Chapter Eight 【Sunset】
My entire world is a lie.
Well—okay, no, that’s an exaggeration, but it is entirely impossible to keep my head on straight when this damned woobie princess is being all earnest while pumping me full of enough love to make me literally physically ill. I have to mumble excuses and go sit in the corner for my language like a good little foal just to get away from her and her damn bald-faced kindness.
I will be more than glad when my stint as an empathic love magnet is over—not that I don’t expect ponies to fawn and coo over a baby dragon, but at least then I won’t have to taste how they feel and like it.
The worst part is… I know I’m being a hypocrite. I shouldn’t need to keep hating Cadance in the first place. Yes, I feel like she was just given everything I worked for, but that’s… over and done with. Not only is there no going back, but I’ve committed to actively helping somepony else—someling else—do exactly that.
I dully bang my head on the wall, trying to get it to sink in.
I am not Sunset Shimmer.
I am not Sunset Shimmer.
I am not Sunset Shimmer.
I will never be an alicorn, never reach the end of the impossible path that was set before me.
I no longer have any reason to be jealous of Cadance. Princess Celestia will never…
Being cute is good, because being cute gives me power. It is absurd and humiliating, but at least it’s consistent.
I stay in the corner for longer than necessary, just trying to get these points into my thick skull. Eventually I run out of things to berate myself over and sneak off to get rid of the love I accumulated during dinner.
It occurs to me that, while enthusiastic and a good cook, Cadance is not actually a very good foalsitter if she is this bad at keeping track of her charges. I feel more like we are the ones foalsitting her.
With all the practice I’ve already had tonight, I’m able to hop my way down the basement stairs without getting Shining Armor to help me. Fortunately, the… amoral sack, I think Twilight Sparkle called it, is close to the base of my neck, far above what passes for a diaphragm in a changeling, so my undoubtably adorable pronking doesn’t put any pressure on it.
I do my best to ignore the cold, dead eyes of my body standing in the corner as I enter the lab again. Rather than getting used to it, the uneasiness I feel when looking in those eyes has only gotten worse now that I know what’s behind them. Hopefully my previous brief connection to the changeling hive mind will remain my only connection to the changeling hive mind; I’m going to have enough nightmares about it as it is.
Not for the first time tonight, I wish there was a sheet down here to drape over it.
“The sooner we get you in that abomination, the better,” I grouse at Shining Armor, who is undisguised in all his chitinous glory and busy hacking up something thick and goopy as I make my way to the tumorous growth containing all the love we’ve collected tonight that somehow weighs more than the pony it all came from several times over.
For all it’s a natural part of changeling life, emptying myself of love is about as pleasant as it sounds, though at least the process was easier to learn than taking a disguise was. That, or Shining Armor is just a better teacher than Twilight Sparkle. I’m tempted to go with that one just on principle.
The taste of love sticks to my tongue and I wash it out with a splash out of the obligatory industrial-sized bottle of mouthwash that seems to be required for any changeling household.
I’m not saying I necessarily want to have more orifices to deal with, but I have strong feelings about using them for too many things, especially when those things involve my tongue. Thank Celestia that dragons evolved past the cloaca; I mean, I’m not racist, but you’d have a hard time convincing me to become some sort of immortal gryphon if there was such a thing.
Okay, no, that’s a lie; I’d still take it in a heartbeat, but dragon magic is better than gryphon sorcery anyway… and gryphons aren’t even avian on the back half regardless. Where was I going with this?
Shining Armor and I both finish using our mouths for things that mouths really shouldn’t be used for at about the same time, and he gives my body a glance. “That’s really not going to be weird for you?” he asks as I approach the resin-rimmed hole he’s working on. I have to admit, while I maintain that I could have done it faster with magic, he’s making good progress.
“It’s bucking terrifying looking at it the way it is now,” I tell him with a shiver. “And I don’t like admitting stuff like that. Seeing it walking around with actual intelligence behind those eyes will be a relief. I mean, I still reserve the right to be creeped out, but I’m actively trying not to think of myself as that pony, so I’m hoping it will actually help.”
“Please be at least a little creeped out,” he says with a grunt as he spreads out the goop he previously coughed up. “It’d be weird if I was the only one.”
“I’m still going to treat you like a leper, considering the whole direct-line-to-the-hive-mind thing, so there’s that,” I remind him. “That still applies, right?”
“Yeah,” he says. “There’s no difference; it just plain doesn’t have the organ that regulates the connection.”
“That doesn’t leave you unprotected?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “It’s not as if I’m actually leaving my body. It’ll still be my brain doing all the thinking, it’ll just be sorta… tunneling through the hive mind to use your body, if that makes any sense.”
“As much as any of it does.” I shrug. “Well, I guess I’d better get going back to babysitting the babysitter; Twilight’s probably getting uncomfortable. You still able to give me a hoof?”
“Of course.”
⁂
Twilight Sparkle is less than subtle in running off as soon as I show up; she actually looks like she’s in pain this time; oops? Wonder of wonders, Cadance finally notices that something is going on. “Are you two fighting?” she asks with a frown.
I barely hesitate before my changeling bullshitting powers kick in. “She refuses to acknowledge that I’m in charge when her parents aren’t home,” I say with a prim and proper huff and a pout.
…Okay, I don’t actually have changeling bullshitting powers; I’ve mostly spent the night reading next to her in awkward silence punctuated with outrageous statements like this.
The pained look on her face as she tries to process my statement makes it all worth it. Eventually, she takes a moment to take a breath and bury her face in her hooves, mumbling under her breath. “But I’m the one… why would… how does that…”
“Is there something wrong with what I said?” I ask innocently.
Cadance’s head snaps up to look at me before her face quickly softens into foalsitter mode. “No, no, of course not, Whitewash. I was just wondering how you came to that conclusion.”
“It should be obvious,” I scoff.
She looks at me with interest, expecting elaboration. It doesn’t come. “Yes…?” she says, drawing out the word. “You’re, what, half her age?”
I blink. Twilight Sparkle is about ten years old, I believe, so if I look like I’m five, that means I’m no longer a toddler—score!
…Ahem. I put on airs of sophistication as I inform Cadance of her mistake. “Age doesn’t matter. I am her aunt.” Argue against that, you sanctimonious love-tart!
Hrm, sanctimonious love-tart… not my finest insult. Wait, no, now I’m imagining her actually cooking love tarts, and—damn it, now I’m salivating! I guess it’s not actually possible for changelings to get sick of the taste of love, no matter the number of times I associate it with feeling ill.
Mmm… love tarts.
It takes my entire internal conflict before I see the moment that the logical part of Cadance’s brain just gives up on coming up with a way to explain to a five year old that some number trumps familial association so long as it isn’t actively causing problems.
“Okay,” she says, looking back to the book in front of her. “So I was looking at equipment and…”
I’m able to fend off any serious interaction with her for the rest of the night with exchanges like this, taking several more love breaks as the night goes on without too much issue. I learn a lot of little things about changelings from the book that I’m torn between hoping they aren’t true or that I’m not wasting my time, and we get no actual gaming done, as expected.
All in all, I’ve had worse nights. I may not have any right to hate the Princess of Fluffentuft anymore, but I’m pretty sure messing with ponies is an official changeling pastime, so I’m in the clear.
⁂
I lie bloated on the floor of the living room as Shining Armor pretends to come home and puts on his goofy older brother act for Cadance in the hallway. Next to me is Twilight Sparkle, who is in a similar situation.
Love takes its toll on us all, and in this case it’s literal.
“So, when you’re rebuilding Shining Armor, can you just kinda… replace all of his internal organs with ones for love storage?” I suggest halfheartedly. “Then we can just chuck him at the giggly wonder and never have to go through this again.”
Twilight Sparkle is quiet for a while. “I am unsure. Love storage and transportation is an issue that the hive mind has already devoted significant resources to solving. As you say, though, it is an issue that will need to be resolved if we are to make use of the princess in the future unless she is into harems.”
A pause.
“Is anyone not into harems, really?” I say, asking the deep, meaningful questions here.
Twilight Sparkle scrunches up her face. “Excuse you, but some of us haven’t reached puberty yet,” she gripes at me. “Actually, that includes you at the moment.”
I frown, thinking back to the many strapping young stallions that Princess Celestia keeps around the castle. I feel nothing. “Well, ponyfeathers.”
We continue to lie there sore and tired, and eventually the heavy thump-and-clunk of the front door closing signals that the princess of adulting has finally left. We probably shouldn’t have been talking about changeling stuff out in the open while she was still here, but ehh… Shining Armor was with her and there was the whole game excuse. I’m still kinda proud of that one, though I’m not sure we actually tempered her love output any more than any other distraction would have.
“So, you said one of the problems with love is that it’s hard to transport because it’s all but impossible to crystalize, right?” I ask, starting on an idea. “I assume liquid love has a set concentration per volume; does the energy density of crystallized love increase exponentially with its mass like crystallized magic, and if so, could you make a changeling that unhinges its jaw like a snake to pass it?”
“It’s possible,” she says, thinking. “Also, that reminds me: buck you.”
I blink. “What?”
“I had to actually pass an amoreal stone because of you taking your hive-damned time at dinner, in the punishment corner and then downstairs with Shiny,” she says sourly, reaching up to rub her cheek with her hoof. “It was exactly like you describe, except instead of a hinged jaw, it was my hive-damned hinged face because of this buzzing crack.”
“Oh.” I should probably apologize. “So with all of that, is Shining Armor still going in the chrysalis tonight?”
Twilight Sparkle grimaces—and then double grimaces as her grimace moves the crack in her face. “He should be able to, yes. The actual work was done while you were in the chrysalis.”
“What does that actually involve?” I wonder. “I mean, what’s the actual process?”
Twilight Sparkle flops her forelegs around in what I assume is a shrug. “It’s not actually that complicated,” she says, then reconsiders. “That is to say, it is massively complicated, but the process itself isn’t. There’s a part of the changeling brain that’s present from the embryonic stage onwards which stores the genetic code for all the different breeds of changeling, and it’s tied directly into the part of the brain that communicates with the hive mind. There’s a… representation of it in the hive mind, you could say, and from there, it’s so much mental gymnastics if you know what you’re doing.
“Now, knowing what you’re doing and making actual changes is like messing with the tax laws of a nation in hope of still having something viable after a thousand years of expansion and annexation, so I’m not saying it’s easy, but on the physical side of things, it really is just popping him in the chrysalis and telling his brain to liquefy him like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.”
“Huh.” I take a moment to let that all sink in. “You guys really like liquefying vital organs.”
⁂
My inevitable food coma takes until mid-morning the next day to sleep off. How do I know this? Because there’s a neat old grandfather clock in the living room, and they just left me sprawled out on the ground. As a petulant child who can take care of herself, damn it, I am not sure if that makes them the best parents ever or the worst. I crane my neck to look around, but I am alone.
When I stumble into the kitchen looking for breakfast, it takes me a second to realize there’s an orange pony sitting on a stool eating cereal with a teal glow of magic around the spoon and I freeze. One second. Two seconds. She looks over at me with a completely normal, bleary-eyed expression followed by a lazy smile. “Oh, hey, you’re up. ‘Morning,” she says.
I swallow down on my congested throat.
It’s me it’s me it’s me it’s me it’s me, says a small voice in the back of my head, and I quash it. It’s not me. I’ve been over this with myself already. I am not Sunset Shimmer.
“H-hey,” I stammer out and make my way over to the counter. A teal aura of magic lifts me up over the island in the middle of the kitchen and onto a stool on the opposite side from… from…
I can’t help it, I snicker and she looks at me like I’ve insulted her pet marmot. “Something funny?” she asks in a voice that is nothing like mine; gruff, but obviously feminine.
I try not to look at her. “I just wasn’t sure what to call you at first, but then I realized it was obvious.”
She stares at me for a moment, then rolls her eyes and goes back to her cereal. “Okay, hit me with it.”
“Shimmering Armor,” I declare with a grin.
I actually get a snort out of her and she has to wipe the milk off her muzzle with a paper towel. “You know what? Sure, why not?”
That settled, I nod and pour myself a bowl of cereal and watch the pony across from me as I eat. It’s a bit surreal, but I think I can get used to it. Sometimes I have to remind myself that it’s my actual body sitting across from me and not a long lost twin or clone, and every once in a while I expect to see her turn and look at me with those horrible lifeless eyes, but for the most part it’s… nice.
And I don’t even have the excuse of being high on love to say that.
As I watch her levitate her spoon with my teal magic, something occurs to me. “Hey,” I say, getting her attention.
She looks up from her bowl with a questioning lilt to her eyes.
I motion at her using my own spoon. “How does that feel for you—the magic? Different from what you’re used to?”
She waves the spoon around, similar to if she was weighing it in a hoof. “Like I have blinders on, to be honest… or like I’m looking through a tunnel that’s pressing in on me from all sides. It’s not the greatest.”
I take another bite of cereal as I consider that answer. “Yeah, I can see that.” She keeps her eyes on me as she continues eating, expecting more, and I oblige. “You might assume it’s just because of the ‘tunneling’ through the hive mind you mentioned, but I figure you’re feeling the lack of your magically-conductive chitin.”
She grunts. “Feels awful either way.”
“Yeah, well,” I continue. “As I was telling Twilight yesterday, that might be how it has to be if she wants to really push changelings into the magically adept. Like, I admit the feeling of magic running through chitin is damn nice, but when you put magic through your horn, it’s not supposed to get drawn down into your body like heat from a bare ass into a marble floor. Waste aside, it’s a pretty big accuracy and control issue.”
“Hrn.” She waves the spoon around a bit more trying to see what I mean. “So, what’s the solution then? Changelings that can’t disguise themselves? Not sure I can see that happening.”
“Well, strictly playing Discord’s advocate, maybe changelings that can pass as ponies without shapeshifting?” I shrug. “Or just insulate the two systems from each other. It’d probably be a nag to learn—like using two horns—but eh, you guys have ways of streamlining that, I gather.”
“Huh, yeah, I’m gonna let Twily tackle that one before I go anywhere near it,” she says with a shake of her head. Done with her cereal, she gets up and dumps the bowl in the sink. “For now, nothing should change when I get my body back, right? I mean, aside from being able to bench a bench with ponies on it without lifting a hoof. Miserable lack of chitin aside, your power wasn’t oversold—not that I’m any good with it.”
“So far as I know, it should just be you, but better, yeah,” I say. “Are there any other kinds of magic that changelings are naturally good at besides shapeshifting?”
“Well, one of the most basic things a swarm of drones can do is to form crude shields with their magic and just sort of ram into things—predators, each other, the ground… though sometimes they forget the shield.”
“That could work…”
⁂
Most of the day goes by in a sickeningly domestic way. With the surplus of love from princess sugarpear, the bottleneck for incubating the egg with magic is now my ability to digest the love into magic. “You aren’t serious,” I whine, looking at the mug full of sticky sweet slop that has just been pumped back out of the cistern. “I have to swallow it back in? That is disgusting.”
Unamused, Twilight Sparkle sets the mug down in front of me when I don’t take it. “One, we’ve already established that changelings are virtually immune to disease—” she begins.
“Doesn’t mean I want to swap spit and bile with you,” I mumble under my breath.
“—And two,” she continues, ignoring me. “While it acts like a liquid, love is still just a flavor of magic. It cannot actually mix with physical impurities.”
Ugh, there she goes using facts and logic again. I give the cup of love another leery look. “Fine,” I grumble and pick up the mug in both hooves as I am still a shockingly tiny foal. Bracing myself, I tip the edge of the cup into my mouth and take a sip.
As expected, it tastes repulsively amazing and I continue drinking until my amoreal sack is full again.
Twilight Sparkle gives a curt nod. “You should keep yourself topped up with a shot glass’ worth every couple of hours, at least. You’ll digest it faster the more there is to digest. I assume you can handle your actual thaumic levels and pushing magic into the egg?”
I nod.
“Good. Don’t worry about oversaturating it for now; with your current output levels as a nymph and alternating between incubating the egg and storing some of your magic for the second to last stage of growth, it will take at least a couple of weeks to get the egg where we need it.”
I stare at her for a moment and wonder if she’s screwing with me. “Or,” I say, drawing out the word, “I spend the whole time storing magic and we push it all into the egg at once because there’s every chance that the rate of magic influx during incubation will equate to incubation temperature for normal reptiles.”
Twilight Sparkle blinks at me. “What does that matter?”
“It matters,” I growl. “Because it would mean that higher levels of magic during incubation will have me not being reborn as a tartarus-damned male dragon.”
She cocks her head. “Yes, I know. As I said; what does that matter?”
I wish my forelegs were long enough to strangle her.
“Actually,” Shimmering Armor interjects from her corner of the lab where she sits, having been reading. “Temperature-dependent sex determination in reptiles varies by species. For some, higher temperatures means more females, but for others, it’s the other way around, or even a bell curve.”
My ears flatten in embarrassment. “Oh.”
“Hah!” Twilight Sparkle points at me dramatically in triumph.
“But no, Sunset is entirely correct about dragons,” Shimmering Armor says in a deadpan. “Which you would know if you’d asked the hive mind like I did. We kind of have a lot of experience trying to breed them, you know.”
Twilight Sparkle makes the cutest indignant pout, turns in a huff and goes back to checking up on the body in the chrysalis.
Satisfied and feeling a little bit smug, I decide to add insult to injury. “Someone who is not spending all their magic on this should probably also just cough up something to insulate the egg for the time being so long as we aren’t going to need it.”
With the look she shoots me, I am very glad changelings don’t soak up each other’s emotions. “Actually,” she says, her mein quickly transforming from sour to smugness, “Resin production is mostly a physical process, and like I said before, experience with that sort of thing can only help in the future when you’re ready to learn dragon magic.”
Me and my big mouth.
⁂
I’m going to need a bigger mouth.
That’s the only response I can think of when Twilight dumps a pile of wood chips, candles and a giant tub of vegetable oil in front of me and tells me to get naked and start chomping.
I resist the urge to ask if she’s serious. Not only did I see Shining Armor doing this just last night, but I also made fun of Twilight Sparkle for having done it to create the lab we’re in.
Eating crow is almost as bad as eating landscaping supplies.
But only almost.
I’m tempted to argue on the grounds of all the trouble we had restoring it last time, but it’d be a weak argument now since I already caved on that issue once when we didn’t have an abundant source of magic. With a long-suffering sigh, I bow to the inevitable and light up my horn, searching for the feeling I had the last time I did this.
It’s not for no reason that I was Princess Celestia’s student, and I quickly have my fluffy white disguise peeling away from me in green fire, starting from the tip of my horn. This time, I’m really able to appreciate the feeling of magic rippling down my sensitive, bone-white chitin. Celestia damn it all, I think I might actually miss chitin when all of this is finally settled. If scales don’t feel at least half as good as this, I’ll feel cheated.
With no further excuse to procrastinate, I try not to think about where the wood chips came from as I get to work. Some of them are small and uniform—obviously a packaged product; possibly cedar—while others are long splinters with lacquered faces providing clear evidence of their previous life as office furniture.
It’s as repugnant and revolting as you’d expect masticating oil-soaked wood to be… though admittedly, it’s actually not an entirely new sensation for me. In fact, it’s basically like chewing sugarcane without the sugar. And then swallowing it. So, yeah, all kinds of terrible, but at least no one here is offended when I gag and try to scrape off my tongue in between bites, unlike the panda delegation. I’m not even sure where they found uptight pandas to begin with; they’re generally kinda chill and too thick to be insulted by anything as a rule.
My musings on panda culture and cuisine take me all the way through my prescribed portion of greasy splinters. After that, taking a few bites of candle wax is downright enjoyable, though I could do without trying to cut the wick between my unfamiliar incisors and the flower scent does absolutely nothing for the bland taste.
What has my life even become that I’m mentally debating the relative palatability of candles in my head?
Fortunately, my tiny stomach fills up quickly even with the miniscule bites I have to take. Unfortunately, that just means I’m going to have to do it that many more times in order to make enough to cover the egg.
“Eugh,” I groan. “There, I’m full of craft supplies; now what?”
“Now,” Twilight Sparkle says putting down a ruled notebook she’d been taking notes in, “Similar to taking a disguise, you need to draw magic out into your chitin like you do your horn—but this time you want to focus it into your thorax. Once you have it there, you’ll want to try and pull it back in towards your stomach. You’ll know you’re doing it right when you feel several organs—glands, actually—that actively resist the magic. Feel around for the one that feels kind of tacky and stiff; it should also be the one that resists the hardest. Then, uhh, you poke it.”
My incredulous look is instantaneous. “I… poke it? Is that the scientific word for it? Do I have buttons on the side of my pancreas?”
“It’s… hard to describe,” she says with a frustrated pout. “You massage it? Stimulate it? It’ll absorb some of the magic, but you’re mostly just triggering a process that’s all but automatic for someling with actual changeling instincts to start.”
“Wonderful,” I grumble. “And I suppose the easiest way would be to just let you show me like with the disguise?”
“That would be the most expedient, yes,” she admits.
I waffle on it for a moment, but it never really was a question. “Yeah, well, I’m stubborn—”
“I know,” she interrupts.
“—so I’m going to try fumbling around in my gut for buttons anyway.”
In the end, I spend over a half an hour just trying to specifically draw magic out using the chitin of my thorax. The difficulty comes in one part fighting against my horn-magic training, one part the actual trial and error inherent in doing something new and one part just trying to stay on task without being distracted by the feel of magic running through chitin.
It’s not my fault having a whole new magical organ covering my entire body is distracting.
Ironically, once I manage to focus magic in my thorax, the rest of it comes relatively easily, just as Twilight Sparkle described, and it’s only another fifteen minutes or so before I’m hocking up a hoof-full of sticky, fibrous goop and spreading it over the egg.
One down, only two or three dozen more to go.
What did I ever do to deserve this?
Oh, right.
That.
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Guh. Sorry if there are any errors in this; I was literally writing up to the last moment before posting.
Also, sorry if people were expecting a bit more Cadance interaction. One of the things fighting me this chapter was the fact that I hadn’t actually come up with anything for them to really do while Cadance foalsat them.
Ayyy your back!
Good to see this again.
Is it Christmas already?
Christmas came early!
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I can't tell if this is a typo or an intentionally terrible pun.
Are you sure this isn't because you needed to be thinking of the marvellous mares instead?
I'd forgotten how many minor canon details tie together wonderfully in this: the weird pod-ponies from the comics, Spike and Changelings both using the same green flames, Twilight Sparkle basically being Sunset Shimmer V.2 (in universe, out of universe, it's the other way around), Changeling head on charging tactics and Shining Armor's shield proficiency, even Spike often seeming more mature than Twilight, etc.
Kind of funny that both the Changeling Infiltrator poses as Twilight Sparkle from before her arrival in Ponyville fics I've been reading both started updating again at about the same time, but I'm hardly complaining. (The other one is Chrysalis Savior of Time, which stars Queen Chrysalis. She's recruited by a Time Traveler who accidentally landed on Twilight Sparkle with his time machine when attempting to view the history of such a famous person-- he needs someone to be Twilight Sparkle or history is fucked and she's the only one who can pull it off).
So... Do they mess up or is Spike going to be female in this? You could do it while literally changing none of the elements of his appearance or voice, since dragons genders probably tend to look similar to non-reptiles.
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Nah, it's fine. Her getting in to the White-Wolf-esque Changeling the RPG was entertaining enough and she's a minor character who Sunset Shimmer would do her best to avoid. The focus on the way her presence affected the household worked. Plus, the "I'm her aunt" bit was funny.
I'm so excited to see this story is still alive. What a wonderful Halloween gift. I've adored the dynamics here and I'm incredibly eager to see this pan out - it's such a unique AU that takes all of the canon details and shows them through an entirely different but perfectly accurate lens.
Heeey, I was thinking about this story a few days ago! Glad to see it's still getting some attention!
This story is still the most grotesquely fascinating thing I've read on this site, and I'm so happy it's back. Some fics are hard to pick back up after a long hiatus, but I slid right back into this without any problems.
"I lay bloated on the"
"I lie bloated on the"?
"continue to lay there sore and"
"continue to lie there sore and"?
"I swallow down onmy congested throat."
Is something missing there?
"don’t soak up each others emotions"
"don’t soak up each other's emotions"?
Still quite enjoying this, and I'm glad to see it back. :)
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Whoops, missed that one; thanks for catching it, if it isn't a pun.
"her mein" should be "her mien".
I had to reread the rest of the story to remember all the context, but on the bright side, I got to reread the rest of the story.
Great to see more of this. Changelings continue to be disgustingly fascinating, and Shining is proving to be a delight, especially his rapport with not-Sunset-anymore-stop-freaking-out-when-you-see-the-old-body-dammit. Eagerly looking forward to more.
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For what it's worth, I don't think having Cadence's segments being mostly pseudo-time-skips is a bad idea. They really are just playing for time while she's there, unless there's another mishap like leaving the egg out or a door open. They could easily spend the next few playdates on the TRPG, and Cadence being a terrible baby-sitter, either by lack of experience or because she's an 'airhead' (as Sunset originally predicted of the babysitter), works wonderfully well both with what's currently happening, and her continued ignorance in the future as she [presumably] falls for Shiny.
If you're having trouble, just fast-forwarding to a relevant conversation in the middle of a TRPG game or a glossed-over generic foal game would probably do fine. Since she's playing the role of babysitter, she's supposed to be busy keeping the foals in line and out of trouble, and that may not leave room to have her develop herself as a character, or their relationship (I certainly don't remember anything much of my sitter back in the day, besides a game or two that was played, but that could be my terrible memory). Most of what I see coming from Cadence's appearance is it reflecting back on Sunset as she struggles to move on from her past feelings regarding Cadence accepting her path forward.
All that being said, feel free to handle it how you desire. I'm mostly intrigued to see where Sunset's & Twilight's characters go, as well as the interactions and scheming of the two. Needless to say, I'm very happy to see the update to the story.
I remember being infatuated with the concept back when you first started, and it's always nice to see an old favorite get another chapter. I hope you [the author] are doing well, and if we don't see you for a bit again, have a good holiday season!
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These should all be fixed now, thanks!
The capitalization of fantasy nouns is a particularly annoying thing to get stuck doing… It’s something a lot of authors do Wrong— JK Rowling is an especially big offender—and I hate getting in the habit.
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You're welcome. :)
Ah, sorry about that.
The whole story came back to me just from the last few words of the previously-last chapter, so that was nice. Good to see so much pony coming from you again, your stories are very enjoyable.
Yay! I absolutely love this story. So glad to see it continue :3
I'm feeling confused about the timetable of them taking care of the dragon egg. I'm already having difficulty wrapping my head around your concepts of transferring magic in this weird experiment, but then it doesn't feel like they ever settled on the process they would be using to ensure the egg was female. Shining Armor says that he has the information from the hive mind, but then it's just left hanging there.
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Basically, digesting love into magic takes time, but once it’s been digested, the resulting magic can be stored and reclaimed pretty much as fast as the physical action takes. I’d have to go back and check for specifcis, but with an unlimited supply of love, it takes Sunset about a week to digest enough love for the process. If they were to do it Twilight’s way, Sunset would be feeding the egg the whole week, and therefore the relative strength of the magic, which is standing in for temperature in the gestation of normal reptiles, would be comparatively low. By storing the digested love as liquid magic, Sunset will be able to feed the egg much faster—a matter of minutes or hours—thus guaranteeing her desired gender thanks to the increased rate of transfer.
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Well, it might work to soak or baste the egg in liquid magic, but probably not for their purposes. Sunset will be consuming the liquid magic and channeling it properly with her horn.
I get the feeling that one of Sunset's immortal-dragon-needs-a-hobby projects will be to find a way to become a true shapeshifter, just so she'll be able to try out EVERY species-specific magic