//------------------------------// // Forward to the Past // Story: My Little GLaDOS // by TheApexSovereign //------------------------------//         “What’s the point of traveling through time and space if we can’t change anything? Nothing. Tlotoxl had to win.” -Barbara Wright * * * Two ponies stood in a kitchen. One held a knife, the other a champagne bottle. One had violent intentions, the other only had thoughts of camaraderie. Cold intelligence and a naturally distrustful makeup was one, while the other is just the same, older and wiser, but a little more humane, too. They were both the same person, and at the same time, they weren’t, by every sense of the word. “Take a seat,” said the time traveler, patting the empty stool beside her, “we have much to discuss, and not a lot of time.” Glados continued staring daggers at her future counterpart, to which the doppelganger rubbed a cracked hoof against her mucky, perspiring forehead and exhaled a grievous sigh. “Ugh, I forgot how stubborn I could be,” she muttered. “I’m not believing a single word that comes out of your mouth,” growled the other, scrambling to pick up her kitchen knife and resume pointing it at the seated pony. “The time travel part I believe,” she said, matter-of-factly. “But you? Being me? I wouldn’t stake my life on it. You couldn’t be me. You’re too... fat.” She whirled her knife at the overtly plumpish form of the pony that sat before her. “The fact that I have a little bit of extra fat is irrelevant,” she countered, aggressively. “Besides, the cake denied to test subjects is actually surprisingly good, and sitting around building turrets out of soul gems and conch shells isn’t exactly going to burn boatloads of calories.” Glados’ bemused look spoke volumes about her struggle to collect her spinning thoughts. “You actually allow that nauseating rhubarb-filled garbage to pass through your stomach? And what do you mean by ‘turrets’?” The soot-coated pony glared up at the ceiling with a stone-faced grimace, then looked back down at her younger counterpart. “Look, I would love to sit here and beleaguer your hilariously narrow intellect. I honestly, truly would.” Glados narrowed her eyes, frowning a bit. “There’s just no time to explain,” hissed the time traveler, careful as to not alert the guards outside. “You’ll find out eventually, or maybe you won’t. I don’t know the repercussions this thing will have on my time, but you’ll just have to accept that I know everything and anything about you.” Glados swapped knife-holding hooves with a conceited grin. “Alright,” she muttered, “what’s my greatest, darkest secret? What’s the one thing I swore that I’d never tell anybody, and that I’d carry it all the way until the day I shut down, or in this case, pass on into the great hayfield in the sky?”   Future Glados bared a nasty, yellow smile through the blackness of her face. “That’s easy. Your, our, greatest secret is none other than our favorite scene from the classic, ‘Frankenstein.’ You know the one: ‘You’re young, my friend. Your success has intoxicated you. Wake up and look facts in the face! Here we have a fiend whose brain...’” Glados, her tense figure and armed stance laxing, quoted with a genial grin, “‘The brain must be given time to develop! It’s a perfectly good brain, doctor. You ought to know, it came from your laboratory.’” “‘The brain that was stolen from my laboratory was a criminal brain!’” “‘Oh well, after all...’” the two ponies looked each other in the eye, and for a brief moment, there seemed to be a strange connection; in perfect unison, they said: “‘...it’s only a piece of dead tissue!’” Future Glados partook in a grand, hearty laugh; one that she had to smother with a well-trodden hoof. The younger incarnation’s chuckle was rather light, but noteworthy, considering laughs from her are about as rare as air turning into gold. “I guess you’re really telling the truth...” she finally admitted, looking back down at her knife and raising it once more, “...but I still don’t trust you. What if this is because I’ll do something so horrible in the future, that my guilt drives me to go back in time, and kill myself to prevent it from happening?” The future double took an angry swig from her champagne bottle, neglecting the alcohol clearing paths of muddy-white fur down her soot-ridden chin. “Look, I don’t have a whole lot of time here,” spat the drunkard, waving her hoof about in a riled manner. “The time-travel spell only works for five minutes, max, and I’ve already been here for—” she stopped to glance at the wall mounted clock, “—two minutes and thirty-seven seconds, and I’m not going to sit here and play ‘Twenty Questions’ with my younger, immature and mentally deficient self.” “I’m the mentally deficient one?” teased Glados, giving off a befuddled snicker. “Huh, says the happy-go-lucky drunk with a cybernetic implant that looks like it was grafted by a blind, deaf, and mute quadriplegic chimpanzee.” The rage in the time traveler’s face was being vented through the irksome grinding of her own teeth. In a contrived, leveled tone, she stated, “I can explain everything, if you just give me a moment to—” “Now I can see why I’d want to go back in time and kill myself. You could practically hear the violins whining in the background. My God, are you the most pathetic creature I have ever se—” A bottle of champagne clobbering Glados in the face was enough to, not only silence and incapacitate her, but disarm her of the knife and give her a bloody nose as an added bonus. Her person seemingly plastered to the wall, Glados slid down its surface until she was slumped up against it with a groan escaping her throat and a trickle of blood oozing down her muzzle. “Ugh, I think I chipped a tooth,” she grumbled, nasally, cruising her tongue along the length of her teeth in search of any nicks or dents. “That was satisfying.” Future Glados was now up from her seat, sauntering over to the dazed pony with a blank demeanor. “Now I understand how unbearable it is to have my company. It actually makes whipping Fluttershy and poking fun at Spike’s weight all the more satisfying. And calling Rarity fat. That’s always fun.” Both ponies looked each other in the eye; one appeared to be enjoying herself while the other still had a slight punch-drunk daze, incapable of processing whatever her eventual double was saying.   Future Glados frowned a little, lifting a split hoof to her mouth and apathetically droning, “Ow. I actually felt that. Come to think of it, my front teeth feel a little different than they did just this morning. I guess that theory is true: if the younger incarnation cuts off a pinky, the future one loses it. This would be fascinating if I actually cared.” Shaking the vertigo out of her head, and receiving some unexpected but conceded help from her future self, Glados got up with a mild stagger briefly lingering in her step. “Alright, I guess I was asking for that,” she admitted with explicit enmity. “I honestly forgot who I was talking to.” “Good,” Future Glados agreed with a nod, falling into a torpid lean against the counter with her legs crossed over one-another. Burying her nose into her bandaged foreleg, Glados icily observed the motion. “Forgive me for asking,” she began, muffled slightly, “but why do I grow such a complete disregard for proper manners and common decency?” She made a short-lived pause when the light fixture overhead started to flicker, then continued, “And how come I look like the scum of society in the future? Should I actually learn how to bathe?”         The time traveler, who was preoccupied with analyzing the kitchen’s fundamentals, froze her gaze at the younger incarnation. “I’m assuming you’ve met Lyra by this point?”         “Yes. It was very disturbing and I hope that I don’t meet her again in the future.”         “Well, you will. Trust me. You need to.” Glados showed no disdain towards the assertion, but her future self knew better than anyone that she was groaning with agony on the inside. “Well, after a brief scuffle with some pissed off horse, you and Lyra go searching for his remains in the ruins of Germaneigh.” Glados’ eyes widened, and her brows rose in a precarious manner. “It’s a long story,” she assured her undisciplined double, who still looked unconvinced and remained that way for the length of the conversation. “Anyway, you trip, fall, splat, landing face first in a pipe sticking out of the rubble.”         “Ouch.”         “Yeah. ‘Ouch.’ These, right here,” she pointed to the metal plating and wires buried under her skin, “are from a few tweaks I made in my downtime. I couldn’t really go anywhere for a couple weeks, since I took some ‘Cure-All’ to try and grow it back. Let’s just say that trying to grow a brand new eye, then gouging it out after it tries to kill you, is a lot more painful than it sounds.”         Glados lowered her foreleg, inspecting the few splotches of dried blood against her white fur. She looked back up at her fated double and said with leadened indifference, “Then I’ll never go to ‘Germaneigh.’ Who cares about what’s in there? It’s definitely not worth losing an eye over, so I won’t go if it means I turn into a drunk cyclops.”         At the very instant Glados completed her oath, a garish white flash erupted from her future self’s cybernated eye, filling the entire kitchen and pouring into the living room with a blinding heavenly aura. She leaned back against the wall, looking away and covering her face with both forelegs, expecting to be reduced into a pile of hot ash at that very moment.         Disintegration, she thought, I supposed there are worse ways to go. Without question,a quadrillion times better than living out the rest of my days here, or with the moron and his corpulent accomplice. One second passed when she crestfallenly realized that this wasn’t your average disintegration ray. Rather than asking trivial questions such as “what’s going on!?”, Glados was far more intrigued, albeit alarmedly, by the fact that this light gave off absolutely zero heat, leading her to believe that this was—         Magic. Of course. Why would it be an actual technological anomaly? It’s sad, really, that I almost got excited over getting flashbanged or lasered in the face. Shows just how far I’ve fallen.          The light slowly dissipated, leaving the kitchen in its’ dimly-lit state once more. Glados lowered her forelegs, and was met with a most alarming sight: Herself from the future, while still the same drunk, ash-caked pony, had her cybernetic eye replaced with one that was a simple artificial replacement; its’ lighter springtime-yellow tint was a dead giveaway of this. “Your... your eye!” she stuttered, cautiously softening her defensive posture. Future Glados tilted her head with a crooked brow. “Huh? What are you talking about? It’s been like this since you saw me.” Glados shook her head, retorting with a newfound looming terror, “No, no! I saw your eye!” she pointed her hoof straight into the counterpart’s face, its tip almost brushing against her nose. “You said you modified it after the accident in Germaneigh!” The time traveling pony looked to and fro, completely stumped on responding to her younger self’s preposterous accusations. “What are you talking about? I never went to Germaneigh! This—” she pointed to her prosthetic eye “—was put in after Ditzy splashed sulfuric acid on my face! That’s how I also got this...” she lifted her head to the right, revealing a horrific patch of blistering pink skin on the left side of her neck, “...and this.” Moving her mane aside to reveal a horrendously gnarled ear, Future Glados harshly asked, “I was just explaining this, was I not?” Glados’ jaw nearly hit the floor; for the first time in her entire life, she was truly, without a doubt, at a complete loss for words. “What’s your problem?” asked the time traveler, then madly shook her head. “Oh, forget about that! I need to warn you before the spell wears off!” With her breathing almost at a complete halt, Glados barely uttered above a whisper, “Then I won’t let Ditzy help me in any future experiments...” Not that I’d want her to. Another flash. This time, Glados didn’t look away; she hoped gazing into it would blind her of whatever heinous time paradox emerges from the light. What became visible was just as Glados had initially feared: the same pony, coated in soot and black dust, with her left eye’s place taken by an even simpler eyepatch. “—why won’t you just calm down and listen to me!?” urged Future Glados, soliciting a sharp inhale from her younger, petrified self. “I’m sorry...” she mumbled, eyes widened to the size of dinner plates, “...could you tell me what happened to you eye one more time?” With a groan, the elder pony ardently recounted “As I said three times now, you’ll eventually lose sight in this eye after looking directly into the Crystal Empire’s aurora borealis through a telescope. Now, can I have just five precious seconds of your time to warn you about the possible end of all existence?” Ignoring her wisecrack, Glados was made hesitant by her overbearing alarm. “My... my... your eye... i-i-it was just a prosthetic! And don’t screw around with me! Your eye was just a prosthetic and now it’s gone!” “Damn, was I this crazy to everyone else?” muttered the future embodiment. “No! You listen to me!” hissed Glados, her hooves now both pressed against the slightly-taller pony’s chest, as were their noses mashed into one another; both Glados’ angry stares were at war with each other, like fire and ice.   “You literally just said to me, with a cybernetic eye, that Lyra and I go into Germaneigh’s ruins, and an accident causes me to lose that eye!” She prodded at the eyepatch, forcing her older version’s stare to grow wide with uncurbed rage. “I told myself that I wouldn’t go there when the time comes, and a flash happened, and you were standing right here with a prosthetic eye I get in a lab accident with Ditzy! Then I repeated the same thing! I promised myself that I wouldn’t let her help me in any experiments, and lo and behold, you’re now here! What the hell is going on!?” Glados received no answer, other than the unsettling, blazing glare she was drawing in from her allegedly-destined self. Her hooves slowly fell from their place on the frozen pony’s chest; the terror in her face slowly abated, though remained in obvious sight. “I mean,” she continued, looking down at the ground, “I know I’m cruel to everyone and anyone around me, but to myself? Is that what this is? Some sort of sick game I play with my younger self to torment her mind with the scientifically impossible?” Future Glados silently turned her full body to look out the kitchen window, at the large moon hanging over the hills that seemed to endlessly roll into the horizon for miles until they reached the mountains. Never looking at her self in the eye, she said in a hoarse whisper, “I know myself enough to know that I wouldn’t joke about something like this if it was really serious.” Both scientists redirected their gazes, each locking direct eye contact with the other. “If what you are telling me is true, then that means no matter what happens, you will always lose your eye. What’s to say...” her lips began to tremble, as did the ears on her head slack, “...what’s to say that going to Hell isn’t inevitable?” She firmly ran her hoof along the length of her foreleg, scraping it almost clean of ash and soot and giving the kitchen a distinct smoky aroma. Glados strained to even find the words needed to speak, never feeling as helpless as she did right now. “I go to Hell? Isn’t that a little much? Sure, I plan on bringing down Equestria’s government, but who with a brain cell hasn’t?” Future Glados opened her mouth to speak, to explain, but was never given the chance; she had begun to fade in and out, her body swapping between transparency at a gradual, rhythmic pace. The cabinets and drawers behind her became murky silhouettes, but still slightly visible. “Oh, no...” she murmured. The time traveler shot over to the petrified pony and hastily explained, “Glados, you have got to listen to me! I know you’ve never trusted anyone before, and with good reason, but just this once, trust yourself!  No matter what it takes, scrap the experiment! Don’t try taking over Equestria!” She took a quick glance at herself, realizing she was starting to fade in and out at an accelerated rate. “Please!” she begged with genuine sincerity. “For the sake of your life, scrap the damn project! The fate of reality itself is at stake here, and we’re the reason why!” “But why!?”  asked Glados, taking a wide step away from her double as a gaudy white sphere took form before her, splaying rays of black and yellow light around the kitchen. “I don’t know! And that’s what scares me!” Future Glados cried, now just a voice in the wind, save for the orb that has now grown big enough to engulf them both. A deafening gale picked up, somehow originating from the orb itself; pots, silverware, the tablecloth and even Glados’ mane was being drawn to its’ abnormal gravitational pull, ushering her to back up into the kitchen archway. “But what’s the point of traveling through time if you can’t change anything!?” she hollered over the roaring winds. “I don’t know!” replied the other, coming off as a mere echo across time from inside the sphere itself. “But I’m kicking Time Turner’s ass!” The sphere began glowing from a blinding white, to rustic orange, black, and finally a metallic steel. For a fraction of a second, Glados could’ve sworn she saw the Aperture brand appear before the entire orb shrank in the blink of an eye, into nothingness. Upon dissipation, it discharged an unearthly whine and a great thrust of wind, rattling the cookery instruments aligned against the wall and rustling any loose cloths or textiles in the vicinity. There was no evidence of anything that had just transpired; even the champagne bottle seemed to have somehow vanished amongst the commotion. Glados just stood there, in blundering silence, unsure of how to even live on with this unsettling information now bearing down on her shoulders. * * *         “Uh, Twilight?” asked Spike, sitting atop a stack of book and twiddling his thumbs. “What are you looking for?”         His employer and adoptive mother, Twilight, was pacing circles around the library, pulling random books off of the shelves and quickly skimming through them before placing them in another neat pile beside him. As she did this, she simply stated, “I’m trying to find a spell.”         “What kinda spell?” he slyly badgered, now on all fours and leaning down from his towering throne.         “A certain spell...” said Twilight, trailing off as one book in particular caught her attention, “...and I think this is the one.”         She levitated the book up to Spike, who grabbed it out of the air and skimmed through the passage the book was opened up to. “The ‘oestrous infinitia’ spell? Come on, Twilight. Don’t you remember what happened last time?”     “Next page, Spike,” Twilight said, tiredly, as she started placing the books back in their respective shelves. “Oh.” The assistant narrowed his eyes and read the next page aloud, under his breath. It wasn’t until he got to the spell’s name did he exclaim with flabbergasted surprise, “A reforming spell!? Why in Equestria would you need a reforming spell?”                                                           Spike suddenly felt himself lifted off his feet and descending to the ground, encased in a warm lilac glow. He was plopped onto Twilight’s back, who turned to him and said with a reassuring tone, “Spike, you do know who I’m talking about, right?”         He rubbed his chin in thought for a moment, then snapped his fingers. “Pinkie Pie!”         Twilight frowned. “No. Not Pinkie Pie. Think about it, Spike! Who’s the one pony we’ve met that is in dire need of a major attitude adjustment?” As she allowed Spike to realize the painfully obvious answer, she resumed placing books back on their respective shelves.         “I got it!” cried Spike. “It’s Trixie, isn’t it?”         “She’s dead,” Twilight recalled, dryly.         “Oh, that’s right,” said the naive drake, slowly. “Didn’t you say that that was mostly Glados’ fa—” Spike stopped himself; his jaw was left hanging and the slits of his eyes dilated to ridiculous proportions. “No way...”         Here it comes, thought Twilight, giggling externally.         Spike promptly smacked himself in the forehead and groaned. “You’re kidding me! Why would you cast a reforming spell on yourself, Twilight!?”         Twilight in turn smacked herself in the forehead with the hard-end of her hoof. “Glados!” she yelled into the heavens. “It’s Glados, Spike!”         “Oh,” he muttered, crassly. “Well, why?”         A stack of books were aggressively slammed into their shelf, startling a dozing Owlowiscious out of his slumber. “Because she’s a mean and nasty pony who’s bent on hurting everypony we care about?” drilled the unicorn, her tone steadily rising with anger.         With the books all put away, Twilight closed her eyes and allowed her horn to illuminate a brilliant lavender glow. With a single nod, every candle on the first floor was extinguished in a soft push of air, then she began her ascent up the stairs. As Spike started nodding off on her back, she said, “Mind you, I’m not going to cast it right away. I’m willing to give Glados a second chance, but if she does anything that threatens the town’s well being, then I’m putting my hoof down!” To prove her point, Twilight literally stamped her hoof on the ground, alarming Spike out of his shallow rest. “Huh? Wha? Oh, right,” he mumbled, drowsily, “you do that Twi. Can I jus’ sleep in ‘morrow mornin’?” Twilight gave a light chuckle, tenderly lowering her assistant into his basket beside her bed. “Sure thing. Goodnight, Spike,” she whispered, gently placing a kiss on his cheek. “See you in the morning.” * * * Morning. Rays of dawn were splayed across the surface of Glados’ untouched bed in evenly sectioned strokes of light, illuminating the dust hovering about in the atmosphere. Its owner wasn’t in her bedroom. Rather, she was found slumped up against the living room wall, underneath her whiteboard, looking much like a corpse. She had a dry erase marker in one hoof and a handheld tape recorder in the other; heavy grey bags hung under her exhausted eyes, as did a thin line of drool dangle from her bottom lip. The whiteboard was cluttered from end to end with notes—most of it unintelligible drivel crossed out with big black ‘X’s and arrows pointing to other jottings—with some stretching as far as to the other side of the board. Glados groggily lifted the tape recorder up to her face and slammed the red button against the wall. “Personal log number...” she took a deep, straining breath,  “...number seventy-one. Last night left me genuinely terrified. I’ve always lived my life by a simple code of morals; not once did I ever ally myself with anyone, nor did I trust another living being. I always told myself that nothing is impossible if you set your mind to it, and anyone who said otherwise doesn’t have the will or power to make it so.” “Last night, I broke nearly every code I’ve been following my whole life. My future self believes that I am the cause of the death of all reality, and she doesn’t even know why. She also alludes to my person being sent to ‘Hell.’ Whether or not this is capable of being altered, I don’t know. She doesn’t think so. Apparently, I am destined to lose an eye, as well. Very unsettling.” “I have never been so scared in my whole life. And it’s not because existence itself is in jeopardy. Hell, if it means the death of this irritating world and its annoying inhabitants, then that’s a green light in my book. Bring on the apocalypse.” Glados paused, staring off into space for a time until she found the proper words to continue. “Okay. I’m lying. I wouldn’t want the universe to collapse. Then I’d go. But what I’m most afraid of is not knowing. Why am I the cause? What should I do? Should I ask the princess for help? Should I try a different route with my plans? I’m certainly not scrapping it, no matter what my future self believes. I just need to attempt a different approach; rework it a little.” “I’m not a time traveler, but something as grand as what I’m planning can certainly be rewritten in the fabric of... time. God, I sound like an idiot. I just need to get some fresh air. Today’s the first day I’m working at Sugarcube Corner, so this should be interesting.” Glados slammed the tape recorder against the wall once more, turning it off; the cassette tape’s repetitious wounding ceased with a disheartened groan. She got up to the sound of her joints cracking and popping, then trotted over to the front door. When she opened it, however, she was greeted with the unexpected and albeit unnerving sight of a smiling Dewmist. “Uh...” began Glados, blinking multiple times, “...can I help you?” “I was just seeing if you were up,” she replied, her grin growing wider. “Uh-huh. Where’s the brick?” she asked, poking her head out the door and scanning the area for any signs of the robust stallion. Dewmist cocked her head to the side; her face had fallen into a muddled frown. “Huh?” “Uh, Ironsides?” The bat-pony’s ears and smile picked right back up. “Oh, right! He just went out for a walk. He’ll be out for a bit. So—” she took a step inside Glados’ home, curiously scanning the living room with mischievous serpentine eyes, “—want me to fetch you any breakfast?” Glados grew uncomfortable with her guard’s unusual friendliness. “Uh...” Crack! “We’re not your maids.” For once, Glados silently thanked her mental deficiency and its’ ability to snap her into a more awake and alert state of mind. She simply gestured “Dewmist” into her welcoming abode, saying, “Sure. Just follow me... into the kitchen.” Dewmist smiled, stepping into the house without receiving so much as a creak from the floorboards. She lead the way into the kitchen. “Wow,” she whistled, “you’ve sure got a nice place here, Glados.” “Yeah,” she agreed, watching Dewmist investigate the ajar cabinets aligned with stacks of plates. “I sure do.” When the Shadow Guard’s back was finally turned, drawn to the impressive view outside the window, Glados stealthily reached for a vegetable peeler inside one of the many nearby drawers. “Say,” asked Dewmist, “why don’t you tell me about yourself, Glados?” “Mm... no.” “Wha—? Oof!”  Without any hints or warnings, Glados lunged at her bodyguard like a cobra and pinned her to the wall in one fluid tackle. She had her foreleg pressed against Dewmist’s throat, effectively preventing her from any form of escape. The wind was knocked out of the bat-pony’s lungs; she was gasping for air, but managed to choke out, “What is the meaning of this?!” Glados brought the peeler up to the guard’s perspiring face and said in a low growl, “You have about sixty seconds to convince me why I shouldn’t kill you right here, right now.” “Alright! Alright! Just don’t hurt me!” Dewmist ceased her fruitless struggle; she closed her eyes, and under her breath, counted to ten. Upon reaching “ten,” she erupted into a powerful burst of green light, forcing Glados to look away and tightly shut her eyes. She looked back as quick as she looked away, just a fraction of a second later, and was greeted face-to-face with her exact definition of “a mutant freak.” A small, jagged horn jutted out of the creature’s forehead, protruding in between two large and featureless topaz-colored eyes, which were a deep contrast with its’ jet-black skin that was both cold and hard, like a shell. Dewmist’s bat-wings were replaced by a pair that was torn and translucent, which made Glados briefly ponder over how this crime against science could even fly. But like a bad taste in one’s mouth, she resentfully recalled her old excuse: Because they’re ponies. At least, I think it is. The masquerader wrapped its swissed hooves around Glados’ one foreleg, which remained pinned against its throat. Glados looked upon this abomination with disgust. “Alright, scratch that. You now have twenty seconds. I highly recommend you start talking.” “We are Changeling! We are Changeling!” the insect cried in an unusual voice, sounding like many were speaking at once in perfect unison and no longer Dewmist. A sticky lilac substance began excreting from his eyes. “Our names is HookHook! We are Changeling scouts!” Glados frowned a bit. “Mind explaining why you’re here? My arm here is getting kinda tired, and I wouldn’t want this peeler being driven into your skull before you tell me.” “We scouts pony areas! Honests! New pony seems interesting!” “Interesting how?” “We don’t knows!” he cried. “We don’t knows! Please don’t hurts us!” Glados shook her head, disapprovingly. “Wrong answer.” She pressed the peeler’s blade against the changeling’s throat and began to slowly, agonizingly scrape away at his shell, immediately drawing dark green blood upon the first cut. HookHook’s maw opened up to let out a horrible scream, also revealing a set of vampiric fangs. “Please don’ts! This is our first time out of the hives! We wants to see our family again!” “You still haven’t convinced me why I shouldn’t kill you. I doubt any of these whelps would miss a thing like you.” She resumed peeling away at HookHook’s supple outer shell, sadistically prodding at his exposed green flesh and soliciting a series of sharp hisses and cries in between pleas. “We can take you to queen! She can give anything you wants!” Glados smiled, releasing her hold on the changeling. HookHook fell to the ground in a heaving mess of wracked sobs and fleeting gasps for breath. “Good,” she said, pleasantly. “That’s what I like to hear. But try anything,” she lifted HookHook’s head with the very tip of the peeler, “and I’m going to have to use something bigger and sharper to peel away this ugly little mug. Capiche?”         The changeling groaned in pain, ruefully accepting his fate with a groveling nod. Next Time: A Creeping Alliance - Glados comes face to face with one of the worst creatures in Equestria, the changeling queen, Chrysalis. However, the two just might come to an understanding. An understanding that'll surely be the beginning of Equestria's downfall.