* * *
Yesterday had been busy for Otto. He'd been sending our broadcasts on the TV and the radio like mad, trying to stir up Manehattenite fervor in the face of 'Changeling' aggression. While it was true that various hives outside of Equestria's borders had been growing since the Canterlot Wedding, where the first high-profile Changeling infiltration became public knowledge, few of them had the horsepower, or the will, to be truly powerful enough to threaten all of Equestria, not after the failure of the Queen Chrysalsis, at least. Still, he didn't need them to be: They only needed to be powerful enough for the odd infiltration or attack on ponies; that would be enough to scare ponies into surrendering their common sense.
He'd sat down, once again, in his office, ready for another day's worth of work. However, his deputy and companion had her qualms, and wasn't prepared to sit quietly on her haunches about it...
"Otto?" Starlight spoke to the mayor, his magic engulfing a typewriter and its keys, causing them to click in rapid succession as he wrote out a letter. "Otto."
He looked up. "Yes, what?"
"Are we going to talk about what happened the other night? With Ashfeather?"
The clicking stopped. "She deliberately disobeyed me, Starlight." He snorted. "She nearly KILLED Zecora. Two griffins and an earth pony, with armour and metal truncheons, against a single zebra? How do you THINK that's going to end? I was more than merciful that night. Today, they're getting punished properly. That's GOING to happen, Starlight. What if your prison guards did that to someone while you were warden, or somepony came to Ourtown and beat the living daylights out of one of your villagers? What would YOU do?"
She frowned. "...I'd punish them."
"Yes, and so shall I." His office phone rang. He picked it up with the red glow of his magic and listened.
"Heya Otto, Sir." came Janine's voice. "The two griffins and that pony you wanted to see are here... They don't look very well, sir. Shall I fetch a bucket for you?"
Otto chuckled. "If they're going to throw up everywhere, maybe you should. Send them in. Thanks Janine."
He groaned, looking at Starlight. "Watch where you put your hooves for the next five minutes or so."
The doors to his office opened. In marched the three mercenaries, they looked pale, which did not surprise Otto in the slightest. They approached the chairs at the desk, intent to sit: Otto took them in his magic, gently pushing two aside and out of the way, denying them; the third he gently floated to his side, offering to Starlight. All the while, Otto's eyes bore into the three of them.
"So." He spoke. "What is there to say? I gave you expressed orders. DO NOT ATTACK THE ZEBRA! I told you, and you ignored me."
"We..." Ashfeather responded, looking unusually queasy. "We got your stupid amulet. Sure we had the cause some brusies, but..." She coughed. "...We got the damn thing."
"I don't care." The mayor hissed, the sharp, glittering steel blade of a letter opener rising from the desktop, hovering between Otto and Ashfeather, pointing at the griffin, aimed at chest level. "The captain of my mercenaries, unable to follow a simple order. You're a liability to me, and..." She kept coughing, growing more intense, violent than before. "WILL YOU STOP COUGHING?!?!"
"I don't think she can help it, sir." Jabsco interjected. "We've all be feeling pretty..." She groaned, clutching her side and wincing. "...Pretty bad. My entire body hurts, and my head is splitting."
"Oh. That's so bad." Came Otto's sarcastic snort. "What about you, Scopes? You feeling poorly too?" He nodded quietly. "Oh, Celestia damn you all. I hope..."
Suddenly, Ashfeather let out a sharp yell of pain, stumbling and falling, tumbling to the desk. Her body twitched and moved about in a most strange fashion. Then Jabsco suddenly followed suit, screaming in agony. Then came Jabsco, who clutched his limbs on the floor... The fur on his forelegs was falling off.
"Otto!" Starlight cried. "What did you do?!"
"I didn't do anything!" He barked, rising sharply to his hooves. "What in Tartarus is going on here?!?!"
He watched as strange things began to happen to the three mercs. The griffins were... Shrinking. Jabsco appeared to be getting shorter, the toes and talons of her paws forced to tightly clench as she lay on the floor; her feathers feel out and her wings withered and vanished. Her beak changed shape, and then... It stopped being a beak; in its place was a snout... The extremities of the paws had fused together, covered in fur... Jabsco was turning into a pony?!
Scopes, meanwhile, had grown considerably. His front legs had shrunk, his hooves growing talons; feathers replaced the fur on his head and neck, large wings grew from his back, reinforced with many more feathers of his fur colour: He was a hippogriff, now...
the transformations had finished. Where Jabsco once lay, now sat a unicorn: Her fur the same copper brown as Jabsco's feathers, her mane and tail white. Her cutie mark was a blue flower, growing from an equally blue vine. She sat up, looking confused, but smiling. "Oh, hello sir." She spoke, her tone was strange, a weird sort of calmness. "...What, what just happened? I remember getting up, getting ready to see you, and then, well, everything went fuzzy, and now I'm here. I can't quite put my hoof on it..." She looked around. "Oooh, a hippogriff? I've not seen one of those before..."
Otto and Starlight exchanged looks, before turning to Scopes, who was freaking out.
"What? What!?! What's happened to me?!" He cried, spinning around, trying to take a glimpse of himself. "I, what?! Otto, sir, please DO something! Please!"
Quietly, the mayor climbed out of his seat. There was still one griffin left unaccounted for. He peered around his desk, but there was no griffin to be seen: In the pile of feathers and fur lay a single, large, gray-feathered pigeon.
"Awww, look at her." Jabsco smiled as she too saw the bird. "It's so cute. I..." She flinched with a yelp as the bird squawked at her, lashing out with its claws and flapping angrily about. It didn't last long, Otto engulfed the bird with his magic, freezing her in place as she hovered in the air.
"Ha! So this is what became of the mighty Captain Ashfeather?" Otto smirked. "Well, I guess that's it for you, isn't it?"
"Isn't there a cure for this?" Starlight asked. "What..." She saw Jabsco's new cutie mark, joining the dots in her mind. "...This is Poison Joke. There is a cure!"
"Of course." Otto nodded. "Shame this featherbrain attacked the only one who'd know how to brew it." He frowned. "So, here we stand." He glared at the pigeon. "Still, that does mean one thing: The Groverclaws are mine now. Ashfeather controls the mercenaries, and now she's a pigeon, I control Ashfeather." A smirk on his face was followed by another evil chuckle. "Jabsco!" The copper-brown unicorn turned to face him.
"Yes sir?"
"How would you like to have a job as an errand runner for me? I could do with a unicorn like you."
"Oh, I'd love to!" She grinned, seeming to have become far more docile and friendly with her transformation, the Poison Joke clearly having affected her mind. "What do you want me to do?"
He hovered the pigeon over to her, letting her take it in her own magic. "I want you to find a cage for my new pet. Nice, big, strong one, money's no object, just tell them to send the bill to City Hall..."
"Oooh, she's a feisty one sir."
"I know. I may need to find some magical means to gentle her temper." Otto smiled. "But for now, run along. Go fetch me a bird cage."
The now-unicorn smiled, nodded, and quickly trotted out the door, leaving the two unicorns and the hippogriff.
"As for you..." Otto snorted. "A hippogriff is tougher than an earth pony, and more useful to me. Consider that your punishment for disobeying me. That, and a month suspension without pay."
"Sir, please." He begged. "I'm sorry. Just, turn me back, I can't live like this!"
"I don't care. You shouldn't have disobeyed me." He snorted, a sudden, evil glint in his eyes. He tapped his office phone, looking up at Scopes. "Guards! Guards! I need help in here! There's a Changeling!"
"What? Sir?!" Scopes cried as guards swiftly descended upon him. "No! Please!"
"That hippogriff was one of my mercenaries! He was Scopes! Now he's a damn hippogriff! Get him! Get him now!"
The hippogriff screamed in protest, struggling and fighting as Otto's men wrestled with him. With his newfound beak, he lunged and bit down on one of the ponies, drawing blood and causing a loosening of grip. It was enough of an opportunity for Scopes to break free, he charged, having to quickly figure out his new wings as he jumped into the air, shattering through the office windows and flying away. The other mercenaries wasted no time shouting, and giving chase into the Manehatten sky...
The messy piles of feathers and fur of three transformations took a very, very, very long time for the janitor to clean up. By this time, the new and improved Jabsco had returned with a large, standing bird cage, with a very unhappy looking pigeon inside it. Things swiftly returned to normal, and Otto felt this had been more than a net gain for him: An annoying thorn in his side was now a caged bird, he'd usurped control of a paramilitary organization from said bird, and he'd gained a useful, docile, brainwashed servant to boot. He smiled: This had been a good day so far...
"Well..." Starlight spoke after the dust settled, and Ashfeather had given up trying to rattle the bars of her cage. "...That was something. Hm?"
"Indeed."
"Are we going to talk about you and that amulet, now?"
He huffed. "I'm fine." He smiled. "Really. You're worrying too much about this amulet. I'm strong enough to be able to resist its impulses." A scoff marked his dismissiveness. "I'm no easily influenced showmare. I'm not being corrupted by it."
"Fine." The mare snorted. "Then take it off. You don't need its magic right now. Once we have the spell to turn you into an alicorn, then we can use it to secure your ascension." He fell silent, his face crumpled in his discomfort. "Come on, Otto. Please."
The mayor sighed, shaking his head. The amulet's lock clicked open, and he floated the Alicorn Amulet onto the table. "There." He said flatly. "It's off."
She stared at it, its stone shining in the office lights. "...How do you feel?"
"...Weaker. Actually." Otto remarked. "...Like the amulet has taken my strength with it as I took it off." He sighed. Starlight trotted over to him and hugged him.
"Thank you." She whispered in his ear. "You really don't need that amulet as much as you think you do. It's more important we keep you you in the grand scheme of things. If that thing made something awful out of you... I don't know if I could stop you."
He turned to look at her. "That won't happen." He assured her. "I can fight it. I will fight it. I've seen enough stories of ponies being corrupted by power. I won't let that happen to me. It's too important. The pony folk need me us to save them. The amulet... It's a means to an end." He went quiet, thoughtful. "...But, if I'm wearing it, nobody else is, and so it can't fall into the wrong hooves."
"We won't allow that to happen." Starlight nodded. "It's for the greater good. But, promise me, if I tell you to take it off, because I fear what it's doing to you, you'll do it, right?"
Again, silence. He wieghed it up. "I will..." He nodded. "...For you. I'll narrow to my time with the amulet to short bursts, to minimize the risks of it corrupting me. You'll help make sure I don't wear it for too long."
She smiled. "Of course. We'll do this together."
At that moment, the phone buzzed again.
"Sorry sir." Janine's voice spoke. "I've got a letter for you here. It's marked as pretty urgent."
Otto sighed, giving a wistful look to Starlight, before settling back in his seat. "Fine. Send it in."
The red blank-flank quickly trotted in, bowing her head slightly and setting the letter down on his desk, before leaving as quickly as she'd arrived.
Otto's magic returned to the letter opener, slicing the envelope open with a quick swipe of the blade. He produced the letter, and sat down to read, his blood turning cold at the familiar handwriting.
Dear Otto,
I am writing to inform you that I am alive and well. I washed up on the shore after I danced overboard my yacht a week ago. I had been cursed. The shoes I wore were magic, and made me dance against my will. This continued when I woke up on the beaches of Lake Manehatten, and continued to happen every day for the next week until the spell finally wore off, at least in part. I still cannot remove these shoes, but I am alive. You had been like a mentor for me for years, taking me under your wing when I was an inexperienced, lost intern within the corridors of City Hall. I would like to think, of all the ponies in government right now, I could at least trust you with this information.
However, I have also decided that for the time being I should lie low. I've been seen to by Princess Twilight Sparkle, whose friend was the one who had saved me after nearly drowning in Froggy Bottom Bog, and she is going to investigate into who cursed me, and see that they remove the curse on my shoes, and are brought to justice. It is also my intention to return to office as mayor of Manehatten, and serve out the remaining two years of my term. Your rule has been competent and just, and an excellent government in this transitory time. I thank you for what you have done so far, and I hope to hear from you soon.
Your sincerely,
Paver Goldstreets.
"So it's true..." Starlight was the first to speak, having read the letter over Otto's shoulder. "She's alive. Zecora wasn't trying to trick us as Ashfeather believed."
Quietly, Otto nodded. "Indeed..." He rolled a pen with his magic atop the desk, his mind casually floating it around in the air, before conclusively tapping the table with it. "We go on as ahead. We don't let her survival interfere with our plans."
"And how do you plan to do that?"
"We call her bluff. Make sure she stays hidden. Now she's alive, and the princesses are involved, we've got a deadline to get this done by, so we're powerful enough to force through our uprising regardless of if the princesses know the truth or not." He turned to a drawer, collecting some paper and filing it into a typewriter. "For now, I'm going to write some letters, and see if I can't buy us more time." He leaned over, giving his companion a brief hug. "Then, I think we draw a line in the sand for today, say screw it for the rest of it, and just go home, get drunk, and order a pizza or something. Sound good?"
"It's been years since I've had pizza." Starlight sighed rather wistfully. "It'd better be a good delivery place."
He kissed her cheek, causing her to blush slightly (having still not yet shaken off her hardy exterior). "It will be, one of the very best... For now though, I'd best get some coffee, I'm going to be here a while..."