//------------------------------// // Chapter Three: Choices and Impulses // Story: The Redemption of Chrysalis // by Fallen Prime //------------------------------// “You did what!?” The cry came from two different sources, miles apart, and for two different, if related, reasons. Yet both were uttered simultaneously, in a cosmic coincidence none would ever be aware of. For even further convenience, the two ponies who spoke these three words were brother and sister. “You did what!?” Shining Armor cried, startling his wife on the other side of the window she constructed. “What else was I going to do?” Cadance asked. “He would’ve died in that hospital! The entire point of all this is to make sure he stays alive!” “But this is probably even more dangerous for him!” Shining countered. “I mean, for one thing, I would’ve liked to know ahead of time, since it’s our house—” “Right now, you’re not here,” Cadance stated. “I planned to have him able to go out on his own by the time you came back anyway.” “That’s another thing,” Shining argued. “How are you planning on caring for him? You don’t know the first thing about treating coma patients!” “I can learn the basics,” Cadance replied. “Princess Celestia said she’d have professionals come in regularly for everything else.” “What about your own safety?” Shining warned. “Once he actually wakes up, he’s gonna be hungry for love. What if he takes all that you have?” Suddenly Cadance came to a realization. She thought she understood exactly why Shining was so worried. A valid fear, to be sure, but still so ridiculous. “Shining... are you afraid that doing this is going to make me love you any less?” “Of course I am,” Shining answered. “You mean everything to me. The last thing I want is for you to stop loving me back. What happens if you start loving him instead?” “Did you love me any less after Chrysalis sapped your energy?” Cadance asked. “No, I didn’t,” Shining answered truthfully. “Then why are you so worried that one of her subjects could have that effect on me?” Shining tried to respond, but no words came out. Yet again, Cadance had cornered him. In their relationship, she was simply the better arguer, and though it wasn’t very heated at all, this was still their biggest fight yet as a married couple. She was so convinced she was right this time, and she was sure he would see it her way. “...when is he arriving?” Shining finally asked after a moment’s silence. Cadance glanced at the clock beside her. “Any minute now. They just finished tending to his wounds and filing all the papers, last time I checked. You’ll probably be able to see him before we hang up here.” “I already had to see him when we found him,” Shining replied. “I can’t say I’m looking forward to seeing him again. He was beat up pretty bad.” “I noticed,” Cadance said morosely. “I guess I only have one more question about all this,” Shining stated. “Why? Why do you feel like you have to put yourself through this?” Cadance started to reply, but was interrupted by an urgent knock at her door. “I’m sorry. Hold on.” She approached the door and opened it in an instant. As expected, a pair of ponies immediately barged in, carrying Chicane in a stretcher between them. “Do you have a clear surface for us to put him?” the medic at the front asked. Cadance pointed towards a couch on the other side of the room. “Right there, where all the equipment’s set up.” The medical ponies moved to the couch and slowly lifted the battered changeling onto it. Cadance could only watch in awe as they quickly hooked him up to several machines she still hadn’t even learned the names of. They were supposed to stay for a few hours longer to guide Cadance through the basic motions, which she was incredibly thankful for, since she knew she’d be lost if she tried going in blind on her own. Once the IV tube was fed into Chicane’s good foreleg and the heart monitor made its first steady beeps, the doctors moved aside, allowing Cadance a full view of him. His right legs were in casts, and much of his body was wrapped in gauze. The wrapping on his head engulfed his horn and concealed his damaged eye. He was much easier on the eyes with his more severe injuries concealed, but he somehow looked even more pitiful. Cadance looked back to the portal, back to Shining Armor. He looked to feel just as sorry for the poor creature as she did. “We did that to him,” Cadance stated. “We did that to his entire race. I’ve lost so much sleep over that these past few weeks. The worst thing about it is that, no matter how much I want to, we can’t take any of it back. I don’t think I can forgive myself for it unless I do something to make up for it. I can’t not do this.” Shining paused for quite a while, looking upon the bandaged figure with an expression of guilt and remorse. Just as Cadance expected, he was finally seeing it her way. Eventually, Shining sighed. “You can’t do this for all of them. You’ll barely be able to handle the one.” “One is better than none,” Cadance declared. “I can forgive myself if I can make a difference in just one of these changelings’ lives. I don’t just want him to recover. I want him to feel welcome here.” “He’s not, though,” Shining countered. “I appreciate what you’re doing for him, and I get why, but he helped crash our wedding and attack Canterlot. Most ponies won’t let that go easily.” “There are plenty who will,” Cadance replied. “Even if it’s just us, Chrysalis, and Twilight and her friends, he’ll have ponies here that are willing to accept and help him. And with most of his swarm gone, I think he’ll need as much support as he can get.” “Well, do what you need to do,” Shining instructed. “I need to head off now. The guys are getting sick of the heat, and we want to leave Appleloosa within the next hour.” “Good luck out there,” Cadance encouraged him. “I love you.” “Love you too,” Shining replied with a smile, and Cadance cut the connection. She had to rest a foreleg on the arm of the couch to keep her balance; that spell always took a lot out of her. As she stabilized herself, her gaze fell back upon Chicane. Despite the countless fractures and scars concealed by so many bandages, despite the uneven and shallow breathing aided only by an oxygen mask, he looked strangely peaceful. She wondered if he could even feel any of it in his state. Almost without thinking, Cadance lit her horn again with magic, surrounding it in a bright blue aura. She touched her horn to Chicane’s, hoping he would respond and consume the energy for himself. “Princess Cadance,” one of the doctors called from behind her. She almost completely forgot those stallions were even there. “I don’t recommend you try that until the patient’s horn heals. With any luck, that will only take a few days, but for now, I think it’s too risky.” Cadance stepped back from the changeling. With the horn concealed, she’d forgotten about the cracks. The doctor had a point; those cracks most likely impacted Chicane’s ability to use magic and absorb love. In a worst-case scenario, going through with it could have caused a backfire that would kill them both. It would still be some time before she could nourish him. “If I can’t do that yet,” Cadance told the doctors, “I’ll find some other way to take care of him. I think we should start by teaching me how to change his IV bag.” “You did what!?” Twilight Sparkle cried, shifting her eyes between Chrysalis and the morning paper. “What else could I have done?” Chrysalis asked. “The doctor was refusing to let me see him! Chicane is my subject, one of those whom I’ve been fighting to preserve all this time!” “What was stopping you from just talking to him?” Twilight demanded. “We tried!” Chrysalis responded. “Princesses Luna and Cadance tried long before we arrived, and not even Celestia could generate the results I needed.” “So you threw him into a wall!?” Twilight shouted. “Did you think he wouldn’t tell anypony about this? Did you even think at all!?” “Those in glass houses...” Chrysalis muttered. “Did you seriously just compare this to my problem!?” Twilight accused, slowly growing more and more upset. “I have actual issues, Chrysalis! I’ve been seeing somepony for them every other day because I can barely keep them under control on my own! You knew exactly what you were doing! You were just being stupid and reckless!” “Alright, I get it!” Chrysalis yelled. “I’m sorry for comparing my impulsive actions to your emotional instability, and I admit that I may have been out of line at the hospital. But what’s done is done.” Twilight paused, taking a few deep breaths to calm herself down. “It’s alright. I shouldn’t have blown up at you like that. That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m trying to avoid. Right now, though, we need to worry about this.” With that last word, she shook the newspaper in her telekinetic grasp. The fact that she’d made it onto the front page of the newspaper alarmed Chrysalis far more than she was willing to show. She knew that her eventual reveal was inevitable, but she’d hoped to be able to have it happen on her own terms. She’d envisioned herself standing by Celestia’s side while she made a public announcement declaring her and the changeling race to no longer be a threat to Equestria. She would even have taken the systematic method of introduction that her friends seemed eager to start implementing, meeting ponies a few at a time and perhaps letting word of mouth do the rest. This was exactly what she wanted to avoid. She feared that the invasion would still be fresh on the public mind when the time came, but this incident would only serve to make things worse. She’d changed in her time in Ponyville, and she’d desired a clean slate for her public reveal, but now it would appear that she was just as malicious as her first visit made her appear to be. She would be judged a monster, a hostile tyrant come to take their kingdom once again. Her fears were now guaranteed to come true. This article sealed her fate. “What use is there now?” Chrysalis lamented. “Nothing can change the fact that this happened. If I were to take any action now, I’d certainly face persecution.” “You can’t hide forever,” Twilight informed her. “Not from this, and not from the rest of Equestria. If this is a sign of anything, it’s that it’s time to show yourself.” “After this?” Chrysalis asked. “This article has made me a villain in the public eye!” “You did that yourself when you invaded Canterlot,” Twilight replied. “This isn’t nearly as bad as that.” “To them, I may as well have just invaded a second time!” Chrysalis retorted. “I cannot make my presence known to them as a friend if they think of me as a foe!” “You didn’t have that problem with us,” Twilight reminded her. She sighed, moving for the door. “At any rate, your presence is definitely known now. I need to get to Manehattan for my appointment, so we’ll talk about this when I get back.” Chrysalis gave off a sigh of her own. “Take care, Twilight.” The mare nodded her acknowledgement, then headed out the door. Another problem caused by lack of forethought. Chrysalis was so used to this, yet it would always take her by surprise when the consequences caught up with her. For the second time now, her grand mistake was in full view of a peaceful nation in which she was generally unwelcome. This time, though, it was not an intricate plan, and she could not map out its flaws in hindsight and try to learn from the mistakes. This time it was pure impulse, a choice made in the heat of the moment, where the only flaw was the fact that it had been made in the first place. She knew she should have just accepted Celestia’s offer for a formal pardon... “Something wrong, Chrysalis?” Chrysalis looked behind her, to the staircase of the upper level of the library, where she found Spike standing at the foot of the steps. Would she ever have a conversation with him that did not involve him descending that staircase? “You’ve seen the newspaper, have you not?” Chrysalis asked morosely. “What about it?” Spike replied. “I didn’t think you were that interested in current events.” “Not normally,” Chrysalis stated, “but I have a personal investment in today’s front-page story.” She grabbed the newspaper from across the room with her magic, tossing it into Spike’s waiting hands. He started to scan the paper, but after a moment, his eyes began to widen. “Oh, that’s not good,” he panicked. “That’s not good at all! Everypony’s gonna know you’re here now! Do you have any idea what they could do to you, or to us, if they found out where in Equestria you are!?” “You’re not helping,” Chrysalis retorted. “Twilight suggests that we find a solution before this truly gets out of hoof.” “We could burn every copy that got sent out, right?” Spike asked, speaking rather quickly in his frantic state. “I bet if we hurry, we can just grab them all and have a nice little fire in a nice little clearing in the Everfree Forest! If we want to get the entire kingdom in less than thirty minutes, we need to leave now!” Chrysalis rolled her eyes. It seemed some of Twilight’s paranoia had rubbed off on him. “We are not burning anything. Besides, I have a less-than-pleasant history with that forest. I would rather not return to that place just to set fire to a pile of newspapers.” “Then we’ll go to Winsome Falls!” Spike shouted, seemingly ignoring the first part of Chrysalis’ statement. “The smoke and fire won’t do too much damage to the rainbow waterfalls’ colors, will they?” “Enough with the burning!” Chrysalis ordered. “We must find a way out of this mess that does not involve covering up the fact that the mess is there!” Spike sighed, looking down at the floor. “Yeah, I guess so. I don’t even think it’s possible to get every newspaper in Equestria in half an hour.” He raised his head again to meet the changeling’s gaze. “So are we just waiting for Twilight to come back?” “I see no better option,” Chrysalis answered, “so wait we shall.” They waited for about an hour before there was a knock at the door. It was much too early for Twilight to have already returned, so Chrysalis assumed it was a hopeful patron to the library. And here she stood, completely undisguised! She stepped to the side, out of view from the doorway, as Spike moved to open it. As he did, she saw a smile cross his face. “Hey there, Fluttershy!” Spike greeted, to Chrysalis’ surprise. “Looking for Twilight?” “Um... actually, no,” Fluttershy’s voice replied from outside. “I wanted to talk to Chrysalis.” Chrysalis stepped forward to meet Fluttershy as Spike allowed her entrance. “It’s been far too long, Fluttershy. What brings you here?” Fluttershy muttered something under her breath, Chrysalis only able to catch the words “only four days,” before she raised her voice to a more comfortable volume. “Anyway, I was wondering if... well, maybe you’d like to come out and meet some other ponies. Rarity was telling me about how well things went with her sister, and—” “You’re kidding,” Chrysalis interrupted. “You’re kidding, right?” “Who kids about making friends?” came an unexpected and energetic voice from seemingly nowhere. Without warning, Pinkie Pie burst her way through a pile of unsorted books on the ground. “How did you—” Chrysalis began to ask, but a knowing glance from Fluttershy told her not to question the methods of Pinkie’s madness. “You don’t mind that I’m setting this all up, right?” Pinkie asked, talking at a mile a minute. “It made me so sad seeing you all shut up here in the library, so I thought to myself, ‘Hey, Pinkie, how can we get Chryssy to get out more?’ And then it hit me; make more friends! So I gave Applejack the idea to bring you over to Sweet Apple Acres to meet the Cutie Mark Crusaders, since they’re just the cutest and nicest fillies you’ll ever meet and they’d never be able to not get along with you! And now me and Fluttershy are gonna take you to meet Zecora! Isn’t this exciting?” Chrysalis simply sat there stupefied for several seconds, trying and mostly failing to process everything that had just been said. It seemed like she said that this meeting system was of her own design, but she couldn’t be sure. What did catch her attention, however, was a name she used towards the end. “Zecora? The zebra?” “Aww, you already know her?” Pinkie moaned. “You weren’t supposed to meet her yet! My plan is ruined!” Chrysalis chuckled. She knew the feeling well. “I have not met her personally, not as of yet. Applejack and Apple Bloom mentioned the name.” “I think you’ll really like her,” Fluttershy assured her. “She’s wise, she’s charitable, she’s great with potions, and if you can get used to her manner of speaking, she’s very pleasant to talk to.” “Which is why we’re leaving to talk to her right now!” Pinkie exclaimed, and Chrysalis barely had time to protest before she and Fluttershy were forcefully dragged out of the library. Accepting her fate, the changeling queen groaned and disguised herself as Twilight before any attention could be drawn to her. She began walking with Pinkie and Fluttershy in silence, mentally preparing herself for another arranged encounter. She initially hoped that Zecora would not be too judgmental based on the newspaper article, then remembered that she likely would not receive a paper in the— Chrysalis stopped dead in her tracks. That train of thought reminded her of where exactly Rainbow Dash had said Zecora lived. All at once, she was filled with unpleasant memories and a sense of dread. She would need to re-enter Everfree.