//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: Chrysalis // Story: Fluttershy Is Free // by Jordan179 //------------------------------// Rainbow Dash did a double-take. "What?" she asked, guffawing. "I mean, how can that even possibly and remotely be true?" "Don't laugh!" cried Fluttershy, hiding her face again. "Well come on, Fluttershy," Rainbow pointed out more calmly. "You're no mythological monster!" Silence. "I'm sorry," said Rainbow. "I'm sorry that I laughed. But how can you be anything but a pegasus?" "Ididn'tsayI'mnotapegaus" came a very small voice from under the forest of silky pink hair. "What?" asked Rainbow, leaning in closer. "I can't hear you." "Ididn'tsayI'mnotapegaus" Fluttershy repeated. "No, really, 'Shy," said Rainbow Dash. "I'm not kidding. I really can't hear you. You're doing that squeaky little voice thing that you sometimes do when you're really --" "I DIDN'T SAY I'M NOT A PEGASUS!" Fluttershy's head came up as she screamed that phrase. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. "Ahh!" cried Rainbow, recoiling in pain, ears going all the way back and hooves covering them as she fell away from the sonic barrage. "Okay, so you agree with you that you're not some kind of monster!" "Well, mostly," said Fluttershy in a more normal tone. "What do you mean?" asked Rainbow. "My mother believed in, well, flutter-ponies." Rainbow covered one hoof, suppressed the urge to burst out laughing. "Uh -- you mean those little things that flitted around flowers ...?" she finally managed to say in a normal tone. "No," said Fluttershy with emphasis. "Flutter-ponies. About the size of pegasi, a bit lighter built, but their wings weren't birdlike, they were more like, well, those of butterflies." "Oh," said Rainbow Dash. A light dawned in her head. "Is that why she named you ..." "Yes," said Fluttershy. "She thought that she had made love with a Flutter-Pony and I was one too." "But, 'Shy, you have normal wings," pointed out Rainbow. "You're just a bit mixed ... um, upset, because your dad was mean and your mom was nuts. I've seen you from foalhood to marehood, and there's no way you're anything but a pegasus." "I know that," said Fluttershy. "I can see myself in the mirror. But ... well ... there was the other story." "What," asked Rainbow. "That dragons were going to eat you?" "She said that only when she was in a very bad way," explained Fluttershy. "Well, most of the time, before the end -- when they took her away, I mean. No," she continued, "I mean the other story." "What, about soul-sucking monsters?" "Exactly," said Fluttershy. "Have you ever heard of -- well, buzzies?" "What, that old nag's tale?" asked Rainbow Dash. "About mysterious flying things that pegasi only ever encounter when they're alone, or drunk, or both? All black, or black with a few bright stripes, wings like a bee's, and glowing green eyes?" "Yes," she said. "Buzzies." "But that's nonsense," said Rainbow. "Every time somepony reports a buzzy -- if anypony bothers to check it out -- it just turns out to have been some normal pegasus going about her business that the pony just saw from the wrong angle or something like that.. Anyway, you look even less than that than you do like a flutter-pony!" "My mother used to tell me that they were shape-changers," Fluttershy said. "That they could read minds, and make themselves look like whatever somepony wanted to see. Take the forms of their loved ones, suck their souls, take them away and nopony would ever see them again." Her voice was breathless, frightened, her breathing hard. "I see where this is going," said Rainbow Dash. "Your mother was claiming that whoever she ... whoever your real father was ... that it had been a buzzy taking the form of her old coltfriend. Which meant that you were really a buzzy, which made you a mythical monster. And the reason why you look like a pegasus to me is because you're a shapeshifter, looking like what I want to see. Right?" "Um ... yes." "All right then," said Rainbow Dash. A weird little voice in the back of her mind was wondering if this was actually a wise thing for her to say, but then if she listened to that voice on a regular basis, she knew she would be at least 20% less awesome. "If you're a buzzy, then show me your true form right now. Come on! I'm not scared!" She assumed a fighting stance, reared back, hooves ready to strike. "I ... well ... I can't," said Fluttershy. "Ah hah!" Rainbow cried triumphantly. "You can't because you are not a buzzy!" Wow, she thought. I can do deduction too! Twilight Sparkle, eat your heart out! "I never claimed I could shape-change," Fluttershy protested. "I never claimed to be a buzzy. I'm saying maybe I'm part buzzy, but I came out mostly pegasus. "Can you read minds?" asked Rainbow Dash. "Well, no," admitted Fluttershy. "Suck souls?" "No ..." "Then why do you think you're part buzzy?" "Well," said Fluttershy. "I think I can tell when someone likes me a lot. And I think I can get stronger from it." She looked at Rainbow Dash. "Usually, I think, you like me a lot. And it makes me feel stronger. Right now ..." her eyes teared a little, "... I don't think you like me very much. I think you're ... well ... annoyed at me. Frustrated." "Well ... agh! ... I mean ... of course I'm frustrated!" said Rainbow. "Fluttershy -- you're one of my best friends. Ever. In my entire life. I'm sca ... worried, too." "Worried?" asked Fluttershy. "About me?" "Yes!" said Rainbow. "Of course I am . You're telling me some crazy story about your mom mating with demons and you being part-demon and, well, I'm worried that maybe your mom being crazy affected you too, and maybe made you a little crazy. Am I making sense here?" Fluttershy looked up at her, sadly. "Well," she said, "I suppose ..." "I'm worried because I like you a lot, 'Shy," said Rainbow quietly. "I don't want you to go crazy, too." "You really do care, Rainbow," said Fluttershy, her expression melting into happiness. "I'm sorry that I told you all these crazy things. I'm sorry I made you worry." She hugged Rainbow, and Rainbow hugged her back. Rainbow Dash loved Fluttershy, though she would never have used such a mushy word to describe their friendship. She held Fluttershy, and Fluttershy held her, and the love coming from Rainbow Dash was very strong and pure. "I ... I feel better now ..." said Fluttershy, releasing Rainbow with what seemed almost a moral effort. "Stronger. More able to face reality." "I'm glad," said Rainbow. "I'm sorry I laughed at first. I didn't know that you actually believed any of this, even a little. I'd never laugh at you, 'Shy. You know that." "I know that. And I'm sorry too. For being too ... needy." Rainbow yawned. "Wow," she said. "This trip took a lot out of me. Must've been working too hard on the Weather Patrol. I think I'll turn in early tonight." She stepped over to the tent, started to crawl in. "Gonna join me?" "Oh ... no, not yet," said Fluttershy. "I talked too much ... I just want to sit out here and think a bit." "Suit yourself," said Rainbow. "I'll probably be asleep by the time you come to bed." She crawled into the tent, into her sleeping bag -- and was snoring loudly before a minute had passed. *** Fluttershy looked at the stars in despair. I thought she'd understand, she thought. She really does love me -- more than any other friend I've ever known. I thought she'd believe me. Tears welled, slowly flowed. Well, how could anypony believe me, she reflected. I'm a physically-normal pegasus. I can't change my shape. And I don't know if the real ... I don't want to think of them by that silly name ... I don't even know if they can read minds or suck out souls. All I can do is feel the emotions of other beings, she said. Specifically, positive emotions. Friendship. Love. And if I feel it, I can ... feed ... on it. I don't know exactly how. I just know that, in moderation, I can do it without hurting anypony. And it makes me stronger. Somehow. I took too much from Rainbow, she thought. It was unexpected, after the anger. I think she was angry because she was afraid for me, wanted to help me, didn't know how. Ponies are so complex. Animals are much simpler. She sighed and looked toward the tent. She'll be all right, Fluttershy thought. I've never really hurt anyone, just made them sleepy. I don't know if I can use this power to hurt someone. I know I don't want to hurt anyone. It would be horrid to hurt someone who loved me! She considered, not for the first time, the irony of possessing an ability to drain the most from those she wished to hurt the least. She wondered if it was some kind of curse. Then, if maybe she deserved it because she was fundamentally evil. But if I'm evil, how was I able to wield the Element of Kindness? she wondered. No. The power's not evil. It just is. She speculated on whether or not it had something to do with The Stare. Surely I can't have multiple unconnected psychic abilities. She understood biology extremely well, and she knew that such would be evolutionarily improbable. On the other hand, she also knew that she lived in a world where mad metaponies periodically re-arranged pony heritage. So evolution might have nothing to do with it. At least I'm free, she thought to herself. And will continue to be so, as long as I stay away from that horrible hill. She remembered that hill only too well. It still haunted her nightmares. She had been around fourteen, had lived on her own for some years by that time. Her mother sometimes pleaded with her to come home, to come help protect her mother from the dragons she was sure were going to attack any day now. She usually refused such entreaties. Not only did she not want to spend time around someone who kept insisting that they were surrounded by monsters, who sometimes became terrifyingly violent, but she even less wanted to see anyone on her father's side of the family. This time, though, her mother had claimed illness. Fluttershy feared that her mother might be dying. She wanted to make sure that if her mother was seriously sick, she got medical attention. In the last extremity, she did not want her mother to have to die alone. Her mother was not dying. She wasn't even that seriously ill -- nothing worse than a bad cold. She was lonely, and Fluttershy found herself incapable of resisting her mother's need. So -- making arrangements to see that her animals would be cared for in the interim -- she spent a while with her again. She heard the usual rants about the creatures. Only this time, perhaps because she was older and her mother felt that she deserved to know the details, perhaps because her mother feared that this might be the last chance she would have to recount them, her mother told her exactly where she had met the thing which she had claimed was the lover of her youth, and which had not really been a pony at all. Deep in the desert -- she had a map -- there was an old hill. Once upon a time, her mother said, this had been a fertile plain. Then the world had changed, and the streams dried up, and the Sun and Moon gone strange, and the land become the desert it was today. It was said that this hill had once been a home to the Flutter-Ponies. The legends did not go into details, but they had always been a shy and retiring race, and after some sort of curse had been put upon them they hid from the world forever. But it was also said that they had strange secrets. Her mother had been a romantic sort of mare, and obviously back then already deeply unhinged. She flew alone to the hill without telling anyone where she was going. There, she said, she saw that the circle was crowned by standing stones, the ones that the legends said were older than the present Sun and Moon, older than the Age of Wonders, older perhaps even than Ponykind. There she had an unexpected encounter. It had not been her old coltfriend, of that she was quickly certain, yet somehow she thought it was. And she had lain with him on the top of the old hill, between the standing stones; lain in adultery with a strange stallion chance-met in a wild place. Romantic, and deeply-unhinged, indeed. Afterward, they remained together in the glow following love, and then he left, passing between the stones. She watched, dreamily, for she felt a strange lethargy, and then she found the energy to rise. And she saw him on the side of the hill, looking at a mesa beyond ... And then he changed! In an instant his semblance was gone, and there was a black thing with bright green stripes, its carapace and wings like that of some impossible insect. As she watched in horror, it buzzed away toward the mesa, and into a cave there, into which it crawled and was gone. A moment later her mother realized her own danger and also flew. For if there were things that monstrous, and living in secret, surely they would not treat well any Pony who spied them in their true forms. And she raced back home, and did not speak of it again ... .... and then a month later, realized that she was with child. And a year later, gave birth to Fluttershy, after a gap of time that made her think that her husband had not been the sire. For a while she had managed to trick him, because it was remotely possible that Fluttershy had been born prematurely, a fact to which the child's overall physical weakness gave credence. But eventually, her husband had suspected, when Fluttershy grew old enough that her features were more distinct, and it became obvious that the foal resembled her mother, but not at all her supposed father. And then came the accusations, and the arguments, and the separation. Fluttershy dimly remembered the last of it. She had just been old enough by then to become aware that her very existence was destroying her mother's marriage. *** Fluttershy listened to this story, mostly in silence, for she was afraid that if she interrupted something she said would knock her mother completely off the track, onto something even madder and less plausible. Then, overcome by her own emotions, her mother had dozed off. Later, Fluttershy wondered if she herself had had something to do with her mother's curious lethargy. For though her mother was mad, her mother did truly love her, and listening to that story, Fluttershy had felt the need for strength. She wondered to this day why she had taken the map. Why she had leaped from Cloudsdale and beat away southward, toward the desert, toward the very point outlined on the map. She certainly had no intention of meeting a demon-stallion, or laying with him, or bearing him a three-quarters demon daughter. She was, she thought, probably so innocent back then that the obvious peril had not even crossed her mind. Let alone the more sinister ones. The desert fell away beneath her wings. She had rarely made a flight requiring such endurance, before or after. She was not a good flier -- it was one of her many sources of shame -- and she later thought disquietingly of her mother's somnolence, and what she might not have done to her in her own emotional turmoil. She was not sure what she had expected -- or hoped -- to find. Surely not the menhir-crowned hill, surely not the cave-riddled mesa, leering out over the landscape like a maggot-eaten corpse. There was a strange sense of unreality in Fluttershy's mind as she landed on the hill, as if she had left the sane normality of Cloudsdale and Ponyville, indeed of all Equestria, behind her, and entered some nightmare realm in which the fantasies of delirium were as one with the realities of the sunlit day. She landed on the hill. Was she insane? Perhaps she too, had been romantic, and more than a bit unhinged. She touched down gingerly, imagining that it might melt away beneath her hooves, vanish like a mirage. It did not. The dry earth crunched under her feet. The desert wind whispered lonely through the time-eaten stones. Had they really stood here, been waiting here already when Equestria was founded, when the Pegasi migrated under the leadership of her illustrious ancestor, waited grinning and forlorn here back when the Cataclysm shook the Earth and the Age of Wonders vanished forever? Could they have been many millennia old, even then? Surely, nothing reared by Pony hooves was that old, was it? Then she heard something. It wasn't the wind. It wasn't the sand. It wasn't even sound, she realized fearfully, it was a voice, whispering in her mind. No, not a voice, for those sibilant, harsh, buzzing words surely issued out of no Pony vocal apparatus. Nor were they words in any Pony language she had ever learned or heard spoken. And that was not the worst of it. The worst of it was that she could understand them. Or at least some of them. Pony, they said. Pegasus, mare, alone ... capture? they asked. Or feed? She looked frantically all around her, but she could see no one. Yet the buzzing, rasping voices continued. No, they said. Not pony. Not pegasus. Lifescent ... wrong. Infiltrator? one of them asked. Hive ... rival? Kill? She was terrified now, beyond logic, beyond reason. She turned, whirled, tried to peer in every direction. She could see nothing, no one, nothing but the stones, the hill, the mesa and its anomalously regular cave-mouths. No, a voice said. Lifescent ... ours. Pony. Hybrid. Unplanned. Danger. Kill? There was a scuffing sound on the hillside. It did not seem to have been the wind. Her eyes were huge, her muzzle foamed. She whimpered. She could feel her sanity slipping away ... Wait, the voice said. Ask ... Queen. Ask ... Chrysalis. The name, which was more a concept, triggered something deep within her, something she did not understand. Loyalty? Love? Belonging? Enthrallment? There was no proper Pony concept to describe what she felt. But on some level, deep inside, Fluttershy realized that if she yielded to this emotion, if she gave in, it would be the last free act of her entire life. She did not know why she knew this, or how she knew this, she just knew that it would be true. Suddenly, her mind started working again. She leapt up onto a monolith with one smooth motion, then shrieked in stark horror as from this new perspective she suddenly caught a brief glimpse of two black-armored, blue-striped forms that scuttled out of sight behind the terrain. There was a scuttling behind her as well ... She launched herself and flew. She flew as she never had flown before. The fatigue of her arrival was gone, replaced by fear at a level she had never previously known in her young life, a fear to which the fear of falling when she was a blank-flanked foal was mere intellectual worry in comparison. As she launched herself she heard a buzzing -- a buzzing from behind her, below her, she wasn't sure from where but she knew it was the hideous stridulation of great insect-like wings. She did not look back. She did not dare to look back. She knew what creatures owned those wings, she knew that they wanted her, and she feared that if she looked back what she saw might stop her heart in an excess of primal fright. She knew that, if the Flutter-ponies had ever lived near that hill, or in that mesa, they had been supplanted by something too terrible for her comprehension. But that was still not the worst of it. For, as she flew faster than ever before in her life, as the buzzing behind her began to fade with the excess of her speed, she felt a voice speak into her mind, a strong and clear voice, a female voice she understood full well. Child, the voice said with a seemingly infinite kindness which she knew was a mask for cosmically-overwhelming evil, Come back. You are not a Pony. You are offspring of our Hive. You can have your true place here, as a new Princess serving the Queen. Serving me. Chrysalis. Remembering those words, Fluttershy shivered uncontrollably, in a manner which had absolutely nothing to do with the night. She knew she was not a brave pony. But she knew she was a pony. Not some horrible thing that lived in the wastes and drained pony lives. If that was what they did. She remembered what she had done. She had shut her mind to the voice. She had severed whatever strange link she felt to the creature, killed whatever strange compulsion might enslave her to the monster who called herself Chrysalis. She thought now that she knew what she had done. She had used The Stare. On her own mind. She would never serve that thing. Never give up who she was. She was Fluttershy, and within her was more than just the timid little filly who hid under her own hair. Deep within her she knew she was the daughter of proud Pegasi, ones who would never bend the knee to any tyrant. She was Fluttershy. And she was free.