Stuck in a Rainbow

by theRedBrony

Lefty Loosey (Dash)

Previously on Stuck…

Rainbow Dash is tied to a chair in the barn again. After the Conner imposter is done badgering her, the Silas imposter shows her some kindness. And some chloroform. She takes a nap and has a nightmare about abandoning her friends.

She wakes up and sees Silas. He tells her a lot has changed while she was asleep. Minutes later, a team of SWAT officers busts into the barn. Apparently, Morgan called in some backup. Rainbow thinks she's saved, but they all seem to just disappear. Until, that is, Rainbow witnesses Silas disguised as one of them, in order to trick another and knock him out. Though Silas insists that he spared them all from getting hurt much worse.

He explains that changelings eat love, but gain magical power from hate. And that only eight changelings were talented mages. Six were made 'Overlords' of their six 'Hives' and the other two were Chrysalis' personal guards / underlings. These two were named Right and Left. Right is aggressive and Left is passive. Just so happens that the Silas imposter is Lefty.

---

"You can call me Lefty, by the way."

"You're Lefty? So then who's Righty?"

"Oh haven't you guessed? Uh, you might know him as Conner. I imagine you got to know him pretty well, you and your pal Morgan had him tied up and you two were dragging him around all day."

"Oh yeah, him."

"Yeah. Him. Look, Rainbow, I have a very important question for you." His face gets all serious.

"Uh…"

"Are you really a lesbian?"

"WHAT?!"

He smiles and shrugs with his hands up. "Well that's just what I've heard."

"Oh come on! That was just one time!"

"One time? Exactly how many 'one time's?" He snickers.

"Just twice- buck off."

"Oh relax Rainbow. I'm not judging you, only teasing. Just trying to lighten the mood, that's all."

"Lighten the mood?! You have me tied to a chair!"

He momentarily looks at the chair. Then pointedly ignores it. "In all seriousness, I do have some questions for you."

"Why should I tell you anything? You have me tied to a chair for pony's sake!"

"If… I untied you… would you answer me truthfully?"

I avoid eye contact.

"And you have to promise not to run away."

I only grumble.

"I tell you what. Answer me truthfully, and I promise to untie you."

"Really?"

"I swear on my changeling honor."

"Oh why should I believe you? All of you have done nothing but lie to me and trick me the whole time I've been here!"

"I told you my name, didn't I? You think changelings just go around telling ponies their real names? Think about it. I've told you way too much already. Consider that a symbol of mutual trust."

"Well… I guess that kinda makes sense. You better not be lying to me though!"

"Not this time, Rainbow."

"Alright, hurry up and ask me those questions already! I have to pee!"

"Heh heh. Fair enough. First question: why don't you want to go back home?" He asks with a serious face.

"I… do!"

"Ah. No you don't. You hesitated just there."

"But I do!"

"Nope. You hesitated, which means you don't. I'm a changeling, we're good at picking up those kinds of subtleties. The question is, why don't you want to go back?"

"I… don’t know…" Don't I want to go back? I miss my friends… but… if I go back, I'll have to choose. Choose between them and the Wonderbolts. The whole reason I'm here. The whole reason I made that stupid wish!

But then… there's also Morgan. And Claire. I kinda promised I'd help them find her brother, and the rest of Morgan's friends. I don't want to let them down, even if I kinda have already…

"Well… I may have… kind of… sort of… possibly…"

"Yes?"

"I wished I wasn't myself! Ugh..." I roll my eyes. "I got accepted to the Wonderbolts..."

"Let me guess. If you join them, you'd feel like you're abandoning your friends?"

"…How did you know?"

"Changeling. We're good at this kind of stuff. So you don't want to abandon your friends. Noble. But you realize you've already done that, right?"

"Yeah. I noticed. THANK YOU FOR REMINDING ME."

"Well I'm not exactly an expert on friendship – though I'd like to think I know enough – but wouldn't they want you to be happy? Which way would make you happy?"

"Oh, doy! Of course you don't understand! It's not that simple! Yeah, they want me to be happy, right? But I also want them to be happy. And how can they be happy without a totally awesome friend like me around? I can't just leave them for my own selfish desires… that's what it means to be a friend! That's what it means to be… loyal…"

"Seems to me you're stuck between a rock and a hard place."

"You can say that again."

"What's the big deal, anyhow? Can't you be a Wonderbolt and have friends?"

"Ugh, they wanted me to live in Los Pegasus, it's like a whole day's trip between there and Ponyville. I'd never have the time to go home, and even if I did, I wanna be with my friends all the time, not just once in a while…"

"Well… I could go turn Los Pegasus into a Hive if you want…"

Hmm…

"The whole city. All changelings. You wouldn't even know the difference. But you could have everything your way. How's that sound?"

Hmm…

"No!"

He looks down and rubs the bridge of his nose. "Well, we need to figure out why you don't want to go back. And fix that. I hate to say this Rainbow, but if we don't fix it, you're never going back. Is there anything else? Any other reason you might not want to go back? Anything at all?"

"…Well there is one other thing…" I say with a smirk.

"Yes?"

"It's the uh, people, you guys replaced. I kinda promised Morgan I'd help him get to the bottom of this."

"Oh, well, I tell you what. That leads me to my next question. I don't suppose you remember when I woke you up a few minutes ago, what I told you then? Well, I said a lot has changed while you were asleep…"

"Such as?"

"I need your help."

"Come again?"

"I need your help. You're the only one around here that can do this thing I need done."

"What is it?"

"I need your love."

"Well that's not freaky at all! Do you have to like… bite me with those freaky fangs of yours?"

"Ha, no. In fact, you won't even be giving me your love."

"Who then?"

"Righty."

"HIM?!"

"Yes, him. And in exchange for your love, I will give you all of your human friends back. How's that sound?"

"But… I don't… what do I have to do?"

"I told you, just love him."

"Yeah, I got that… but how am I supposed to do that?"

"Well don't look at me, I don't know! I'm a changeling, remember? You ponies make the love, we just eat it. If we could just make love like you do, my people wouldn't be starving!" He looks away from me, hiding his face for a moment.

Changelings… starving? That's kindof… sad. That's really sad actually. I mean, it's not like love grows on trees or something. I guess they take what they can get, and if they don't get it then… wow. I never thought about it like that. I kinda feel sorry for him.

Lefty clears his throat. "Ahem. Anyway, look, you love your friends, right? Just do the same thing. Simple enough."

"Not… really."

"Well, look. My offer stands. All the humans we have for a little love."

"Why him anyway? He's a douchebag. Is he hungry or something?"

"Ah. If only it were so simple. So, if you recall, hate fuels our magic. But it also does strange things to a changeling. Makes them feel powerful. Ever heard the expression 'power corrupts'?"

"Yeah?"

"Well if hate equals power…"

"So he's… corrupted?"

"Extremely so."

"How'd that happen?"

"Funny story, actually. It seems these two bumbling idiots tied him up and spent the whole day belittling him and using him as a punching bag."

"Oh… crap. No wonder he kept egging us on."

"Yeah. That was an awful lot of hate. Human hate, too, which seems really strong compared to pony hate. It's delicious by the way. But try not to give me too much, I'm kind of a lightweight."

"So let me get this straight. I hated Righty a whole bunch, so now he's super-powerful and corrupted?"

"Yes. And he wants to take over this world, enslave all the humans, and become the new changeling King, did I mention that part?"

"No. No you didn't. So anyway, all I gotta do is give him a little love and he'll stop being… evil?"

"Well, probably a lot of love, but yes. The love should counteract all that hate that's making him power-drunk."

"And then you'll let all my human friends go?"

"Yes, and all the rest of them."

"Wait. The rest? How many do you have?"

"Oh… I think we've lost count, but probably in the hundreds."

"WHAT?!"

"Don't look at me! It was Righty's idea."

"WHY?!"

"To secure the town- that's not important right now! Do you accept my offer or not?"

"Yeah sure. Dunno how I'm gonna pull it off, but I'll figure something out. I'm awesome! Now untie me! I have to go to the can!"

Lefty walks behind my chair.

The ropes fall free from my arms.

"One thing, Rainbow. Can't use the bathroom in the house. Righty's in there. Just piss on the side of the barn or something."

---

"Do you have to watch me while I do this?"

"Well, no. I'm just fascinated by it."

"Ok, weird. You know I'm actually a filly, right?"

"So am I."

"…I think that just made this even weirder somehow. Just turn around, will ya?!"

He/she/Lefty turns around.

…Aaaah.

"So why the hay are you changelings even here in the first place? It's pretty obvious you're from where I'm from, cuz you seem like you know all about me. So, what, you followed me here?"

"Oh, haven't you guessed? We came here to get you. We're the good guys!"

---

Author's Note:

What?! Changelings are the good guys?!

Mostly dialogue here, I know. I had most of this written in the old version, which progressed about the same except at the end Dash and Lefty bumped into Righty, then Righty and Lefty duked it out while Dash was left to wonder what the hell was going on. So straight up exposition seemed to make more sense here.

Previously, Silas/Lefty was written as sort of a badass douchebag (no doubt a bit of GeTa's personal touch) pretty much just like Conner/Righty. And he kept insulting Dash and so forth. Which… didn't work. Righty and Lefty were supposed to be polar opposites, so I figured, make Lefty a more passive, easy-going type. And a girl too, for good measure. Though the jab at Dash's questionable sexuality stayed mostly the same from the old version. lol

One of the things that bugged me about the old version was that… Lefty had all sorts of super powers for lack of a better term. In the previous Dash chapter, the SWAT guys all got their asses handed to them without Lefty so much as breaking a sweat. That's why I changed Lefty's method to quiet, cunning trickery instead. In the old version of this chapter, he had some sort of mind-reading powers, and was able to immediately tell the reasons why Dash was not quite wanting to go home. That seemed like too much of a cop-out to me. I figured it'd make much more sense that changelings would naturally just be really good guessers, rather than psychics.

I also got to add a lot of juicy stuff about changelings in here. Which I'm fairly pleased with. It's worth noting though, the 'lings in this story, and how they work (hate making them powerful, etc), were originally written by GeTa. So not much of this is my personal headcanon, I'm just kind of rolling with the punches to make this story work with what it was built on. Regardless, I'm still really happy with how these 'lings are turning out and I think they're quite unique and interesting.

Speaking of GeTa, one thing I should really praise about his ideas for the story, is that hate makes these 'lings powerful and having Conner be dragged around by Morgan and Dash all day, in order to further his corruption, just makes perfect sense. Years ago, when GeTa left the project, I was left trying to figure everything out. It actually took me a long time to make sense of this one bit, and as it turns out, it made perfect sense.

Comment as usual, guys!