Fluffy Days and Buggy Nights

by EpicGamer10075

Midnight

The world flashed black as Princess Chrysalis entered one of her subject’s dreamscapes to cleanse it of its nightmare, the void quickly parting to reveal a nearly pitch-black cityscape that seemed to resemble Manehatten, though the buildings were far taller.

‘Vertigo or size-wise insignificance, then,’ The changeling reasoned for the dissonance as she fluttered her wings and flew off into the middle of the city, ears perked for any sign of the dreamer.

Soon enough, a loud shriek echoed through the buildings, alerting the Defender of the Dreamscape and making her turn and fly towards its source, weaving through streetways and tunnels with a deftness most would not think her wings capable of.

Eventually a dark streak off in the distance caught her eye, seeming to have found the tormentor and flying faster towards it. She turned many corners, the streak always seeming just out of clear sight, but the numerous glimpses of it seemed to have it in the shape of a pony, a rather large one at that, with cobalt armour and a mystical mane and tail.

‘Queen Luna of the thestrals,’ Chrysalis identified, recalling her encounters with the diabolical mare and her schemes to plunge the world into an eternal night. It was hard to imagine the dark monster as the sister of the peppy punk pony she met with just this evening...

Another shriek flooded the city, forcing the Princess to up her speed yet further, a rather uncomfortable proposition given the fragility of her wings, but the dreamscape held no internal logic, so the wind blasting across her did no real harm. Of course, the psychosomatic aspect of it still prevented her from going fast enough to catch up with the stronger-winged alicorn, despite their owner’s experience in this realm.

“You cannot escape me, little filly...” The evil pony’s voice echoed around, her tone while perhaps not visceral, definitely held a dark intent.

‘A foal; that would explain the size, though there’s no way a foal would be able to outrun or outfly Queen Luna, even though she is moving very fast...’ Chrysalis thought as she rounded a few more corners, getting closer now and holding the black alicorn in near constant view. ‘Teasing. A fear only natural for foals, whereas older creatures fear things more sudden and intense.’

A dark chuckle sounded through the streetways before a sudden shout told of the alicorn dashing at the victim, loud and high-pitched wails and cries erupting from the no doubt suffering filly. The Princess followed the sound to its origin, soon finding the armoured thestral on top of a small, lightly coloured pony, who was writhing and flailing with her cries.

Something quickly struck the changeling as off however, noting the tone of the wails to be slightly more upbeat than she expected while she flew closer to the scene of the crime, where the position and movements of the mare and filly reminded her of something.

“Is that... tickling?”

Chrysalis stopped to clear her buzzing wings and the whipping air from the cacophony of noises, and finding that, yes, the diabolical Queen Luna was tickling somepony.

For a few moments, the Princess remained still in bewilderment. ‘This is a nightmare, I saw the darkness on the outside...’ She shook her head. ‘No matter,’ She thought before shooting a purple bolt from her horn at the ebony alicorn, soon hitting her and making her shatter like glass, freeing the oddly terrified foal.

The changeling then flew up to said foal, who was resting on the ground and panting in fear, not even mustering the energy to look around. “Are you alright?” She then asked concernedly, making the pony startle and jerk up to see her approaching savior.

The filly didn’t reply, however, instead gasping as her eyes widened, no doubt in wonder at the royal in her presence. The royal in question merely adopted and warm smile and rolled her eyes at the response, happy that the dreamer wasn’t hurt.

“Hello my little pony, I trust you are now alright?” Chrysalis asked in that same warm tone as an icebreaker of sorts.

The pony then blinked a few times before she seemed to come back to the ‘real’ world, nodding in slight embarrassment.

The Princess then took in the filly pony, a white coat with no visible cutie mark on her flank, a white ruffled mane with black ends that somehow made it look like a drawing, along with a delightfully adorable paper hat atop her head.

“Well,” The royal then started, “Now that you are safe, I do believe it is time I take my leave from this dream.”

“Dream?” The pony asked in bewilderment.

“More of a nightmare,” Chrysalis replied. “It is my sacred duty to help my subjects out of their nightmares, though,” She adopted a pensive expression while holding back a snicker, “I wasn’t expecting tickling to be something to be truly afraid of.”

The foal shuddered a bit at the mere mention of it. “I don’t like it,” She said with a slight pout, “Being trapped and... forced to laugh until it hurts... laughing is supposed to be fun...”

“Mm,” The Princess grunted in assent, trying her best not to pounce on the poor pony from her sheer cuteness. “Yes, such a juxtaposition can often be frightening; something safe being turned on its head like that...” She mumbled in thought.

“What?”

“Pay it no mind,” Chrysalis replied offhoofedly. “Regardless, I have other subjects to attend to.” She flared her horn in its signature purple in preparation to leave this dreamscape and added, “Farewell.”

The filly quickly got up and waved to the changeling. “Bye, Princy!”

“‘Princy’?” Said changeling responded, slightly baffled. “...Is that supposed to be a nickname?”

“Yes!” The foal replied ecstatically, “Princess Chrysalis, so Princy!”

Chrysalis laughed heartily at the adorable statement before clarifying, “‘Princess’ is not my name, it is merely my title.”

“Oh,” The pony responded in slight embarrassment, though paused in thought and then called, “Um, bye-bye Princess Chryssi!”

The Princess merely giggled and rolled her eyes while finished her spell, then flying back out of the filly’s dream. ‘I’ll let that one slide...’

Comments

[Horse-With-No-Name]

Yus

[Rathorc Lemenger]

The one story we ALL needed.

[Ri2]

That was cute. Should we know who the kid was?

[EpicGamer10075]

10874205
Possibly foodstuffs or building materials (humans have managed to make bricks out of mycelia, after all)?

10874214
Alicorns are unrelated to royalty here, mostly because that was needed for the story. There may be implications of that, such as many other alicorns existing (likely with mortal life spans), but I didn’t bother thinking about it.

10874216
Nah, it wasn’t relevant. The only reason I disclosed Celestia and Luna was because I thought it would be interesting to see what they would do in a world where they weren’t princesses.

[Alondro]

Thpppppppppt... :P

(taco appears) GASP! (nom nom nom nom)

[Alondro]

10874205 Because imported seaweed is far better than domestic!

[Razzy]

What a nefarious foe!

That was cute.

[RDT]

Hello, I am one of the judges for the Reunions Swapped Roles contest, and I'm going to share the scores that I gave this story along with the comments. Note that I was just one of three judges, so these comments do NOT reflect what the other judges thought of the story.

Quality 3 / 5

There are just a couple writing slip-ups (not counting Spoder-Mane!), such as “to hit the ceiling, and stay there.” not needing the comma. But overall, it did not impact readability.

Reasonably comedic. You captured both Fluffle Puff’s and Chrysalis’s personalities fairly well, despite the obvious difficulty of transforming visual media into a written story. Okay, maybe Fluffle was a little more angry than most of her depictions, but that just comes with the station.

Nothing was unexpected enough to make me laugh out loud, but it’s packed full of grin-inducing moments. This is a decent story.

Roleswap originality/utilization 3 / 5 

Fluffle and Chrysalis being the Diarchs of the Equestria is quite interesting and not something I’d seen done before. Since Chrysalis’s usual swaps are with Cadance, having her replace Luna is a point for originality. 

Given the light-hearted tone of the story and its short length, I feel like we missed out on some of the roleswap ramifications. The existence of a constant enemy in the dream world was something that canonical Luna never had to deal with, and we did see a few of the consequences in the story. But I still feel like there was more you could have included.

Of course, seeing some little things like the twin Guards and Fluffle’s intimidating effect on the rest of the court were still good details to have.

Prompt utilization 1 / 3

The theme of reunions was not particularly well-addressed. While each meeting (Fluffle and Chrysalis, Chrysalis and Celestia, Chrysalis and Luna) could be considered a reunion, you didn’t focus on that aspect. In the case of the first two, you mostly went for character chemistry, and in the last case it was simply Chrysalis flexing her dream powers. While these choices do not detract from the story quality, it does mean that you didn’t address the “Reunion” theme of the contest much.