//------------------------------//
// Who? 
// Story: Guessing Games, or, How Many Changelings Fit In A Breadbox? 
// by ErraticOverlord 
//------------------------------//

Puzzle Solver throws Edward against the wall and bites down hard on his ear. A crack resounds throughout the room as his teeth break through the bit of exoskeleton over it. "Let's try this again: why would you steal the journal from Canterlot during the invasion and then again from Princess Twilight? Did Princess Celestia somehow retrieve the journal?"

Edward grunts and sniffs some blood leaking from his nose. "Princess Celestia couldn't retrieve her own sister's good temper, though that's not really surprising considering what happened."

Puzzle Solver slams Edward's chair to the floor. "Stop playing games with me."

Edward's head slams on the tile floor and he coughs out a laugh. "That must've been what all the colts at school said, I'm sure you were a very boring one."

Puzzle drives his hoof into Edward's chest. "Why did you steal the journal twice."

Edward winces. "You think somepony who collected as much information as Starswirl the Bearded only wrote one journal? Little fillies can fill more than one journal with all the inanities of their life and you think Starswirl had less to write?"

Puzzle Solver removes his hoof from Edward's chest and takes a step back. "So, there's more than one journal, at least two, possibly more. Where will your new Queen ascend?"

Edward grins, revealing bloody teeth, some missing. "Wouldn't everything work faster if I told you who was going to ascend?"

Puzzle faces Edward. "Would I know them? I must say, I know few changelings and the fewer the better. All the same, who?"

Edward laughs. "I would say, 'I'd tell you but I'd have to kill you,' but we're planning on killing you anyway, aren't we?"

Puzzle Solver yanks Edward's chair upright again, then slaps his hoof across Edward's face. "Who?"

Edward moves his jaw until it snaps back into place. "Another question might be why we even need the journals, what they contain, or how we knew about them."

Puzzle Solver turns to Needler. "Tell me who you're ascending, first. Or I'll let Needler do her work."

Edward grins. "It's always so funny when you think you're in control. Who pulls a changeling's strings?"

Puzzle Solver sighs and grits his teeth. "Fine. Why would changelings suddenly need two journals to ascend a queen. Surely you're nursery rhyme is enough."

Edward laughs. "Actually, for any normal ascension, it would be. However, we had something very special planned, this time around. You can't take over Canterlot with just any normal queen, isn't that right? Besides which, the information we needed was only in the second journal, we stole the first from your Princess Twilight mostly for kicks."

Puzzle Solver paces the length of the room. "Why did Starswirl The Bearded write all of this? How did he know so much about changelings?"

Edward shrugs. "Technically, he didn't know that much about changelings at all. He befriended a hive of them sometime in the middle of his first journal. He believed that if he knew as much as he could about magic, he could finally understand the world; he was obsessed with it, really. But who could blame him? Some ponies just don't know when to stop digging."

Puzzle Solver turns. "No. That can't be it. He can't be searching for the mysteries of Equestria just for no reason. There must be something he was looking for. Where are the journals, now?"

Edward grins. "Exactly where they should be: right beside our future Queen."

Puzzle Solver trots to the door and opens it, whispering something to a pony inside. Edward strains but can't hear the exchange. Puzzle Solver reenters the room and closes the door behind him.

He turns. "Who do you plan to turn into your changeling Queen?"

Edward smiles. "I think you already know."

Puzzle frowns. "Humor me."

Edward shrugs. "In order to make a changeling queen using the method Starswirl wrote, we need a different component. Specifically, it will not work to turn just any changeling; we need a pony."

Puzzle Solver takes a step back, startled,  and leans against the table. "You mean to force a pony to become a changeling? How could that possibly work? Any pony you turn would fight against you, not with you."

Edward's eyes light up. "Actually, it turns out Starswirl thought of that as well. The process involves dredging qualities in a pony to the foreground, qualities that would make them more likely to join us. Anger at equinity, hunger, jealousy, they all work wonders at changing a pony's alliance and this process heightens all of these emotions."

Puzzle Solver laughs. "Or at least, that's what it's supposed to do. You said yourself, Starswirl was no great spellcaster."

Edward's eyes narrow. "But he was a great magical theorist. Despite his no great talent casting spells, he made some of the best ones there are."

A pegasus pony with a brown coat and yellow mane trot in, carrying a piece of paper in her wing. She lays the paper down on the table and Puzzle Solver thanks her before she leaves again.

"What's that?" Edward says, nodding to the paper.

Puzzle Solver lays it flat on his desk. "Actually, it's a little project I've been working on. A fascination of Starswirl's if I'm not mistaken. I wouldn't worry about it too much. If all goes well, I won't have to use it."

Edward strains, trying to see what's written on the paper but to no avail. Puzzle Solver dwells on the page for another moment before turning his attention again to Edward. "How many journals are there?"

Edward shrugs. "The two we have aren't labelled. There could be any number of them, and we may have more than two to begin with."

Puzzle Solver rolls his eyes. "What was Starswirl's relationship to the Princesses? You seem to make references to their affairs, yet the only time I've heard Starswirl even spuriously connected to the Princesses is in the Hearthswarming eve play with his apprentice, Clover the Clever. Even then, it seemed a time before the Princesses. How could he possibly have known them?"

Edward laughs. "Your information is predicated on the belief that whoever wrote the play knows what happened. Though it's commonly touted as a true story, it could very easily be false and the playwrite just chose a name and the name of a lesser know unicorn to be her supposed mentor. From what I can tell of you, Puzzle Solver. You don't usually take much stock in lies."

"And yet, I'm talking to you." Puzzle Solver smirks. "Tell me where the journals are."

Edward shakes his head. "No."

Puzzle Solver cracks his hoof down on the base of Edward's horn. Edward grunts and a few sparks fly out of his horn. "If you refuse to tell me that, perhaps you can amuse yourself by telling me who killed my daughter."

Puzzle grits his teeth together as he says this. Edward just smiles. "You won't be familiar with her name, but you may be familiar with her work. Already, she has infiltrated several positions of power, done an assassination and left without a trace. I believe the Canterlot Times is calling her The Hoofington Howler from where her stories originated.  However, those are her activities of the present, even the greatest assassins have to start somewhere."

Puzzle Solver snarls. "Are you suggesting my daughter's death was-"

Edward interrupts. "Little more than a practice round. A precursor to more important things."

Puzzle shouts and slams his head into Edward's, creating a ringing sound in the room. Edward chuckles. "You may know her, however, by another name: Daisy. It is my understanding you hired this diamond dog to keep me up at night, scratching on the bars. Daisy was highly trustworthy. She went to the Guard Academy and worked as an officer for several years. She is the same changeling who killed your daughter."

Puzzle Solver moves away from the paper on the table and presses his forehead against Edward's, placing his two hoofs on his shoulders and standing up on his back ones. "How do you know this?" he whispers.

Edward's grin grows wider. "I know because yesterday she told me, herself. She told me everything about you, Puzzle Solver. Including your previous occupation as a doctor and your loving daughter, Silver Pine. She told me about how she killed your daughter and took her place and it wasn't until she was sixteen with still no Cutie Mark that you even managed to notice. She even told me how terrible practice it was, because surely any pony she'd need to assassinate wouldn't be so thick." A tear slides down Puzzle Solver's cheek and his grip loosens. Edward continues. "She also told me she's in the building, right now. Making her way to you and you'd better move fast because she's already here."

The door creaks open and Puzzle Solver whips around. His eyes are greeted by a frowning changeling with red eyes, bent into a charging position, her horn lowered. Puzzle Solver makes a lunge for for the piece of paper on the table but is hit in the side by a bolt of green magic.

A trickle of blood flows from his mouth and a tear escapes his lifeless eyes.

Bridget lowers her Needler disguise and unbinds Edward, taking care with the magic lock in place. Edward stands and embraces Bridget, her blue eyes shining with delight. Jill checks Puzzle Solver's body, then peers at the paper on the table. "A teleport rune. He must have a unicorn powering it from the other side, one touch of this and he'd make his escape." She nudges his body with a hoof. "Too bad."

Edward turns to Jill. "Where is Princess Luna?"

Jill raises her guard disguise. "Everything is prepared. Princess Luna will be Awakening upon our arrival."

Edward nods. Bridget raises her guard disguise. "Let's not keep them waiting."

The two 'guards' escort Edward to his cell. Then past it into the throne room.

"Each for us."

"Changelings all."