Bonus Chapter: A Buggy Nightmare Night
“Nightmare Night, what a fright! Give us something sweet to bite!”
Tuppence flashed her sweetest smile to the old mare who had answered the door, and inwardly, she pumped a hoof when she saw the Princess-sized candy bars that the greying mare held in a large bowl.
“Oh, aren’t you all just so adorable! Is that you, Tuppence?”
“Yes, Hazelnut, it’s me. Do you like my stripes?”
“They’re just perfect, dear! I almost thought you were a real tiger for a moment.” Hazelnut adjusted her glasses and turned her attention to the other ponies on the porch. “Let’s see. This darling little Royal Guardspony must be Marble, and the beautiful little Luna just has to be Buttons, or I am going to get my glasses checked.”
“Is me, Hazel!” Buttons chirped, with a quick flap of her wings.
“I see your mother decided to let you go trick-or-treating tonight by yourselves. I’ll have to have a talk to her about her free-range parenting ideas,” Hazelnut huffed with a playful grin. “But since you’re here, I suppose I should give you a treat. I certainly don’t want your backsides to be gobbled up by Nightmare Moon!”
Tuppence suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. While she was young enough to still go trick-or-treating, she was also old enough to know that all of those legends about Nightmare Moon were just made up. Besides, Nightmare Moon had been defeated by the Elements of Harmony years ago, so there was nothing to worry about.
If Marble and Buttons wanted to sacrifice some of their candy to a non-existent spook, then let them. She was going to keep every last piece of candy she got, and enjoy them all, too.
“Here you go, dears,” Hazel slid a candy bar into each of their bags, then tipped her witches’ hat back on her head. “Don’t eat it all at once! You’ll get a horrible tummy ache.”
“We won’t, Missus Hazelnut,” Marble said.
“Good. Oh, and watch out for the house next door.” Hazelnut leaned in, put one hoof to the side of her mouth, and glanced around to make sure no pony was eavesdropping. “I hear there’s some kind of frightful monster in there! If I were you, I’d consider skipping it and moving on to the next one.”
Three pairs of young eyes went to the house, and Tuppence’s eyes grew wide at the sight of the sickly green glow that was pulsing out of the windows. She, along with every other foal in the neighborhood, had heard the rumors of an evil changeling living in Sergeant Hokey Pokey’s house, and now was the perfect time to investigate.
“Thank you, Hazelnut!” Marble called out, and the three of them checked out their prize as they walked back to the main sidewalk. “I got a peanut crisp bar!”
“I got a caramel pull-apart!” Buttons happily said.
Tuppence frowned. “I got a rock.”
“You wanna go back and ask for something else?” Marble asked, but Tuppence shook her head.
“No, it’s okay. C’mon! Let’s go see if Pokey’s house is really infested.”
“I don’t wanna go.” Buttons nervously looked over the foreboding abode, and she ducked behind Marble for protection. “It looks really scary.”
“Ah, relax,” Marble scoffed. “Whatever’s in there can’t be that bad. It’s Sergeant Hokey Pokey’s house! You like him, remember?”
Buttons shrugged. “I dunno. He’s always cranky. I don’t think he likes me.”
“C’mon,” Tuppence added. “Just a quick peek. If there really is a nasty changeling in there, we’ll run away before it can get us, tell Mom, and she’ll take care of it. Okay?”
Buttons glanced over the home once more, swallowed hard, and then nodded. “Okay.”
Having convinced the young filly, the trio of siblings marched confidently down the sidewalk, past the two jack-o-lanterns, and up the two stairs to the porch. So far, there was nothing amiss, and Tuppence checked for any sense of immediate doom before knocking on the front door.
The three gasped when the door slowly creaked open after the first knock, and a cold rush of dusty air made Tuppence doubt her previous bravado.
“Hello?” Buttons called out into the eerie and poorly-lit room. “Anypony home?”
No answer came, and Buttons retreated to her safe position behind her brother. “I don’t like it. There’s something breathing in there.”
“Ah, it’s just some fancy lights and some creepy noises on a record. C’mon,” Marble said, his chest puffing out. “Nightmare Night, what a fright! Give us something sweet to bite!” he shouted in.
The reply was a high-pitched chittering that made the hairs on the back of Tuppence’s neck stand on end. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, Marble.”
“Don’t be such a scaredy-cat,” he quipped with a grin. “Look, I’ll go in first. You girls follow behind me, okay?”
“Hey!” Tuppence gave her brother a shove. “I’m not scared! I’ll go first!”
“Be my guest,” he said, with a wave of his hoof to the front door.
Tuppence’s pride was on the line now, so with far more bravery than she felt, she pushed the door open and stepped through the doorway. “We know you’re in here, changeling! Show yourself!”
“Yeah!” Marble added from somewhere behind Tuppence. “We’re going to stop you, you evil monster!”
“Are you nuts?!” Tuppence whirled and threw a hoof over Marble’s mouth. “Don’t provoke it! Look around, dummy!”
Marble’s eyes widened as he finally saw what Tuppence had noticed. The entire front room—or, what had probably once been a front room—was now free of any pony furnishings, and in their place, several green pods of various sizes were glowing with an unearthly neon green glow. The pods were even attached to the walls and the ceiling, and the three hesitantly began to pick their way around the slime-filled cocoons.
“What are these things?” Marble asked. His hoof reached out and poked one pod, but he pulled it back when the surface gave way to the pressure.
“Maybe it’s all the love that a changeling steals,” Tuppence mused.
“If that’s right, then this one has been stealing a lot,” Marble noted.
“I don’t like this,” Buttons said, her voice trembling slightly. “I’m scared. I wanna go.”
“Just a minute,” Tuppence replied. “We gotta make sure Sergeant Pokey isn’t in one of these things.”
“Oh, I’m afraid it’s far too late for that,” a dark and wicked voice called out from nowhere.
The three siblings screeched and quickly bunched up together, their heads whipping in all directions as they began to inch back towards the front door. Another screech came when the door slammed shut, and Marble’s small horn lit with what little magic he had.
“Well, well, well,” the mystery monster called out with a tut. “Three little ponies, all on their own. Whatever shall I do with these trespassers?”
“S-show yourself!” Marble called out, his voice squeaking just a little.
A glob of slime then hit the floor right in front of Tuppence, and the terrified ponies slowly looked up to where the slime had come from. From the middle of a group of pods, a horrible, deformed pony-like creature of black and green slowly slid out and hung upside down while peering at her catch with wide, slitted eyes. A fang-filled smile split her face nearly in half, and her hole-ridden wings buzzed in anticipation.
“How perfectly delightful!” the oversized bug cackled with delight, her head spinning in an impossible circle to look down on them with devious glee. “Three little flies, caught in my web. I must say, you all look rather delicious. All of that wonderful, youthful love!” she hissed, her tongue snaking out to taste the air. “I can’t wait to see how much you have.”
“You stay away!” Marble said, and a small spark jumped from his horn in an attempt at a warning shot. “We’ll call the guards!”
“Oh, no! Not the guards! I suppose I’ll just have to eat you now. Maybe I’ll start with—” the monster dropped from the ceiling, landed on all four hooves in one smooth motion, and lunged at Buttons—“this little one here!”
The threat pushed Tuppence, Marble, and Buttons beyond what little bravery they had, and in unison, the siblings made a break for the open back door. Tuppence tried not to scream too much as they blindly galloped across the small yard and across the street, but once she had, she stopped to catch her breath and to make sure that evil bug hadn’t caught Marble or Buttons.
“What was that thing?” Marble asked, his breaths coming in ragged bursts.
“I have no idea!” Tuppence gasped back. “Did you see all of the holes in her legs?!’
“She was gonna eat us!” Buttons wailed. “I almost widdled!”
Tuppence started to offer a comforting reassurance to her younger sister, but she stopped. The bug had threatened to eat them, but she hadn’t chased them once they had left the house. If she was serious, why hadn’t she followed them?
“Wait a minute,” Marble said, his thoughts clearly travelling down the same track. “She didn’t come after us. Did she stay in the house?”
“I guess so,” Buttons said.
“But why didn’t she gobble you up, Buttons?”
The trio thought these facts over for a few moments before Buttons spoke up again. “So… she wasn’t going to eat us? She was just trying to scare us?”
“She did a good job,” Tuppence noted. “But it was kinda fun, too.”
The siblings quickly trotted around to the front of the house, and found the front door slightly ajar again, with the same sickly green glow emanating from the windows.
“It’s almost like she wants another pony to go in,” Marble mused. “Hey! We should go tell Violet! She’d love something that scary!”
“She was whining about how lame that haunted corn maze was,” Tuppence noted with a grin. “I bet this’d really freak her out. Can you imagine her face?”
“Well, let’s go get her and find out!” Marble said, with a devious grin. “C’mon!”
* * 🎃 * *
Sergeant Hokey Pokey rolled his shoulders and groaned as the muscles in his neck pulled back. Absolutely nothing had happened in the palace during his shift, and that made for a very long and boring day of staring at a wall.
Truth be told, he would have rather stayed at his post for the remainder of the night and dealt with the boredom. He was not looking forward to Nightmare Night, or the hordes of trick-or-treaters that would be coming to his house and making demands for candy. He wasn’t even sure if he had any candy left, since Chrysalis kept sneaking into what he had bought when she thought he wasn’t looking. She seemed to have a preference for peanut butter cups, since he had found several chocolate shells with two fang marks and no innards laying around, but the bug queen would feast upon whatever she could get her thieving little hooves on.
His idle thoughts were interrupted when he rounded the last corner to his house, and found a long line of ponies waiting on the sidewalk out front. An eerie green glow hung in his windows, the front door was slightly ajar, and two jack-o-lanterns had somehow appeared on his front stoop.
“Chrysalis,” he muttered as a pair of ponies ran out of his back door, shrieking all the way. With a snort, he quickly flew over to the next pony in line, and he landed in front of the clown just as he was preparing to enter.
“Step aside, sir.” Pokey ordered in his official voice. “Royal Guard. Please return to the sidewalk.”
The visitor beat a hasty retreat, and Pokey growled as he threw the front door open.
“Pokey, shut that door!” Chrysalis hissed. “You’ll give away my hiding spot!”
“Where are you?!” he demanded.
“I’m up here, stupid. Now shut the door!”
Pokey kicked the door shut with a rear hoof and glared up at the pods on his ceiling. “What in Equestria do you think you’re doing?”
“Enjoying Nightmare Night, of course.” Chrysalis dropped down on a long line of changeling goo like a spider and smirked as she struck a threatening pose. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Do I even want to ask why?”
“Well, for one thing, it’s free emotions.” Chrysalis licked her lips and sauntered up to Pokey. “Scared isn’t as powerful as love, but it still works. Second, it’s good practice. When I go back to the hive, I’ll need to be as fearsome as I can get so my drones remember why I’m in charge. Third, it’s entertaining. The looks on the ponies faces when I scare them is hilarious!”
“So, you’re scaring ponies for your own needs.”
Chrysalis put a hoof on Pokey’s breastplate and smiled. “Pokey, this isn’t just about me. I’m giving those ponies out there something they want. Do you really think they’d be lined up otherwise? I even got Hazelnut and three little nitwits to help funnel them in, and you know Hazel wouldn’t help me if she thought I was really going to hurt somepony. Quit being such a wet blanket and enjoy the holiday for once. Besides, those little crumb-suckers dump candy when they run, like they think I’m Nightmare Moon and will eat that instead of their backsides. It’s a win-win situation here, my sweet babboo. I get emotions, I get candy, and ponies get scared. What could be better?”
“I am not your sweet babboo,” snapped Pokey. “You can’t just go scaring the—” He stopped with a second look at the relatively small pile of candy Chrysalis had accumulated. “Is that a NuttyOatyOat bar?”
The changeling queen shrugged. “Not my kind of candy. I’ve been slipping them into the emptier bags when they’re not looking. It’s good practice.”
Pokey hesitated, and his mind went back to when he had been a small colt on Nightmare Night. NuttyOatyOat bars had always been his favorite, and he had willingly traded whatever he had to with his friends to get more of the succulent treats. Of course, he always mapped out the most efficient route for trick-or-treating, so when the time came to trade, his sugar haul was easily twice that of anypony else, and his cache of treats would last almost until the next Nightmare Night.
But back then, he had also enjoyed being the one who stood up to all of the scary that the holiday had for his friends, and to drive them back until they were reduced to nothing more than a laugh. If Pokey had to be honest, Nightmare Night was really where the first seeds of his career as a Royal Guard had been planted.
“Well…” Pokey reached out with a wingtip and snagged the candy bar, trying to keep his most stern face. “I’ll go out back and make sure none of them are too traumatized after you’re done. Nightmare Night is for the foals, after all.” He turned to leave, covering the motion of a wingtip as he snagged a second NuttyOatyOat bar on his way out the back door to stand vigil over the departing youngsters.
After all, some children were just a little older than others.
* * 🎃 * *
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Keikaku dori!
This was a fun chapter. Too bad I can't enjoy it.
Maybe I'm just way overthinking it.
Chrysalis' presence is an open secret by this point. She did an amazing job of creating a spooky, scary-but-not-TOO-scary aesthetic. And...did nothing with it.
Changelings could be excellent prostitutes, therapists, Haunted House operators, spies, and probably ten other jobs I'm not thinking off of the top of my head. But Chrysalis is too selfish and self absorbed to even try. This chapter ONLY works because three foals were brave enough to enter the house, AND smart enough to realize that it wasn't a dire threat but a fun trick, AND to spontaneously advertise this Wicked Cool Haunted House to their friends.
Chrysalis stumbled into success here, which is so frustrating because it shows that she COULD actually help her changelings...but she won't ever realize it.
Didn't want to link particular stories here, but people can dm me if they want to read what I mean by changeling jobs.
NuttyOatyOat bars are reason for many a Nightmare Night experience.
Don't think for a second you can get away with such blatant references like that.
I'm on to you.
Lul, perfect holiday for her
Well, Sweet Babboo, aka Pokey, will have some problems this is all over.
Just imagine the mountains of paperwork and interviews of what was said.
Do you want Georg? Because that's how you get Georg!
10509282
You’re way overthinking it. Yes, we’re all well aware of the vast potential job market for changelings. There are stories that are written with this in mind. This is not one of those stories. As a matter of fact, this is essentially an omake in a mostly-fluffy series of fun and feels.
"... And that's why there's a hole in the roof sir! No! Really! Someone mentioned something about a really good spook house in the Sarge's neighborhood and the Princess just kinda... Poofed... Through the roof... Both of them... Please don't make me patch that up sir. My little sisters are out tonight..."
10509750
In Richard Attenborough voiceBehold, the wild Georg is his natural habitat. Scientists are still trying to figure out why this elusive writer fancies these so-called NuttyOatyOat bars, but much of what we know about the Georg is thanks to this singular snack.
10509824
Stopped what I was doing to laugh out loud at that.
Next year Bean wakes up with Shining Armor in a dilapidated room. A hoof chained to a pipe.
-squeak squeak squeak- a rocking horse enters the room.
“Gentlecolts, I would like to play a -“
“-Discord.”
“What? Oh shoot. How’d you know it was me?”
“This seems like a reference to something that I don’t get. That always means it’s you.”
“...:my humor is wasted on you both.”
“The keys please.”
I got a rock XD perfect reference to a classic Halloween cartoon
Don't worry Tuppence, you'll have time to dole out comeuppance!
Drones take note, your Queen was accidentally onto something!
I don't like this chapter. Chrysalis isn't suffering here.
Arghhh I've finished Reading the available chapters now i just keep clicking refresh until i see a new one
Brilliant chapter! Chrysalis was right in her element here. We have even more in common dear Chrysalis, I also love Peanut butter cups! The peanut butter being the best part too. *licks lips and chuckles.*
This was a wonderful bit of Halloween fun, as an afterthought, I'm kinda disappointed Chrysalis didn't try and pull a Nightmare Moon on unsuspecting trick or treaters. But seriously this was fine as it was, don't mind my idle musings.🎃🦄
10509918
Excellent update! I was thinking. Chrysi could use this opportunity to let the common pony know she's not a complete bad guy now. Hazelnut trusts her enough.
10509750
Who wouldn't want a Georg? ...as long as it comes with a NuttyOaty Oat bar..whatever that is.
10515436
Having a Georg is a big responsibility, you know. They aren't just for holidays, after all. <puffs on pipe> Are you ready to feed them, and walk them, and give them plenty of paper and ink and internet access?
Well, now.
i love love love it. a grate chapter.
I got some little ponies in my Trick-or-treat bag!
They were delicious. Almost as sweet and tasty as... CUPCAKES!!! MADE FROM RAINBOW DASH!!
(It will never end... never...)
I may loathe Chrysalis, but this was cute.
*Evil laugher*
Epic nightmare night symbiotic relationship ♡
Delices chapter, in many ways ~♡
10515050
She doesn't want to admit to herself much less anyone else. Until the school of hard knocks gets some sense into her She won't admit it. Even if her actions are saying it.
Don't we know it
Changelings Canberra mutually beneficial in general. With good reason many like them.
So - mutch - potential ♤♡
Indeed