//------------------------------// // Chapter Three【Twilight】 // Story: A Sparkle-ling Perfection // by Cast-Iron Caryatid //------------------------------// It has been two weeks since Sunset Shimmer entered the chrysalis. “Well?” says Shining Armor from behind me, his voice sour like that of a colt doing his level best to sound like a stallion.  I can’t tell if he’s an exemplar in the art of changeling mimicry, or if that’s just his normal voice.  “How is the process progressing?” I click my tongue and pull my horn out of the observation orifice on the side of the chrysalis.  The feeling of antiseptic jelly and amniotic fluid on the crooked keratin is like a cold, wet sock, and I flick my head at the ground to get rid of as much of it as I can.  “It’s like they say—never send a glutton to get you accurate norepinephrine counts.” There’s a pause, followed by a murmur in the hive mind.  “They don’t say that,” Shining Armor informs me.  “Nobody says that.” “Fine then, I’m saying it,” I tell him as I busy myself wiping my horn down with solvent and waxcloth, and then finish up by lighting it up with as much magic as I can push through it for a few seconds.  Proper horn care is important.  “It’s criminal that we don’t have a better way to examine pony brains than to trust the word of an organism whose primary function is to eat them.” He lets out a snort of displeasure.  “Be glad this is the best you can do.  If there was a better option, the hive would make you take it, and you wouldn’t get your ‘assistant.’  I still don’t see why it’s even that important.  You have her genetics already.” A cloudy, crystalline salt block floats out of a small alcove amongst the rib-like protrusions in the wall, encompassed in the weak, green glow of my magic.  I set it down on the floor between Shining Armor and myself, lay my horn on it, and with a flash, a bolt of magic forks though it, leaving behind a lichtenberg figure resembling a parasitic embryo’s interpretation of Sunset Shimmer’s brain and spinal column. “And now I have a record of her nervous system, too,” I say, lifting the block up in my magic holding it out for him to see.  Later, I’ll polish the surface clear and soak it in magically-charged isopropanol to bring out the chemical data in color.   “Ponies aren’t much different from changelings in the respect that the right chemicals at the right stages of maturation can result in an entirely different set of physical and mental traits.  Where they differ from us is in the fact that these variations in growth are only loosely tied to whether the pony is a drone, pegasus, unicorn or queen.  The result is a great number of substandard specimens, but, on occasion, an outlier will present itself.  It’s crude, but the success of pony society is a testament to how valuable a single specimen can be.” Shining Armor gives the immature unicorn inside the chrysalis a doubtful look.  “And Sunset Shimmer is that outlier?” he asks. “Sunset Shimmer is a record-breaking, curve-wrecking outlier to end all outliers,” I fume, though I am uncertain as to why this upsets me.   Perhaps it is just the sheer mathematical improbability of a pony like Sunset Shimmer existing.  In any case, it is shameful that the ponies do not even seem to be aware of what they have lost.  If I hadn’t run the tests myself, I would think that there was some merit to the rumors that she is Princess Celestia’s daughter; the addition of wings would have been a formality.  “If I can recreate in a changeling half of what she could do on a day to day basis, the hive is sure to make me a Queen.” “Will it, now?” asks a snide, nasally sort of voice from behind me, and it takes me a moment to realize that Shining Armor doesn’t have that much buzz in his voice, nor quite so much gravitas.  Mostly, it’s the buzz, though; it comes with being the mouthpiece of the hive mind. Speaking of which, the hive mind belatedly notifies me that the queen is in the room with us. “Queen Chrysalis!” I cry, whipping around to face her and almost dropping the salt block containing the graph of Sunset Shimmer’s brain as I do so.  After fumbling with it for a moment, I manage to get it settled gently on the ground with myself casually hanging off of it like an amorous gentlestallion on the prowl.  Smooth.  “What are you doing in Canterlot?  Here?  In my lab?  I had no idea you were coming, or I would have—err, I mean—my lab is always in perfect condition and does not need special attention before an inspection.” “The sad part is that you aren’t even lying, and yet you are doing it so very badly,” the queen says, overdramatically bemoaning her lot in life.  “Maybe if you spent less time broadcasting every word that passes through your overdeveloped purple head and more time listening to the rest of the hive, then you would have been aware of something outside of this sad little laboratory you’ve built—or inside of it, for that matter.” “Of course, my qu—”  Crack.  The sound of hoof on chitin is deafening from inside my own skull, and the room spins sideways around me. “And my voice is not nasally!” Chrysalis shouts, though I hear it more over link to the hive mind than in my own ears as my head swims, not just from the impact, but also the mental backlash washing over the link.  “Nor am I overdramatic!” I am tempted to say something, but, humble as I am, I do not point out the queen’s obvious hypocrisy. “And for your own sake, stop narrating your pitiful life over the hive mind!” ⁂ Queen Chrysalis hems and haws around the chrysalis containing Sunset Shimmer as I see to the injury on my face.  The queen wasn’t cruel, and thus had only hit me the one time, but it was a good one; I had a crack connecting my eye socket with the corner of my mouth that stung like the fury of the hive itself if I talked or smiled. Not that I would ever let such a thing stop me from doing so. “Not that I don’t enjoy looking at the result of your hubris, Twily, but is this going to take long?” Shining Armor asks; his voice sounds strange from within his own skull. It is an unfortunate fact of life that changelings are not fond of mirrors, and I certainly have none in my lab.  The only one in the house is in the bathroom upstairs, which is why I have borrowed the use of Shining Armor’s eyes to get a good look at myself.  The sight is not encouraging. “This is going to take forever to heal,” I whine, chewing my lip as I dip my hoof in the hastily-prepared bowl of resin.  I have to scrunch up my face so that the chitin aligns properly before spreading the transparent green goop over my face.  Once I’m sure I have everything important covered, I unroll a square each of gauze and linen for the bandage, which are laid over the resin in layers as I ruminate on how much easier this would be if changelings had ever developed proper medical magic. The hive mind doesn’t believe in medical magic largely because it doesn’t believe in medicine at all—at least, not in the sense of it being something that is administered to the sick and injured for the sake of their health.  A single changeling, after all, is expendable—even the queen.  We make up for it by having tough exoskeletons and the tenacity of the much smaller pests we resemble. Changeling first-aid, such as it is, essentially falls into two categories; when grievously injured, a queen or other unique asset, such as myself, can usually expect to be rebirthed if the need is dire enough.  Otherwise, we are expected to do what amounts to spitting on it and wishing for the best. Once the resin has begun to set, I let Shining Armor have the use of his eyes back and wave him off to let him know I’m done.  He immediately takes a moment to rub at them with his hoof while I poke at my injury, but before long, our attention naturally falls in synchrony to the elephant in the room. It’s a very good thing that I have momentarily ceased my narration to the hive mind, as I doubt the queen would appreciate that strange and rather racist ponyism. “Did she say what it was she’s doing?” I ask out of the uninjured side of my face through a clenched jaw, doing my best not to disturb the resin until it has completely hardened. Shining Armor turns to look at me with a strange expression that’s not the casual disregard I’m used to from him.  “You know, she has a point.  You really don’t listen to the hive mind enough—sometimes at all, it seems.” Really?  We’re doing this when I can barely talk without burning pain?  Fine.  “That is why I exist, Shining Armor,” I say, holding my hoof over the bandage in hopes that it won’t move too much.  “I am… a second opinion.” “Can’t argue with that, I guess.”  Shining Armor lets out a heavy breath and shakes his head.   “It must be tough.  It certainly won’t earn you any friends.”  He glances over at Chrysalis and the chrysalis.  “Not in the hive, anyway.” “It will not,” I say, wincing when I accidentally move my jaw.  “Fortunately, the fate of the hive does not rest on me making friends.” “No, just creating them from whole cloth, it seems,” he counters as his gaze lingers on the yellow, red and gold figure barely visible beneath green wax and resin.  “Your pony is having trouble letting go of her body.  The queen is here to ‘help’ the transition and see to the integration of the neurospast into the hive mind.  It would seem that someling out there thinks this crazy plan of yours is worth saving.” “Oh.”  I didn’t see any sign of rejection, but I guess the queen would know, if anyling would.  Whatever it involved, it seemed to be taking all of her attention.  “Well, good.” The next thing Shining Armor says surprises me.  “Are you going to be alright?” My hoof gravitates back to the crack on my cheek.  “I shall live, though it will be difficult to explain at school.  I will be rebirthed eventually, anyway, even if I am third in line at the moment.  It will be forgotten in time.” Shining Armor frowns.  “Hopefully the lesson won’t be.  Your face looks wrong when it isn’t smug and self-righteous.” I let out a snort of laughter, which is just about the last thing I should be doing.  Ow.  I blame Shining Armor.  “Do not pretend you care.” “Well, if you won’t listen to the hive mind, you’re going to need someling looking after you who will.” “I am not certain you understood the point.” “I’m not certain I care.” ⁂ Following Shining Armor’s contradictory declaration, I excused myself from the lab so that I could head upstairs and give Queen Chrysalis the opportunity to work in peace.  As I am about to open the door at the top of the stairs leading to the cellar, though, I stop to test the resin of my bandage once more.  I believe it has hardened enough to handle a transformation, and whatever else I think of the hive mind, there are some rules that a changeling just doesn’t ignore. No chitin in the halls is a pretty big one. A flash of green fire restores me to my adorable purple self, sadly with the addition of the bandage still covering a significant portion of my face.  One would think that magic that turns chitin into fur and flesh could maybe just fix things like that, but it is not that simple. I think. I don’t actually know how the transformation magic works. I am on the verge of another rant about the state of the hive’s magical knowledge when the green flames of my transformation finish fading away, and I open the door that leads to the foyer of the house.  All thought leaves my mind when I see that the foyer is not empty; it has a pony in it.  A pony-pony, not a changeling, and not just any pony-pony that ponied up to the door, but the pony-pony pony.  The only pony-pony pony that is pony-pony-pony. “Oh!” remarks the tall, white pony as she turns her flank away so she can get a look at me.  “Why, hello there, my little pony.  Are your parents home?” It’s Princess Celestia.  Why is Princess Celestia in my foyer?  This—this isn’t my fault!  I’ve done nothing to attract any attention since the day I retrieved Sunset Shimmer.  Did somepony see her when she teleported away that day?  Why would they wait two weeks to say something if they did?  Maybe they hadn’t heard of Sunset Shimmer’s disappearance?  It’s possible.  Anything is possible. “Excuse me?” the princess prompts, and I realize that I’m just standing there with my jaw hanging limply open. “P-P-Princess Celestia!” I cry, all but throwing my face at the floor.  The flaw in my plan makes itself painfully apparent as the tip of my muzzle impacts the wooden floorboards.  I freeze in place as the resin of my bandage cracks, sending a sharp jolt of pain straight up the side of my face. My hasty bow immediately turns into a fetal ball of clenched teeth emitting a keening whine as I clutch my hooves over the re-opened injury. A warm, golden glow of magic surrounds me and lifts me up off the ground.  “Oh dear,” she whispers as she turns me around in her magic.  “What ever happened to your face?” My mommy hits me when I talk too much.  No, wait, don’t say that.  Say literally anything but that.  “I jumped off the roof ’cause I wanted to see what it’s like to have wings,” I say, injecting a little bit of shyness and embarrassment into my voice.  From the tightness in her eyes, I can tell that I’ve nailed it. “Oh,” she says, and her eyes lose a little light as they drift up to my horn.  “You know that you can’t grow up to be a pegasus, right?” I blink and stare at her.  What a thing to say to a filly!  What’s gotten into her?  All of a sudden it’s like I mentioned someone who… died.  Oh.  Oh.  Bad subject!  Curses—I don’t want her associating me with Sunset Shimmer and her goals. Or do I?  I might have an easier time becoming her student if she sees a chance to make up for her mistakes with Sunset Shimmer.  Should I risk it? I look into her eyes, and my resolve withers.  No, I don’t want that hanging over her every time she sees me. “Of course not, but I bet there’s a spell for flying!” I say, giving her a toothy grin in spite of the pain it causes me underneath my bandage. She returns my grin with with a warm, relieved smile.  “That, there is,” she says as she sets me back down on my hooves and brushes me off.  “It’s a very difficult one, though, are you sure you’re up to it?” Finally, I can be honest with her.  “Of course!  I’m gonna learn every spell there is!” I say, beaming quite honestly. “Really?” she asks, amused.  “You must be quite the little prodigy if you’ve set your goals that high.” Ah, shoot, I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?  “W-well, no, but…”  Ugh, this really isn’t the time and place for this.  “Um—Princess Celestia?  Why are you in my house?” Celestia pulls back to look around, as if she has just remembered where she is.  “Ah, yes.  My apologies, but the door was wide open, and nopony answered when I knocked.” It takes me a moment to connect the dots, and then another to stop myself from attempting to bury my face in the floorboards again.  While windows are a personal vexation of mine, doors are also, technically, not exactly a feature that changeling hives are known for.  That said, they are fairly intuitive for the average changeling, and yet… well, there’s no use hiding in the hive, as the saying goes. The fact of the matter is, Queen Chrysalis doesn’t get out much. “Oh,” I say, inwardly cursing our malevolent mother, but I keep a tight grip on the feelings.  “Well, I guess it’s okay, then.  I bet the princess gets to go anywhere in Canterlot!” At this, Princess Celestia’s eyes begin to wander down the hall past the kitchen.  “Ah, not quite,” she says rather vaguely, which is a way ponies have of saying ‘no, not at all; it’s quite illegal, but nopony is going to admit that.’  “Is your mother home?” she asks, hoping to be spared the awkwardness I am using to get rid of her. Technically, yes, she’s in the basement doing brain-things with your ex-student, but I’m not going to say that.  It’s also—again, technically—not actually the question she asked.  “Dad’s at work and mom went to the store,” I tell her.  I wish I was lying, but the ponies posing as my parents are, much to my displeasure, absent. “You’re home all alone, then…?” she asks, cautiously, raising one eyebrow. Oh, right, that might be considered odd in a pony household.  “I read a lot, so I don’t cause any trouble,” I explain, leveraging a hint of sadness in my voice to keep the awkwardness going.  Enough of it, and she should take the hint and leave.  Normally, ponies could be quite nosey, but the herd mentality cuts both ways and those excluded from the herd are even more likely to leave well enough alone without calling foal protective services. Unless, apparently, you are the god-queen of ponies and consider all the little ones to be your herd whether they want it or not. “What about your brother, Shining Armor?” she asks, and the second half of the puzzle falls into place. Shining Armor, what have you done now? Apparently I let my animosity show on my face, because the princess balks.  “Oh dear, do you not get along with your brother?” “What?  No, never!”  We are a perfect urban pony household and nothing is out of the ordinary—nothing!  “Shiny is my Big Brother Best Friend Forever.  We’ve never had a single fight—ever!”  Okay, maybe that’s pushing it, but the bigger the lie, the easier it is to remember, right?  Something like that.  My face can attest to how bad I am with honesty, anyway. “Why the sour look, then?” she questions, showing no sign at all that she would rather be anywhere but sitting in the foyer of a middle-class townhouse chatting with a blank-flank filly about her older brother.  She probably wouldn’t, actually. Immortals are weird like that. I glance back to the door I just came out of.  “He’s, um, sulking,” I tell her.  “He doesn’t get along with the other colts at school.” “Sulking in the basement?” Celestia says, tilting her head in question for a moment before something clicks.  “Ah, I think I understand.  I had heard that he was rather withdrawn, but that does explain a few things.  Does your brother perhaps spend a great deal of his time playing… I believe they are called ‘tabletop’ games?” What?  I have no idea what that even means.  “Yes.  Yes, that is exactly what he does.” ⁂ I eventually give up on trying to get rid of Princess Celestia, as her experience in gentle persistence far outstrips my own ability to make things awkward.  Instead, I manage to fall into something of a rhythm between inventing facts about Shining Armor and letting Princess Celestia do the same through her questions.  I don’t simply confirm everything she suggests, of course.  Once I’ve managed to figure out the rules of the game, I manage to maintain a particular image for him that is consistent and interesting—much moreso than the real Shining Armor, in any case. It is, rather ironically, not unlike the games which the princess has suggested he plays.  I plan to cheat when it comes to rolling out his stats, of course, so I keep my description of his actual deeds vague and colored in the innocent adulations of an adorable little sister. “And that’s when he saved me and got his cutie mark!” I proclaim, having just finished the tale of a young colt discovering his calling in life to protect the weak and helpless, which is why, as a matter of course, he intends to go on to military academy and join the guard. Somepony behind me clears his throat.  “Twily,” says Shining Armor, straining his words through clenched teeth.  “You know I don’t like telling that story.”  He just doesn’t like telling it because he’s never come up with a good one.  Well, now he has one—and the rest of a character sheet, besides.  He should thank me. “You’ll have to tell me about it some time,” says that certain nasally voice again, and I cringe.  Why does she always have to sneak up on me?  I chew my lip as I turn towards the two unicorns who just came up the stairs from the basement.  Then I stop, because hive that hurts the crack in my face. As soon as I see them, the dread in my stomach turns to ice.  It was already going to be difficult to explain anything that Shining contradicted, but with Queen Chrysalis here too and looking flushed, there weren’t a whole lot of explanations that a preteen could make.  As for the queen, she had chosen the form of a sultry, green-coated unicorn with a jet black mane.  It seemed a tad conspicuous, but like I said—she doesn’t get out much, and she has that ego. “Are you done… fighting?” I ask, piling on the naïve innocence, for Princess Celestia’s sake. Queen Chrysalis gives me a husky smirk.  “Yes, we’ve… reconciled our differences,” she says, doing absolutely nothing to avoid the inappropriate connotations.  Well—inappropriate for ponies.  The pony concept of ‘incest’ doesn’t exist in the hive.  It’s far stranger for changeling queens to breed outside of their lineage. Shining Armor clears his throat again.  “I really wish you’d told me that we had guests, Twily,” he says, glancing nervously between me and the queen.  “You know you’re not supposed to answer the door.  Um, speaking of which—it’s an honor to have you here, Your Majesty.” “Ah, please don’t fault young Twilight here,” Princess Celestia says, laying a gentle hoof on my head.  “Your door was open and I managed to wander in off the street looking for somepony.” My eyes meet Shining Armors and I break into a beaming smile.  “Yeah!  She wanted to know all about you, Shiny!  I had no idea you had the eye of the princess!  What did you do?” “I—what?” he says, poleaxed, then looks to the princess for explanation.  “Princess?” Princess Celestia just smiles her radiant, tranquil smile.  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about little old me.  I’m just being a nosey old nag.” ⁂ The princess had barely excused herself when Shining Armor and the queen both rounded on me like two stallions interested in a threesome. Sorry, changelings have no natural predators, so we’re kind of starved for metaphors, sometimes. “What in the name of the hive was that?” Queen Chrysalis growled with all the force of the hive mind behind her.  Normally, I would be cowed, but damn it—this was not my fault. “Don’t look at me, Your Majesty.  You left the door open, and he,” I say, pointing at Shining Armor.  “I don’t even know what he did, but whatever it is, I just spent the better part of an hour bullshitting the princess with stories about our childhood together in order to fix it.” Queen Chrysalis bristled at being talked back to.  “An hour!” she cried.  “And why am I only hearing about this now?  The hive mind is there to prevent these ridiculous shenanigans!  Why in the hive would you not use it?” “Because you told me not to!” I retort in anger.  “And cracked my face to make sure I’d remember.  Hive, do you know how much this hurts, mom?” The queen’s eyes narrowed.  “Take care that you remember your position, Twilight Sparkle.  Your catch is magnificent, I shall give you that, but you are not yet a queen.” After a moment of careful consideration, I take a breath and swallow my bile—and my pride.  “Of course, my queen.” She gives a curt nod and turns to the door.  “Seeing as your masquerade appears intact, I shall leave you and Shining Armor to discuss the Princess’s visit on your own.  I don’t have to tell you how dangerous she could be for all of us, so pray that your luck holds.” Click.  The door opens and the queen walks through.  She pauses on the threshold and looks back.   “And in the future,” she says with a hateful, reticent snarl.  “You are allowed to keep the hive apprised of your actions.  Provisionally.” And with that, she disappears out into the street. My eye twitches at the door hanging open after her.