The next few days were spent in an increasingly frantic investigation. There were a lot of changelings in Canterlot, and we were trying to find out what they were up to without them realizing we were doing so. Midnight Oil and Fog Dancer stayed out of it, focusing on establishing themselves and our new safe house. If nothing else came of our trip here, or even of my whole journey to Equestria, the two of them getting a new, clean, fresh start on life made everything we had done worthwhile in my view.
Wind Chaser and I split up, but stayed within a few blocks of one another. She could sense changelings, but they could sense her as well, and if we were together she might miss out on some opportunities to talk freely, 'ling to 'ling. Meanwhile, that allowed me to move relatively undetected by the changelings, just another pony that they hopefully didn't realize was stalking them.
One thing we realized quickly was that the palace was on very high alert, and well protected. It was easy to find out why: there was a royal wedding coming up, and the ponies were determined to make sure nothing happened. But, with Wind Chaser's abilities we very quickly realized that many of the guards were changelings themselves, and that they were allowing more of their kind to come and go freely. More coming, than going.
But we had a bit of a problem. I was a complete unknown here, and Wind Chaser was, as far as could be easily explained, one of the invaders. Our only means of identifying the invaders was something we needed to keep secret, and for that matter I had to be careful not to be lumped in with the changelings myself. We couldn't just walk up to a non-changeling guard and say "Hey, just so you know, there's a bunch of shapeshifters pretending to be your fellow guards." Not without some kind of evidence to point to that didn't involve us in incriminating ways.
So our indecision just kept us investigating, looking for that special something that would give us the opening we needed.
Instead, we found ourselves surrounded in dark alleys, by dozens of disguised changelings each.
"So, the traitor decides to poke her snout in where it doesn't belong, eh?" One of the changelings, in the guise of a dark grey earth pony stallion, accused Wind Chaser. "If you'd stayed out of way, perhaps we could ignore you, but here you are, on the eve of our Queen's glorious victory. Since you were my brother, I'll give you once chance. Walk away, now. Otherwise you'll get to see a side of a feeding pod most changelings never see. The inside."
Wind Chaser winced. "Careful, Long Shadow, jokes that bad could be considered war crimes."
Long Shadow huffed, and made a quick gesture with his hoof, sending a wave of false ponies crashing down on Wind Chaser. "Looks like your time's up. Should have started walking instead of tossing insults."
Meanwhile, a few blocks away, another changeling appraised me briefly before assuming the form of my own disguise. "So, you're the one that stole Wind Chaser away, huh? You don't look that impressive. And what lies were you feeding him that got him thinking you would somehow 'save the hive'? He didn't save us from squat. Luckily, our Queen finally has the answer to our troubles in her hooves."
I moved slowly, inching toward the back door of a restaurant, hoping it lead into the kitchen. "I am the very same, and explaining your salvation would take too long and exceed your ability to comprehend. I have no quarrel as of yet with you or your Queen, but if you want to make the Itinerant King your enemy, by all means, come at me."
"Oh, our Queen has plenty of quarrel with you. We have no love for so called 'Kings' to begin with, but to snatch away such a talented drone just as he revealed that he could change into a dragon? That's just rubbing it in, and completely uncalled for." Even with Deus, I had to struggle to dredge up what he was talking about from my memories. Or rather, Wind Chaser's. It was the moment she unwound time to. She had been in the form of a dragon in order to carry more spiders back in time, and so to them it seemed she suddenly transformed, just before announcing her defection.
They didn't care to talk anymore, and began their headlong rush against me, at practically the same moment the other group attacked Wind Chaser.
Perhaps a month wasn't all that long of a time to train, but we had been efficient with our time, and ultimately effective. Fog and Midnight found comfortable positions to sit and focus, pouring as much of their love into me as they could. I shifted it back and forth between Wind Chaser and myself, allowing each of us to fight with three ponies worth of power behind our strikes.
I rushed for the door, bucking it in as the changelings converged on me. Seeing a professional kitchen before me as I had hoped, I brought both forelegs up and created a powerful electromagnetic surge. Swiftly dropping to my back, I watched as a flood of pots, pans and knives flew through the air, slamming into the closest few changelings. One reflexively reverted to his natural form, the chitin taking the brunt of the blows and leaving him down, but not out. The other was left a bleeding mess, and very well might have bled out. Magnetically ripping a pair of knives from his chest, leaving the wounds unplugged, probably made it worse for his chances. But better for mine. A subtle wave of changeling magic in my hips and rear knees made an upright fighting stance suddenly more comfortable, as I towered over the false ponies in an upright stance.
Wind Chaser shifted to a unicorn form, using her horn in sharp bursts of focused telekinesis. Sharp blows stunned changeling after changeling as they tried to get close to her, before a quick shift had her airborne, diving over her attackers and out of their tightening noose. But she was heavily outnumbered, and they had horns at their disposal as well. Their combined attacks were overwhelming, and soon she was collapsing under their focused assault. 'Earth ponies' and a few 'pegasi' were able to close, and soon hoof blows were added to the magical attacks.
Having a couple blades in my hooves was counterbalanced by the collection of additional knives, as well as pots and pans, that now littered the alleyway, where changelings were more than happy to pick them up. I surprised them a few times by wrenching the weapons from their grasp with magnetic surges and using them against other changelings, but the element of surprise didn't last long, and soon I was being pressed by their numbers as well.
While a ring of changelings fought me, a second ring decided to start syphoning off my love, pulling it out by brute force. For a pony, being without love meant collapsing into a state of weakness, possibly even unconsciousness if enough was syphoned. For me, it meant something else. I remembered my experiences from the other timeline, where my other self, already under the control of my villainous alter ego, was drained of love by Istaran. It had made him.. not stronger, per se, but it cemented his hold over me. In this timeline, I had never succumbed to his control, but if I was drained of my love, would that be the new trigger.
I was afraid. Afraid of becoming that person again.. that thing. I was afraid of what damage he might do, once again able to silently leave orders to our nanospiders nets, possibly secret orders that they wouldn't tell me about, but could come into play at any moment, triggered by some secret rule. And with that.. I wasn't afraid of the changelings, anymore, not even the ordinary caution of the sane fighter. Wounds could be healed, broken bones as well, and I doubted they could muster any attack that would outright kill me.
Long Shadow stood before Wind Chaser, as a pair of 'earth ponies' held up her nearly unconscious form. He smirked, opening his mouth to make some no doubt clichéd villainous comment to her. But she cut him off with a loud harsh whispered command. "Run!"
"What? Why would I run? I've wo-" his response was cut off by a chef's knife flying through his head, fast enough to incapacitate the changeling on the other side of him.
"Because.. I didn't want you to be killed by a human, again," she said, quietly, as she slumped to the ground, no longer held up by the fleeing changelings. She looked up at me, trembling with a mix of emotions as I approached. I was.. mostly human in appearance, but with the wings of a pegasus, emerging through holes in my regal looking crimson cloak, the horn of a unicorn jutting up just under my simple, golden crown, and blood and changeling ichor splattered all over me, especially my hands. My eyes burned, not with hatred but with fear, a primal force like a cornered animal, but backed with enough logic to see the changelings' mere continued presence as a lethal threat.
"You're.. still you, under all that?! I.. think I would be less scared if it was only scary-you.."
The threat gone, I gave her one last loving smile and shifted back into a half-dead pegasus before collapsing at her feet. Becoming an earth pony, herself, she pulled me onto her back and quickly began making her way back to the house.
Our fast healing was nothing short of miraculous, but we were still out of the mix. We still didn't know what the changelings were up to, exactly, and in a sense our heart had gone out of the fight. On the one hand, we had expended a lot of 'love' fueling our magic in combat, to say nothing of what the changelings drew off of me personally. Even the ladies, who had stayed out of the fight themselves, were feeling the drain from tapping into our link so heavily. They were off, now buying food to help us replenish ourselves.
Unfortunately, food was only part of the equation. Pony bodies somehow naturally converted the energy from their diet into the energy aspect of 'love', but their hearts had to be in a good state to do so. Right now our hearts were in disarray. Wind Chaser was trying to come to terms with losing her 'brother' at the hands of a human, again. While the bridges between them were already a smoldering wreck from when she abandoned her hive to avert our 'survival game' and join me on my journeys, a part of her was still glad that she had been able to save him, as well, even if he never knew or understood. But then, that was suddenly wrenched from her, by someone she knew and trusted.
As for myself, I was trying to come to terms with being a killer. Not every changeling we fought was dead. Some were in critical condition, and may yet survive the day, or could succumb to their injuries, and others had managed to flee, more or less intact. I was tempted to agree with Wind Chaser's sentiments: in the other timeline, my other self had been able to blame every bad, cruel or heartless thing he ever did on Istaran. The alternate personality had a lot of value as a scapegoat, at least for my own heart. But I had no such excuse. This time I owned my actions. I wouldn't blame fear: I had chosen my fear, chosen to wield it as a weapon, chosen fight over flight. If I had so chosen, I could have broken free of the fight, snagged Wind Chaser, and tried to escape. It would probably be messy, a long hard pursuit with no particular place to hide, trying to keep our allies' position secret in the process.
If I had 'tagged out', Istaran probably would have chosen to flee. The self-proclaimed villain was quite happy to follow the tradition of recurring villains everywhere and escape when the fight wasn't going his way. But I realized I wanted the changelings to fear the Itinerant King, to scramble to stay out of my path in the days and years ahead. I wanted them to be like cockroaches, scurrying from the light of my presence. In short, I wanted the benefits of being a killer. So now I had to deal with the guilt of being one.
I sat in the basement of our little house, where no strangers would spot us, and hugged Wind Chaser against me. On a whim, I returned to my human form, and bid her do the same. I was naked this time, not clad in illusions, covered only in rapidly healing wounds and a tired, injured changeling, and now hungry changeling. I hugged her tighter, my tears falling on her carapace as I reminded myself of just what I had been fighting for. Her own tears dropped to my bare leg. She realized, after a moment, that her thoughts were closed to me, and soon Turbine began to feed me her own thoughts and emotions, every overwhelming aspect of the day's events.
We were down there for hours, before the days events found a new way to catch up to us. Fog Dancer was the first to alert us. Her subnet, Nimbus, started sending us live images of a massive shockwave of pink energy, crackling with pink lightning, was spreading out throughout the city, emanating from the palace. Changelings struck by it were being sent flying into the distance, including their noticeably larger queen. The shockwave passed harmlessly over ponies, including Fog Dancer herself, and kept going.
Exploring quickly, she spotted changelings who were unfortunate enough to get caught against walls. Most had the good luck or sense to get out into open streets where they could run directly away from the blast and get launched outward when it caught up with them. Some were thrown painfully through wood or glass, leaving a bit of property damage in their wakes. But an unlucky few got caught, pinned against stone walls. The pressure didn't seem to actually squash them, as one might think. Instead, it pinned them in place and.. fattened them. They were being force-fed love, I realized, and as I watched in horror they inflated like balloons, before suffering the same fate.
From our position in the basement, we didn't have time to do anything but wait, brace ourselves, and pray. The shockwave soon hit us, and we felt it. Wind Chaser was pinned up against me, pinning me to the stone wall behind us. The love began to fill her, and soon she was beginning to inflate like the others. Tapping into our bond, I started to draw love out of her as quickly as we could, pushing it back out to Fog Dancer and Midnight Oil. That bought us a little time, but they were soon full to their capacities. Fog began flitting about at top speed, burning off love to fuel her high speed maneuvers, while Midnight Oil lit her horn up like a flare, while juggling several pieces of debris. But we couldn't syphon it off as fast as it was coming in.
Finally, a desperate idea occurred to me, and I dragged Wind Chaser into a deep kiss. [Focus on your womb,] I thought. [Pony children are formed from a surge of love, right? Maybe changelings are.. similar enough. Let's put all this love to good use!]
Wind Chaser tried to form a coherent disagreement, even as she did her best to follow my suggestion. [I can't do this!] she objected, [I'm not a queen!]
Even as I syphoned the love bomb's power away from her, I pushed my own love back into her. I thought back to all our times together, starting from when I had first seen her in the abandoned castle, in the guise of a pegasus-winged human woman. [But you're with a King!] I countered. I knew it didn't mean anything, that it was just a title we had come up with together, but I wasn't about to let logic kill my guardian angel.
She managed to move a bit, repositioning herself on me, despite the pressure. [Human children are made from fluid exchange.] She pointed out. It was hard to follow along with her suggestion, with the fearful tension of the situation combined with the added concern that the surge of love normally associated with sex would be enough to push her over the edge. But we acted quickly, using Deus help to get the biology to cooperate. And when the fluids did come, it seemed to be just the trigger that was needed. Somewhere, deep inside of Wind, something changed, became more open, more receptive, and suddenly the excess love had somewhere to go.
When the shockwave faded out, Fog Dancer and Midnight Oil finally returned. They knew we were still both alive, but we both had our eyes closed and so they didn't know exactly what they were going to see when they made their way downstairs. That we were naked and exposed was no surprise, they had heard our exchange loud and clear, and besides they had both been our lovers more than once. What was a surprise was the other evidence of our love.
I saw it first through Midnight's eyes, before slowly opening my own. Wind Chaser was huge, heavy laden with child already. In human terms she looked well into her second trimester, maybe nearing the third. Considering it had only been a few minutes, I was very much concerned. "We're not going to have like.. a hive-full of hungry little baby changelings soon, are we?"
Wind Chaser shook her head. "No.. it's, twins I think? I can feel their subnet in there. And hear their thoughts. I think all that excess love energy sort of.. jumpstarted the process. They seem to have settled into a slower rate of growth now." She smiled, closing her eyes again. "Oh! Hmm. It seems they couldn't wait for us to get around to naming them."
I shook my head, happy but unsettled. "I see we're going to need to teach them patience.. even before they are born. So what did they name themselves? We do have veto rights at least, don't we?"
"Of course, my king. The boy calls himself Alexander. The girl Gabriella. I think they got the names from your memories of Earth. Their subnets.. um.. they seem to share a single subnet. That's going to be weird for them. Anyways, it designated itself Stormbringer."
"Well, at least one of them had the good sense to have a pony-sounding name," I laughed.
My other subjects gathered around us, snuggling in against the pregnant changeling on my lap. Soon we were all hearing thoughts from the unborn pair.