To Move The Heavens Themselves (Twilight) Part 1
Changing Time’s Notes: Sometimes our hearts get the best of us. No pony—or ling—is truly immune to the siren call of emotions. Changelings may talk of limiting their emotions, but in the end that was always their biggest mistake—crafting a crutch that has taken far too long to overcome. It has made them all the more vulnerable, even if it was useful or needed at times.
And it seems the Everfree Hive had certainly realized this, given this report.
I have seen—neigh, lived—the ultimate consequences of such rigid filtering, stoppering, and general bottling of emotions. The prince himself believed Twilight was better suited to handle reporting the first trip to the Everfree Hive, but he gave me the same memories and myths he and the others were granted that day, and it is my regret to say that Twilight Sparkle’s retelling cannot truly give them justice. Even she admitted as much when I voiced my concerns on the matter. In the end, I can only hope your curiosity is peaked enough to seek the truth yourself.
If you are such a pony, find someling and ask: can love truly be strong enough to move the heavens themselves?
To Move the Heavens Themselves: A Report by Princess Twilight Sparkle of Equestria
The trip to the Hive was simply fascinating. We might have experienced a few hiccups getting there, but the trip was well worth it. I got page after page of notes, but that wasn’t even the most exciting part. Deep in the bowels of the Everfree Hive we were given a choice. It was a choice to—
Ah, forgive me. I’m getting far too ahead of myself in my excitement. It’s just what I experienced was so—
Right, right. I’m doing it again. Let me start at the beginning. I had invited all my friends to come, but only Rainbow and Rarity had found the time to tag along. Applejack and Fluttershy were busy expanding the vampire fruit bat sanctuary, and Pinkie had been called to Canterlot by the Cutie Map. I had asked Castle if Pinkie could wait to go, but he was being less than cooperative.
“What?” I blinked, tilting my head, but Castle’s response remained just as enigmatic.
“It is not my place to say yes or no, Mistress, but the Department of Taxes has dire need of Miss Pie’s unique perspective. —Friendship Castle”
My muzzle wrinkled further. “Seriously, what? I don’t even— How is the DoT—” My eye twitched once.
At least, I think it did…. It was at least the first twitch I noticed, and I quickly performed Cadance’s breathing exercise.
I. Must. Not. Freak. Out.
This was nowhere near the most stressful thing this week, but Pinkie ‘color-coded’ her taxes in crayon. She’d drive whoever was involved up the wall in a heartbeat.
“Can I at least get a name to make things quicker?”
Pinkie was pronking while she said that. She always pronked, and the DoT had rules on pronking. I would know. I had had to sit through a 3-hour lecture—one that I’d found boring—on the perils of improper pronking when Celestia took me as a filly.
The map flickered, replacing Pinkie’s Cutie Mark with a small scatter plot, and I couldn’t help snickering. “Oh, I wish I could see this…. Pinkie, I know who you’re going to visit. He’s one of the nastiest ponies I’ve ever met.”
“Who is it?! Who is it?!” The party pony froze mid-hop. “Wait! Don’t tell me! I want it to be a surprise!”
I shook my head. “He’s not the kind of pony you want to be surprised by, Pinkie. His name is Mean Norm, and, if you live to make others smile, he lives to make other ponies miserable. I would almost pay to see what happens when you two meet, but my trip to the Everfree has to come first.”
Pinkie waggled her head back and forth as if unsure which direction to tilt it. “You make it sound like he’s nothing but a mean ol’ meanie pants! I’m sure he can’t be that”
I shook my head, sighing. “Let me put it this way. Just to spite the guard for ‘invading his privacy with changeling checks,’ he went from door to door to get a petition signed that would exempt him. It took him only a week to get a declaration that all of Canterlot hated him, and he used that to demand that he couldn’t be a changeling, and that he shouldn’t be subject to the monthly changeling checks.”
Pinkie’s head settled on tilting left. “Isn’t that just what a changeling would do, though?”
“Pinkie, he’s proud enough of how nasty he is to walk from door to door and get ponies to hate him. If he was a changeling, he wouldn’t be able to feed.” I massaged my forehead with one hoof.
Her head flip-flopped to tilt right. “Yeah, but he could just be acting mean. It doesn’t matter if Mean Norm is unlovable. If he’s a changeling he could be all ‘fwoosh!’ and turn into Median Rare, barbeque master of the tax system—feeding on the love of fellow workers as he cooks up a storm of honey-smoked vegetable kabobs and broken hearts.”
My hoof froze, and I could feel the hairs of my coat beneath my hoof splitting. “Why didn’t any of us think of that?! My brother spent weeks trying to figure out a way to check him!”
“You mean there’s really a barbeque master in the tax department?” Pinkie was salivating.
I twitched again, briefly. “No, the secondary disguise thing!”
Pinkie giggled. “Well, it is just a teensy bit scary to think changelings could be anywhere or anypony, so it’d be even scarier if one changeling was more than one pony. Maybe he was expecting everypony to not think about it too hard.” She tapped her chin. “Or maybe I’m wrong, and he’s just not himself when he’s hungry. I’ll have to pack extra Nickers bars.”
The logic of Pinkie Pie was a dangerous beast to stalk, and I took care not to follow it too far down the rabbit hole.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us first, though?” I sighed. “Even if Mean Norm might actually be a changeling, I’d really appreciate you coming with me first.”
Her smile became almost painfully wide. “No, I’m sure! After yesterday, it’s probably not a good idea for me to go.”
I tilted my head to the side. “Did something happen? Morpheus got back really late last night, so I didn’t get to ask him how things went.”
Pinkie was silent for a moment before slumping. Her head fell so far forward that it almost kissed the ground. “Kinda…. Just being near me makes him go all loopy after a while. I’m just glad Mrs. Cake was so exhausted from the twins when she saw him that she thought she was seeing double.”
I tilted my head. “What did you do to stop everypony else from panicking?”
Pinkie squirmed slightly. “Umm… I might have convinced him it was easier to bake with wings and a horn, and he might have taken that to mean look like an alicorn. Wanna guess who he picked?”
“Not really….” I sighed, turning to the door.
“Okie! Dokie! Lokie!” I could hear Pinkie begin to sprong along behind me—her cheer was never shaken for long. “Just ignore the words ’Dusk’ and ‘Shine’ and ‘failed experiment.’ He wasn’t thinking straight enough to be a mare most of the time. On the bright side, I make one smoking stallion. Literally! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a stallion smoke before, or bubble for that matter! Bubble Berry had a very bubbly butt!”
I had stopped for a second, shuddering violently in hopes of shaking that particular mental image. “Pinkie… too much information.”
Pinkie had left an hour ago, and everything I needed for a basic trek into the Everfree had been packed, checked, double checked, and triple checked. I had had to repack when I realized I had accidentally started eating one of the trail mix bags in boredom, but at least it completely validated my worries over whether I needed to quadruple check everything. Morpheus had yet to rise, and we were going to be tardy if he slept much longer.
Finally unable to wait any longer, I ventured back upinto Castle to check his room. There was no response when I knocked the first time, so I knocked again with a bit more oomph. Once more there was no answer, so my hoof slowly pushed his door open, and I inched inside—eyes closed just in case.
“Hello?”
The sliver of light from the hall was consumed by the darkness within. My horn brought more light to the void, but even that seemed hampered, as if the shadows dripped down upon us.
Creepy darkness aside, what I could see certainly looked normal. The dressers were perfectly aligned. The shelves were dust free. The bed was made and empty except for a bedside mint and a note. There was no changeling prince, however, which merited further investigation.
Flicking the table lamp on with my magic, I trotted over to read the note.
“Look up not around, Mistress.”
A drop of green goo plopped onto the note, hissing slightly, and a slight glow, similarly colored, entered the upper limits of my peripheral vision. The skittering sound that I’d been successfully ignoring since entering the room decided that was a good time to start clawing at my ears.
So I ever-so-slowly looked up.
Just beyond the range of normal line of sight—visible only if a visitor decided they wanted to look at the ceiling—was a web. Both fascinating and disturbing in its viscous composition, I could not tell if its strands were a fluid glue or a solid silk. It seemed to bend and twist and absorb the light from the room, increasing it’s glow in turn, and through it dozens—no hundreds—of little black scarabs swarmed. I could feel my stomach drop at the sight of them, and my mouth opened up to scream. It did so a few times, but no sound escaped while the bugs swarmed to the center where the prince was all but cocooned in the web.
The scarabs wings buzzed, elongating in little bursts of green fire to turn into shrill, sharp chirps, driving into my eardrums like a dentist drilling teeth. My brain was assaulted with similar stabs from their skittering thoughts and feelings—like lemon-scented millipedes decided to crawl over my brain—and it was in that terror-filled moment I discovered where stallions got that horrible stereotype for screaming like a filly.
I was vaguely aware that I was, in fact, screaming, but the only feedback that informed me any sound was made at all was the panicked scattering of the skittering things and the jump Morpheus gave. He launched himself from the cocoon-like strands in surprise, and I quickly found myself in a tangled pile with him as he landed on me.
“I see yesterday was productive.” He hissed, each eye retreating behind its respective haw.
“You laid eggs in my castle?!” I sputtered scrambling to my feet. I could hear them scritch-scratching about the shadows.
He had the gall to simply scuff the floor, clenching his leg holes open and close while smiling sheepishly. “Maybe? Ve can’t actually remember anything I did yesterday. It’s all a sugary blur.”
The lights flickered and writing appeared on the wall. “You mentioned something about wanting some company if I recall. Desired to make some bits. —Friendship Castle”
“You didn’t!” I wailed, picking up a pillow to hit the prince with. “That. Is. Illegal. In. Equestria!” Each word was punctuated with the satisfying thwap of a pillow.
He, in turn, desperately tried to interrupt my righteous crusade. “Wait– A– Second– It’s– Not– Like– That!”
I paused, glaring through the rain of feathers. “I thought you said you didn’t remember anything?”
He gave a few exasperated tsks and clicks. “Ve don’t, but you’re taking that out of context. Bits are a basic form of livestock. They have to be created through the manipulation of an asexually produced egg. It’s impossible for any form of mating to result in them.”
Curiosity peaked, I tilted my head, continuing to glare, pillow at the ready. “But mating can still happen? The other day you said changelings didn’t reproduce like that.”
His ears clunked against the back of his head as he shrank inwards. “It’s just so hard to wrap our head around changelings like Lyra and Third Eye existing again…. I-it wasn’t a lie. I promise….”
I cringed as his slight echo fractured into the stutter, and my own ears splayed back as I saw how fast he made the motions to a Pinkie Promise. “Hold on, Morpheus. It’s not that big a deal.”
“Yes it is….” He bit his chops. “I— I can’t have you thinking I’m a liar.”
“But I don’t think you’re a liar!”
“You don’t?”
“No! Why? Is there a reason I should be worried about you lying? You’ve been honest with me so far.”
“N-no! Ve just— I—” He slumped. “I’m afraid what we’ll learn today will shed my hive in an even worse light than it already is. We aren’t just dealing with some rogue changelings. There’s an entire rogue hive in the Everfree, and they’re already integrating into Equestria far better than my hive dared to think possible. Clearly, they know some secret the Hive of the First Father lacks, and I… I’m worried about what that is. What if they rest of my hive can’t adapt? Lyra called us damaged.”
I shuffled nervously from hoof to hoof, unsure of what to say.
A manic bark of laughter escaped him. “By all rights, we have no feasible right to a chance, and yet you continue to give us one. The other Lords read my reports and think I’m simply manipulating you. They don’t understand that I’m just trying to make a friend.”
Ruffling my wings, I tried Celestia’s Sunlight Serenity Smile #43. It was a calm smile, meant to encourage others and give an aura of wisdom and confidence in the face of adversity. Unfortunately, the forty-third smile was reserved for times nopony had any idea what to do, and I could feel my cheeks strain with the effort of stopping it from appearing forced.
There had to be something I could do for him. Had to. Had to. Had to. Had to. What the hay should I say?
I’m supposed to be the Princess of Friendship!
“Thank you.” I was snapped out of my thoughts by the words. The clock was a whole three minutes farther along in its job for the day, and I blushed as I realized I’d zoned him out.
He had needed a friend to listen, and I’d gotten too absorbed in my own thoughts to be there for him.
‘Wicked Smooth’ scrunched his face. “Please, don’t be embarrassed. Embarrassment is so unpalatable. I was… rambling… monologuing really, so it’s fine. The fact that you were concerned speaks volumes more than simple listening.”
That just made me more embarrassed. I had been so far out of it I missed him disguising himself, and he could taste how awful I felt. Of course he could. I really wanted to just melt into the ground right now.
Morpheus gave the smallest of smiles. “Really, it’s alright. Maybe we should get ready for the Everfree, though. A trip to another hive isn’t something we want to waste just because my emotions got the better of me.”
My eye almost twitched again. “Right! We wouldn’t want to be late!” I laughed—or rather I tried to. In reality it was more of a bray. “Everything we need is packed in a pair of saddlebags in the front hall.”
“Then we shouldn’t keep the others waiting any longer….” His smile shifted to a barely noticeable frown as he passed me into the hall.
“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” Hoof met forehead repeatedly.”Why did I laugh? He can literally taste whether it’s sincere or not.” Reigning myself in, I let my frog massage my temple. “Probably thinks he messed up now. I know I would if I heard a laugh like that.”
I sighed before trotting to the door to follow him. “It’s not even the trip that was bothering me. Yes, we’re late. Yes, that irks me. But it bothers me more that he’s just…” I exhaled, slumping onto my haunches. “...hiding from himself.”
I looked to the ceiling. “Castle, you’re a giant sentient fortress of friendship made manifest. It can’t be a coincidence that you always know who to send…. What can I do to help here?”
I paused for what felt like forever, staring at the goopy green ceiling until it became clear there would be no witty response.
First and foremost:
Bit Sketch!
I'm not the best at drawing, but I'm ok enough to get the basics done, so I drew a bit in it's scarab-like base form.
Regardless, this chapter was fun. A little fluff. A little weirdness. A touch of drama. There's also a slight tag change based on comments from my editor. Drama was added for those tense moments that aren't quite slice of life.
Anyways, as usual comments and criticism is appreciated. If you do criticize, however, please try and include at least one positive criticism amid any negative ones. It doesn't need to be an even ratio. I just prefer being criticized by those who can tell me I'm doing something right in addition to whatever I'm doing wrong.
Thanks to Malefactory, reprovedhawk, and Stainless Key for editting.
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Piqued not peaked. Also, I can't see the images but that might be me.
Edit: I get piqued and peaked wrong a lot myself, its not something a ton of people have practice typing. And for the images, it might be because I'm on a phone as well.
Edit 2: That's also why my initial post was so short. Positive - the asexual reproduction thing is an interesting and I think unique piece of worldbuilding. Ver noice.
I think I like the idea of anti-matter and matter colliding in an explosion of pink. The inevitable heat death of taxes is a great thing for every being. But certainly true how apt some views are with a shitty situation, and that such never change.
Pinkie versus the Equestrian equivalent of the IRS?
Well, their funeral. As for Twilight and Morpheus, I look forward to seeing more of their trip.
As much as like this story and i do. But im more interested in what pinkie has to do then the hive.
Aaaargh!
More aaaargh!
I liked the Pinkie part.
Um... Something doesn't seem right here.
7498963
Woops... Thanks for spotting that.
Good Lord that's a storm of bad puns.
Nickers bar. I hope you're ashamed of that one.
Thinking about it, I'm kind of surprised prostitution would be illegal in Equestria, actually. It seems like the kind of proactively liberal place that really shouldn't care about this kind of thing so long as no one is harmed in the process. There's nothing about this story that suggests any particular amount of prudishness there. I think this may be more of a case of real-world sensibilities bleeding into the story.
Alright, finally caught up.
I'm really curious about what this big Choice will turn out to be.
Seems legit.
Wow. These guys deserve a little Pinkie to the face. Or maybe a lot, Pinkie isn't exactly shy and reserved.
Dusk Shine? Bubble Berry? The Pinkie arc should be fun.
7511805
I toyed with the idea that most of Star Swirls time traveling adventures were actually part of a giant paradox time loop perpetuated by the Everfree Changelings, but I didn't want to deal with all the implications. This would of course begin with the War of a Thousand Star Swirls -- also known as the Crisis of Infinite Star Swirls -- and all but the youngest are, in fact, changelings who tell Star Swirl of his exploits so he can record them, figure out the spell to time travel once, have him realize something was wrong if he could only travel once, and have him travel to the future to give the Everfree Changelings permission to act as him and knowledge of the rules of time travel.
Needless to say, it was excluded because this is not a time travel fic, and silly convoluted time travel shenanighans would only detract from the story no matter how much I love them.
7513435
It's not necessarily fully illegal I suppose, but, even if they did take a more proactively liberal view, there would probably be required licenses, paperwork, and regular check ups because of health concerns. You couldn't just randomly go onto the street and start propositioning others for money. I mean, being liberal is just as often about regulating rights as it is about securing them. Securing rights only means so much if those that gain them abuse them.
7522209
And am I ever glad for that. There is nothing I hate more than stories that run on an ontological paradox - a closed time loop, that is. It's literally the author saying "this plot happens because I said so." It has to, by definition, spring into existence fully formed with nothing actually causing it. The entire thing is predetermined, pre-existent, and nothing about anything the characters can do actually matters in a meaningful sense.
7522411
I suppose that makes sense enough. Prostitutes are required to pay income taxes on their earnings here, that much I know, and established bordellos might require business licenses and regular health checkups the way they are required for the pornography business. I never thought to actually look that kind of thing up. It just stuck out to me because it seemed like local cultural sensibilities making an influence on the story, given that you sound American and the USA is pretty well-known for being one of the few Western countries to specifically make prostitution illegal. The story hasn't really done that before, so it felt like it was worth remarking on.
7522469
I prefer for allowing such time loops to break, but having some form of cost involved. No idea if the cost would have been instantaneous at the loop break or gradual with time itself attempting to correct things, but it would not have been predetermined by any means. The self perpetuation would have been more of a misnomer than anything. Changelings as I have them are like the ideal time travelers. Have the analysts calculate the ideal actions for a certain path of probability. Send Changeling A back as far as he can go to upload carefully worded instructions for Changeling B -- worded to keep the list of paradoxes as small as possible. Changeling B similarly travels back -- uploading again for some Changeling C. Continue this effectively to the nth degree, but make sure no changeling involved in the chain is fully identified. Changeling N returns minutes after delivering his message to the Hivemind, and the Hive of that time enacts the changes based on purposely obscured info from the future and an encoded location for the mostly full disclosure in the Hivemind that both parties agree will only be opened a given number of years in the future. This information reveals what originally happened and any failed iterations of changes, but no names or numbers of the Changelings involved in the chain. In this way, it doesn't matter who goes back or what number Changeling N is -- as different changelings of differing strengths may be born. All that matters is the information successfully looping.
7522590
Honestly, in a way, I think that kind of thing is even worse. That's the kind of plot idea that would have me put down a story again for thinking it's a lot cleverer than it actually is. I'm unpleasantly reminded of some of those "Less Wrong" people there. The paradox in time travel, even an open loop like that, doesn't actually come from you knowing about it. It comes from the loop ever occurring at all. This one in particular, for example, runs into the risk of producing an infinite regression where N is never actually solved for anything. Ask a question that can't be answered through an iterative process or simply accidentally end up with a stable sequence of events where the target number can never be reached without incident and you have a loop that can never end. How does that even work anymore, then? It actually just doesn't.
I suppose time travel plots just aren't for me. The only type I can actually stand is the sort that really only uses it once, as a setup for a "future past" kind of thing, and then entirely disregards it in every other sense as a situation that actually shouldn't even be possible, sort of like the story "Take Two" on this site does. Time travel just doesn't make sense in linear storytelling, unless you take the option of ignoring basically everything about it.
7522641
That's the rub, isn't it? Is a paradox actually a paradox if it exists in a story? just because we experience time in a linear fashion doesn't mean it works that way. If I draw a circle on a piece of paper and move the paper, does the circle notice? It's just not worth worrying about, really.
Is it weird that the first thing that came to mind when I was looking at this story was that the sparkle of twilight's magic and the changeling flame on the cover art should probably change places if it was trying to mimic the YinYang symbol. it might not be, but it just looked like it was.
its*
The "Psycho" theme started playing in my head during the bedroom scene :P
You are not yourself when you are hungry.
SNickers BarWhy do we get the impression she meant that Morpheus backed into the stove while lovedrunk, and the water they used to put his tail out was -- it being Pinkie -- turned into (or intended for) a bubble bath? Twilight has quite the dirty mind in this fic. Even Castle's getting in on teasing her.
I don’t really understand the changeling issue of being called liars; at this point, it’s accurate to call his whole hive liars and manipulators, and the only reason I can see them disliking the term so much is because that generally means they’ve been caught, not because they aren’t actually liars.
So far, it seems to me that his particular hive is inherently evil, and have been for centuries, so I wonder why he bothers trying to keep them alive when he’s now aware that there are good, symbiotic hives out there to keep his species going.