Like a true soldier, I marched away from the obnoxious conspiracy theorist while muttering about all the horrible ‘accidents’ I could arrange for her while she makes her way home...or whatever hole it is that she lives in. Honestly, who was she to call me a parasite?! That’s like demonizing a bunny for all the carrot orphans it creates when it devours the citizens of a helpless garden. Admittedly, my comparison of ponies to vegetables is probably one of the many reasons why my only friend is a bartender who probably can’t understand his accent any more than the rest of us. Moral of the story, I am most definitely the good guy here.
Now, time to prey on the emotions of the weak.
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Yet another uneventful feeding hour, I’m starting to hope someone catches me in the act. Not because I want to get arrested and thrown into a dungeon, I just really want to justify punching somepony in the face. The sun had already set, and so I took a few sips from the bottle of vodka. No, I don’t have a drinking problem...don’t judge me. I was beginning to stumble a bit, as I continued to empty my precious bottle. Just on the edge of my hearing, the quietest of clacking noises reverberated from a nearby alley, like somepony had kicked a pebble on their way down the passage.
Stranger yet, the disturbance was followed by an obvious shushing noise, which sounded even closer. Somepony had gotten very close to me, and they didn’t want to be heard; even my inebriated mind knew what was happening. I took one long pull from my bottle, before hiding it away. Everything around me had gone silent as I passed the alleyway. Very suddenly, two earth ponies came charging out of the alley, with a unicorn in tow. The front two stallions looked to be the brawn, while the unicorn mare was likely going to assist them with magic from behind, should things get ugly. Luckily for her, things were about to get very ugly.
“Lovely evening, isn’t it?” I said, my mock friendly tone was low, and caused the two stallions to cast confused glances at each other.
“You seem a might bit confused, mister.” The green one standing to my right chuckled darkly, “We’re gonna need you to drop yer bit bag for us, understand?”
“Hurry up, dammit!” I noticed that the obnoxiously vulgar blue stallion to my right was carrying a small blade; if I kicked him in the shoulder hard enough, I might dislodge it, effectively disarming him.
“Listen, how about we just forget about this little ‘misunderstanding’ and go home with all the limbs we left with?” My silly threat obviously aggravating the two, I couldn’t see the unicorn from here, but I assumed she was standing somewhere behind the two idiots in front of me.
“Screw this!” The blue one yelled, charging me with his knife high above his head; was he seriously going to attack like that?
“This outta be good.” I muttered, waiting until he was within range. The gap closed quickly, and the stallion brought his knife down in a big slash. It was easily dodged with a sidestep to the right, and I used my momentum to continue turning until my hind legs lined up with his shoulder. Releasing the kick, my buck landed roughly near the joint, causing it to pop. He collapsed to the floor, yelling obscenities as he went.
Next was the green stallion, who had used his partners distraction to get close. His left hoof made contact with my jaw, and I reeled in pain. The punch had taken me by surprise, and I was already regretting it. A second blow to my face had my muzzle bleeding profusely, my previous cockyness was gone. He may have had strength, but I had the cold and calculating gaze only changelings could achieve. The pain was taking it’s toll, and my disguise was flickering. One final punch to my temple forced Diflex to evaporate into green flames; I wasn’t a pony anymore.
Well...crap.
“Sweet Celestia!” He shouted, quickly pulling away from my larger, more imposing frame. This is not what I wanted, the fight needed to end quickly. Luckily for me, my old military training worked much better when I was actually using the body I trained with. The stallion was quickly whipped off his hooves, and into the unforgiving cobblestone with a nasty crunch by a quick flick of emerald green magic.
The unicorn mare was panting furiously, her pink coat matted down and unkempt. I was picking up some heavy duty enchantments on the now unconscious green stallion, which wasn’t too surprising, considering she wasn’t hurling spells at me throughout the brawl. What was surprising, however, was that the enchantments were not guarding from physical trauma, but instead, were guarding his emotions, which neatly explained how he managed to surprise me. However… that had some very, very bad implications. They had known about me before they tried to mug me, and had made preparations to do so.
My unwavering blue eyes narrowed in contempt for this mare, they already knew I was a changeling. The green stallions reaction to my disguise dropping likely meant that they weren’t actually educated on how changelings work, or more importantly, how they fight. The mare was pinned to the wall behind her with my magic clamped on her throat. I wasn’t in the mood for toying with these three, all traces of mirth or hilarity were gone from this little scuffle; I needed answers.
“Who was the idiot that put this little show together, girl?” I asked calmly, my inner soldier struggling to balance brutality with necessity.
“U-up yours, parasite!” She muttered darkly, practically leaking fear and saturating the area around me with the stench of anxiety.
I gave off a low growl, but necessity overtook brutality. I released her from my grip, causing her to cough and hack on the floor. If she wasn’t going to talk, i’d have to search for evidence on the thugs.
“That’s it, huh, no torture session; no monolog about your master plan?” She said with a huff from her position on the ground.
“No, but i’ll give you a message to send back to whatever cult you belong to, girl.” I said, giving her a bright smile, before whacking her over the head with my foreleg. With all three unconscious, I quickly began working on a memory wiping spell while looting the two stallion's, sadly meaning that the only message would be the bump on her head.
“Oh, hell.” I whispered, feeling glad that I was just drunk enough to keep me from screaming in frustration. Now that the situation had calmed down, I realized that I had practically just beaten three civilians into the dirt. I was supposed to be undercover, I was supposed to be hiding from arrest and execution!
...I was supposed to be the good guy.
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Those three won’t remember tonight, but they will be very sore when they wake up in the alley. Hopefully, I could forget tonight too, even if it meant drinking myself to sleep in my own home. By the queen, what would Lucky think about this; what would Berry think think?!
Collapsing on my bed, I took a huge pull from the bottle, draining it completely. I had to see somepony, just to take my mind off of things. It would have to wait until morning, I would have to spend the night with myself. Chuckling weakly, I began to sing a little tune I picked up a while ago. I covered my face with my forelegs, still clutching my bottle, and curled up into a ball on the bed.