Nothing to see here, move along

Author's Note:

It seemed like a good idea to me at the time, honest.

Alan, human and guest of the crown, awoke feeling refreshed and fancy-free.

Today, he felt, was going to be a good day. Something in his bones told him this, and so-far in his life his bones hadn’t led him wrong. Today the plan was simple, sedate and relaxed. These were things that Alan could get behind.

Princess Celestia - his primary host, dear personal friend and occasional buddy-for-snuggles (as was the official term) - was largely free today, you see, having arranged her work and duties just-so. The simple, sedate and relaxed plan involved her and Alan using this free time to sit on something comfortable and watch something undemanding.

This was something they did quite commonly, or at least as commonly as her busy, regal schedule would allow.

So, following a brisk and refreshing shower and the rigorous application of a pair of trousers, a shirt and a few other aids of modesty, Alan was out of the guest room and off and away to find Celestia, to see if maybe her mostly free day allowed for a quick spot of breakfast before the plan got underway (breakfast hadn’t been included in the plan).

Almost immediately he was struck by the sensation of something just being somehow off. It took him a few minutes and a few twists and turns of the palace corridors to be able to put a finger on it, however, though once he did he was surprised he hadn’t realised sooner.

The place seemed oddly quiet.

Large as the building was and early though it might have been, the palace passageways were usually at least semi-bustling. Some maid or butler or servant or chef going this or that way to do this or that thing. Alan would pass and wave and they’d wave back and it’d all be very friendly and nice. Or else guards on their rounds, also available for a wave (nice lads, the guards, in Alan’s experience).

But today not so much. Deserted. Alan hadn’t passed and didn’t pass a soul. Weird.

He stopped for a second and gave this some thought. Alan had to stop to give this some thought as Alan had difficulties in thinking and walking at the same time. After a few moments he shrugged and carried on his way.

Probably nothing to worry about.

Before too long Alan’s winding (and solitary) path through the palace brought him to Celestia’s door. Here too was quiet, the usual guards nowhere to be seen. Even Alan had to admit that this was all starting to get seriously unusual, but he was at a loss as to what the cause might be.

Standing before the door he stroked his chin briefly before concluding:

“Probably arrived at some switchover point between shifts. Yes. Yes, that’s convincing.”

He then went for the door, opening it even as he rapped his knuckles on it. Typically this sort of thing might have been considered rude but she’d made a habit of doing it to him so he didn’t see much harm in repaying the favour - especially without the guards there to tell him off for doing it, something they normally did whenever he tried.

Who was Alan to question providence?

“Good morning prin-” he started, only to be cut off.

“What?! Wait!” Cried a voice. Presumably Celestia’s voice, though it sounded a bit strange to Alan’s ears.

“Um, okay,” he said, pausing on the threshold, knob still in hand. So to speak.

A pause.

“I’m changing!” Came another cry, equally strangulated and odd-sounding.

This - that she might be changing - was a concept so utterly baffling to Alan that it stopped his thoughts in their tracks. Changing? Out of what? Into what? Why? And why would she not want him to see her when nudity was basically the default?

So many questions.

“...alright,” said Alan, asking none of them.

There came the characteristic flash and tinkle of magic. Alan assumed this had something to do with the changing process. Telekinesis, perhaps? Would make sense. The colour of the flash - what little he’d seen - had looked a bit off but, being colourblind, who was he to say? Probably just a trick of the light.

“Can I come in yet?” Alan asked.

Another pause.

“If you have to,” came the response, definitely sounding more like Celestia that time.

He rather assumed he did have to if the day they were planning on having was to go ahead, and so he did. Celestia was standing in the middle of the room appearing utterly and entirely how she always appeared, albeit with her eyes a little wider than they usually were and without the big smile she typically greeted him with.

Which was a shame, in Alan’s book.

She also appeared to not have a clue who he was, if the look of utter bewilderment that briefly danced across her face was anything to go by.

“Hello...you?”

This was not the cheerful greeting that Alan was used to receiving. This was just plain odd. So, therefore, clearly had to have been some sort of joke on her part - clearly! Therefore nothing to worry about, for Alan knew her to be a joker to the core, and clearly that’s what this was. Clearly.

With this comforting knowledge clutched to the bosom of his brain Alan breezed right past the greetings and into the following question:

“What were you changing?”

Celestia blinked at him, eyes still wide, glancing past him as though expecting someone else to show up. No-one did, and Alan took the opportunity to close the door behind him, something he had neglected to do.

“What?” Celestia asked once he’d done that.

“Just now, when I couldn’t come in. What were you changing?” He asked, genuinely curious given that he couldn’t see so much as a damn hair out of place anywhere on her.

“Oh. My shoes. I was changing my shoes,” she said in the clipped tones of someone thinking fast. Alan looked down. Her shoes were exactly the same as they always were, or at least appeared to be.

So many more questions. Too many for Alan to start asking, he felt.

Probably another joke anyway, best not to get bogged down. Best to just chuckle even if he didn’t get it and just move on. The happiest life was the life least examined, as mother had always said.

“Heh, shoes indeed. You are a kidder! Well, anyway, as I was saying, good morning princess!” Alan said, going in for a hug, as was their custom, to the extent he barely gave it a second thought.

Indeed, the first thought had just been ‘She’s normally the one to get the hug going!’ and so the second thought had just been ‘Suppose today’s my turn!’ and had lasted perhaps half a heartbeat.

“What are you doing?” Celestia snapped, recoiling.

Alan remained where he’d been when she’d recoiled, body extended, arms out, frozen and confused.

“Going in for a hug?” He ventured.

“Hug? Cel- we hug?”

“Uh, not all the time but, you know, often? Occasionally?” Alan said, unsure of himself despite knowing what he was saying were actual things that had actually happened.

Ponies had been and still were, in his experience, quite extraordinarily tactile little things, princesses included. It had taken some time for him to get used to it all, stuffy as he had been, but his time on this side of whatever nebulous curtain of energy separated here from there had softened him considerably. This abrupt and blunt refusal was unusual!

Especially from her!

Celestia stared at him flatly for a second and then blinked again. Slowly.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. We do. I was testing you.”

That made sense?

The most powerfully awkward hug followed. Alan more-or-less stayed as he was, arms outstretched, too cautious to move lest he make some other sort of mistake, and Celestia edged in towards him as though this was the first time she’d ever done this. Her approach and engagement was all to cock as well, their usual (and well-practised) way of getting a hug to work between a big magical horse and a human entirely forgotten.

Limbs went in all sorts of places, and the whole thing was a mess which she apparently couldn’t untangle herself from quickly enough.

“What are- why are you here?” She asked, without preamable once she’d broken the hug and taken a few steps to get some distance. Again Alan was taken aback. Surely she should know why he was here? She’d been the driving force behind today’s plan! She was the one who’d asked him to be here!

Another test, maybe?

“The plan?” He probed, getting only a blank look in response and so clarifying: “We were going to watch our show? Well, the show, rather.”

It hadn’t been made for them specifically, after all.

Celestia continued to look utterly nonplussed.

“We were?” She asked. This was all most unlike her, all of this, top to bottom. Only so much could be put down to joking. Her jokes were usually funny! This was just weird. Some new style? Something she was trying out? Long-form humour of a sort most unusual?

Alan was quite at a loss.

“I thought we were. If you changed your mind that’s quite alright, it’s just you said that you’ve been kind of busy lately but that today would be a good day because you didn’t have a lot on?” He said, tentatively, conversationally feeling his way forward.

She stared at him.

“Oh. Oh yes. I remember saying that.”

The show in question, the one which had been vaguely hinted at previously, was a soap opera, and the primary thing that the two of them liked to watch together on these quiet, lazy days.

Prior to his arrival-stroke-appearance the show had been something that Celestia had watched on her own. Something of a guilty pleasure for her, apparently, it being an unabashedly schmaltzy and melodramatic affair - it knew exactly what it was setting out to be and to do and was and did it.

Since Alan had shown up though and expressed enthusiasm for schmaltz and melodrama he had been invited to join her whenever the opportunity arose, and the two of them had rather a lot of fun with it, or so he liked to think.

It was called Neighbours, by the by, this soap opera, something which Alan appreciated on so many levels that the first time she’d introduced him to it he’d had to have a little sit down. While it featured many and varied (some might say outlandish) plot threads, the overall theme of the show was that of good neighbours becoming good friends.

A theme so important it was in the theme song, in fact.

Alan checked his watch. Breakfast had come and gone, now was the slim window between breakfast and brunch - a window wherein which no food could be eaten, obviously. More importantly the airing of the programme was rapidly approaching. All this faffing about with changing and questioning and failure at hugging had cost them valuable time.

“Well, it’ll be starting in a minute and the sofa is there so...if you want…?” He asked, cautiously, nodding to the nearby sofa and its attendant widescreen, high-definition scrying...crystal...thing...the thing which functioned as a television might in a normal plane of existence.

Maybe they had conventional televisions here, Alan didn’t know. Frankly, he didn’t want to know. It was information he could do without. She had the crystal thing. They watched their show on it. He didn’t ask questions.

Celestia’s jaw seemed to twitch. It didn’t usually do that.

“Yes. I do. Let us do this thing. This normal thing. That we do. Does it take long?” She asked.

“The programme? Um, half an hour maybe?”

“That...is acceptable,” she said through gritted teeth.

Further awkwidity followed as neither one of them seemed to actually want to be the first to head towards the sofa. Alan eventually led the charge, as it were, and Celestia followed with gingery reluctance behind, settling down beside him as he settled himself, having got the crystal wotsit to fuzz into life.

And, once settled, Alan settled further in Celestia’s direction - their standard operating procedure being to gradually melt against one another as the programme got underway, the better to be cuddly and comfortable. This time though Celestia, still sitting ramrod straight, recoiled.

“What is this? That we are doing? Is this another hug? What is this?” She asked, inching away.

“Snuggling?”

Snuggling being similar to though technically distinct from hugging (as she should have known).

“Snugg-ling? _Snu-gling?” She said, the first part in confusion and to him, the second part in bafflement and to herself, as though the word was some odd foreign delicacy she wasn’t sure had been cooked properly or not.

“Mean, we don’t have to…” Alan said, morosely. He’d rather been looking forward to the snuggling. It’d be a lovely point of familiarity in a rather strange and disquieting day.

“Is it normal? Would it make you less suspicious of anything being out of the ordinary if we did it? Not that anything is out of the ordinary. But would this snug-gling make you less suspicious in general?” Celestia asked, peering at him intently.

“...yes?”

If nothing else it’d make him feel a bit better about life in a general sense. Snuggling a magical horse often had that effect, Alan had observed, though it was often more pronounced with Celestia for reasons he was sure weren’t important.

She seemed to be giving the prospect some thought.

“I will allow it, then. As I normally do. Like a normal day,” she said, at length.

And so it was.

Given her unrelenting rigidity it was mostly Alan moulding to her this time, rather than them moulding about one another, which was what normally happened. He didn’t mind too much, really, as getting to wrap oneself around something so soft and warm and lovely was also nice, regardless of odd circumstances.

By inches Celestia even seemed to be relaxing a bit. Not a lot, but a bit. A good sign!

Their attention then went onto the crystal screen, on which the programme was finally getting underway.

Celestia’s usual habit was to sing along to the theme tune. Not overtly, not loudly, probably not even consciously, just under breath and normally towards the end as the title came up. Alan found it rather endearing, honestly, and its absence stuck out. He looked up at her and found her glaring at the screen looking like she was trying to pass a kidney stone.

“Are you okay? You seem a little out of sorts today,” he asked, concerned.

“Of course I’m okay I’ve never been more okay I’m the most okay I’ve ever been and could ever possibly be the most okay that’s me now shush just snuugel no talking shush.”

Hard to argue with that, particularly as she’d used a hoof to squash his face back against her as she’d said it. He imagined she probably had a lot on her mind and decided to let the issue drop. Technically, he wasn’t wrong.

They lapsed into quiet again. The show burbled. On it, right out of the gate something unlikely was happening. How dissimilar to real life, Alan thought, where unlikely things almost never happened, at least not to him.

Barring magical horses, obviously, but that was normal for him now. It had been unlikely once, now it was commonplace.

Silence continued. And not the cosy, companionable sort the two of them normally enjoyed. The sort punctuated with nudges, jokes about this or that and occasional observations about the wonderfully cloying nature of Neighbours as a programme. No, this was the smothering sort of silence, where something is plainly wrong but no-one really wants to make an issue of it.

The strangeness of the morning finally got to Alan and he could take it no more. He had to give vent to it otherwise the tension would, well, be unhealthy in some vague, non-specific way. He had to say something, anything! Just to puncture the mood!

And in a flash the perfect thing came to him, something so silly it would surely, finally get poor Celestia to smile and relate what it was that was clearly bothering her.

“You know,” he said, chuckling at the sheer ludicrousness of what it was he was about to say. “If I didn’t know any better I’d say that you’d been replaced by some sort of shape-changing infiltrator who’d had to hastily assume Celestia’s appearance and pretend to be her because I’d stumbled across them midway through some scheme or plan they’d been engaging in and they’d panicked and just had to play along and hope they didn’t get rumbled while waiting for the perfect moment to take me out and continue their nefarious activities.”

He chuckled again, shaking his head.

“Even around here that sort of thing is probably pushing it a little, eh? Eh?”

After all, shape-changing beings with malign goals and aims were far too fanciful even for magical horse land, so the mere suggestion would be ridiculous enough to get a good giggle, he was sure. Just for being so out there and mad!

Only not. No response.

He looked up at her again.

Celestia’s eyes were the widest they’d ever been and unblinking too, staring down at him.

“You alright there?” He asked.

And she bit him.

Surprised at this sudden turn of events - and surprised at just how pointy her teeth had felt - Alan had just about enough time to exclaim:

“Ooh, steady on! That’s not-”

Before keeling over sideways onto the sofa and promptly starting to snore.

A second or so later Celestia turned back into Chrysalis, who she actually was.

Most Changelings couldn’t do the biting trick, but a queen can cheat or, rather, a queen obeys her own rules - putting marks to sleep by biting them was the least of it, it was barely noteworthy.

Screwing up her face as she tried to work out how much she hated the taste of alien (it tasted very, well, alien) Chrysalis sat up straighter, causing him to slide off and thunk onto the floor head-first, arms limp, knees under him and arse raised skyward.

The picture of dignity.

“Oops,” she said, wincing and moving to maybe see he’d bruised his head before remembering she wasn’t concerned about his wellbeing and so stopping. Besides, the carpet was thick anyway, he’d be fine. Deserved it, too.

A brace of royal guards poked their heads in through the door.

“We heard a thunk, your majesty?” They asked, looking first to Chrysalis with wariness then to the quietly snoring Alan with alarm.

“Get in here!” Chrysalis snapped and the two guards - disguised Changelings, clearly - approached, each one trying to shield themselves with the other, making the whole thing a bit clumsy.

When they were in front of her properly she didn’t say anything. She just stared angrily. Had Changelings been able to sweat they would have. In fact, let us say they did, for comedic effect.

“Um, pleased to report the whole palace is now under our control, your majesty,” said one, hoping to placate her with some good news. The surprise of their attack had been total. Alarmingly total, in fact. Kind of embarrassingly easy.

Chrysalis did not react, just kept on looking angry. Seconds ticked by.

“Why weren’t you guarding the door?!” She then snapped.

The two disguised guards exchanged the briefest of brief looks. Express instructions had been given that the door was not to be guarded. They’d remembered this. She’d written it down for them.

“Your majesty, you didn’t-” one started, but she cut them off.

“Silence! You’re lucky that the unbridled success of this operation has put me in a good mood otherwise you two would be dead already!”

Neither of the guards said anything to that. Chrysalis, eyeballing them, then pointed down at Alan.

“What is this thing and how was it missed?” She asked, rather less loudly and angrily but still with plain irritation.

The guards were unsure how to answer this question. The spy placed in the palace had mentioned the presence of Alan - or at least the presence of a strange, otherworldly alien of vague origins - but Chrysalis had assumed this had been a joke at her expense and that spy had been set to cleaning the hatchling warrens with a toothbrush stolen expressly so he could use it to clean the hatchling warrens.

Subsequent information reports had excluded Alan’s presence. Thus.

“We didn’t...list...pets?” One of the guards said, tentatively, wincing in expectation of something unpleasant. Chrysalis instead just looked to Alan.

“Pets?” She said to herself, turning the idea over. Made sense, in retrospect. He didn’t seem to serve much purpose other than taking up space, getting too close and making odd noises. This fitted Chrysalis’s understanding of what a pet was and was for.

Anything else on the subject was interrupted by a nearby wardrobe’s doors opening and the limp, unconscious body of the actual Princess Celestia slumping out of it. Everyone present jumped, even Chrysalis, who had quite forgotten that’s where she’d stashed Celestia when she’d heard a knock at the door.

“Did either of you see my jump in surprise?” Chrysalis asked the guards who both furiously shook their heads.

“No, your majesty!” They said as one.

“Good. Now put her in a sack and get her back to the hive immediately!” Chrysalis said, pointing to Celestia. The guards instantly produced a sack from somewhere and got to work on that, it not being an easy thing to do.

Sacks were, famously, the optimal way of transporting one’s enemies, especially princesses (who were known to be vulnerable to sacks). Later the captives would be put into gross gooey pods to be held in magical gooey stasis, but to get them to the gross gooey pods it was always best to use sacks for the sake of safety.

Eventually it took the combined efforts of the two disguised guards and a handful of other, unchanged drones to struggle Celestia into the sack and struggle her out of the room.

“Are we taking this thing too, your majesty?” Asked one of the disguised guards who was still around, nudging Alan with his leg.

Chrysalis considered the limp human, still resting on the floor in the same thoroughly humiliating position he’d landed in, snoring loudly, arse raised in salute to nothing in particular.

Now that his actual purpose in the palace had been discerned she could sort of see the appeal, a little. He was quite cute, in an ugly sort of a way, and had that sort of animal loyalty and adoration that was apparently prized in a pet. Would having these strange, novel, snuu-gels on tap back in the hive be something she was interested in?

She wasn’t sure. But she wasn’t sure they weren’t, either.

Hmm.

That, and if she had it, no-one else would. It would be hers, which was a definite plus.

But no, not this time. Not the time to be sidetracked. No time for any further distractions. Besides, victory was assured! All this would be hers by tomorrow anyway. She could just come back and pick him up later. Assuming she still wanted to. Which she might.

That was her own business.

“No. Leave it for now. Put it in that cupboard, there. That one,” she said, pointing to the same wardrobe that Celestia had fallen out of. The guard - smaller than Alan - then spent a merry few minutes doing their best to get the human hidden. It was not easy, but it was very funny for Chrysalis to watch.

With that (finally) done, they departed. Everything was going perfectly!

Later, everything fell apart - quite literally in the case of the hive - but that was later, and those events are covered elsewhere.

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