//------------------------------// // Changeling at School // Story: Chibi Changeling // by Yukito //------------------------------// Berry Punch pulled the thermometer from Berry Pinch’s mouth, and shook her head. “Yep. No doubt about it.” She knelt down and wrapped her forelegs around her daughter’s head. “You have a fever.” “Which means you don’t have to go to school today!” Crunch Berry shouted from the kitchen table, pumping a foreleg into the air. “Video games and action Anime is the cure for fevers!” “Bed rest and plenty of fluids,” Berry Punch started, “Is what she’s getting! Honestly, what is wrong with you?” Crunch Berry waved her hoof dismissively. “I already got to play the ‘boring, stick-in-the-mud mother’ role. Now I get to play the ‘fun, favourite grandma’ role.” “Well, go play it back in the Changeling Kingdom.” Berry Punch stood up straight, and looked down at her daughter. “And you, young lady, should go straight back to bed! I’ll drop by the schoolhouse to let Cheerilee know what’s up.” Berry Pinch quickly shook her head. “No! I can’t miss school today! There’s a test, and if I don’t take it-” Berry Pinch wobbled slightly on the spot, and was about to fall over, before her mother quickly caught her with her magic. “Please, mommy…” “Sorry, Pinchy, but you can’t go to school in your condition! Even if you did, do you really think that you could take the test in your condition?” Berry Pinch didn’t answer her. “I’ll ask Cheerilee to let you take the test another day, but your health comes first!” “You know,” Crunch Berry started, making Berry Punch cringe, “This might be a good chance to test out a new spell I’ve been working on.” “What?” Berry Punch asked, looking at her mother with furrowed brows. “Crunch Berry, what are you talking about? My daughter’s ill! This is no time for experimenting with crazy magic!” “It’s not gonna blow up this time or anything!” Crunch Berry assured her daughter. “It’s a medical spell. I started to take up medical magic after you left. Y’know, to keep myself entertained? Even got a ChD.” “‘ChD’?” Berry Pinch asked. “‘Changeling Doctorate’,” Berry Punch explained. “And quite frankly, I don’t believe you,” she said to Crunch Berry, who huffed and looked away. “Well, it’s true! And, I just so happen to have been working on a spell before I left that’s designed to suppress fevers!” Berry Punch knew where this was going, and quickly positioned herself between her mother and her daughter. “Forget it! You’re not ‘experimenting’ on my daughter!” “Oh, relax! The spell’s harmless if it fails.” “I said ‘no’!” “Please, mommy,” Berry Pinch said, tugging at her mother’s tail to get her attention. She shot a pair of pleading eyes at her mother, and trembled her lower lip to add to her ‘cuteness appeal’. “Please? I really wanna go…” Berry Punch tried to tell her ‘no’, but that face she was making was just… too hard to turn down. With a reluctant sigh, she turned her attention back to her mother. “She’d better be safe.” “Of course!” Crunch Berry said cheerfully. “You know that I would never do anything to harm my little Pinchy!” ‘True enough,’ Berry Punch thought. ‘AS far as I can tell, she prioritises Pinchy’s health quite highly.’ Crunch Berry approached the filly, who was lowered to the ground by Berry Punch. “Now, just remember, Pinchy dear: all this spell will do is ease up the symptoms to a degree that you can still go to school. You will still be ill, and your symptoms will still show, but they shouldn’t hinder you too much. That being said, make sure to stay warm, and do not do anything that will expend too much energy. Do you understand?” Berry Pinch nodded slowly. “I… think so. Basically, go to school, do the test, attend my classes, then come straight home?” Crunch Berry nodded. “That’s right. And try not to infect the other students, if you can.” “I’ll get her a facemask to wear,” Berry Punch said, walking over to the first aid cabinet behind her. “And finally,” Crunch Berry continued, in a serious tone, “If you start to react to any feelings of hatred around you, come home immediately. Your body is already weak enough. We can’t risk your disguise becoming undone from two fevers stacked on top of each other.” Berry Pinch nodded, and Crunch Berry shot her a smile. “Well, I’ll be watching over you, anyway. So it should be fine. “Right. Well then, shall we begin?” Berry Pinch coughed as she entered the schoolhouse, with Rumble and Archer walking beside her, talking about something that she hadn’t heard. “Whoa, you okay, Pinchy?” Archer asked. “You sure you’re well enough for school?” Berry Pinch nodded. “I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just a slight cold. Nothing to worry about.” “If you say so,” Archer said. She noticed her friend’s eye and nose twitching, and tilted her head in confusion. “What’s-” She stopped when she realised that Berry Pinch was about to sneeze, and acted quickly, searching her saddlebag for some tissues. “Here,” Rumble said, offering a tissue to Berry Pinch. Berry Pinch thanked him silently, and snatched the tissues from his hoof. “A-CHOO!” After two more sneezes, the filly groaned, and threw the tissue into the nearest bin that she could find. “C’mon, let’s just go to class…” The other two foals shared a concerned glance with each other, before following Berry Pinch towards the classroom. Neither of them had noticed the tissue, which had been stacked at the top of the bin, had fallen onto the floor. “Aah, what a beautiful day!” Junior sang as he entered the schoolhouse, trotting merrily down the hallway and towards his classroom. “How nice it will be to see Miss Berry Pinch agai-Hm?” He stopped when he noticed a piece of tissue paper on the floor, and frowned a he reached down to pick it up. “Inexcusable! Honestly, ponies today just have no respect for…” Junior froze as he picked the tissue up with his magic. As he picked it up, the paper opened, revealing its contents. To anypony else, the mucus would just seem to be ordinary, ever day mucus from a pony. But to the trained eye of a changeling hunter, one could notice the telltale signs of chemicals found only in changeling mucus. A simple magical test is all one would need to confirm this… “Mamma mia! T-This means…” Junior looked around quickly, and then turned back to the tissue paper, glaring at it as if it were a foul evil, threatening to destroy all that he loved. ‘This mucus is fresh! There’s a changeling in the schoolhouse!’ Junior threw the tissue paper back onto the ground, and quickly turned tail and began to run through the school’s hallway. ‘Not good! There’s a changeling somewhere in the school! I have to protect the students! First off, I’ll need to trap it here! I’ll set up a cordon around the school, and then…’ Rumble sighed as he carried Berry Pinch through the hallway, the filly breathing heavily and coughing frequently as they moved. “Geez. To think you’d have a reaction on the same day that you’re ill… This is why you should have stayed at home.” Berry Pinch slowly shook her head. “… Had to… come…” “What?” “I… I had to…” “What are you saying?” Rumble asked, arching an eyebrow at the filly by his side. “Actually, never mind. The first thing that we should do is get you home. And then, you’re going to get plenty of bed rest, alright?” Only a little squeak came out of Berry Pinch’s mouth, which Rumble took as a sign that she understood. They continued to move through the schoolhouse, until they eventually made their way outside. “…What the?” Rumble looked up at the large, blue translucent field before him, surround the entire schoolhouse. He wasn’t quite sure what it was, but he approached it anyway, out of curiosity. “What is this?” “Don’t touch it!” a voice cried out. Rumble looked up to see Crunch Berry floating above him on a cloud. “That’s a barrier set up by that changeling hunter brat! It’s designed to stop any changelings going in or out!” “W-What about ponies?” Rumble asked, looking at the barrier cautiously. “And, wait! Does that mean that he knows?! About Berry Pinch, I mean.” Crunch Berry shook her head. “Ponies are fine, but you’re touching Pinchy right now, so the barrier will still hit her if you touch it. And as for knowing, I don’t think he knows specifically who the changeling is.” ‘Meaning that he knows there’s a changeling here, but not who it is…’ “What’s wrong with Pinchy? She shouldn’t be suffering that bad from a simple reaction to hatred!” Rumble shrugged. “Maybe… she’s reacting to somepony with a lot of hate?” “Come to think of it,” Crunch Berry started, “That kid, Junior, didn’t seem to pleased when he set up this barrier… Though, given his father’s history, I can understand his anger…” “His what?” Rumble asked. “… Nothing! Anyway, you need to find the source of the barrier, and destroy it! It should be in there somewhere!” Rumble looked around for a bit, before looking back up at the cloud. “What does it look like?” “Trust me, you’ll know when you see i-AH!” Crunch Berry pointed a hoof down at Berry Pinch, prompting Rumble to look at her… and gasp. “H-Her disguise!” Rumble quickly turned around, and ran towards some nearby bushes, diving into them, just in case anypony happened to pass by. “Hey, Berry! Are you okay?!” Berry Pinch, now completely exposed as the changeling that she was, opened her eyes slowly, and looked up at Rumble with tears in her eyes. “… I’m sorry,” she said weakly. “This is… all my fault…” Rumble shook his head. “No, don’t blame yourself. None of us could have predicted something like… well, this.” “But… if I hadn’t insisted on coming in today…” Berry Pinch let out a few coughs, before continuing. “I just… had to come in, no matter what… I had to come in, and wish you a ha-happy… birthday…” “… Happy birthday?” Rumble asked, receiving a nod from Berry Pinch. “What do you mean?” “Today is… your birthday, right? You told me…” Rumble shook his head. “Berry, I said that my birthday is next week.” Berry Pinch stared up at him with a shocked look on her face, and then groaned and buried her face into Rumble’s shoulder. “N-Now way1 Then, I did all of this for n-nothing!” Rumble sighed, and pulled the youngling into a soft hug. “Well, it’s the thought that counts, right? Thanks, Berry, for doing all that for me… But, in the future, please don’t endanger yourself like that, okay?” “B-But-” Rumble placed a forehoof to her lips to cut her off. “I can’t very well enjoy my birthday, if I knew you were suffering for it… Just knowing that you’re fine is enough for me.” Berry Pinch blushed, though it was hard to tell from how red her face already was, and she averted her eyes and she silently muttered: “S-Sorry…” Rumble smiled, and rose to his hooves. He looked up at Crunch Berry, who was now glaring down at him. He was now conflicted on whether the barrier should come down or not. “Can you keep watch over her, while I go and look for the source of this barrier?” Crunch Berry composed herself, and nodded. “Fine. I’ll come and alert you if something bad happens.” “Thanks!” Rumble quickly shot off around the schoolhouse, in search of whatever it was that was keeping the barrier up. He searched all around the outside area, for about seven minutes, before he found something. A large, metallic box, with a symbol on it matching Junior’s Cutie Mark, with a blue aura around it that matched the barrier’s colour. “This must be it,” Rumble said quietly to himself as he approached the box. “Now, I just have to destroy it…” He picked it up, and started to question how exactly he would go about doing that. However, as it turned out, the box wasn’t that hard to break at all… In fact, it seemed to just fall apart in his hooves. “Huh… that was easy,” he said as he watched the barrier begin to fade away. He began to make his way back to where he left Berry Pinch, but stopped when he noticed a pink mare flying through the air, carrying something black wrapped in a blue blanket on her back. Breathing a sigh of relief, Rumble dropped the box to the ground. “Good. She’s safe.” “Who’s safe?” Rumble jumped as he heard a sudden voice behind him, and turned around to see Junior standing behind him, glaring daggers at him. “And why is my Anti-Changeling Barrier Box 2000 lying in pieces at your hooves?” “Y-Your what?” Rumble asked, before looking down at the broken box beneath him. “O-Oh. That. Eheh… funny story, actually…” Junior took a step closer, causing Rumble to swallow and take a step back. “This, on your shoulder…” Junior touched a hoof to Rumble’s shoulder, and then pulled it away, showing the colt the sticky substance now his hoof. “This is changeling mucus… the same changeling mucus that I found on that tissue paper, inside the schoolhouse.” ‘‘C-Changeling mucus’? Really?’ “I-Is that so?” Rumble asked nervously, looking around for somewhere to run to. “It is… So, why don’t you tell me, Rumble?” Junior took another, larger step forward, moving his face closer to the frightened colt’s. “How did it get there?” Rumble shrugged. “B-Beats me…” “… You know what I think? I think that-” “RUMBLE! JUNIOR!” The two colts turned to see their teacher, Cheerilee, running towards them. “What do you two think you’re doing out here?! The test is scheduled to begin soon!” Junior put a hoof up to protest. “Miss Cheerilee, with all due respect, the school grounds are not safe right no-” “Oh no!” Rumble shouted, cutting Junior off. “I completely forgot! Sorry, Miss Cheerilee! I was just so concerned for Berry Pinch’s safety that I-” “M-Miss Berry Pinch?! What do you mean? What happened to her?” Cheerilee sighed, and grabbed Junior’s forehoof with her own. “She’s just had another one of her sick spells, that’s all. As for you, young colt. You have a test to take.” She turned to Rumble. “As do you.” Rumble nodded. “Yes, ma’am!” he said with a salute, before running cheerfully back towards the schoolhouse. “H-Hey, wait!” Junior shouted, but was stopped by Cheerilee, who was still grabbing a hold of his hoof. “Miss Cheerilee, you don’t understand! There is a changeling loose in the school! We have to-” “Recess is scheduled for after the test,” Cheerilee said. “You can play your games then.” Before any further protests could be made, the teacher began to pull the colt with her back towards the schoolhouse. Junior tried to free himself from her grip, but found it quite impossible. He had to admit, she had quite amazing strength. She would make a fine changeling hunter, that’s for sure. ‘… Rumble… Don’t think that this is over. I’ll find out what you know, one way or another.’