//------------------------------// // Chapter VIII - Shocked // Story: Let's Try This Again // by HypernovaBolts11 //------------------------------// At that very moment, there was a loud gasp from the door, a burst of light blue magic, and a pony jumping from the top of the staircase to stand between Twilight and the changeling. The white unicorn had a mane and tail somewhere between blue and purple in color. Her lips were pulled back in a snarl, and her horn was surrounded by a light blue aura. Before the changeling could do anything to defend himself, a bolt of magic landed on his right shoulder, sending electric jolts through his body, leaving his front right leg paralyzed, stiff, and lame. He grunted in pain, then, breathing through his grit teeth, summoned a shield between himself and the unicorn. A wide rectangle glowed a bright green, upon seeing which the unicorn's eyes narrowed, and she launched another beam of magic at the changeling. The edges of the rectangle began to reach towards one another with a thin sheet of green magic. Just as the last hole in the shield was about to close, the blue beam slipped through, some of it dissipating in the defensive spell, but enough got through to the changeling that the wall immediately collapsed on itself. Twilight summoned a bubble of purple magic around her friend, but, as it had been when she'd used it to contain the changeling, no attacks could get out. The unicorn continued to launch magic at the changeling, but stopped when she realized that the shield around her was stopping them. Rarity turned to her friend, who summoned a similar bubble around the changeling, preventing them both from attacking one another. The imprisoned unicorn spoke in a raging voice, bordering on a sort of silly madness, "Twilight, that was close." She glanced around herself and asked, "Why am I in here?" Twilight slapped her forehead with a hoof, and began explaining her situation to Rarity. "Okay, he's not going to hurt me. This is a good changeling. His name is Fangheart. Don't call the royal guard or contact the princess about him. He's under my protection," she rambled. The right side of the changeling's face was paralyzed, locking his expression in one of pain, which only involved a closed eye and snarling lip, but it was specific enough to be understood by the unicorn who'd shot him. The left side of his face was free to show anything it wanted. He was lying on his side, having lost control of his right leg, which had given out under him. He slowly propped himself up on his left leg, standing shakily. He sat down in his bubble, looking over the two unicorns as they talked. He spotted something out of the corner of his eye, and lit up his horn before anything bad could come of it. He set Spike down in front of Twilight, and said, his words a bit slurred, "I'm gonna let you guys talk this out. I'll just um... sit here." He watched the three people argue. "It's a changeling!" Rarity exclaimed from inside her bubble. She poked her horn against the pink bubble, causing the spell to shatter into a dozen little pieces of magic, which collapsed on themselves. She turned to look at the changeling, and pushed Spike towards the creature, saying, "Spikey-Wikey, be a dear and keep a close eye on that thing!" The little dragon's eyes seemed to widen when the unicorn touched him, and he immediately nodded before hopping over to the purple bubble. He turned to face the changeling inside, and sat down, his eyes thoroughly glued to the monster. He didn't move for a while, and the changeling couldn't do anything about it, for Rarity added a blue bubble onto the purple one, preventing anything inside from having magical influence outside. The white unicorn continued to speak, "Why do you call it a he? And why on earth have you given it a name? And why in the world have you kept it?!" All of these questions came in such rapid succession that the purple unicorn couldn't even answer them before the white one loosed another volley of questions. "Why shouldn't I call the guard? Has it hypnotized you?!" Twilight placed her hoof on Rarity's lips to silence her. "Stop it, let me answer you," she said. She took a deep breath, and gave the changeling a soft, reassuring smile. "He is a male, who gave himself that name, and has chosen to behave cooperatively with me. He is under my protection, and he wouldn't hurt me. I've been under an anti-mind-control spell all day." She removed both of Fangheart's prisons, allowing him to speak for himself. The changeling nodded slowly, both to confirm Twilight's words and to assure Rarity that he could understand every word she'd said. "And I'm not just a thing," he corrected the white unicorn. "I have my own thoughts, emotions, and a full comprehension of everything you say about me." He then, not taking his eyes off of the unicorns or turning his head, pulled back the left corner of his lips in a quiet growl. The growl was directed at Spike, who was experimentally poking at a hole in his left leg. He then pulled his hoof away from the baby dragon, and said, "Careful, that's really sensitive, and I'm not above being hungry." The dragon backed off, returning to the side of the white unicorn, who put a hoof down in front of him, defensively shielding him from the changeling. Rarity —apparently not in the mood for jokes— took this as evidence that the changeling was definitely bad. She turned to look at her friend, glancing at the changeling, and said, "You saw that, right? You're clearly under some sort of mind control spell, Twilight. This monster has gotten into your head!" "Pardon me, but these holes don't even have a measly layer of skin to protect them. How'd you like it if someone else decided to poke at your inner body without asking for permission? And you, Rarity, should note that, while some changelings do eat meat, I —being a drone— am an herbivore," he said, narrowing his eyes at Rarity. "And don't even think of calling me a monster. Monsters are big things, or things that will, at the very least, eat you. I couldn't eat you even if I wanted to. You're much too big to fit inside of my mouth, much more valuable as a love factory than a meal, and besides, I don't like my meals to talk about me like I'm some sort of mindless monster," he added. Rarity stared at the changeling, her eyes wide, her mouth hanging open, and her ears standing on end. "I-it. H-he..." she stammered a bit, unable to formulate proper sentences. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes. She said, "Has it occurred to you, Twilight, that Queen Chrysalis was the only changeling that could talk?" Twilight nodded to her friend, and turned her head a bit to face the changeling. She asked him, "Would you like to explain why it is you can talk?" Fangheart shrugged and said, "Well, my mother insisted that I learn to speak Equish, but I have been startled by my recent increased skill in speaking it. It's not like I stole it from anywhere, if that's even possible. I suppose that being in my pony form for more than a day could have burned it into my mind. Or, watching my mother die might have snapped me into speaking it, perhaps in subconscious tribute to father." He froze, already knowing that he'd said something bad, and bit his lip. He shouldn't have mentioned his father. That had been rule number one around ponies. He hoped that the unicorns wouldn't ask what he had so carefully avoided answering for so many years. Twilight told her friend, "He's not evil, okay? He already had the chance to kill me twice, and he's said for himself that he'd rather help me defend against other changelings than use me as a source of food. He's not like Chrysalis. He isn't Chrysalis. Imagine what we could do if we had a changeling with political power on our side." Fangheart relaxed, then corrected the purple unicorn, "First of all, my mother wasn't evil. She could have gone about it in a better way, but the invasion was an act of desperation. Much of the workers in the hive were starving, and she had no better options. She made her mistakes, but goodness knows she wasn't evil." He lay down on his stomach, sighed a bit, then continued, "Secondly, I wouldn't have killed you. Why would a changeling kill a pony? Ponies are much more useful as love factories than edible matter. I knew that if I did kill you, Celestia would stop at absolutely nothing to make me pay. She would carve my bones into a new throne, upon which she would sit every day, crying over your dead body." He crossed his front legs and said, "Thirdly, I am absolutely worthless to the hive now. Without their queen, their numbers will dwindle as they starve to death, and no new changelings will be born until they get a new queen. I am, without my mother in power, just another potential concubine for the new queen. If she doesn't want me, I can at least try to escape before she chooses between torturing me for information and just stoning me to death." He scrunched up his face, and relaxed it again, clearing the effects of Rarity's paralysis spell. He sighed deeply, letting his eyes close. He sensed all of his magic coursing through his whole body, freely flowing alongside his blood. He could sense the raw power of everything. He didn't know that he had more power than Celestia did at the time, as that magic was locked away somewhere he couldn't detect it. He could still sense strength though, and he had missed the ability to move for a while. He'd spent a good day in Baltimare prison, unable to lift his own weight, and the days before that had been spent flying, then walking, then crawling as he and his mother had slowly lost their strength in the desert. And now, he could sense his virility returning to him, the world becoming crisp and sharp as his eyes opened again. He was prepared for every changeling in the hive to chase him right back out of the Badlands, and he'd laugh at them, for he would know that the north was better than the south. The two unicorns led him upstairs, into the library's one bedroom, and, after rummaging through the main catalog, dumped a mountain of legal code onto the floor. He could hear the unicorns arguing about his merit as a person. They bickered about his mental acuity, debating whether he was a barely sentient creature, or something equivalent to them in rights and ways of thought. They argued and debated about what he could or couldn't do, which rights he also possessed, and which of them was more sane than the other. They provided hypothetical examples of potential scenarios a changeling might have found themselves in while living in Equestria. Fangheart listened as best he could, dressed in his pony body so as not to upset Rarity. He lay upon the large bed in the bedroom, watching Spike transcribe the whole debate. He watched in utter fascination as the dragon's little claws expertly guided the quill, which guided the ink, which became letters, which became words, which became entire mountains of parchment. This left the stallion as the only one in the room who didn't really understand what the two unicorns meant half the time, and with nothing to do. He rolled around on the soft bed, figured out how to preen his wings —which he knew was a private matter, but nopony even noticed— and wandered around the library, picking up books and putting them back where he'd found them. He assumed that he wasn't allowed to go outside, which was a familiar rule to him. He'd never been allowed to leave his mother's private quarters, unless she gave him explicit permission to join her at her throne and attend meals —which were not at all like pony meals. But when the front door to the Golden Oak Library opened, and the sounds of metallic footsteps persisted after it had closed, he slammed the book in his hoof back onto the shelf, and zipped up the stairs before he could get caught. He burst into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him, and everyone inside stopped what they were doing to look at him. "G-guard," he said, his eyes and voice saturated with pure, instinctive fear. Before anyone could say anything, he was consumed by a shell of green fire, and the changeling vanished. The door creaked open, and those inside of the room could only see a faint, almost mirage-like outline of the wall moving out of the door's way. A pink pony stepped through the door, carrying a large stack of pie tins on her back. She spoke faster than any of them could understand, but they all heard her clearly say, "Hi, Fangheart." She was facing the wall to the right of the door when she said that. Then she continued on rambling about parties to the other people in the room, like nothing odd had happened. Twilight got the pink pony to hold her tongue for just a moment, took a deep breath in preparation to speak, and then the door slammed closed on its own. The lock clicked shut, and everyone aside from the queer earth pony, who just kept looking at her friend, awaiting her words. There was a flash of green fire, and Fangheart materialized from behind the pink pony. He was in mid-air, having just pounced, and in his fully changeling form. Before he could understand what had happened however, the pink pony was a meter to his right, as though she'd teleported so perfectly, so precisely, that no scan would have detected anything changing. The changeling met the floor with a loud, "Oof!" His limp body bounced ever so slightly, and when he landed again, his fall was blocked by a pie tin full of something he didn't recognize. His nose fell into the pie tin, and the rest of his body followed suit —but without a nice cushion in the way. The changeling lay there as the pink pony returned talking, her nearly endless droning filling the bedroom. No one even noticed when she stopped talking, as they were all staring at the rather oddly behaved changeling, who was curled up on his back, with the pie tin pressed to his nose, and his tongue audibly cleaning the tin of anything he could find. When the pie was gone, the changeling examined the tin with an odd scrutiny, and a blob of apple dripping down his chin. He bit down on the metal pie tin, then, finding the taste of the metal unpleasant, made an exaggerated gagging sound. He looked up at the pink pony, licked his lips, showing his luminescent, green tongue, a contented smile on his thin, chitinous lips. He asked the pink earth pony, "D-do you have any more?" And with that, a small burp escaped his mouth. He immediately said, "Excuse me, ladies." He eyed the few crumbs resting on his slightly distended stomach. He summoned a small piece of white cloth, and wiped his lips clean before dismissing the napkin. Rarity elbowed Twilight gently with her left leg. "No one told me that changelings had manners," she whispered, holding a hoof in front of the right side of her face. She added, "Had I known that, I might have asked him to go to dinner with me. I need a better date than Prince Blueblood so I can make that hunk of a unicorn jealous." Twilight rolled her eyes, and said, "Okay, Pinkie Pie, don't tell anypony else that Fangheart is staying with me. Don't even tell me how you know each other." She turned to face her bed, where Spike was curled up into a little ball, his quill still held between his little claws. She retrieved the writing utensil from Spike, and set him down in his bed. The changeling said, indicating Pinkie Pie, "I have no clue who this mare is." He stood up, wobbled a bit, not used to carrying around material inside of his stomach like this. "I... I'll just sleep... here." He slowly lay down, burst into flames, returning to his pegasus body, and closed his eyes, as the first stars blinked into visibility through the window. When Fangheart woke up, he found a single talon placed over his lips. He blinked at the thing, and jumped when he heard a smooth, deep voice tell him, "You know, Fangheart, I was expecting more from you." The changeling turned around to face the one who had roused him from his slumber. He looked around, not seeing anyone. He wasn't anywhere he recognized, nor did he recognize anyone around him. He was marching forward, weighed down by heavy metal armor, his hooves sinking into the mud below him with every step. The whole legion around him kept marching, so he continued to tread forward. The voice spoke again, "He gave you more than you knew, Bite. I don't quite understand how you haven't already used his powers." Fangheart looked around, searching for the voice, only to find himself sinking into the mud below him, while the soldiers continued to trudge forward. He sank and sank, until his shoulders were about to be swallowed by the marsh. He reached to his shoulder with his jaw, and bit through the leather strap they held his backplate and chest plate onto his body. He managed to grab a passing soldier's hoof with his own, and finally dragged himself out of the mud. He ran towards the hole in the marching force that he'd left, and fell into pace with the others. He kept marching, even as the voice spoke again, "Very good. You lost some equipment, but you got back up." He shook his head to clear it, closing his eyes for a short moment. "Perhaps there's hope for you yet, boy."