//------------------------------// // Chapter 4 - The Son and the Father // Story: Flitter // by Nyerguds //------------------------------// Flitter Chapter Four The Son and the Father "So," Morning Rain said. "Five years? Seriously?" Flitter sighed. "Yes. I was five years old when I met you. Stop thinking of me in terms of pony age, please." The two were making their way through the Everfree Forest, trying to find signs of pony civilization to orientate themselves. While Flitter had had no trouble finding his hive, the same could not be said about finding the way back. The pair was hovering through the trees, going roughly in the direction they thought Trotsborough should be. Morning Rain shook her head. "Still. I'm nearing forty, and you're only twenty-five! You're closer to Blueprint's age than to mine." "Does it bother you that much?" Flitter asked. "Well, no," Morning Rain replied. "It's just... weird thinking about it." Flitter chuckled. "Then don't." Morning Rain shrugged, and looked ahead. It seemed they were finally getting out of the Everfree Forest. "So... where are we?" Flitter asked. She looked around, and spotted apple trees in the distance. "That's Sweet Apple Acres. We came out just beyond Ponyville." Flitter smiled. "Great! If we travel along the edge of the forest we should find the road to Trotsborough." * * * "What do we do now?" Flitter asked. They couldn't have chosen a worse day to visit the little town of Trotsborough. Market day. The only day of the week when everypony was on the streets all afternoon, rather than most of them doing their variety of indoors jobs. The pair was looking down at the village from a nearby hill, with Flitter somewhat hiding behind a convenient tree. "You could change," Morning Rain said, rolling her eyes. "In a town like this?" Flitter sighed, and shook his head. "No, no, see, first of all, that'd mean I'd inevitably be copying somepony that everypony else here probably knows. Secondly, they'd see said somepony walking around with a mare he's normally unassociated with. I would prefer visiting my son without starting any town-wide scandals or other unnecessary drama." "So... change into me?" she said. Flitter blinked. "...what?" "You can change into a mare, no?" "Well, yes, but—" "That'd make it easier! Then there'd just be two of me." Flitter shook his head. "Look, not even touching on the subject of how uncomfortable it'd feel to become you... last I checked, you don't have a twin sister." "No, listen... I'll fly to the other side of town, and make sure nopony sees me. You go in from here, I go in from there, we both pretend to be me, and we both make our way to Blueprint's place. If we're fast enough, nopony will even notice we were on the market at the same time." Flitter groaned. "This has disaster written all over it, you know. Some ponies here might remember us from previous visits. What do I do when they talk to me?" Morning Rain smirked. "Make some small talk and go on? Are you saying that, after twenty years of marriage, you won't be able to impersonate me?" "Oh, very well," Flitter said. He looked her in the eyes. "For the record... I hate this plan." "Noted. But I don't see you coming up with a better one." "Right, right," Flitter said, dejected. There was a brief moment of silence. "Well?" Morning Rain asked, tilting her head. "Any time, now." "Rainy, sweetie... you have no idea how uncomfortable this makes me feel. I've never even been a mare before." "Again, noted," she said with a smirk. "Now change already, we don't have all day." Flitter sighed, and a torrent of green flames engulfed his body. When the green inferno faded, a pink-maned minty green pegasus mare was standing in his place. "Oh, wow," Morning Rain said. "You're like the twin sister I never had!" The second Morning Rain's eye twitched. "...you have no idea how uncomfortable this is." * * * Matters of comfort aside, the trip through the town went rather smoothly. Flitter had waited about twenty minutes to give Morning Rain the chance to get to the other side, so they'd at least end up at Blueprint's house around the same time, and then mingled into the busy market. As luck had it, their son's house was right in the middle of town. "Morning Rain!" Flitter heard a voice behind him. "Is that you? It's been ages!" Flitter suppressed a groan, and looked at the young mare. At least he knew who it was. "Hi, Sunshine!" he said cheerfully, with Morning Rain's voice. "I'm just here to visit my son." The mare nodded. "Yes, I gathered that," she said with a friendly smile. "Did you hear about that dreadful business in Canterlot?" "Y-yeah... we were right in the middle of it all. Scary stuff. Good thing Shining Armor kicked them all out, huh?" he said, keeping up his best smile. "We left just after all that." "Oh!" the mare said. "Is Swift Star here too?" Flitter mentally kicked himself. Stupid! "Oh, no," he said. "He made a detour through Ponyville. We were, um..." Improvise, dammit! "...planning a surprise for Blueprint, and he decided to see if Pinkie Pie was there, to maybe get some help with that. I doubt it, since all the Element Bearers were at the wedding, but hey, you know Swift Star, he can be so stubborn." * * * Meanwhile, at the other end of the town, Morning Rain found herself in a similar situation. "Oh no, Swift's fine. He just wouldn't miss the wedding." "So, ya came here all by yasself?" the brown earth pony stallion said. He looked impressed. "Surely all dose changelin's will be comin' down somewhere! I wouldn't dare goin' out dere alone right now!" Morning Rain looked pretty uncomfortable. The stallion was apparently a good friend of Blueprint here, but she didn't really know him. She remembered he helped Blue with moving his stuff into his new house, but that was about it. "Hehe, oh, that's no problem. I haven't seen a single one!" "Dat's de point, Mornin' Rain, ya don't see 'em! Ya jes' see ponies that could be 'em!" "Oh, no need to get paranoid, now," she said. She needed to cut this conversation short, and she had a fairly good idea on how to handle that. "With that attitude, you could accuse anyone of being a changeling just because you haven't seen them in a while." The stallion blinked. "Oh!" he shouted. "Ah din' mean ta imply anythin'! Ah'm sorry, Mornin'." "Well, I really need to go see Blueprint now." "I'll walk along!" the stallion said, smiling. Morning Rain raised an eyebrow. "I know where my own son lives, you know." She nodded at a piece of paper hanging out of the guy's saddlebag. "You better finish your shopping list, before the stalls close. I have some... rather serious news for Blueprint, okay? It's a pretty private affair." "Oh. Right, I see," the stallion said, nodding gravely. "Best o' luck, ma'am." Morning Rain gave him a polite nod, and slipped away. * * * Flitter made it to the house first. He cursed inwardly. He had no idea what to say to his son, even less so when disguised as Morning Rain. Nonetheless, there wasn't much choice. He had to get off the street before Morning Rain arrived as well. He knocked on the door, unconsciously holding his breath. Being a changeling, he felt his son's mild curiosity radiating through the door long before he opened it. Blueprint opened the door, and his face lit up. "Mom!" he said. "What a wonderful surprise! I thought you'd be at the wedding party now!" "Oh, no, it's f-far too busy there," Flitter said, walking inside and closing the door behind him. "All the party noise and such. So we decided to come here!" He noticed he was rambling, but couldn't help it. Blueprint gave 'her' a concerned look. "Are you okay?" He didn't seem to have noticed Flitter slipped up again by saying 'we'. Flitter sighed. "Don't ask. Stressful journey." At least the last part, he added mentally. A knock on the door made him freeze up. This was the moment he'd dreaded. Before Blueprint could react, he opened the door, and, after confirming it was indeed Morning Rain who had knocked, he quickly pulled her inside and slammed the door shut behind her. Blueprint looked at the two identical copies of his mom, and blinked. "Please stay calm!" Flitter pretty much yelled at him. He glanced at Morning Rain. "Oh Goddesses, this must look so weird." Blueprint slowly walked back. "You guys are changelings. I read about you in the newspaper. The Canterlot—" Morning Rain shook her head. "Please, it's not that simple." Flitter sighed. "I told you. Disaster. All over it." Morning Rain shot him an angry look. "Well we got here, didn't we?" she shouted. "I didn't see you come up with anything better!" "We could at least have waited until the market closed up!" Flitter threw back. "Why thank you!" Morning Rain growled back. "That suggestion would've been useful half an hour ago." "You're always running into things," Flitter said, sighing. "It's hardly your rump on the line. If it's all the same to you, I really don't want to get chased out of town with torches and pitchforks." Blueprint stopped walking back, and frowned. The conversation had taken an awfully familiar turn. "This isn't even a farmer's village!" Morning Rain said, rolling her eyes. "I doubt anyone here has a pitchfork." "Agh, you're doing it again! Stop arguing about useless details instead of admitting you're wrong!" Blueprint looked at Flitter, a baffled look on his face. "...dad?" The two arguing Morning Rains had completely stopped paying attention to him, though. "I'm not!" the real Morning Rain said. "You shouldn't generalise all country villages! Really! You act as if Haytail is the only country village you've ever s—" Morning Rain stopped, and blinked, as she realized Flitter really never had seen any other country villages besides the one they'd lived in back then. He had no memories of Swift Star's travels, and he'd rarely ever left Canterlot since they moved there. "Oh. Right," she said. "It is." The next thing she realized was that she'd completely forgotten about Blueprint, who appeared to be looking at them with a familiar bored look on his face. "This is why I moved out, you know," Blueprint said flatly. "Now can you two please explain to me why my dad looks like a mare?" Flitter and Morning Rain exchanged a worried look, before turning back to Blueprint. "Right," Flitter said. "Long story short, that business in Canterlot messed up our lives quite seriously. I am, indeed, a changeling, and I'd been living in Canterlot for twenty years without any problems. And now, I lost my form." He looked at Morning Rain, sighed, and finally transformed back. As the green flames faded, Flitter was once again in his black changeling form. Blueprint frowned. "This isn't just some elaborate prank with a Starswirl-degree transformation spell, is it?" "As if I would ever be able to cast those," Flitter muttered. Morning Rain shook her head. "No, I'm afraid not. Your dad's a changeling, Blue." As the information started to sink in, Blueprint's eyes widened. "B-but how..." Flitter looked at him. "Basically, some irresponsible idiot knocked up your mom and then got himself killed in the wilds, and I've been filling in for him ever since." "Nothing really changes, you know," Morning Rain said. "He's still your dad." "Well, except, not biologically," Flitter added. Somehow, Blueprint seemed to take it all in quite easily, probably because he'd already recognized his dad despite his transformed state. He rubbed his forehead with a hoof. "So, wait," he said. "You're not Swift Star, then." Flitter shook his head. "No. He died before you were born. You never actually met him." "So, what's your real name, then?" Flitter looked at him nervously. "Uh, it's... Flitter." "That's a mare's name," Blueprint pointed out, raising an eyebrow. "Yeah, well," Flitter grumbled, "I had it for quite some years before I knew that. I'll have you know it's a perfectly masculine changeling name." Blueprint sighed. "This is so unfair, you know," he said, looking at his father's new appearance. "That means I'm the only one of us without wings." "That's what bothers you most about this?" Flitter asked. "Well," Blueprint said, "not much I can do about it, right? There's no way anyone could impersonate my parents' arguing style that well, anyway." "Right. Well. Your mom seriously freaked out, is all," Flitter said. "I'm just a little... underwhelmed." Morning Rain rolled her eyes. "In my defense, we were being chased by an army of changelings at the time." The conversation was interrupted by loud knocking on the front door. "Blueprint!" a rumbling voice came from the other side of the door. "Ya got changelin's in yer house!" "Discord's beard!" Morning Rain cursed. "They figured it out?" "Ugh." Flitter said. "They must've compared notes. I kinda panicked out there." Blueprint looked at them. "Go through the garden!" he hissed. "I'll keep him busy." The pair nodded, and ran out the back door, and through Blueprint's garden. When they walked out, Flitter glanced at the considerable crowd that had gathered in front of the house. "What'd I tell you?" he said to Morning Rain. "Pitchforks." "Just get running!" she hissed to him, and ran on. Flitter followed her closely. "Hey, they're back here!" someone yelled. Morning Rain promptly upgraded her cursing to contain certain private parts of Discord's anatomy, making Flitter raise an eyebrow at her language. "In here!" she barked, pulling Flitter into a shady alley. They saw the majority of the mob rush past them. They were indeed carrying pitchforks, and, despite the fact it was far from evening, torches. Unfortunately, the back of the mob was slower, and more attentive to detail. "Here, in the alley!" somepony yelled. Flitter and Morning Rain heard the noise behind them increase as the whole mob squeezed itself into the narrow street. The alley gave way to a larger road, one side of which was already blocked by ponies who had been slightly smarter and had foreseen where they would come out. Morning Rain bit into Flitter's hoof and pulled him along to the other side. "STOP!" Flitter yelled. He yanked his forehoof loose from Morning Rain's grip, and stopped in the middle of the road. He turned to Morning Rain. "This has gone on long enough." The mob approached him carefully, suddenly looking quite confused. They had planned to just chase him out of the village, but with that plan suddenly failing, they really had no idea what to do next. Flitter walked towards the nearest pony in the mob, an earth pony mare with a pitchfork in her mouth. "What?" Flitter asked. The mare blinked, tried to say something, and decided the best course of action was to spit out her pitchfork first. "Um," she said, "you're a changeling. Right?" Flitter once again wished he had eyes that could roll. "How nice of you to notice. What do you want from me?" The mare looked at the ponies around her. They gave her encouraging nods, but didn't say a word. "To... chase you out of town?" the mare said with a very uncomfortable grin. Flitter pointed at the road behind him. "That's the road to Saddlebright, isn't it?" The mare blinked, and tilted her head to look past him to the rest of the road. "Uh, yeah. I guess." "So, basically, you're not just chasing me out of town, you're chasing me into the next town. Now, do you think the people of Saddlebright will appreciate you chasing a changeling into their town?" The mare's uncomfortable grin changed to an expression of overall discomfort. "No?" "So, pray tell," Flitter said, "why are you chasing me?" "Because... you're a changeling?" Flitter gave the mare a contemptuous look. "Yes, I'm a changeling. Congratulations, you want a prize for being perceptive? Now stop this whole nonsense, and just escort me to the guardhouse already. That seems like a far better option than this sorry excuse for a mob." "We don't have a guardhouse," one of the ponies in the crowd remarked. "Yeah. Hardly any crime here. Everypony knows each other," another said. "Guardhouses are for, like, cities," said yet another. "Augh!" Flitter yelled in frustration. "What does a pony have to do around these parts to get himself arrested?" "Um... you're not a pony," the mare at the front remarked. "Thank you! I hadn't noticed!" Flitter said, glaring daggers at her. "Where did you get that pitchfork anyway?" "What?" she said, taken off guard by the sudden change of subject. "I- I work at the transport company. We use it to unload bays of hail... uh, bales of hay, I mean." Flitter looked back at Morning Rain. "Well, that's one mystery solved," he said to her. "Beg yer pardon," the brown stallion that Morning Rain met at the market said, "but why'd ya want ta be arrested?" Flitter gave him a dry look. "Beg your pardon, but what are you all chasing me for? Apparently, I've done something wrong, and thus I would prefer the Equestrian High Court to determine exactly what I'm guilty of, and what my sentence is." "Right," the stallion said. "Um, apparently ya did impersonate 'er," he said, pointing at Morning Rain. "That was her idea!" he said, exasperated. "And I told her it was a terrible one!" The stallion looked at Morning Rain. "Really?" "Oh yes. Really terrible," Flitter deadpanned. Morning Rain sighed, and walked towards Flitter. "Well, I didn't want to cause an uproar. It seemed better than just walking in here." "You attacked Canterlot, though," another voice piped up. "No, I didn't," Flitter said with a bored expression. "No, he didn't," Morning Rain confirmed. "He was with me all day. The only thing he attacked were some of those invading changelings." "That was clearly self-defense, though," Flitter said. "Oh yes. They attacked us first," Morning Rain said, nodding in agreement. "I didn't look like this, of course," Flitter said to the crowd of ponies. "Some of you may know me as Swift Star." He looked at Morning Rain. "I'm getting really tired of explaining all this. This is, what, the fourth time?" "Well, Morphosai didn't need much explaining," Morning Rain remarked. "True, true," Flitter mused. "Third time, then. Still, I'm done explaining." "So..." the mare at the front said. "Now what?" "Now," Blueprint's voice came from the back of the crowd, "you stop pestering my dad, and they both stay with me for the night." The crowd quickly parted to let the blue unicorn through. "Sounds good to everypony?" Blueprint asked in a stern voice. The crowd, which was somehow no longer a mob, seemed to have lost all its driving force, and some agreeing voices were heard. As the three went back to Blueprint's house, the townponies slowly dispersed. "So," Blueprint asked, as they walked back to the house. "What are you going to do?" "This circus has gone on long enough," Flitter said. "I was serious, you know. If I don't do anything, it'll be like this in every town. No, first thing in the morning, I'm finding myself a guardhouse, and turning myself over to the authorities. Let the Court deal with me. It's the only way to clear this up once and for all." Blueprint shook his head. "There really aren't any towns with guardhouses around, you know. The only thing remotely close... well, no. Probably a bad idea." "What?" Flitter asked. "Just tell me." "Well... Ponyville. Everypony knows Twilight Sparkle's in close contact with the Princess. She should be back from the wedding by now." Flitter stopped and blinked. That was a court a bit higher than he'd aimed for. "Oh, what the hay, why not," he said, and walked on.