Leech listened intently from his branch to the commotion going on inside the library. There were shouts, squeals, the soft thud of bodies hitting the walls and the crashing of furniture being destroyed.
"Trixie and the Diamond Dogzz muzzt really be letting pony have it!" he muttered to himself.
He didn't much care for this stage of the plan, but pleasing Trixie was his number one priority. Any moral issues on his part would just have to wait. Nevertheless, he couldn't help but feel a slight pang of guilt for 'Fluttershy'. Little did Leech know the truth of what was happening beneath him at that very moment!
----------
Away from the relative quietness of outside, a scene of utter chaos was unfolding inside Ponyville's library. A severe beating had indeed been dispensed, but it wasn't by Trixie and the Diamond Dogs. The room was a mess - books and pieces of broken furniture littered the entire floor. Twilight was certainly in for a shock when she got home that night!
Spot was laying on the floor in the corner of the room, clutching his stomach where he'd been hit by a double-hoof buck and groaning as best he could whilst being winded. Rover was attempting to get back to his feet, staggering as he did so and rubbing his jaw after a brutal front-left uppercut from the cyan pegasus.
Fido and Rainbow were now dueling in the center of the room, Fido swinging his massive fists wildly and uselessly as Rainbow effortlessly dodged the cumbersome attempts to hit her. Trixie had bravely taken the position of strategist, and was ducking behind an overturned table shouting orders to the Diamond Dogs.
"Get up, you weaklings!" she snarled to Rover and Spot, her attention then turning to Fido. "And you, you great lummox - stop stumbling around like a concussed foal and actually land a punch! I didn't employ you idiots to fail me, you're here to do a job! Now get it done!"
Fido didn't have chance to register his increasing annoyance with Trixie's attitude. He swung a punch powerful enough to floor a full-grown stallion at Rainbow, only for her to dodge once again. This time, instead of waiting for him to swing again, Rainbow grabbed his outstretched arm between her front hooves and using the giant canine's own momentum against him, swung him round a full 180 degrees. At this point, she released his arm and sent him hurtling across the room and into an empty bookcase, reducing it to splinters and taking the final standing Diamond Dog out of the fight. Rainbow's attention then turned to Trixie.
"You've got some nerve showing your face around here again!" she said, advancing on the now cowering showmare. "What are you and these gem-stealing fleabags doing here, anyway?"
Trixie said nothing, she just curled even into an even tighter ball and awaited the inevitable thrashing she was about to receive. She was far too terrified at this point to attempt to distract Rainbow with her magic - she just couldn't focus on her horn at all in her present state.
----------
Outside, Leech noticed that the noise had died down. After a few moments, he began to wonder why Trixie hadn't called for him yet.
"Maybe Trixie forget to call." he reasoned "Maybe she waiting for Leech right now!"
Leech decided to go inside and check the situation for himself - he figured that he wasn't needed out here, all seemed quiet. Most of the ponies were still at the pre-festival party, none of them seemed to be moving towards the library.
He pushed open one of the library's upper floor windows and squeezed inside. He cautiously hovered through the darkened upstairs rooms, attempting to find the stairs. Navigating through the dim light wasn't easy, even with his specialized low-light-vision eyes. Leech grunted and cursed under his breath as he bumped into walls, and grimaced as he knocked some breakable-sounding items off a dresser. After some near-blind hovering through the upper floor's rooms, he finally saw the glow of the lights from downstairs. He buzzed over to the top of the stairs and landed on the top step, and gasped as he saw Trixie being pressed for information by a colorful-maned pony in the room below.
"Leech let wrong Element get into library!" he wailed despairingly.
As Leech looked in horror at the scene below, he realized he'd seen the pegasus somewhere before. Obviously, she was an Element of Harmony so she would have been present during the Canterlot incident. But Leech felt it was something more than that... he tried to think back to that day, instinctively licking at the broken remnants of his left fang as he often did when in deep thought.
Then it struck him - THIS was the pony who'd knocked him out almost as soon as he'd arrived in Canterlot! This pony was the pony who'd broken his beloved fang! An unusually intense flame of anger and lust of vengeance suddenly rose within Leech's tiny insect heart. With a personal score to settle, Leech abandoned any coherent thoughts he may have been having, revved up his wings and zoomed down the stairs. Rainbow didn't even have time to turn her head before Leech dive-bombed her broadside. The two went rolling across the library and ended up in a heap next to the front door. Rainbow was the first to get up, rubbing her head as she did so.
"So, the rumors ARE true - you really are working with a changeling!" exclaimed Rainbow with surprise. "The Trottingham weather team told me this morning, but I didn't think anypony would be stupid enough to do that - not even you, Trixie!"
Leech struggled to his hooves and glared at Rainbow.
"Trixzie izz not zzstupid! Trixzzie izz Leech'zz friend!" he growled fiercely.
Trixie was amazed - as far as she had seen, this was the first time the almost endearingly passive changeling had displayed anything even approaching anger.
"Oh yeah? Well, when the royal guard hear about- HEY!" Rainbow yelped.
She hadn't noticed the three Diamond Dogs recovering from their various punishments, and now had all three pairs of strong hands holding onto her. Fido held her wings, whilst Spot and Rover held a hind leg each.
Trixie immediately regained her usual bravado, now that the threat was safely contained. She stood up, dusted off her signature cape and strode cockily over to Rainbow Dash. Her horn glowed, and she levitated her hat to reveal several ropes underneath. Using the same rope trick she'd used on Applejack during her first Ponyville performance, the captive pegasus was soon bound wing and hoof.
Trixie had also unwittingly pinned one of Fido's pinkie fingers underneath the rope holding Rainbow's wings. He'd managed to pull it out without Trixie having to loosen the rope, hurting his finger in the process. He moodily sucked at his damaged digit whilst Trixie coordinated the next stage of the plan.
"Finally, we have an Element of Harmony!" she announced triumphantly. "Not one of the ones we were after, thanks to Lord Of The Dunce over here," she continued, giving Leech an angry glare, "but now we've got her she will do. Leech, if you would do the honors..."
Acknowledging the command, Leech stood before Rainbow Dash, and before her eyes he engulfed himself in a fiery green aura. When it subsided, there stood an exact replica of the Element of Loyalty herself. Well... almost exact. The duplicate Dash had a gap in her teeth on the left side due Leech's damaged fang. As it turned out, whenever an injured or disfigured changeling disguised, its injuries and disfigurements were copied into the disguise as well. More powerful changelings with advanced disguising magic could compensate for this but Leech, of course, was not one of these.
"Hmmmm." mused Trixie, examining the missing tooth "No matter. Just try not to speak with anypony, so they won't have a chance to notice. Focus on grabbing the gems and creating chaos!"
"HAH!" laughed Rainbow, who was lying on her back with her bound hooves in the air at this point. "THAT'S your grand plan? Do you really think Ponyville would be stupid enough to think that bug-faced bozo was really me? Nopony can imitate the one and only Rainbow Dash!" she said proudly.
"We'll just see about that." replied Trixie, smiling menacingly. "If the town of Ponyville is simple-minded enough to deny the Great and Powerful Trixie's indisputable abilities, I'm sure they'll fall for this!"
Her attention shifted to Spot, Fido and Rover, who were still rubbing their various bumps and bruises from the brutal melee that had taken place just a few short minutes ago.
"Diamond Dogs - get yourselves to the meeting point just outside town. And make it snappy - the festival starts soon! Wait there for Leech to drop the gems off to you." she said with urgency.
With a salute of highly questionable sincerity from Rover, the three canines hurried away. Trixie then turned to the duplicate Dash.
"Leech... conceal yourself somewhere until the festival is properly underway. Try not to get into any conversations with other ponies, lest you blow your disguise. When the time is right, grab all the gems you can, making sure everypony can see you!" she ordered, before looking at her hooves for a moment. "And... please be careful." she added quietly.
Leech raised an eyebrow at Trixie. He hadn't expected this! Trixie picked up on the changeling's surprise and quickly regained her usual demeanor.
"I mean... be careful not to mess up again, it seems I can't do a thing without you bungling it up! Trixie has everything riding on this plan, so you'd better get it right!" she quickly blurted out.
Leech headed for the door, turning back and giving Trixie another quizzical glance on the way out. Trixie simply shuffled her hooves and looked away awkwardly.
----------
Leech trotted through the town in his new pony form. Whilst he found it refreshing being able to stride about the town without constantly hiding, he never liked taking the form of a female pony. Whilst he often took Trixie's form during certain tricks at their shows, this was only for a short time. He didn't like female disguises when he had to use them for an extended period - indeed, many changelings were poor at acting like the opposite gender. In fact, alternate-gender disguises had been discouraged back in the hive, under Rule 63 of the Changeling Basic Training. It also made it difficult for them to keep their pronouns straight, which could often lead to cover being accidentally blown during conversations.
Nevertheless, Leech paced back and forth around the town square, attracting a few odd looks as he did so. Noticing this, he decided to take cover in an alleyway to wait for the festival to start properly, out of the view of any prying eyes. Watching the events of the evening begin to unfold around him, Leech felt a nervousness that he'd never felt before in his life. As a maintenance worker, he'd never been on a proper infiltration mission and so was uncertain of how to proceed.
"Maybe Leech should have told Trixzzie thizz..." he thought nervously.
Leech had little time for regrets and cold hooves, however, as the Mayor of Ponyville announced the official beginning of the Gemstone Festival. Within a short period of time the streets were positively heaving with ponies from the length and breadth of Equestria.
----------
The party was still going strong, with a stream of ponies milling in and out of Sugarcube Corner. The gemstone market was thriving, with gems and bits changing hooves left, right and center. An exhibition of especially valuable gems, which were not for sale, stood in the middle of the town square. Security was low, because Ponyville was ordinarily known for being one of the safest towns in Equestria. That was part of the reason why the Festival was held here.
But tonight was no ordinary night, and with the exhibition picked as his first target, Leech prepared to commit Rainbow Dash's first crime spree! He took off, unsteadily at first as he wasn't used to flying with pegasus wings. High above the packed town square, Leech could see many ponies had looked upward to see what Rainbow Dash was doing. With his new audience watching, he went into a steep dive and swooped down over the square, almost at head level. As he did so, he passed over the exhibiton and scooped up all its precious stones in a single pass. There were diamonds of various colors, a fire ruby, a pumpkin-sized emerald and even a small piece of ultra-rare jadeite. Speeding out of the town with his new haul, he touched down at the meeting point, where the Diamond Dogs were eagerly waiting with sacks.
Ill-advisedly, Leech gave all of his freshly-plundered loot to the crooked canines, who hungrily snatched the gems from his hooves and stuffed them into their bags. Although Trixie had told him to put the most valuable gems aside, he had nowhere else to stash them. Leech, rather naively, figured he would separate the more valuable items from the other gems when they all got back to the wagon.
He took off again, and sped back towards the town where the previously bustling festival had been reduced to many shocked ponies whispering to one another, wondering what had just happened. Before they had chance to think any further, a rainbow streak whizzed over from the opposite direction, again at head level. This time, a box of assorted amethysts disappeared from a trader's counter. The crowd watched in horror as the rogue Element of Harmony doubled back and wooshed over again, this time scooping up Rarity's bag of rare opals. Mouths hung open as the assembled ponies watched the spectral after-trail disappear once again.
----------
Back at the library, which was still an absolute mess, Trixie was idly flicking through a book on spells in the hope that she could learn a few whilst she waited for Leech to finish his work. However, she couldn't focus on the now dog-eared pages in front of her. Her mind was restless, something was bothering her, and it wasn't just nerves that the plan wouldn't work. She had begun to harbor serious doubts about her own motivations, and had a terrible feeling that she was missing something that should have been obvious. The real Rainbow Dash looked over to her from the corner of the room. She'd long given up struggling against the ropes, and instead decided to try a different tactic.
"This is never going to work, you know." she began, attempting to spook the villainous unicorn. "Twilight could come back here at any time. And lemme tell ya, she'd kick your sorry flank all the way to Canterlot! Then she'd kick it out of there again because it's way too nice a place for trash like you!"
"I know what you're trying to do, insolent foal!" hissed Trixie, still in the midst of figuring out the source of her doubts. "And it's not going to have any effect. You might as well keep your inane ramblings to yourself!"
"Looking a little tense there, Trixie." whispered Rainbow mockingly, a smile appearing on her lips. "Realized your stupid little plan's about to fall flat on its flank, huh?"
Trixie shot the captive pegasus a glare so sharp that it could have cut through glass. With a muted snarl under her breath, she abandoned her pursuit of the cause of her worries for a moment. She trotted across the room, stepping over the shrapnel of the smashed furniture and the forlorn remains of the library's tomes, into the kitchen. With a wisp of magic energy from her horn, she levitated a dishcloth from the kitchen as Rainbow continued her attempted psyche-out speech.
"You should just get out of here whilst you still can," called Rainbow Dash with gusto, "cos Twilight's at least 20% cooler than you and your idiot minions. I bet she could beat the lot of you in ten seconds fl- hey, what are you doing with that?"
Trixie said nothing as she and the dishcloth made their way back across the war-torn library before coming to a stop at the spot where the prone Rainbow Dash lay.
"Horseapples." whimpered Rainbow quietly, her ears dropping as she realized what was happening. "I hope that's clean..."
With this, Trixie deftly tied the cloth tightly around Rainbow's snout, effectively cutting off the pegasus' attempts at scare tactics. To further ensure silence so that she could think, Trixie's horn glowed brighter, and she levitated the stricken Rainbow Dash over to a nearby storage closet filled with books. Caring nothing for the comfort of her captive, Trixie unceremoniously dumped Rainbow inside and closed the door. The muffled protests and occasional bangs on the closet door were far less grating than Rainbow's attempts at freaking her out. With this matter dealt with satisfactorily, Trixie returned to attempting to make sense of what her subconscious was trying to tell her.
She asked herself exactly why she was doing this... it was because she craved attention, praise, and admiration, right? Plus, the bits from the stolen gems would be a great bonus. It was mostly the former that drove her, however. She was a showmare at heart - positive attention was what she thrived upon, as was the case with all showponies. And when she handed Rainbow Dash into the authorities, she'd be showered with all of this and more...
So why did she feel as if she was looking in the wrong places for these things?
Why did she feel that she already had what she had been looking for, and had failed to appreciate it?
Why did she suddenly feel unfulfilled by the prospect of being worshiped by strangers?
Then it hit her. Leech. Since meeting Leech, he had done nothing but shower her with admiration and praise. He'd saved her flank from the crowd in Trottingham, worked tirelessly on her wagon for her, and stopped her going mad with loneliness during her Everfree exile.
He'd been the first creature in years to have ever genuinely cared about Trixie, and she had been too preoccupied with gaining empty praises and platitudes from large numbers of insignificant ponies to take notice. She'd abused his trust, taken advantage of his eagerness to please and used him as a means to an end. He had freely given what Trixie had needed most all along without realizing:
True friendship.
And she had just thrown it back in his face. The only true friend that she had ever made, without even knowing it. A being who liked Trixie for Trixie, and not for the parlor tricks she did on stage. Sure, Trixie had no doubt in her mind that Leech had some interest in feeding off her unique array of emotions at first - but it was beyond that now. He'd gone above and beyond the call of duty so many times in recent weeks. But Trixie had been too wrapped up in her own insecurities to notice or care.
"Leech..." she whispered, a lump growing within her throat, "... I'm sorry. What have I gotten you into?"
Trixie knew the answer to this question all too well. Her cheeks were ablaze with remorse and shame as she considered how her short sightedness had landed herself and him in a desperately dangerous situation. The pair were marooned, stranded halfway through a ridiculous plan to obtain a vastly inferior version of what she already had. She couldn't stop the plan now, they were too far into it to call it off. Leech had already begun trashing the festival, and the Diamond Dogs would probably have the stolen gems by this stage. No, they were in too deep to cut and run now.
Or were they?
Trixie stood up, her eyes staring intently into the middle distance as she came to a decision. She no longer had any interest in being the hero of Ponyville, or the money that the gems would bring. Now, her primary objective was simply to find her friend and get him out of this place before any harm could come to him. Unsure of how she was going to do this, she charged out of the wrecked library and into the cool breeze of the night. Casting a temporary and only semi-effective invisibility spell, she became translucent enough to slip through the evening shadows unnoticed by the crowds of stunned and dumbstruck ponies. She had to get back to the wagon - Leech and the Dogs would most likely be there by now.
----------
As Trixie left the town and began to run down the moonlit country road that led to the Everfree, she hoped that nopony would find Rainbow Dash until she'd been able to get herself and Leech a safe distance from the town. Once word got around that Rainbow Dash had been bound and locked in a closet the entire time, it would become obvious that the raid was a changeling's work. Most of Ponyville, and possibly even the Royal Guard would come looking for them. Trixie resolved to make sure they were far away if and when this happened.
She wasn't worried what would happen to her if they were caught - she'd be alright. Justice tended to be quite lax in Equestria, at least if you were a pony. If you were a Draconequus or a manifestation of envy possessing a Princess, then retribution tended to be somewhat harsher. The same was true for changelings - after the failed raid of Canterlot, changelings were being hunted all over the continent. None had been caught yet - being changelings, they were somewhat hard to capture. However, the Royal Guard had pledged that any that were caught would be thrown into the Canterlot dungeons. Trixie shuddered at the very thought of this fate befalling Leech. She ignored the fatigue in her legs and continued to gallop hard towards her intended destination.
----------
At the wagon, a distraught Leech had dropped his disguise and was pacing back and forth, considering his options. The Diamond Dogs were gone, and so were the entirety of the gems he had looted. Leech had never gotten a chance to separate the valuable gems from the others, and the Diamond Dogs hadn't stayed around long enough to share the rest with Trixie...
As soon as Leech had delivered the final lot of stolen gems to the Diamond Dogs, he noticed that all of them wore smug expressions upon their faces.
"Thanks a lot, insect-pony! Now, we will be going. With ALL of these jewels! Tell your Trixie friend we said thanks!" Rover sneered, turning to leave with his associates in tow.
When Leech attempted to stop them, Fido had simply swatted him to one side with a vicious backhand, breaking off even more of his left fang, reducing it to a stump. When he had woken up, both the Dogs and the gems were gone.
----------
Leech knew that most of Ponyville would be on the lookout for 'Rainbow Dash' at this point, but he couldn't bear to leave Trixie empty-hoofed. Not again, not after the trouble he'd caused her before. She was relying on these gems for income, and he was NOT going to disappoint his only friend. He had to go back one last time, to see if there was anything left that he could grab for Trixie.
Donning his colorful Pegasus disguise, Leech took off from the Everfree and headed back to Ponyville once more. He knew that this would be the most dangerous raid of all, now that Ponyville was on high alert. Evading capture in these conditions was not guaranteed. He flapped his wings harder and forged ahead, disregarding the danger for the sake of his best friend.
Less than a minute later, an exhausted Trixie dashed into the deserted clearing. She dropped her invisibility spell and frantically looked around.
"Leech? LEECH? Where are you?" she called, her voice reverberating through the silence around her.
But no answer came.