Rez: Eqstr[Tera]

by NiGHTcapD

20: Cadence

Author's Note:

I suppose I should point out that I have been making an exception to the rule I stated in WH1's Author's Notes, about color and communicating through real vs alternative methods. Major powerful characters, specifically the Princesses and the two pony-side antagonists so far, always get their text in color. Also regarding colors, and about The Politician (who will be appearing again, trust me)...I tried to make his a dark gray, but you can't tell because it gets lost to the sea of black (unless you go into formatting and change the background color to pretty much any shade but the first two. In fact this story might be a better read in darker backgrounds in general; I'll have to try that myself).

One last note:

Cadence (n): a sequence of notes or chords comprising the close of a musical phrase.
Cadance (n): Princess Mi Amore Cadenza.

I silently object.

I object to those who would put personal freedoms of others on the line. I reject realities wherein I fail without a damned good fight, and subvert them with my own skills. I subject those that take what is not theirs to what is, in effect, themselves; administered with a healthy dose of me.

And I object to this wedding. But I am unable to act upon it, not yet. It would be rude to have asked the princess for something and then decided not to use it, simply on a whim. No, it takes a lot more reasoning than that to change a plan like that and get away scot-free, especially where immortals are involved.

No, I sit back and wait for her to say the words. The words I asked her to, that she owes me. Now, I have done some research in preparation, and the phrase originated back in the middle ages-when there were no laws to prevent someone from marrying someone else while the former was already married. In extremely rare cases in which the phrase is used in real life, the officiant and the speaker would have a private conversation-and if a legal reason could not be supplied on the spot, the wedding would continue without a hitch...no, that's not the best choice of words...without any further interruptions.

I have a perfectly good reason.

"If anyone objects to this marriage, let them speak now or forever hold their peace."

That's my cue. "I object." My avatar had been in a seated position; I make it stand up to further draw attention.

The reactions of the crowd are all over the place. The new bridesmaids AKA my friends in this world all are completely surprised I would do such a thing. Most everyone else is surprised anyone would do anything like that at all. Celestia is caught off guard somewhat, but is prepared to roll with it. Shining Armor doesn't know what to think (if he's even thinking at all-the whole time he's been up at the altar, he's just been standing there with a sickly shade of green in his eyes), the rest of the guards point their weapons in my general direction, and Cadance...well... "What do you think you're doing?" Cadance is more than a bit confused.

"Rez. On what grounds do you object to this wedding?"

"I object not on the grounds that Shining Armor and Cadance truly love each other, nor that they are married to another not present to object themselves. I believe the two on the altar were truly meant for each other, if not for one problem-Cadance is not standing on the altar!"

"Then who am I?" Now annoyed.

"A shapeshifter."

"Lies!" Panicked. "If I'm not the real Cadance, then where is she?"

"She's right here!" Just who I needed to hear.

Now very annoyed. "Ugh! Why does she have to be so possessive of her brother?" In a rather futile attempt to cover up, she begins fake crying. "Why does she have to ruin my special day?"

"Because it's not your special day! It's mine!"

Everypony gasps as the owner of that last voice walks into the room. The one-and-only...

Princess Mi Amore Cadenza. The real one.

"What? But how did you escape my bridesmaids?"

Twilight and Cadence tell how they distracted them with a bridal bouquet, prompting my snarky response of: "Next time, don't ask questions you don't want answers to."

"Hmph. Clever. But you're still too late."

Applejack takes the opportunity to ask a good question. "I-I don't understand. How can there be two of 'em?"

To which Cadance easily responds: "She's a changeling. She takes the form of somepony you love and gains power by feeding off your love for them."

"Just like I said. Halt and catch fire, deceptive Cadance."

"If you so insist, hacker." I miss not the venom in her tone, nor the fact that after she drops her illusion she looks a lot like Glitch...only bigger, definitely feminine and with rather unkempt (Rarity may be rubbing off on me somehow) blue hair. Nor the former phrase being taken so literally when her form-changing magic involves a burst of green flame. She takes the stunned silence of everypony after the flames die down to partake in a minor bout of evil laughter. "Right you are, Princess. And as queen of the changelings, it is up to me to find food for my subjects. Equestria has more love than any place I've ever encountered. My fellow changelings will be able to devour so much of it that we will gain more power than we have ever dreamed of!"

"They'll never get the chance! Shining Armor's protection spell will keep them from ever even reaching us!"

"Hate to burst your bubble, princess...but diagnostics state that it hasn't been updated for at least 12 hours, and that it's being broken as we speak!? Shoot!" I move to leave, but the queen steps in the way.

"Ah, ah, ah. Wouldn't you like to hear more? I know you love your information."

"Stupid stalling tactics Fine. Staring with this: to whom do I owe the pleasure of calling you out on having a hivemind?"

She pauses for a bit to process this, then laughs a bit more-and this one is more legitimate. "Oh, you are good. How did you figure that one out? And you may refer to me as Queen Chrysalis."

"To answer your question, I don't think you had enough direct interaction with me to know either my hobby or my likes, but I spent more than enough time with that drone you sent along, probably as a scout. I never described Twilight Sparkle to that drone either, yet it changed into the proper form on first mention of her-and you have spent more than enough time looking at her. You passed the message along to the hive, and Glitch knew what-"

"Right. 'Glitch'. That one was not always one to follow orders like the others even before you gave it the name. For your information, it was the only one who even volunteered to scout, and after your little 'chat' that will be the only way it even gets to participate in this invasion-"

"Beggars can't be choosers. Now it will be the only one not getting absolutely mauled by our forces."

"I beg to differ, but I digress. As for you..." she turns back to facing Cadance now "...ever since I took your place, I've been feeding off Shining Armor's love for you. Every moment he grows weaker and so does his spell. Even now, my minions are chipping away at it." I take the opportunity to look out the window...and see that they're being rather crude about just bashing the barrier from all sides with their body. No planning, no weak points, just bashing. It would be funny if it weren't so scary. "He may not be my husband, but he is under my total control now. And I'm sorry to say, unable to perform his duties as captain of the Royal Guard."

"Not my Shining Armor!"

"Soon, my changeling army will break through. First, we take Canterlot. And then, all of Equestria!"

"No. You won't." Celestia is deciding to take matters into her own hooves now. Good. "You may have made it impossible for Shining Armor to perform his spell, but now that you have so foolishly revealed your true self, I can protect my subjects from you!"

Now, I'm not entirely sure what happened during the next few seconds, but I'm pretty sure it involves Celestia losing a magic laser shove-of-war and Twilight and her friends running out the door. What I know is that soon after that there were very few left in the big room-in fact, no one was left but Chrysalis, Celestia (unconscious), Shining Armor (still possessed), Cadance, Spike, and myself-when the barrier finally gave. The alerts could even be heard over the microphone, which alerted Chrysalis to the fact that I was still there. "Ah, I almost forgot. You."

I glare back at her through the screen. "Forgetting is one of the most dangerous things you can do to me."

"I am more powerful than Celestia right now. What do you think you can do to me?"

"What I think is that I don't care how powerful you are, I just see a cracker."

"...really? You think of me as just another one of your kind?"

"That's exactly what I think. Canterlot is...was...a very secure system. I don't mean that lightly, as I checked it myself. You found a vulnerability, specifically Cadance there. No I do not appreciate it, no I am not praising her nor belittling you Cadance, I am making a comparison here so please don't give me that look. Anyways, where was I...oh, right. You proceeded to exploit the vulnerability, you're lucky I haven't tried to sucker punch you already for the method you used. I have a very low tolerance for hostage anything. And then...the payload. Total control. The muting of every single variable that could possibly outperform you."

"I recall that 'lesson'. Vulnerability, exploitation, payload; and when you put it like that, you are correct. I suppose I am a hacker."

"Cracker. If you take one thing out of that lesson, it's the difference in jobs between white hat and black hat. Now, I respect the fact that your hive needs food. But there are better ways of obtaining your sustenance-more efficient, as well as not pissing everyone else in the process. If it weren't for the fact that you seem to be enjoying this way too much, I would have given you a chance to back off on the assumption that this stunt was just to get attention, out of desperation. But you burned that bridge a long time ago, beginning from your initial exploit." I make the "right hand" crackle static. "Every variable except for this one, and now you'll get no sympathy from me. But before we begin...remember my tale about Cloudbank?"

"Surely you're going somewhere with this. Yes, I remember that."

"The wielder of the Transistor was a singer, and I happen to have a perfect song for you today."

A single button press and the silver becomes a speaker. The throne room is now a battlefield, and we are animals ready to pounce, as we allow the tempo to govern a slow revolution about our midpoint. And then I open my mouth to sing.

I hear you buzzing, a fly on the wall On each syllable, I loose a scanlaser.
In through the window and up through the hall The mixed meter throws her off somewhat, but she catches on.
Flying in circles, just trying to land I take the mental downtime to relate to the lyrics; yes, they may be hurting for love.
I see you hurting, I do what I can; What they have done, however, is not very nice.
But I...won't save you, If they had been diplomatic, maybe we could have helped them.
I won't save you. But as it stands, they are beyond me.

Chrysalis takes the downtime between verses to recompose herself; parrying my strikes with beams of her own did not look taxing, but it may have taken mental effort. I wouldn't know; I'm not her. She sneers at me, and states, "Not like this, you don't."

Maybe you're looking for someone to blame? And I find the roles reversed.
Fighting for air while you circle the drain. She briefly motions towards the incapacitated groom. I wrest back control in an instant.
Never be sorry for your little time, She recovers quick, though, and keeps me on my toes.
It's not when you get there, it's always the climb!
And I...won't save you,
I won't save you!

During the last section, we had been casting haphazard to attempt to get our foe to yield. As the voices die down, we take a brief moment to "lick our wounds" and prepare to force each other out of our city. But when overdrive isn't enough...

Flood(Load, Void)

...sometimes you have to think outside the box. What this function amounts to is a ball of pain with enhanced size and potency, and is the only combination I feel can stand up to Chrysalis and not get me on Eden's bad side, given the resources I have. I'm not set up properly for a Kill().

The crescendo passes, and I drained three full Overdrives to keep firing death balls at Chrysalis...but she's no worse for wear come the end of the song. Before she can give my avatar a coup de grâce, which I know she's fully capable of, I hastily give type the command to GTFO. I just hope the Elements will be able to succeed where I failed...

---

"What the actual heck!?!?"

I am looking at a bug.

Not a computer bug, I've seen many of those and they don't really matter enough to make note of. Except for today.

Glitch is physically in the network. It's poking around and doing curious things, such as checking out the scenery. Even though I distinctly recall patching the layer network-side; to the point where nothing that hadn't already been in here would be able to get through. I find myself needing to examine the code with all my senses...wait...oh. I get it now. Explanation rant time again, I suppose.

Vulnerability, exploitation, payload. The three steps to a successful hack. Find a vulnerability in the code and exploit it with more code to be able to deliver a payload. The latter of which often can contain propagative code which exploits even more systems on its own, sometimes with and without user interaction. The middle of which is pretty much the main part of "hacking" in and of itself; but the former part is not unimportant in the slightest, as the problem must be discovered before it can be abused.

And I spilled my guts on finding those problems to Glitch not one full day ago. Did I forget to mention it's a really good listener? It pretty much fooled Layer Level 07 into thinking it was coming in from server-side as opposed to client-side (mine as opposed to theirs), which I hadn't defended against. And he even pulled an SQL Slammer by sending a tracer spell to random IPs, which replicated whenever they found legitimate IPs until they were able to get back to LL07. How it managed to get that through and under literally everyone's collective noses, I'm still not sure.

What I do know is that he used the tracer once it got to the magic IP of 057.000.256.007 to deliver the payload: itself. Its physical form, now in program code.

The hoops I had to go through to stabilize that...I had to utilize multiple hours of previously-studied code about Lumi's own integration into Eden, including the abstract bits (computer abstract and literal abstract), and especially the soul. Along with a modified version of the stabilization protocol that I developed to try and fix the "data ghost" a week ago...wait...have I forgotten to tell you about that? Shoot, must've slipped right by me. I'll have to get back to that some time soon.

And the fact that I helped pull it completely through into cyberspace when it started experiencing physical pain was the icing on the cake. I can only imagine how it looked on the other changelings' end. Or how mad they must be (Chryssy included) that it escaped them.

Speaking of which, she got defeated pretty handily, if the fact that she was even interacting with Glitch is any indication. Ooh, messages that they want me back to help play music for the wedding proper...count me in. Just one last thing to do.

One forum post later, and my friends now have a message of peace as well as brief care instructions for Glitch for the hours I'm gone. I suppose I'll have to fully leak my findings and exploits (the adventuring kind) to the programming underground sooner or later...may as well get a transdimensional mascot for ourselves in doing so. A literal Glitch bug, fancy that. Regardless, it's time to play. My favorite Disc Jockey just so happens to be an ungulate, and she's playing at the reception. No way I'd miss the chance to play live with that, not for the world!

...well okay, maybe for Eden if she ever asked.

I flex my fingers.