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// Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It 
// Story: Angels and Demons 3: Winds of Destiny 
// by lunabrony 
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	Sarah, who had introduced herself as Ruby Mist, rolled her eyes. "Oh, don't be so dramatic. Of all the worst things that could happen, there are far WORSE possible things. At least I have a cultured upbringing, daddy saw to that. You could be forced to mind meld with a chariot driver, or a commoner." She shuddered, laying on the tone of superiority. "I have everything I need from you to complete the interview. You're free to go, when the interview concludes the mind link can be terminated." She said. "May I suggest a trip to HoofBeatz? All accessories are 60% off this weekend, and some of them are absolutely fabulous." She stuck her nose up for a bit of extra flair.

It was hard to keep up appearances, Her mind had been practically bullrushed by all sorts of knowledge from Glitter Shine's mind. She knew how that filly felt about practically everything. It was complicated, she was aloof and a daddy's girl, but some of that was just facade, she was genuinely curious about things but all the while she was trying to imitate her mother. Her sister was one of the few fillies she had a genuine down unpretentious relationship with. Glitter Shine excused herself, and the unicorn guard severed the link and escorted her back to the dressing room. The two mares in her was calling someone a couple of times.
"Sarah?" Asked Painted Wings for the fourth time, and Sarah's addled mind became aware that this was her name after all. The guard didn't comment on what had happened, and neither of the makeup artists seemed to know what had happened except that Sarah looked a bit dizzy. "Ready to get dressed up?"

The whole point of the test was to become Glitter Shine, and as soon as she exited the interview room, Sarah was instantly in character. She didnt drop any names, although the pair of mares were given a slight wink. That was the only indication given that she was up to something. "Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting?" She snapped. "You're supposed to be professional, and I'm just standing here. What are you waiting for? A Wonderbolts flyover? Do your jobs!" She barked. She played it safe, for all she knew she was being tested at that very moment.

With what she had acquired, being Glitter Shine mentally was easy. The hard part was deeper down also being Sarah, and being convinced of both at the same time. Painted and Gluon went to work, brushing in a colourful fur powder than 'returned' the orange coat to its proper blue. As one fixed eyelashes, the other smeared something slightly shimmering on her face. Painted blocked the mirror for a moment as her hoofs massaged and caressed the face of Sarah. When she was done, the difference was striking, Glitter Shine looked back at herself, a little stunned for a moment but regaining a smug appearance soon enough. "Drink this, it will help your voice." Painted offered a small bowl with a glowing liquid. It had no taste, but her throat tingled. 

Sarah knew who she was, there was no doubt about that. She wasn't about to give that up. The truly difficult part was being able to rapidly switch between personalities. When she was Glitter Shine, it took a few precious seconds of coaxing to get Sarah back. Those few seconds could mean the difference between mission success and mission failure. Sarah started coughing. "Ugh, could you at least have put in some sparkling cider or a lemon or something?" She asked. Her voice took her by surprise, even though she'd expected it, it was another thing entirely to actually hear it.

It sounded a little different hearing it coming out of her own throat, but it was Glitter Shine's voice. Satisfied they finished adding length and gloss to her tail and mane. They even fitted a tiny bit of horn extension on her horn. It was hard if not impossible to tell that it was there, but her new knowledge told her that Glitter Shine had gotten it not long after her mother had gotten hers. The rest of their work was unnoticeable, they brushed some powders in here and there, added some shadowing an fine detail in the fur. Making her look even more Glitter Shine like than before, without her being able to tell what exactly it had been. Finally they were satisfied. A guard came and escorted Sarah to the next part. "In the next room Glitter Shine's father and little sister are waiting. He's in conversation with some other ponies, thinking that he has a business proposal to make, which will give you some time. You've got two hours, if during those two hours they suspect you in any way the test is over." And with no further clarification he opened a door and let her into a room, that seemed much like the one she left.

Light classical music was playing the background. A trio of high society ponies were conversing in the back. A dark unicorn in a stunning outfit was debating something. A little filly yellow unicorn, in a dress opened her eyes wide and smiled when she saw Glitter. 

Glitter decided that she gotten tired of waiting and gone to wander, as youngsters were always prone to do. She didn't want to make assumptions however, and strode towards the young filly. Her magic worked Glitter Shines mind, pulling out names and histories from an extensive memory file. "Hello, Ebony." She said sweetly, reaching her neck down to give the unicorn a slight nuzzle. "Getting bored yet?" She asked.

"Mhmm." She nodded. Her father smiled dotingly. "And this, gentlecolts, is my stunning daughter, Glitter Shine. We were here for an interview to a part she wanted. Welcome back, my daughter." Glitter Shine beamed internally with happiness, basking in her fathers comments. He leaned down and placed a tender kiss straight between her ears. Ebony received one as well, once she had pouted enough.

Glitter Shine stood right by her father, standing up straight and beaming with pride. "You should have seen the other applicants, daddy. It was embarrassing. But of course I wish them the best, even if their best isn't all that good." She said with a shrug. "I'm a lock for the part," she said with confidence, and turned her attention to her fathers guests. "A good afternoon to you, sirs." Her father had likely raised her to be polite, especially to the well-off. It could be advantageous.

When the gong went Glitter Shine for a little while had forgotten what that meant, but not quite, not deep down. Ebony and her had a little fun playing a quiet games, such as twenty questions and eye spy. The two of them had a long history together, and loyal little sister she was. But when the gong went Sarah had to be in charge again. Guard ponies came in much to the consternation of her 'father'. "What is the meaning of this. Get your hands off… Glitter?" One of the guards began to unceremoniously dry off the powdered color, Sarah's orange showing forth here and there. The face cream was wiped off and presumable her face now looked like it had before. Ebony screamed and ran to her father and the two were escorted off. Sarah felt a slight pang of heartbreak at the look on Ebony's face.

The room was cleared out by the guard, leaving Sarah partially covered in fur paint. A counter potion had been offered to her and her voice was restored. She was alone in the room that had been decked out as a waiting area. It was clear now that it had been completely monitored all the time. There were three mirrors in the room and they must have all been see through. Eventually a door opened and three ponies entered. All of them were of a dark grey color, and wore official Evodian attire. A fairly somber appearance. "Sarah Key. Step forward." The mare in the middle said her name. 

Sarah immediately stepped forward. She did not protest, hesitate or complain. While she felt a pang of fear at the tone of voice she had been addressed in. Had she done something wrong? She felt a bit of heartbreak as Ebony was escorted away, the fear in the fillys eyes only momentarily stunned Sarah. She saluted the guards, and took her place foward.

"We are all impressed that you made it this far." Addressing her with her full name it was obvious that her father had filled them in on probably everything. 
"Considering that the task of the test was explained to you while you were being tested, you quickly adapted. We were very pleased to see you adapt a technique as a gambit for the extraction of information. Though its unlikely that you will be able to use this outside of this test, it shows the kind of creative thinking we're looking for." The pony on her right, a pegasus stallion raised a hoof.
"You could have done more with what you had been given. You made no attempt to involve yourself in the conversation your father was having with the three ponies you knew were agents placed by us. They would have helped to include you in their subtle interrogation of him." The one in the center took over again. 
"However as this was not what was tested, only what we suspected you'd be doing, we still vote that you completed the test as it was given to you. None of them suspected anything."

Sarah tried very hard to remain composed, for she knew that jumping up and down like a madfilly would be unacceptable. "Requesting permission to speak." She said quietly, for she had been warned in training only to speak when told she could.

"Permission granted." The one in the center said, and gave Sarah a smile.

"May I ask what will happen to the family? I assume they will be memory wiped. Especially the youngster, seeing her sister torn apart right before her eyes could be unbelievably traumatic." She had a soft spot for kids, and only wanted to be sure she hadn't done something that would ruin the filly's life.

"We aren't heartless, they had already been mind wiped when they came here. Glitter Shine's father consented to participating in the test, and having his mind wiped of having given that consent. Afterwards his memory of that will be restored, but his memory of what happened at the test will be blanked. Needless to say that Glitter Shine and Ebony won't remember anything, except spending a day with their father. Now as for you, this test marks you as a satisfying candidate for the mission. Follow the door behind us back to the waiting room you came from. Silver, your father, is waiting there with a contract and the mission profile…" She hesitated. "If he fails to hand these to you, you can call on a guard to assist."

Sarah smiled brightly. "I'll follow in just a moment. May I have just one minute by myself? This is the first time I've ever really accomplished anything, I just want the briefest of moments to take it in. I won't be more than sixty seconds." She promised. 

They nodded, and she gave Sarah a smile again, and left by the door behind them back into the waiting room. It closed and she was left by herself. Wearing posh dress, half smeared in make up, physically and mentally exhausted. And victorious.

Sarah looked in all directions to convince herself she wasn't being watched, then did something she hadn't done since for years.  She started bouncing up and down in circles. "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!" She squealed. She wasn't useless! Even better, she actually mattered, was actually important to a cause! It had begun getting to the point where even the Cutie Mark Crusaders were starting to feel sorry for, she was the oldest member, almost a mare. Sarah quickly composed herself, such behavior was unacceptable. She pushed herself through the door, returning to the waiting room.

Silver Key sat on a chair, a stack of papers lying on the table in front of him, and one next to it. The four hours hadn't made his disposition more pleasing. "I suppose it had to be you, Sarah." He sighed. "Congratulations on beating the gauntlet I set for the ponies. I was sure someone would fit the bill, and it appears that this is you. Sarah.." He looked at her. "I'm genuinely happy that you've demonstrated the strength of character and the cunning needed to do this." He shook his head. "And I'm not surprised that you could do that, I always said that you were a smart filly and that was your greatest strength… but will you please reconsider this. If there's anything in the world I can give you to make up for it just ask, as long as you don't sign that paper."

Sarah had already signed it while he was talking, and a cold defiance was in her eyes. "Why? So I can go back to being a failure at everything? That's not happening. You ALWAYS told me I'd be good at something one day, even if it took a while to find it. Well I'm good at this, and you owe me a mission briefing."

He pushed across a stack of papers. A script. He touched it with his hoof. "Its a disguise spell, to anyone but the ones initated in the spell, it will look like a manuscript for a play. Touch your own hoof to it."

Sarah frowned, there was certainly a lot of mystery to this entire thing. She lifted her hoof, and pressed it against the stack of paper.

"The contract signs you up as an agent of Evodia, so from now on you'll be following orders from them from now on." In some sense this made her a traitor as she had Canterlot citizenship, though since she wasn't in the Canterlot guard it wasn't a great crime. The papers changed before her eyes. The title was now Project Umbra, eyes-only secrecy, signed by Her Majesty Novaria. "Not long after I came to Canterlot, I had the opportunity to learn magic under the tutelage of Celestia. Something your mother gave to me once… it was around the time when Discord had broken free and had been reformed. You and your sister were little at the time. I was busy at the time researching projects for Novaria. Evodia doesn't have any form of great project akin to the elements of harmony, and while Novaria is a capable alicorn she's not the regal sisters, and she's not exactly overflowing with love."

"Ain't that the truth." Sarah muttered.

"There are several threats to Evodia's security and Novaria wants to be able to give that country the means to handle those problems on by itself. Not having to rely on diplomatic relationships with Canterlot. After the expulsion of the changelings from the Crystal Empire they became the number one threat. They've tried smaller attacks on Canterlot and the surrounding cities in Equestria on a small scale several times, but have been driven back. In one case by the elements of harmony again. This has lead to them making excursions towards Evodia. And while I'm sure that the regal sisters and the elements of harmony could provide the help Evodia needs, Novaria wants to accomplish this through her country's own means. So I proposed ways of defeating them. One of them, which is the one I will explain to you, is to infiltrate them." The purpose of the testing was starting to become clear.

"The changelings are by nature masters of disguise. There's almost no limit to the forms they can take, though they can't increase their powers by changing forms. They are by nature, fliers, they're fairly strong and they can do magic within certain limits. Placing an agent into their midst was a nightmarish idea, because unless that agent was an alicorn, and you can imagine how easy it is to find someone like that, then even the best illusion spells couldn't hide that the agent would lack certain natural powers."

"It was around then that I met Discord, through Alicia." Sarah remembered the draconequus who would come by from time to time when she and Emerald were fillies. Usually with hilarious effects. "Discord, seemed to know something about the origin of the changelings. He was key in making them, though the way he said it indicates that it wasn't intentional. There was once a village that he attacked. He said he 'took something from each of them at the heart of their being'."

"It was a vague comment, but it was a powerful clue to what had happened. It took years of consulting with unicorns to get to the bottom of this. All ponies Sarah, at their core, have a... seed, I think we can call it. This is what gives each and every pony all of the possibilities, all the potentials for what they can become. When you're born, some of the fruits of your seeds are actualized and that's then who you are. The seed inside every pony holds the potentials for all that any pony could ever by. When a mother gives birth to her children, they each receive a duplicate of her seed, that's then actualized into three new children with their own 'actual' abilities. There's pegasus wings, great powers, the ability to be a great chef, a master mason, and other things right at the heart of everyone. That's what Discord took from them... they became, I don't know what, but I imagine it must be like pulling the plug out on a filled sink. Whatever they were was slowly draining away."

"And with that they naturally started taking the actualities inherent in other things around them. They couldn't produce any of their own anymore. They had no seeds. I have reasons to suspect that they seized on some insects and managed to put some of their inherent seeds into them, though it wasn't a good match. And so the changelings received their form.. partially pony, partially insect, with a form that's slowly draining away, needing to take emotions, life, essence, all the things they don't produce much of on their own from others."

Sarah was very quiet for a moment, her brain slowly working. "Was that what Sombra did to the Crystal Empire? Took away their essence and everything that they could have been?" She had only learned about the stories in school, but as she understood it the ponies there had been severely changed until they were restored.

"No, Sombra didn't take away the seeds of the crystal ponies, but he did feed off their strength much like Changelings do. However the crystal ponies could still produce new things on their own, develop new talents, grow and change on their own. Changelings can't, they need what other living things produce to do that. The insect parts they incorporated a long time ago do produce a little bit, but its a trickle compared to the flood they need."

"However, this lead me to see if we could reproduce the effects. If we can turn a normal healthy pony into a changeling, simple by duplicating what happened. Removing the core of that pony, bonding them with the core of a particular insect.. then we have a changeling agent of our own making." He explained. "We've already done this, twice, once in some simple studies. When Discord removed the core seed of each pony, he simply threw them away and they're simply gone now. We do it in a controlled way and afterwards we're able to reinsert it. All the old actualities come back, both subjects were returned to their prior form and abilities."

"But there was a catch. In both cases, we could do nothing about the cutie mark. When a pony bonds mentally with their actual being... with the talents the seed has given them... it leaves a permanent imprint on their form. And becoming a changeling simple doesn't change that. I suspect its because the cutie mark is a mental imprint that simple manifests itself physically. We tried forgetting spells, but without causing permanent memory loss its probably unlikely that we could erase the cutie mark. In all of recorded history no pony, amnesiac or not, has ever lost his or her cutie mark. So we need an agent who doesn't have a cutie mark."

Sarah was quiet for a long time. "So this whole test was to find a pony to become a Changeling?" She asked. It made sense to her now, why he didn't want her to be involved in it. He'd be losing his daughter, and there were a million and one ways in which she could be tortured or killed. "You say you've removed the seed already, have any of your tests actually succeeded in putting it back in?"

"In both cases yes, and all their actualities returned, their appearance, their abilities, everything. In fact... you've meet the second test subject. The first one was a simple extraction and reinsertion of the core. We went further with her, bonding her with the core of a certain insect which matched the changelings characteristics. She spent quite a bit of time as a Changeling, and we know most of what we do know about how they work physiologically through her. Marenaris, your instructor."

"Why is called Project Umbra?" Sarah asked. She was slightly afraid now, but wasn't about to let her father know that. She'd come too far.

"In Ancient Equestrian, Umbra means shadow," Silver explained. Umbra is the innermost and darkest part of a shadow, where the light source is completely blocked by the occluding body. An observer in the umbra experiences a total eclipse."

"I want to do this." She stomped her front hoof down on the ground. "But you still haven't told me exactly WHY you're doing this." She said hesitantly. "You only said there were threats. Are we simply gathering intelligence, or is there a bigger movement?"

He looked a little dismayed but continued. "Your mission will be explained in full detail. We know that Changelings are massing in the Everfree forest, planning to make a long trip to Evodia. It is very likely that this means they'll attack Evodia, but we don't know how. We plan to strike first, but we need to know how many there are, where they are, their movements and plans. You'll spend two months in training, we can't afford giving you more time than that, Marenaris will be your instructor again, your personal instructor. Then you will intercept a Changeling recon mission and capture one of their officers. You'll get a chance to study that Changeling for a while, and then you're expected to take their place and go deep undercover. You'll be given license to do anything that needs to be done to stay in that role undiscovered. We'll give you means to send us information secretly bi-weekly. That's the gist, the details are in the file... read them, it's all you'll read from now on."

"I'll make you proud, daddy." She said confidently, then a bit of coldness returned. "At least, I would if you had any faith in me." With that, she gathered up the materials, and left.