Theory
“Hmm…” said Queen Imago after Applebloom had explained the situation. “I confess, in my younger days, I was something of an ‘egghead’, as my daughter would put it. Before I inherited the throne, I often buried myself in research, much like Twilight Sparkle is reputed to do. It sounds like your magic is interacting strongly with the spent love, but I don’t know why it would. I have some ideas, but they would only lead to more questions.”
She paused for a moment. “I do not have to do anything particularly urgently, so I may as well see if I can find anything to shed some light on the subject. Come and see me before you leave and I may have answers.”
“Where are all the foals?” Sweetie Belle asked as they left the throne room. “All the changelings we’ve seen here are adults.”
Mirage hesitated. “I could take you down to the nursery if you really want, but most ponies would think it's kinda gross.”
“What? Why? Little foals are cute.”
Mirage motioned to herself. “Hello, part insect here!”
Applebloom's eyes widened. “Wait, you mean..?”
Mirage nodded. “Giant, filly-sized maggots.”
Sweetie Belle managed the impressive feat of turning even whiter than usual, and shuddered. “Umm... on second thought, maybe we should do something completely different.”
“Oh, Ah don't know, Sweetie,” Applebloom said, smirking. An aura of mischief filled Mirage's emotional sense. “It could be interestin’.”
There was silence for a few seconds before the other two burst out laughing at the look of pure horror on Sweetie Belle’s face.
Queen Hornet’s hive had, somewhat ironically, given their golden back-plates, never been very large or powerful. They survived, destined to be little more than a footnote in changeling history, and most of the hive was resigned to that fate.
The queen herself was not.
Hornet was well aware that her hive was lacking in military might, and had kept her head down, taking less desirable territory while keeping a close eye on the affairs of other hives. Finally, she had found a weakness, and in the largest hive, too. Something that the new queen wanted enough that she could be manipulated into doing almost anything.
Chrysalis was sterile.
She had gone to Chrysalis and convinced her that taking in a huge amount of love would force her body to produce eggs. A lie, of course, but she always felt that the best lies were ones which the target wanted to believe. It was also one that Chrysalis couldn’t disprove, after all she could always say that clearly Chrysalis hadn’t taken in enough.
Chrysalis had proceeded to drain her hive’s love supplies down to nothing in an attempt doomed to do nothing but hurt her hive, but as she had watched her drones begin to starve, she had given it all back with interest, bringing herself to the point of starvation in the process.
In her love-deprived state it had been so easy for Hornet to convince her that an invasion was the only way to get the love she needed. It was a perfect win-win situation. If the invasion succeeded, she could gain an advisory position in Chrysalis’ government and then have her killed, taking the top spot for herself. If it failed, a rival could be removed from play, and it might even be possible to arrange it to inherit regency over her hive.
Now though, she had a dilemma.
After the failure in Canterlot, it had made sense to point her little pawn at the Crystal Empire and the Northern Hive next.
Unfortunately, Chrysalis was not completely stupid.
She had quickly realised that Lepidoptera's hive now outnumbered her, and that they had been gorging on the Crystal Heart for days. Chrysalis would be outnumbered and outgunned… so she had asked for help.
The ball was now firmly in Hornet's court, and she didn't like it one bit. If she refused, she would lose her hard-won influence over Chrysalis, but accepting risked exposing her part in planning the invasion of Canterlot to the other queens, and, through some of them, the ponies.
This would take some thought.
Not too much though. A delay would only shift the balance further towards Queen Lepidoptera.
The tour of the hive next stopped at the love storage area Mirage had pointed out, and it wasn't long before Sweetie Belle noticed something strange.
“Why do I feel happier here?”
“It's the love leakage, the levels are higher here,” Mirage replied. “It's not true that ponies can't sense love, but it's a lot harder to tell. Most ponies simply don't notice, and just feel a little better about themselves and others. Sending a little love back can increase the collection a lot, but it is a risk.”
“How much difference does it make?” asked Applebloom, who, now it had been pointed out, had also noticed the effects.
“Well, if I asked now, I would think that Sweetie Belle would have a lot fewer objections to meeting my baby brothers.”
That's..!” Sweetie shouted, before suddenly stopping, frowning. “That's true, actually. I know that I should, but I don’t. That's creepy.”
“Come on,” said Mirage. “It won't show up as mental magic, but too much exposure could make you act out of character for a while. I’d rather not have the Elements of Harmony after my head, even if a burst of magically charged platonic love does sound very tasty.”
Lyra and Bon Bon sat on a bench.
To a casual observer, this would be nothing new; the couple often watched the sunset together. A trained eye would pick up some tension, but it was hardly unusual for a couple to have the occasional fight.
Bon Bon looked at Lyra. “So…” She paused. “Now that we’ve both had a little time to think things over… where do we go from here? I mean, I can sense you’re conflicted. If you need me to give you a little space, I can.”
“No,” sighed Lyra. “It’s just… things are going to change now. How is it going to affect our relationship now that I know about you? I’m scared, Bon Bon. I liked how things were before. What if this drives us apart?”
Bon Bon's ears flattened. “I won't say it's never happened. Plenty of my family have been rejected or have grown apart from their loved ones in the past. For a lot, it happens when they realise that they can't have foals, not that we could anyway. All I can say is that the fact that you still want to make it work is a good start.”
Lyra sat silently for a while as the moon replaced the sun in the sky. Several times, her mouth opened to say something, but she stopped herself. The silence dragged on until she finally figured out what to say.
It came out as a scared whisper, but it was clear in the quiet evening. “I don't want to lose you.”
Bon Bon wrapped a foreleg around her back and spoke with a gentle smile. “As long as you keep feeling like that, you never will.”
Queen Imago looked up as the Cutie Mark Crusaders walked tiredly back into the throne room. Several large books and other pieces of paper were spread across the table she had used for her research.
“Ah, you’re back. I think I’m onto something.”
“Really?” Applebloom asked excitedly as she ran forward. “What is it?”
“What you described to me is the same way many earth ponies describe a strong response to their magic. That leads to the question of why you would have such an affinity for it, when other earth ponies don’t. Though it is rare, you are far from the first earth pony to enter a changeling hive, and none of them have reported such an effect. So I did some research and I found this.
“We have studied a lot of pony magic, and its interactions, so as to blend in better, but there are very few such studies on the magic of foals, simply because only princesses can take the form of one. The only study I found was from around two hundred years ago, trying to work out why adopted foals often found talents relating to their new family.
“It’s all just a theory, but the short version is that before the cutie mark appears, a pony’s magic seems somewhat flexible. It slowly alters to be more similar to those around it, pushing them towards common interests. The effect appears to be particularly strong towards those that they pin their hopes of finding a talent on, often a parent or older sibling, which is why talents often run in families.”
Imago leaned forward. “You, on the other hand, pinned your hopes on the Crusaders. Had you all been ponies, the magic of all of you would likely have converged on your shared interests, possibly even relating to cutie marks themselves. In reality, one of you was a changeling, and your magic may have reacted by becoming slightly more like my daughter’s, the nature of which was already fixed.
“Of course,” she smirked, “you had no opportunities to try changeling related areas before now.
“As an earth pony, you would expect an affinity for plants, food or materials, so your magic may have latched onto a changeling’s most common building material. Combined with the strength all earth ponies have, it allowed you to shatter the crystal, something that most changelings would find almost impossible.”
“Hold on a second,” said Applebloom. “Are you sayin’ that hangin’ around with Scoots gave me a talent for workin’ with this stuff?”
“It’s a little more complicated than that, but it seems likely.”
“Wait,” said Sweetie Belle. “What about me?”
“Hmm,” replied the queen. “Unicorns tend towards areas of magic. Maybe try illusions or transformation, and if that fails, maybe even mental magic. Just because we don't tend to use it doesn't mean we aren't naturally good at it. Of course, that’s only a theory, please don’t hold me to it.”
“Sure,” Applebloom replied distractedly, before she and Sweetie Belle galloped out of the room.
She looked at her daughter, who sighed. “I’ll go and make sure they don’t break anything. I miss the days when I could be the fun and reckless one, rather than the voice of reason.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.029 seconds
Total duration
937 users online
1,224,518 hits today, 2,314,256 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Wait, what happened in the Crystal empire?
7203680 Nothing yet.
Yay! A update!
What 7203782 said. Woot!
SAME!
And I'm not even an adult yet!
Relaaaaaax, Mirage. How much damage can two unsupervised fillies do, anyway?
7205200 It's the CMC. Your argument is invalid.
Sweet. I was worried it wasn't going to update at all. And it is a good filler chapter.
The funny thing about The Show Stoppers when it's brought up is actually in regards to Scootaloo. Madeleine Peters, who voices Scootaloo, was apparently actually too good with her singing that even when she tried to sing badly it still came out too good, so they had to alter it in a program to make it come out the way it did. So, Scootaloo is really a singing savant
(Somebody was actually able to separate the three CMC voice actresses lines in Hearts as Strong as Horses and come up with their individual singing lyrics. In Madeleine Peters' case, here)
7206823 I did always think it was a bit strange that she was so bad. None of the ponies have bad singing voices except when it suits the plot.
Aww I'm all caught up now... really enjoying this! Hope you can figure out those harder plot points and continue soon! (I know how it can be, I'm drawing close to a similar situation in my own story.)
7206862 question the queen is the mother of all workers in the hive?
7276093 Yes. Except for some of the older drones when she might be their sister, or even niece.
7276718 ok
Holy shit I love this explanation