The sun arose, blocked by the skyline of rock and steel stalagmites of the city of Manehattan heating it up for today’s summit roasting it sunny side up ready for the everyday commonfoalk to gobble it up with eagerness.
Manehattan, the city of opportunities, like a macrocosmic carpet of buildings lay before the one place where it was all going to happen, a building that was the epitome of coexistence, every shape and size of it seemed to melt into the city’s air and atmosphere, its worn glass jade shaded bubbly and wavy domes fading into the city colours and down at the main entrance Twilight and Mark were just doing the finishing touches on a brand new contraption that was supposed to aid them in their task.
“I never imagined you were doing this during your time spent at Canterlot, have you tested it out yet?”
Twilight kept on calibrating the knobs on the left slim metal tower roughly the height of a two story building whilst Mark was taking care of the one on the left
“No, I didn't have the chance to yet”
“B-but you need to test it! You can’t just take this out to the public just like that without a plan!”
“It’s a simple case of redirecting the ambient magic of the unicorns from the street onto the cathode and anode; it’s not rocket science, its magic”
“I have a bad feeling about this Mark; I think we should test it at least a few times before we even try it outside”
"The small scale tests worked and I barely had time to make a full scale version of it"
"I don't know Mark, I still think it would be better to test it first"
“I agree Twilight, but at this point its too late, the changeling representatives are on their way as we speak, I think that right now its best just to trust the theory”
Time flew exceptionally fast in fact, it was flying faster than once could read this very sentence, the changeling representatives have already arrived and were waiting in one room and the pony representatives were waiting in the other.
Naturally it didn't occur to anypony that the Changeling representatives would arrive disguised as ponies, after all walking around as a changeling in city would be tantamount to a death sentence and the only reason why Mark felt confident enough that any of this could follow through uninterrupted by angry mobs was because the area was diligently guarded by The Canterlot Royal guards... still, there was a certain sense of danger to it.
The device was ready. After giving thorough instructions on how to operate said device to the more than capable engineer ponies, Mark and Twilight made their way into the building's green rusted copper doors that pleasantly went well with the rest of the building's composition
The pony representatives were as follow: Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, (The now arriving) Twilight, Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Princess Luna, Celestia and finally Mark in pony form.
In the other room waited an equal number of unknown changelings with the presence of their glorious queen, Chrysalis.
A muffled young growing crowd of protesters could be heard seeping through the building’s walls.
It was time.
The two parties entered into a large indoor terrace-like open room under the large glass domes
A thunderous gong deeper than the Mariana trench announced the beginning of what will be remembered for hundreds of years to come, effectively silencing the complaints of any mob.
The crowd silenced, held back by a modest army of royal guards.
The device's towers sapped the air between them stretching out an optical illusion showing the crowd outside what is currently going on inside the conference room.
A pair of doors opposite of each other opened up revealing slowly each representative of both sides one by one, who arrived and sat at the large rectangular table on each side, a gryphon in the middle ready to unbiasedly mediate the negotiations.
“Celestia”
“Chrysalis”
The two beings of power nodded their heads with respect and sat opposite each other
"Are both parties ready to discuss the terms of this treaty?" screeched the gryphon
Celestia stood up
"Ponykind is ready"
Celestia seated herself back next to her younger sister, Luna
"And the secondary party?"
All heads rotated to The dark and ominous queen of the changelings who refused to stand up
The gryphon cleared his throat signalling its Chrysalis's turn to give an answer whichever answer that may be but to no avail
An air of awkwardness and tension befell upon the room, Celestia began to worry that this will fall apart very quickly so she decided to intervene but just as she began to inhale preparing her lungs and vocal cords to somehow salvage this potentially disasterous event, Chrysalis finally spoke
"We are ready, reluctantly so"
Luna wasn't going to stand for that insult but her sister, knowing her all too well held her back by a hoof under the table and thus preventing an all out war
The gryphon announced the official start of the first pony and changeling summit in the history of ponykind
A few minutes passed before anypony even said anything, nopony knew where to start there was just so much of everything and-
“Maybe let’s start at making your requirements clear, what do you like us to offer you?” stated Mark at the changeling representatives
“Food” replied one of the changelings
Rarity came into the discussion
“The last time I remember, you tried sucking the life out of us”
“Well then, just be glad we’re not doing that right now”
“Why you-“
“ORDER!” the gryphon screeched the two back into place
“We don’t have much choice, your happiness is our food, we don’t get to choose what we’re born with” continued the changeling representative
It was Mark’s turn to talk and he knew exactly what to say, he’s been waiting for this chance to show up for a while now
“I heard that Love isn't your only source of food, from what I managed to find out is that changelings can feed of a number of emotions, am I correct?”
“That is true, but nothing is more filling than love” answered Chrysalis
“I see, but do you think it would be possible for a changeling to live off other emotions?”
“Yes, that could be theoretically possible and it has been done before but a changeling then would need to feed of a lot on those emotions constantly and that would wear off a pony in a matter of minutes”
“Hmmm…” hummed Celestia “What if you were to live constantly a bit off everypony around you all of the time?”
Chrysalis began to think
“I’m not sure, it might work if we tried but the fact of the matter is that given the circumstances of our last encounter the ones that managed to survive and are still out there are very malnourished, they would need a lot of food to recuperate”
The two groups took off automatically everypony had their own things to throw in, and everypony became ever more eager in making this whole summit to bear fruit.
Time seemed to pass in decades and centuries, not in minutes or hours but eventually the conflicting sides were slowly coming to an agreement with more and more paragraphs and laws being written on a parchment that would extend itself by the hour and eventually they have reached the prelude to their conclusion, things were beginning to go well, even the protesting crowd stopped making a ruckus, that was a good sign and some ponies witnessing all this actually began to believe in the possibility of coexisting between the two kingdoms.
“…So this would abut sum up everything then” said one of the changeling representatives
“I… I guess it does” blurted out Applejack and gave him a smile
The changeling smiled back
Chrysalis came forth in front of the group of changeling representatives
“I shall have my subjects gathered by tomorrow and we’ll start the merging at once”
The changeling queen gave out a hoof filled with good intentions towards Celestia
Celestia approached the queen and accepted the gesture without hesitation
“THE FIRST PONY SUMMIT HAS COME TO-“ what the Gryphon mediator wanted to do was announce the end of the summit but today it wasn't just his day
An explosion
A ceiling of rubble on the floor
Shouts and screams
Panic
Chaos within the 4 walls
The crowd outside became more silent than they have ever have been in their entire lives, their full focus going on making anything out of the magical screen that was now fully smeared with the dust cloud that has covered the wrecked conference hall.
Seconds later dozens of changelings dressed in black protective wear with 3 interlocking red cogs depicted on their chest flew down from what was once the roof of the building into the room, each one quickly latching onto each of the changeling representative and instantly teleporting to an unknown location while the rest of the changeling assaulters got busy in swiftly and effectively rendering the incoming guards unconscious, the job was quick and it was over before anypony could do anything about it.
The last limp body of the guards fell on the floor; an anti-magic bubble fell on the characters in the room sealing them in.
One of the changelings who was probably the group leader, ordered the rest to help the pony representatives out of the rubble most of which were still barely conscious but knocked out enough not to be able to fight back
“Why are you saving us?” mumbled out Rainbow Dash
The boss figure looked at the moderately wounded Dash
“Saving? Oh no, we’re not doing that, we simply can’t have you dead just yet, we still need you all to dance with us for a while”
“D-dance? What do you mean?” yelped out Fluttershy who was just slammed ruthlessly on the floor to fend for herself now that she was out of the rubble
“Well we can’t have us spoil the fun now can we?”
“Sir, have a look at this”
The changeling looked to one of his henchmen who retrieved an unconscious seriously wounded Mark in changeling form
“Leave him, he’s of no use to us”
Celestia gave the changeling boss a vengeful look
“Why, why!”
If they could only use magic within this force field
“Oh, poor little Celia, wanted to live happily ever after with us?”
The Changeling chuckled, clopped his hooves to which the force field perished and the mysterious group vanished in an instant in a series of sparks and flashes leaving the survivors to fend for themselves.
Celestia lamented as they all waited for reinforcements to arrive in aid to help them out of this mess.
It was unbelievable thought Twilight, they were so close but some changeling extremists just had to go and spoil it, perhaps they've already reached the point of no return, now all that there was left was to await for help to arrive.