//------------------------------//
// It's not about cake 
// Story: Celestia's Bad Habit 
// by Semaj 
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“Celestia, this is your intervention!” Luna cried out, her voice echoing through the void of the alicorn’s dreamscape. “Celestia! Are you listening? Celestia… What are you doing?”

In front of Luna was the ivory back of her sister. She was hunched over like a sad sock puppet, producing a peculiar noshing noise.

“SISTER!” Luna roared in her loudest Royal Canterlot Voice. “Turn around and listen to me! This bad habit of yours needs to come to an end!”

At this, the slurping ceased, and Celestia’s head finally rose. She paused for a moment before sheepishly turning to face her sister. She stared back back at Luna, wide eyed, strawberry frosting smeared all over her muzzle and a small silver fork still hanging from her lips.

The fork dropped and clattered to the ground as she opened her mouth to reply. “Sister, I swear this is the first time I’ve had any cake for an entire week!”

“I…” Luna stopped and furrowed her brow. “...What?”

“All the work I have to do is so stressful, and sometimes I just have to find comfort!” As Celestia ranted, she began to curl up into a pathetic ball, waterfalls streaming from her eyes. “You understand right? All that rich frosting just melts your problems away! Cake, cookies, pie, donuts, cream puffs, fruit cake—”

“Not to interrupt your… uh, lament, but is there a point to all of this?”

Suddenly, like a faucet being shut off, the princess composed herself. “I-is that not why you are here? T-to break my…” The motherly white alicorn morphed back into a school filly, looking around as if she were telling a playground secret. “Addiction?”

Luna blinked a couple of times and shook her head. “No, Celestia.” Luna put her hoof on her sister’s shoulder. “This is a dream. I am not here to talk about the cake. I am here to talk about…” Luna began to falter before regaining her composure. “Something else.”

Celestia raised an eyebrow. “Luna, whatever are you talking about?”

The moon princess lowered her hoof and looked her sister dead in the eyes. “You cannot keep the charade up any longer. They are finding out.”

“They?” Celestia straightened up into a more rigid posture, finally wiping the frosting from her face.

Luna let out a long sigh. “Never mind.” The dream world around them began to shift into a wild swirl of pastel colors, eclipsing everything until the scene settled on the late night exterior of Twilight Sparkle’s castle. “I shall show you.”

“Luna, what is the meaning of this?” Celestia demanded.

“This is a representation of a real night in the not so distant past. I was watching Twilight and her friends sleep—as I often do—and on this particular night, they were all at the castle for a sleepover. However, I noticed something out of the ordinary. Almost everypony had been asleep for quite some time, but I could tell there were two who were either awake or missing, since I could not connect to their dreams to watch them. I decided to take a chariot down to Ponyville to make sure that everything was alright.”

“Sister, is this going to turn into one of those stories where you worry about somepony, but instead of confronting them directly like a normal pony, you watch them from the shadows like some kind of creepy foal-napper?”

“I act nothing like a foal-napper!” Luna retorted, muzzle raised in disgust. “I do not creep… I observe.”

Celestia suppressed a smile and rolled her eyes. “Well then, what did you observe?’”

“See for yourself.”

The world around them then began to swell, and the princesses found themselves in an astral telescope zooming in on the castle. The rushed expansion of reality soon stopped as their focus fell upon a balcony near the castle’s west end.

At the very edge of the crystal platform stood a lone yellow pony, her bubblegum mane covering the majority of her somber face. Fluttershy sighed and clacked a hoof against the railing. Her uncovered emerald eye was wide open and peering up at the soft waves of moonlight that were washing over the sparkling gemstones of the castle.    

“Fluttershy?” questioned Celestia, squinting her eyes at the dark sight.

“Shhh!” Luna lay a hoof on her sister’s muzzle. “It is about to start.”

Back on the balcony, one of the massive double doors cracked open, and a blindingly pink pony began to emerge.

“Oh hey, Fluttershy!” she cried, less energetic than normal. 

The yellow pony twirled around and released a quiet peep. “Oh… Hello, Pinkie Pie. Please don’t sneak up on me like that next time… Well, I mean, unless it’s inconvenient, of course. Then go right ahead.”

There was a long period of silence, and the two merely stood next to each other, avoiding eye contact.

 Pinkie Pie coughed. “So! what brings you out here, Flutters?”

“Oh, nothing. I couldn’t sleep, so I came out to see if there were any bats to talk to.”

“Sounds… Exciting?”

“It’s more interesting than you might think. They may be scary on the outside, but I assure you deep down they can be real sweethearts,” Fluttershy insisted.

Pinkie Pie looked back and forth and then shimmied her way closer to her friend. “Speaking of creatures that are scary on the outside,” she said in a hushed voice. “Did you hear about the changeling sighting?”

Fluttershy’s eyes grew wide. “Oh... no, I-I really haven’t… Did it happen around here, in Ponyville?”

Pinkie nodded. “I heard the changeling was seen wandering, no, lurking right around the edge of The Everfree Forest. Not too far from where you live actually. I mean, that got me thinking, well, first I ate some candy, but then I got thinking. Anyway, what I was thinking was: what if the changeling wasn’t just passing through or anything but taking a walk or looking at the birds? I mean, I think I heard it was watching birds. Do you think changelings can steal love from birds? I mean, birds have love, don’t they?”

“Pinkie,” Fluttershy squeaked, her voice almost inaudible. Her body was curled inward, and her eyes met Pinkie’s for only a second before darting back to the floor.

“Oh, right, I’m getting off topic again.” Pinkie gave an awkward sort of grin.”I guess the point is I've been thinking: what if there was a changeling who actually lived in Ponyville? Like, not with the hive or anything. What if it was somepony who we passed by all the time and we never even knew?” Pinkie’s voice dropped a little lower, taking an out-of-character, serious tone. “What if it was somepony we talk to every day?”

Fluttershy squinted and folded her ears back. “Pinkie, where exactly is this conversation going?”

“I don’t know… Nowhere, I guess. Hearing about that changeling just got me thinking about changelings.”

“And uh, what do you think about? About changelings, I mean.”

“Lately, a lot of things. Where do they live? What do they do in their free time? Why do ponies hate them?... Can they feel love? Like, I mean true love, not creepy vampire love. I mean—”

“Yes!” Fluttershy blurted out before covering her mouth with both front hooves.

“Wait, what?”

Fluttershy cleared her throat and tried to hide the red in her face. “I mean to say, I think they can. Feel love. Maybe.”

“Yeah.” Pinkie opened her mouth to embark on another rant, but she paused. For a few seconds, all that could be heard were the energetic crickets below. “I kinda feel a little bad for them, you know? It must be kind of hard pretending to be somepony you’re not every day.”

“Ponies treat them like monsters, but don’t we all need a little bit of love sometimes?”

“I don’t know how I would survive without being able to see you guys smile!” said Pinkie, pep returning to her squeaky voice.

Fluttershy lifted her her gaze from the floor, and a small smile appeared on her face. “I’ve always admired the way you spread laughter. Seeing that always makes me feel a little warmer inside.”

Pinkie Pie giggled a bit. “Aw, shucks! I admire you, too! The way you get all the animals to love you is almost magical!”

Fluttershy’s smile evaporated like morning dew. “I-I don’t use magic on them or anything! They love me because of how I treat them, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I mean, it’s not like I could use magic on them. I’m a pegasus. But I still wouldn’t do it even if I could.” Fluttershy lowered her head and let her long mane obscure her ever-reddening face.

Pinkie paused a moment and cocked her head to the side. “Well, you know what they say,” she chimed in, her voice wavering a bit. “Friendship is magic!”

“Yeah. they, uh… do say that. Sometimes.”

The pink earth pony laughed, a dry frog in her throat. “So, it’s a nice night, huh?”

“Yeah. Nice.”

“Anyways, I think I’m getting tired. I should probably go to bed.” The pink pony began to tiphoof back towards the door.

“Yeah.”

“Uh, goodnight?”

“Goodnight.” At that the door creaked closed, and Fluttershy let out a heavy sigh. 

“And another thing!”

“EEP!” the pegasus yelped as she leapt into the air.

“Would you mind not telling the others that I was thinking about changelings? Good.” Pinkie started to leave, but once again couldn’t help bursting through the glassy doors. “On second thought, would you mind not telling anypony… ever? How about just forgetting that I even talked to you in the first place, you know?”

Fluttershy nodded. “I’ll keep quiet if you keep quiet.”

“It’s a deal then! I’ll see you in the morning!” The door was then thrown shut at such a velocity that the whole balcony rattled.

Time around the princess sisters began to crawl, and soon the memory of Luna washed itself away into a hazy gray blob. They were once again in the dark of Celestia’s inner mind.

There was a moment of silence before Celestia spoke. “Well, from what I could see there, nothing is wrong. Nopony knows anything. It was just a normal conversation between two normal ponies on a perfectly normal night.”

“Celestia, you and I know perfectly well what is happening here. They are beginning to question.”

“All anypony should be questioning here is why a full grown mare, and a princess no less, would be eavesdropping on other ponies in the middle of the night like a young filly looking for gossip.”

Luna stomped her hoof on the void floor. “Enough of this diversion! However immature you may deem my actions to be changes none of yours. Honestly, you are the one behaving like a foal caught stealing from the cookie jar refusing to admit what you have done.”

Celestia pouted. “You said this wasn’t about the cookies!”

Luna buried her face in her hooves. This was going to be a long dream. “Sister, if you cannot admit what you have done, perhaps you can use your dream to show me… and forget about the Tartarus-darned cookies!”

Celestia stared into the the void for a bit. “Pinkamina was the first.” The dreamscape around them swirled and fell away to show Pinkie Pie alone in her room, talking to a bucket of radishes and a bag of flour.

 “It had come to my attention that miss Pie’s element, as well as her mind, had become compromised.” Celestia turned her head to the door moments before it was shattered by a pony SWAT team, causing Luna to leap out of her own skin.

Pinkie shrieked and threw herself behind a small stack of rocks. “Rocky, protect me!” She cleared her throat and began speaking in a deep voice as the SWAT stallions dragged her away. “You’ll never take her alive! Wait, noo! Piiinkie!” Muffled shouting continued in various voices as they removed her from the building.

The dream spun and drained away in a great toilet bowl of mixed memories. What was left was the interior of one of Canterlot castle’s secret dungeons. A leather-bound pink pony was being dragged down the corridor by two burly guards, kicking, screaming, and foaming at the mouth. She turned and chomped down onto one of the guards. Soon he was the one screaming. “Get it off! Get it off!” he wailed. 

Another group of guards rushed in to pry her now-bloody teeth from his flesh and affix a muzzle to keep her from biting.

“This is terrible,” Luna said in a hoarse whisper.

“I know,” Celestia replied. Her tone raised a few octaves. “It’s not as bad as it looks, though. As we speak, she is undergoing a new treatment process known as ‘laughter therapy’ to make her compatible with her element again. Look!”

In a flash, the two princesses were forcibly lifted from the dungeon floor and began careening down the blurry maze of hallways. After a few sickening moments, the two sisters came to a skidding stop in front of a thick metal door.

“Come inside,” Celestia said as she phased through the ghostly barrier.

Luna swallowed hard and gave her head a quick shake. “Well, if you insist.”

Inside was a pink-tinted padded room. All around were happy cotton candy walls adorned with foalish crayon drawings and glitter.

 A restrained pink pony with a deflated mop for a mane hung from a gary rack, her legs tied to the board with fluffy, candy-colored rope. Two intimidating stallions stood on either side of her, opening a locked silver crate labelled “FUN”

“Oh my…” Luna muttered as she covered her mouth with a single hoof. “What are they going to do to that poor mare?”

“Something I am not proud of.”

The chest opened with a sickening creak, and strobe lights of every conceivable color began flashing onto the walls. The stallions’ faces went from stern frowns to contorted, forced grins as the chest began erupting with multicolor glitter, and dozens of party blowers began blowing like a hundreds of neon-colored hooves scraping across the chalkboard of the soul. One of the stallions began tickling the mare’s hooves with rainbow feathers while the other reached into the chest and pulled out something almost unspeakable: air horns.

“NO! Not those! Sister, please stop this madness!” Luna pressed her ears down and closed her eyes, waiting for the screeching that would never come. After a few moments, she looked up. The scene around her had frozen. The stallions were still stuck in their uncomfortable smiles, and Pinkie Pie’s expression remained stoic.

“For a while there, we were some promising results,” Celestia continued. ”She reacted very well to pun therapy. Unfortunately, things were not moving quickly enough. The ponies of Equestria needed their element of laughter, and I had to give to to them.” 

“But a changeling? REALLY? Sister, that is sick!”

“What else would you expect me to do?” Celestia wheeled around to face her sister, teeth bared and tail twitching. “If I had told the others, they would never have let another take Pinkie’s place! We would have no element of laughter, and either Discord or some other threat would have destroyed Equestria within months!” Celestia took a deep breath and ran a hoof through her gleaming mane. “So, I decided to tell a little lie. One little untruth to keep thousands from peril.”

“A ‘little’ lie?” Luna raised an eyebrow. “That changeling’s whole life is a lie, thanks to you!”

“That changeling would still be in the dungeon if it wasn’t for me! Though I keep a small staff of turncoat changelings in my service for special operations, not a single one was compatible with the element. I scoured the maximum security dungeons and prisons of Equestria to find a proper match. When I finally found one, I convinced it to bond with the element in exchange for its freedom. With, of course, one extra condition. It had to live the life of Pinkamina Diane Pie indefinitely and tell no one of our deal.”

“It did not stop at the pink one though, did it?” Luna spat. “What of the other? Fluttershy?”

“Well, I couldn’t have an unregistered vampire pony flying about willy nilly, now could I?”

Luna snorted and ground her teeth together. “Celestia, you have a problem!”

“The element of kindness is key to protecting the world as we know it!” insisted the porcelain princess. “I swear we are trying! The poor pony… or bat… or whatever she qualifies as at this point, is just not reacting to any of the cures we have collected.”

“Is that why we keep getting all those shipments of garlic?” 

“I had to do it!” Celestia whimpered. Do you not see that I was pressured? It is not like finding a new Fluttershy was easy or anything! There wasn’t a single stable changeling we could find matching her personality type!”

“So you placed an unstable changeling in the place of the element of kindness?”

“How was I supposed to know that it had trouble maintaining its pony form?” Celestia wiped a tear from her watering eyes. “Now the poor creature is petrified of other ponies!”

“I could hardly blame her, since she has to live in constant fear of blowing her cover, which, I presume, would lead to her being thrown back into some sort of dank, horrible dungeon somewhere.” Luna stared back at her sister with the scorn of a disapproving mother.

“Not all of the changelings I have employed were pulled out of dungeons, you know. Fluttershy was, but that is beside the point. Speaking of which, what exactly is yours? You told me before that ‘they’ were ‘finding out.’ You have proven none of this. One awkward conversation between two pink-maned ponies is no evidence that anypony has seen anything incriminating.”

“One:” Princess Luna touted, “changeling sightings around Ponyville have been skyrocketing lately, and two: I am not finished yet. Behold a scene from this very afternoon.”

The colorful walls and mounds of glitter melted together, and there was a sudden feeling of being thrown upward, as if caught in a sudden updraft while flying. The now-darkish blur above them suddenly split open to reveal a bright blue sky. The verdant hues of grass and trees settled around them, and it became apparent that the two were now in a field not far from Sweet Apple Acres. The telescoping action began again and flung the two toward a pair of ponies sitting beneath an apple tree.

Applejack looked back and forth in all directions. “Alrighty, it looks like the coast is clear. Now what was it ya wanted to talk about?”

A rather irritated-looking Rainbow Dash took a few steps forward. “I wanted to know why Ponyville residents keep saying they’ve spotted a changeling out in the open. I mean, one time could have been a coincidence, but eight sightings in the last few months?”

Applejack’s eyes narrowed and her lip curled a bit. “Yeah, I was wondering about that too. Speakin’ of which, how’s your magic been holdin’ up?”

Rainbow cocked her head to the side. “My ma…” Suddenly, the blue pegasus lept into the air faster than a caffeine-high jack rabbit during a heart attack. “Are you implying that that was me?”

“I ain't implyin’ nothing,” said the orange pony as she removed the worn hat from on top of her blonde locks. “What I’m doin’ is tellin’ ya that if you don’t keep yourself under some sort of control we might have a problem here.”

Rainbow gritted her teeth. “Is that a threat?”

“Why yes it is,” Applejack replied, her voice sugar. “I would never lie to such a dear friend.”

“What if that wasn’t me huh?” Rainbow hunched down and began slinking around her comrade as if she were a fresh piece of meat. “What if you’re just interrogating me to take the blame off of you?”

“I don’t know, what if? Most of those sightings weren’t anywhere near Sweet Apple Acres.” Applejack rubbed her chin and narrowed her deep green eyes. “Come to think of it, a lot of the places those ponies have been talkin’ about have been fairly close to your cloud, haven’t they?”

“Sort of. I guess so. That doesn’t mean anything!”

“I heard they saw you feedin’ the ducks near the Everfree.” Applejack smirked from freckle to freckle. “I didn't know you had a soft side for the fluffy critters.”

“I don’t!” Rainbow flailed her limbs about in protest. “It was probably that lame pegasus Fluttershy or something.”

“Fluttershy? A changeling? As if.”

“Applejack, I swear, if you are going AWOL and blowing your cover on purpose, I am gonna kick your traitor flank so hard you’re gonna wish I only reported you to Celestia!”

Applejack’s eyebrows rose. “Kick my flank? That’s a lot of talk from somepony just trying to cover hers. Besides, I don’t see a reason to bring the Princess into this when it would just be my word against yours. And, as the ‘element of honesty’, I don’t think she’d have a speck of a reason to doubt me.”

Rainbow Dash snorted. “‘Element of honesty’ my tail!” Rainbow Dash stomped a hoof into the dirt then pointed the other directly at Applejack’s face. “You’d better watch yourself from now on, or our next chat won’t be so fun!” Rainbow smirked. “At least not for you.” She turned away and spread her wings to take off.

“Oh, I’m shaking in my horseshoes! See you later, sugarcube. Go back to your safe little cloud in the sky, and fix your horn problem.” Applejack’s voice oozed with syrupy venom. “You know, I hear the Flim Flam Brothers make a tonic for that.”

Rainbow Dash snarled and shot a seething glare back at Applejack before storming off into the air.

As the two sisters watched the pegasus leave a glittering trail of colors across the horizon, Celestia spoke. “Those two have know each other’s identity for as long as I can remember. Once upon a time, they were both agents of mine. It is not my fault that they talk. It has never been a problem before. If I recall correctly, there was a time when they were friends.”

“I think you are missing the point,” Luna facehoofed. “The changeling sightings were clearly Fluttershy.”

“And?”

“And this is ridiculous!” fumed the night princess. “You have been replacing ponies like old toys! And now your shiny new playthings are beginning to understand the game you have thrown them in!”

“Excuse me? You are acting as if this is pleasant work. You have no idea how distraught I was to hear that sweet Applejack had been knocked into a coma!” Celestia sniffled and shook her head. “All that poor filly wanted was to win some money to rebuild town hall.”

“Yes, I see.” Luna rolled her eyes. “You were so distraught that you replaced her with a shape-shifting insect... Sister, you are lazy. Just admit it.”

“I am not lazy! Point to one time when I was being lazy.”

Luna folded her front legs and raised both eyebrows. “Remind me what happened when the rainbow one lost her element to Discord.” 

“That was a time of crisis! She had flown off to who knows where, and we needed every element to defeat that beast.”

“And after the Discord fiasco had been quelled, why were there no search parties being sent for her?” Luna questioned, her words turning to magma.

The white of the sun princess’ face darkened to the burning shade of a fresh apple. “Politics are a complicated animal.”

Luna gave her sister a stare colder than the icy plains of Yakyakistan.

“Don’t you look at me like that! You know how things are. I had to plan my trip to Stalliongrad to appear at the Premier’s birthday celebration, while at the same time reviewing about a dozen bills and reports from my generals, and managing some ridiculous dispute between the citizens of Manehattan and Fillydelphia on whether or not pizza is objectively better than hay and cheese sandwiches! One would think right after the world had almost been thrown into eternal chaos, that the public would have better things to argue about, but nooo!” Celestia paused to look back at Luna. If anything, the moon princess’ gaze had grown even more frigid.

Celestia sharply turned her head away and continued. “There wasn’t any room in the budget anyway. After sending aid to repair all of the local infrastructure that Discord’s rampage had ruined, and the increase in military spending to help assure the public that we will be ‘better prepared’ for future disasters or attacks, AND that ill-fated stimulus package that did not have nearly the economic impact I had hoped for, the deficit was the size of a full grown dragon!”

“Celestia! You. Never. Even. Tried! An Element of Harmony went missing and you did nothing!” Luna sighed. “I was hoping I was not going to have to do this, but I see that I have no choice but to show you what will happen if you do not alter your path.” The azure princess closed her eyes, and a deep purple light began to emanate from the tip of her horn. A dark haze began to flow from under them, and soon everything within sight was clouded in the dark mist.

“What is happening? Sister what are you doing?”

Luna opened her eyes to reveal they were now iridescent white crystal balls. Her whole body was surrounded by an orb of arcane energy, and when she spoke, it sounded like the cascading choir of one thousand distorted opera singers. “Dearest Celestia, I love you very much, and that is why I must now show you the error of your ways.” 

There was a great flash of light, and the day princess found herself alone in black nothingness. 

Luna’s echoing voice rang out from the shadows. “In time, uncertainty and disharmony will slowly eat away at the elements’ bonds of friendship. This, in turn, will obstruct the changelings’ ability to feed off of the love generated by their friendship. They will all begin to feel the effects of weakness and prolonged hunger, especially Twilight. You know, alicorn Twilight.

Celestia twitched and began shuffling her hooves. “If you plan on guilt tripping me about that, don’t bother. I had no way of knowing the spell would backfire the way that it did. I’m not even entirely sure what happened to her. One loud bang, and she was gone.”

“So you replaced her with a changeling alicorn, and distracted everypony with your new ‘princess’? As you know, Keeping up an alicorn form takes a lot of energy, and your new student will be the first to grow weak. Naturally, Fluttershy will be tasked with caring for her. Twilight will ask for the others to visit her such that she can hold a meeting to help address the lack of harmony amongst them.” The dark around Celestia began to ebb and flow like a great black ocean. “The scene that is about to unfurl is not a certainty. Actions may be taken to prevent what you will see.”

The tarry black ground Celestia stood on began to crimp and raise upward. Great globules of black shadow piled on top of each other, creating a landscape of darkness. A strange cast of washed-out shadowy figures emerged somewhere from the darkness. Six creatures, none of which quite ponies, began to act out a farcical tragedy right before Celestia’s eyes. 

The first to enter the scene was a yellowish creature. It appeared to be trotting down the center of the Ponyville marketplace.

“Oh, goodness.” The creature spoke in the same distorted garble that Luna had produced just moments ago. “I sure hope I can find all these ingredients. Twilight asked for some pretty specific things this time. I don't know if the shop keepers are going to ca—” It was cut off by a crackling zap. Somewhere inside the changeling, a light switch was flipped off. In an instant, it went from soft yellow to glossy black. It had blown its own cover right in the middle of town.

Gasping voices of invisible ponies floated around from all directions as the bug-like being curled itself into a helpless ball on the street.

Next, a cyan creature that had been zipping through the air came to a harsh stop before doubling back and shooting straight toward the cowering changeling. “What have you done, you idiot? I knew you would blow our cover. I’m gonna—” The cyan one stopped shaking the quivering, sobbing mass and came to a sudden realization. “Wait a second! AJ doesn't cry. Who the heck are you?”

Just then, a bright pink creature bounced down the road towards the scene that was unfurling, seemingly blind to the action taking place. “What is taking those two so long?”

“What are you?” cried the one with the rainbow mane in a screaming whisper. “Up until now, I thought AJ and I were the only only two deep plant changelings! Did Celestia hide you from us, or are you an unregistered?” 

“Holy cow!” bellowed the pink creature as her eyes lay on the disaster before her. “You two are changelings too? What a relief! I thought I was the only one!”

“Quiet! Before somepony hears you and starts to panic!” demand the deep cover agent as she flicked her head back and forth.

The voices of the unseen crowd around became audible once more. However, instead of simple gasps, the townsponies now found themselves caught in a riptide of ever growing screams.

“Whoops!” The candy-colored life form gave a curt shrug. “Looks like they're panicking.”

“Now you've gone and done it!” The blue one slammed her forehead onto the nearest post. “How is Celestia supposed to clean this mess up?!”

“Yeeeehaaaa!” echoed the voice of something new. “Let's round these puppies up, Winona!”

“Oh dear,” mumbled the still-crying black beast. 

“Not that one too!” The sky blue creature lifted her head from the post, then promptly smacked it back down again.

A thing wearing a hat stampeded on, twirling a lasso in its mouth. It galloped all about the market square, chasing some unseen foe. “There ain't no need to panic! So if y'all would just heard yourselves into one big clump, that would be mighty helpful.” The orange pony-like lifeform turned around and wiped the sweat from its brow. “I can't believe that Rainbow Dash went and got the townsfolk up in a tizzy! She really needs to learn to use those powers.”

“Hey! How dare you blame me for this!”

The Applejack doppelgänger’s nostrils flared, and her eyes ignited with passion. “You! I'm gonna stop you right here, right now, before you cause any real damage!” The blonde creature leapt from her position and slammed into the body of its pegasus prey, tackling her to the ground.

“Get off me!” It screeched as it rolled around in a tumbleweed of flailing limbs and torn fur.

“What in the name of all things fabulous is going on out here?” rang the feminine voice of a fashion inclined creature.

“Oooo! Rarity too?” replied the giggling uproar of the party changeling. “Now it's a shin dig!”

“I was in the middle of talking to a very important client when I heard a great fracas coming from outside. I wasn't sure if—” the off-white imitation froze. “Oh my stars and garters! Where did they come from!?” It took a few steps back and pointed a hoof at the other three changelings, all of which had, at this point, reverted to their insect forms.

“Oh them? That's Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy, you silly!”

“Applewha… R-rain… N-no Fluttershy can't be… I mean I…” 

It fainted.

“Welp.” The pink one sighed. “Another one bites the dust, I guess.”

As everything she had done unraveled before her, Princess Celestia watched in silent reverie. Her game was coming to an end, and she had lost. “Luna, I think I have seen enough of this.”

“But alas, my darling sister, it is not over yet.”

An earsplitting boom shattered the dark sky, and a weak cry echoed through the void. “HELP!” it screamed. It was the now perverted voice of Celestia’s once prized student. “I can't control it anymore!” 

An alicorn creature plummeted from the heavens above. Its body was surrounded by tendrils of soupy tar, and its eyes beamed with the unholy glow of dark magic. 

The ground split and quaked as the speeding comet-pony plowed into the earth and blasted the land with sticky magic. The whole town was soon covered head-to-toe in the magical changeling secretions. Nothing moved, save for the alicorn creature, who convulsed with sparks of black lightning. “I'm so sorry…” it said.

“No!” Celestia screamed. “Don't be sorry! This was not your fault!” Crystalline tears dropped from the eyes of the solar princess. 

“The worst of it is,” Luna said as she rematerialized, “in that world, you never face up to your actions. After Ponyville is cleaned up, you replace half the town with changelings so as to avoid more paperwork. And after, you start replacing changelings with more changelings, until there are barely any left in the wild.”

“What am I doing with my life?” Celestia buried her face in her hooves.

“That I do not know. However, what I am sure of is what you should be doing next.”

“Please tell me! I need to make this right!”

“You must reunite the original six Elements of harmony, no matter how crazy they may be.” Luna lay a hoof tenderly on her sister’s shoulder. “I have faith in you.”

Celestia drooped and looked to the floor. “This is going to be a rough week.”

Luna nodded. “I'm sure it will be a less than pleasurable experience.” 

“Well, is it time to wake up now?”

“Yes, my darling sister.” The moon princess flashed a warm smile, and the dream began to blur into gray static.

Celestia’s eyes opened.

The bed was cold.

She was alone.

She knew what she must do next.

“Thank goodness I saved that last slice of cake!”


END