Chapter 12: Happy Kitty, Sleepy Kitty, Purr, Purr, Purr.
(Or Lick Kitty, Bite Kitty, With Your Little Jaws.)
Chrysalis frowned at her new Grand Vizier, she was hauntingly familiar for some reason… but, truth be told, she was no Steve. She lacked the drive, the will, and the initiative that her former Grand Vizier had possessed.
“I think I will call you Stevena.” Chrysalis finally said, coming to her decision about what to do with this new Grand Vizier.
“My name is Synthia.” She growled back.
“Yes, but you’re familiar for some reason, it must be because you’re like Steve, your predecessor.” Chrysalis explained.
“I’m familiar because I’m your sister!” Synthia retorted angrily.
“Oh, don’t be so cross Stevena.” Chrysalis said, “After all, we have to save our hive.”
Synthia raised her perforated hoof to her temple and massaged; how their mother, the former queen, could have selected her sister to rule after her was one of life’s great mysteries… though at times she suspected that it had been anti-assassination insurance which, obviously, hadn’t really worked.
“We have to save it because you endangered it!” Synthia said slowly, over enunciating and hoping that she’d get through to her sister.
“What are you talking about?” Chrysalis asked, the puzzled tone obviously eliciting an angry reaction from Synthia.
“You brought a kitten into the hive. Then you imported more, even after we learned that draining them of their love turns them into cats, one of the few natural predators known to changeling-kind… and now our hive is being overrun by cats.” Synthia explained.
“Yes, but there’s nothing we can do!” Chrysalis said.
“We could leave, start a new hive somewhere without a cat infestation.” Synthia offered.
The suggestion instantly caused Chrysalis’s hackles to rise, as if the notion itself was utterly repugnant.
“We've made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire rooms and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!” Chrysalis declared, her anger at the situation finally overflowing, to the point where she finished off her speech with a harsh whisper, more to herself than anyone else, “And I will make them pay for what they've done! ”
Synthia stepped backward in surprise, her sister was… unstable, and a moron, the two didn’t go together well. — That, and the smile she suddenly sprouted was creepy.
“And I know just how to make them pay, Stevena!” Chrysalis said, rubbing her hooves together. “Send a squad of drones to Ponyville, they’re to retrieve the Cat-Eater, the one they call Rainbow Dash… oh, and just to ensure her cooperation, bring her beloved Nicolas Cage as well. He’s something called a ‘human’, apparently some sort of lanky biped-creature.”
“At once.” Synthia said, dryly resenting that she had to work for her sister and barely keeping that hatred from her voice.
“It really is too bad about Steve…” Chrysalis said wistfully, morning the absence of her good adviser.
* * *
Fluttershy stared at her winnings with a totally perplexed look, somehow she’d managed to win everyone’s kittens… but she was entirely unsure of how she managed that.
“Oh, I-I’m sorry…” she said, looking through the pile of kittens, “I didn’t mean to win everyone’s kittens… um, maybe, we could split them up and, um, keep playing?”
“Sure luv, you do that.” Spike replied, shaking his head… it was impossible for him to read Fluttershy: she acted remorseful and unsure if she got a good hand, as if sorry she would beat everyone, and remorseful and unsure if she got a bad hand, as if sorry that she’d let everyone down.
There was a sudden knocking at the door that interrupted anything else Spike was going to say, instead he said he’d take care of it, got up and went to the door, a surly “What do you blokes want?” came from the next room, followed by what sounded suspiciously like a body hitting the floor.
Nicolas Cage and Rainbow Dash exchanged glances, as if to ask “what the heck was that?” but they were interrupted by two baskets full of kittens being pushed under their noses.
“Um, I’d better see what’s keeping Spike…” Fluttershy said after depositing Spike’s new kittens at his spot and thereby replenishing his stack.
Several moments after she left there was a “It’s her!” followed by a small “can I help you?” and then another sound that sounded suspiciously like a body hitting the floor.
“What the heck’s going on in there?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“Well, let’s find out.” Nicolas Cage said, rising from his chair and moving into the next room where there was nothing, not even a sign of Spike or their impromptu hostess, Fluttershy.
He opened the door to look out side and a small fluttering caught his eye, it was a paper stuck to the door with a dagger — which he took and read.
“I think we need to save Fluttershy and Spike.” he said.
“What makes you say that?” Rainbow Dash asked.
In reply he read the note aloud: “Nicholas Cage and I have decided to elope, so don’t follow us, Chrysalis Rainbow Dash.”
Nicolas Cage smiled at the cute face-hoof expression Rainbow Dash showed when she heard him read the name of the changeling queen.
* * *
The ship pulled up to the docks, ready for unloading the ‘passengers’ who would be ‘guests’ of Chrysalis’s hive until their little problem had been taken care of… hopefully Rainbow Dash was hungry, because there were a lot of cats infesting her hive.
As they waited for the docking procedure to complete, Chrysalis turned to Synthia and said, “Stevena, I miss Steve, sometimes it seems like he’s still with us, right here.”
Synthia looked at the changeling right beside her and resisted the urge to beat her over the head with a brick.
“But I had to dismiss him,” Chrysalis continued, sadness tainting her voice, “He's more machine now than changeling… twisted and evil.”
“First, I’m standing right here. Second, it’s only a hook—” Steve said raising the named prosthetic where his hoof once was for emphasis, “Third, I’m a changeling, we’re all ‘twisted and evil’, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“Yes, it’s like I can still hear his voice…” Chrysalis trailed off, oblivious to Steve shaking his head in disbelief or Synthia aggressively massaging her temple as if to stave off a migraine.
Any further reminiscing about her former Grand Vizier was interrupted by a changeling from the ship standing before her like any good changeling commander would. “My queen! It is my honor to present Nicolas Cage and Rainbow Dash!”
At that moment a net dropped from a hoist on the ship revealing a gangly biped dressed as a shark and what could only be Rainbow Dash… though the bulging eyes were a little off-putting.
“U-um, h-hello.” ‘Rainbow Dash’ said.
“Ah, miss Dash, we’re so glad you could join us.” Chrysalis said, smiling her most diplomatic and least-fake looking fake-smile.
* * *
“Is anypony home?” Twilight Sparkle called,
“I don’t think so, Twilight.” Spike the dragon asked, pushing open the door and looking in the empty cottage.
“But Fluttershy didn’t say anything about leaving.” Twilight said, looking around the cottage.
Spike followed after and after a quick search the two of them found nothing and were just about to leave when the small dragon noticed a paper that had blown under a chair.
“Twilight, I think maybe they’re in real trouble!” he said, realizing that the changeling queen was behind the disappearance.
“I’ll bet the real Rainbow Dash found the note and is trying to take the changelings on by herself… she’s going to need help.” Twilight said after reading the note, “We’ve got to get everypony else! And the Elements, Spike!”
And with that the two gathered their remaining friends to mount a rescue of their missing friends.
* * *
The real Nicolas Cage and Rainbow Dash were, at that very moment, in a small skiff closing in on the ship that had held their friends. They had almost overtaken the ship once but were ambushed by sea monsters, the small diversion battling squids and a kraken had delayed them in intercepting the larger ship and the confronting the piratical pony-nappers, the villainous vampire violators!
They pulled their little skiff up onto the adjacent dock and, disembarking, raced toward their captive friends… only to have a maniacal laugh suddenly split the air and the flash of teleportation remove the changeling queen and her captives from the area.
Unfortunately, there were still scores of changelings on the docks, ready and willing to fight these interlopers, they burst forward in a stampede of malevolence ready to subdue Rainbow Dash and her human.
Nicolas Cage and Rainbow Dash weren’t in a subdued mood, though and so the two tore through the front lines like a rat-terrier through a mischief of mice.
The feeling of exoskeletons crunching under his mighty fists filled Nicolas Cage with a savage sort of joy that he would only describe later as ‘Savage, Randy Savage.’
As the human inflicted damage on the ground, Rainbow Dash terrorized the changelings from the skies, raining pain from on high.
The two were making a lot of progress until one small changeling flew off to a whistle and began blowing it, summoning more drones from the hive and turning the battle in the favor of the sheer numbers of the changelings.
They overwhelmed the ground-bound human, dragging him off to their hive, and were about to swarm Rainbow Dash when the report of a cannon ripped through the air, just like the confetti that snagged the changelings’s holes and snared their wings causing scores to fall from the sky.
Rainbow Dash looked back in that direction and saw a familiar pink pony packing more party supplies into her hearty party arty.
Her friends had come to help!
* * *
“…and so, Rainbow Dash, you will rid my hive of this feline menace or your precious Nicolas Cage will be forced to listen to country music until all joy is drained from his very soul!”
“Y-y-you monster!” Fluttershy cried in horror, the notion of being forced to listen to country music nauseating the kind mare on a fundamental level.
Chrysalis reared back and laughed, “Yes, my cruelty knows no bounds… you would do well to remember that!”
Fluttershy shuddered at the thought of having to eat the cats infesting the hive, but then she thought of poor Spike and being forced to listen to country music and she couldn’t decide which was more unkind… until she realized that eating could be a quick death while country music would forever scar the poor vampire, causing him to live out the rest of his immortal life thinking about all the dogs that had died, women that betrayed him, and angels.
Chrysalis saw the hesitation in the pegasus’s body-language, “Come now, you’d best be off in that direction—” Chrysilis pointed down into the depths of the hive, which the cats had assimilated into their terrible playgrounds, “—before I decide to make it One Direction.”
Fluttershy’s heart broke. There truly was no end to Chrysalis’s cruelty. She hung her head and moped down the hive’s main corridor, vaguely aware of the rhythmic throbbing of a multitude of cats purring, the interference beats causing an odd reverberating effect from the deep, drums in the deep.