Stuck in a Rainbow

by theRedBrony

Friendship is Magic (Dash)

Previously on Stuck…

Lefty explained to Rainbow that Righty is corrupted with hate-fueled power, and the only way to fix him is by giving him some love instead of hate. Rainbow doesn't really know how to do this, and meanwhile Righty challenges her to a race to Church's house. If she wins, she gets to fight him (and probably lose). She gladly accepts, saying that she's tired of people telling her what to do.

During the race, she sees the empty town and thinks of all the people Righty is going to hurt if he gets away with this. She uses her feelings towards humans in general to hold Righty down after tackling him. No matter how much he tries, he just can't get her off of him, and whatever Rainbow is doing, it works.

---

"Ow. What the hay just happened?" I ask nopony in particular as I rub my head.

Oh yeah. I was hugging Righty and then he… exploded? Huh?

Seriously. What?

Well whatever the hay happened, I think it worked. If it didn't, I'm pretty sure Righty'd be trying to strangle me or something right now. I get up and dust myself off. Say, where'd he go anyway? For that matter, how'd I get all the way into the living room? I thought we were by the front door. Oh boy. We were.

Mother of Celestia.

That is a changeling. Like, not a changeling looking like a human, no no, it's an actual, freaking changeling! A real live ch- oh horseapples, I hope he's alive! Lefty would be pretty ticked if I loved him to death or something.

I kneel down next to him, and wow… he's so… small. He's breathing, so that's good. I poke him to see if he wakes up. Poke him again. Nope, he's out for the count.

Did I mention he's small? I dunno, he just seems like he's a very small little thing. But I guess I don't really know how big humans are, like compared to ponies, but he still seems really small. And skinny. Boy, I'm not kidding, he's just skin and bones. Or… whatever changelings are made of.

I look out the busted-down front door as I hear a car pulling up. Hey! That's Morgan's car! Walking out to greet him, I see Lefty's with him too, that'll save me some explaining.

Lefty gets out of the car and runs up to me, he grabs my shirt and jerks me toward his face. "Did you do it?! Did it work?!"

"Yeah, I kinda-"

He shoves me out of the way and goes to his unconscious buddy on the floor.

Morgan waltzes over to me. "Hey Church, er… Rainbow. Still coming to grips with that one. Sorry I left you back at Danny's place."

"Yeah, I'll be honest, I had my doubts. But then those 'swat' guys showed up!"

"I might've had something to do with that." He smiles proudly.

"Yeah, one of them told me about that. Pretty cool, dude, I thought ya left me hangin'."

"Nah, I'd never leave my deranged friend hangin'. But I guess they didn't help much, huh?"

"Yeah… about that."

"Silas- um… 'Lefty'," he air-quotes with his fingers, "told me he… 'took care of them.' Whatever that means."

"He, uh… might've kinda knocked them all out. But hey, it's ok, I think I fixed everything anyway!"

"So Silas tells me. I dunno, I still don't believe any of this crap. You're Rainbow Dash, the guys are changelings, one of them's gone mad with power, they – for some reason completely unbeknownst to me – abducted everyone in the whole town – ok, well that one I believe. I mean, the place is a ghost town. The only reason the cops in Cloverdale believed a word I said was because the cops here didn't answer the phone. Hell, no one did."

"Well, thanks anyway Morgan. So uh, did Lefty tell you? He promised he'd give all the humans back if I loved his friend!"

Silence.

"That didn't sound right, did it?"

Morgan slowly shakes his head 'no.'

"Well they're changelings so… they eat love or something, and Righty ate too much hate from us ragging on him-"

"Church, Church – Rainbow, whatever – Silas explained all that to me already. I just… don't believe it."

"Oh. Yeah, I guess I can see that. Your friend comes out of the blue and claims to be somepony he's not, and your other friends aren't actually your friends, and then they try to take over the world – yeah, I wouldn't believe it either. But hey! There's an actual real-life changeling over there! That's gotta count for something."

Morgan carefully steps past me. I follow him into Church's house where still-human-Silas Lefty is sitting on the floor next to Righty. Morgan is frozen in place.

Lefty stands up and talks to Morgan. "Listen, Morgan, I'd rather you didn't see this. It was hard enough for me to let Rainbow in on our little secrets-"

Morgan, completely ignoring Lefty, just walks past him and kneels down in front of Righty.

"Morgan," Lefty says with a sigh.

Morgan starts poking the changeling on the floor.

"Hey. Morgan." Lefty taps Morgan on the shoulder. "You know he's my… him and I are kind of… can you please stop poking him?"

Morgan stops poking the changeling and looks like he just had the realization of a lifetime. "If changelings are real then… holy shit." He stands up. "That means you're actually Rainbow Dash!"

"The one and only!"

Morgan looks like Pinkie Pie after somepony told her it's time for a party. He lets loose a string of babble that sounds roughly like him apologizing for not believing me and how happy he is to meet me. Pfft. Typical fanboy.

"Yeah yeah. Don’t sweat it Morgan."

Lefty clears his throat, and ignores the still-rambling Morgan while he talks to me instead. "Well Rainbow, looks like you did it. Congratulations, thank you, all that jive. You saved the day… and Righty. And I'm sure he'll thank you properly, too… eventually."

"Well of course I was gonna save the day! Was there ever any doubt?"

"Uh, yeah. A lot. Particularly on my part," Lefty answers.

"Gee, thanks. See Morgan? I told you I fixed everything! And now that Righty's fixed, Lefty here's gonna give back all the humans they took. You are keeping that promise, aren't you?"

Lefty answers with a smirk, "Changeling honor."

"I cannot believe all this is happening," Morgan says. "So… Lefty, right? Everything's cool then? I mean like… you're the good changeling?"

Lefty gives a half-hearted chuckle. "Morgan, my naïve little human, you can't just divide the world into 'good' and 'evil.' "

"But-"

I interrupt Morgan, "I think what Morgan's trying to say is: when do I get to go home?"

"Well… If we did all this right, and everything you said is true, then all we have to do… is wait. And you'll just wind up home eventually by yourself."

"Wait. By myself? You mean like, I'll just magically appear back home?"

"You just magically appeared here, didn't you? You'll probably go to sleep here and wake up in your bed back in your comfy cloud house, in your furry pony body."

"Well… what if I don’t?"

"If you don't, we still have our backup plan. We can just pop open a gateway, you jump through, and ask the princess to fix you. That is, you and your counterpart, Church. Find him and I'm fairly certain the princess can fix you two. Then Church can just jump right back through, you stay in Equestria, and you all live happily ever after."

"Well that's lame. I thought I'd get to go home! Can't you just pop open that gateway right now?"

"NO. Because of two very good reasons. One: we need all four of us changeling mages to do that. One of which is unconscious, and probably a little bit peeved about the whole… sort of knocking him off his high horse thing. And two: the magic spell that switched up you and Church in the first place is complex, powerful, and sensitive. Throwing a bunch of other magic on top of it could be disastrous. That's a last resort, Rainbow. Besides, it's gonna be a little while either way, so just hang in there. Everything's fixed now…" He pauses to look around the empty street and dead town. His shoulders sag. "Sort of. And-"

"Whoa! Hold on," Morgan loudly interrupts. "Let me get this perfectly straight! You guys have a portal?"

Lefty opens his mouth to respond, but no sound comes out.

"To Equestria?!" For the first time since I've met him, Morgan's sunglasses are completely removed from his face.

Lefty's mouth is still open, unsure how to answer.

"Can- can I go there?" Morgan smiles like an idiot.

Lefty just sighs in sheer annoyance. "…No."

Morgan's stupid smile falls flat and he drops down to his knees in front of Lefty. "PLEASE? Just for a week? A day? An hour?! A MINUTE?! Can I at least write a letter to the princess?!" He bends over and kisses Lefty's shoes.

Well this got awkward real quick. "I guess if he wants to come to Equestria that bad… I mean, he's an ok dude, so… I guess he could come with me…"

Lefty clears his throat and looks down at Morgan, who has a really good set of puppy dog eyes right now. And a nice pouty lip too. "Maybe if you're a good little human and you don’t beat up any more changelings – or, you know, violently hate them – then we'll talk about it."

Morgan jumps up and does a fist pump. "Yes!"

"Calm down. I said we'll talk about it. That’s it."

"So uh," I ask, "what do we do with Righty? We can't just leave him here, right?"

Lefty walks over to where Righty's laying on the floor. "Leave him out in the open like this? Of course not! Let's put him in the car and take him back to Danny's house."

Somehow me and Morgan get stuck carrying the knocked-out changeling. I have his hind legs and Morgan has his forelegs. Lefty keeps telling us to be gentle with him. On the bright side, he's pretty light. Lefty holds open the back door of Morgan's car and we shove him inside.

Morgan wipes the sweat from his forehead. "We should tie him up."

Lefty closes the car door. "Absolutely not. That's how we got into this mess in the first place."

"Well," I defend Morgan, "he did try to kill me. More than once."

"And enslave the entire human race, apparently," Morgan thoughtfully adds.

"Look, guys," Lefty holds up his hands to both of us. "He's not a bad guy."

Morgan and I glance at each other.

"He's really not! It's just… so easy to become corrupted with that kind of power. You don’t… you just don't understand what that's like for a changeling, ok? Hate like that is just… addictive, you can't help but want more. And it just blinds you to everything else. That’s what happened to our Queen. Except her case was special. She had the unique ability to use love to gain power and consume hate for food, and vice versa. She's the only one who could do that. So, for her, every little emotion she got, happy, sad, hate, love, they were all just fuel for the raging fire that burned within her. It wasn't long before the power she got began controlling her, just like it did Righty. But even in her most corrupted state, Queen Chrysalis still had her people's interests in mind. No matter how insane she got.

"In a way, Righty was doing the same thing. He still had his people's interests in mind, but he was blind to what we were trying to do, what we should've been doing, and any other options we had, other than just…" Lefty makes a silly face, " 'Hey! Let's all invade the human world! There's plenty of hate to go around, and some love too!' " His goofy expression turns into a frown as he completely avoids eye contact with us. "He's not a bad guy… he just… forgot, that's all." In fact, he looks downright sad.

I put my hand on Lefty's shoulder. "Sounds like you two are good friends."

"Pfft. Don't be ridiculous. We've just been through a lot together."

"Uh, yeah. Like friends?"

Lefty looks up at me.

Morgan butts in, "Friendship is magic, after all."

Morgan and me smiling at him seems to get to him. "Yeah…" He shrugs. "I guess you could say he's my friend." He cracks a little smile himself.

---

Author's Note:

I wanted to create some chemistry between Righty and Lefty. Not necessarily romantic. Since you didn't really get to know their characters until now, it's a bit difficult. But the idea is that they had been through hell together, most of the time while being completely mind-controlled by Chrysalis. (Another tidbit that is not my personal headcanon.) But like Lefty said earlier, they're changelings, they don't really understand love (even friendship-y love), even though they are intimately familiar with all the details of faking it properly. Doesn't mean they're incapable of it, it just means that they're unfamiliar with how it actually works.

As you saw when Morgan was poking unconscious Righty, Lefty didn't really know what to call Righty. Almost called him a friend or something, but couldn't quite say it.