> A Sparkle-ling Perfection
>  by Cast-Iron Caryatid
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter One 【Twilight】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

My name is Twilight Sparkle.  This is unusual for a changeling, but I am not just any changeling.  I am the most magically powerful changeling that has ever been designed—though unfortunately, that isn’t saying much.

Unlike other changelings, however, I have one mission and one mission only.  Unlike other changelings, I act alone.  Unlike other changelings, I say ‘I’—not just to ponies but in my own head and in spite of my connection to the hive mind.

My mission, such as it is, is to become a better changeling.  To collect and collate magical knowledge and improve on it.  To be redesigned and reborn again and again by my own hooves so that someday my genetic material can be used as a template for a new breed.  It is the greatest honor that can be bestowed upon one such as me, save the lofty goal of becoming queen, and if I do my job well enough, even that is not beyond my reach.  The day when I am chosen to birth my breed, if it ever comes, is a long day off, however.

I am currently ten years old and about to take the first step on the road to perfection.  Also, the first step on the road into Canterlot.  My chosen form is that of a purple-coated unicorn filly my own age.  I have dark blue hair with shocks of violet and pink running through it.  I give myself no cutie-mark; though, my head is full of ideas for one.  This form is special to me.  It is burned into my genetics to be all but permanent.  I can take others, but this is the one I sleep in.  This, even more than my black chitin, crooked horn and diaphanous wings, is who I am.

And right now, who I am is a filly invisible in the crowd.

Somewhere in this city lives another significantly older filly named Sunset Shimmer.  She is the personal student of the god queen of ponies—the alicorn with the misnomer of ‘Princess’ Celestia—and the reason I am in Canterlot.

I mean to replace her.

The average harvesting drone would find this task all but impossible.  The co-operated efforts of a more refined infiltration breed might have a chance at organizing some grand charade, but not even the love of an alicorn would be worth such an expenditure of resources.  This is not acceptable for me.  I do not wish to wear her face for a week or two.  My mission does not have the luxury of so small a scope.

No, for the mission parameters I have been set, it would not be feasible for me to become Sunset Shimmer.  Instead, Sunset Shimmer must become me.  Everything she is, everything she has, will have to be taken from her so that Twilight Sparkle may inherit it.  Indeed, she is the reason I have chosen the name Twilight Sparkle to begin with.  I find the symmetry amusing.

The hive mind does not laugh at my cleverness and wit in nomenclature.  It never does.  I believe I might be the only changeling alive with a functioning sense of humor.  The hive mind says that, no, I am the one that is malfunctioning and requests that I stop self-narrating over the link.  It also suggests that I might be having a midlife crisis, and I must remind it that my maturation rate and metabolism have been modified to that of a pony for the sake of my mission.  I do not actually believe that it has forgotten this fact, as it is the accumulated knowledge and essence of our entire race.

Not for the first time, I wish for the ability to blow raspberries over the link.  It does not come.  I do not admit defeat, but I cease my narration regardless.

At least, I cease broadcasting it.

I walk down a street I have never set hoof on and enter a house I have never seen.  “Mom!  I’m home!” I yell, as would a child just home from school.  I do this in spite of knowing that it is twice the volume necessary for the changeling posing as Twilight Velvet to hear me and that such an announcement is unnecessary.  It stares at me in confusion as I make my way up to my room.

The house is nice.  It feels warm and lived-in, which is an ideal characteristic for a changeling facade.  As I am finding my way to the vacant bedroom, I come across one that is not vacant.  I stare at it for a moment, make a decision and readjust my trajectory.

The door yields to my hoof and slams open.  Without warning, I glom onto the white stallion I find inside.  “Hey B.B.B.F.F.!” I say, beaming.  The changeling looks down at me as if a bug had landed on him.  Rude, if technically accurate.  My greeting and familial hierarchy established, I leave the changeling to his studies.  “You and I are gonna be the best of friends!” I inform him as I hop back out the room and shut the door.

The changelings posing as a family in this house are not like me, but they are similar.  They, too, have a long-term mission involving deep infiltration into the upper echelons of the pony hierarchy and cannot have their work jeopardized by the usual harvesting methods.  Specifically, the changeling calling itself Shining Armor is currently in the early stages of infiltrating the royal guard.  This I find to be fortuitous for my own purposes—not only as a source of support should I need it but for my research.  I shall have to rebirth him a few times to make sure that he is powerful enough to achieve the rank that is required of him.  I have not yet gone through the process myself, so the experience should be valuable to me.

I reach what is to be my room and enter it.  It is a fine room by Equestrian standards and perfect for a young unicorn filly such as myself, but therein lies the problem.  As required by the Canterlot fire code and general Equestrian sense of aesthetics, the room includes a large glass security flaw—a type of aperture known to Equestrians as a ‘window.’  It will be an adequate personal space, but I will have to find someplace else for my real work—preferably, a location that is cool, dark and out of the way.

I find such a place beneath the house.  Ponies call them ‘cellars’ and use them to store potatoes and alcohol—though, not, for some reason, the alcohol that northern ponies make out of potatoes.

Ponies are weird.

As it turns out, the cellar offers a perfect approximation of the deep tunnels in which we changelings place chrysalises for spawning and rebirthing.  That’s ‘chrysalises’ with a lowercase ‘c.’ Though, our queen is typically present for such events as well.  She is what you would call ‘involved’ in the process.

Unfortunately for me, the fact that such cellars as this marvelous specimen are so close to home is exactly why changelings living in pony society are not allowed to use them, else all the ponies would have to do to uncover us is check to see which ponies are living with the wine.

Also, inebriated changelings are lousy at holding a disguise, which seems like a rather large oversight, now that I think about it.

Why this is unfortunate is not that I believe the hive will object to my appropriating the space—I am allowed certain liberties above the average infiltrator, and this is one of them—but due to the rule in question, said space appears to be being used as something of a dumping ground for all the things a changeling household acquires that it does not need or understand.

There are, apparently, a large number of things that fit this description.

I force my small purple shape off, which elicits from me a sound halfway between a grunt and a sigh.  I lift my black, chitinous self up and over the clutter in the room with my wings in hopes that maybe it isn’t as bad as it seems, but I have no such luck.  The room is packed solid with junk.

There’s no helping it.  This is my mission.  The changelings upstairs are not mine to command, and I can’t very well call attention to the house by calling for a bunch of drones out of nowhere.  I grumble to myself and make sure the hive mind doesn’t hear it as I begin to sort the detritus.  Some of it I will be able to break down into the various resins, waxes and hiving that will be needed to make this a proper changeling chamber, but the rest would have to go.

Each item I drag across the room shifts my priorities a little, and a new plan begins to take shape.


⁂


“Pfffhahahaha!” I laugh along with the rest of the fillies in the park as we watch Comet Crash do a dive-bomb into the snow.  Six months have passed since I started living in Canterlot, and I have managed to integrate myself into one of the local schools.  It doesn’t have much of a magical curriculum to offer, but my sights are set a little higher than an elementary school library.

What it does offer is a real, honest-to-hive identity.  I exist in Canterlot now; I can be asked after.  The neighbors know me, and because they heard of me from their own little filly, they think nothing of it.  With this identity also comes food.  The companionship of the young is meager, spread thin as it is without care, but it and the motherly concern of the teachers manages to sustain me, for I am small.

In the middle of ducking away from a well-aimed snowball, I stop to crane my neck and look behind me, but it is no physical sound that catches my attention.  “Sorry girls!” I yell quickly as I make off across the field.  “I’ve gotta run.  Mom’s calling!”

The third thing the small elementary school offers is a location that is, by small quirk of the Canterlot’s zoning ordinances, conspicuously close to the much more prestigious Celestia’s School For Gifted Unicorns.  Today is the day that this last point finally matters.

I have watched Sunset Shimmer through the eyes of changelings around her.  She is haughty, she is arrogant, and she has a burning desire for power.  In short, she is a lot like me, and that makes her perfect for what I have planned.

Ever since my arrival in Canterlot, there has always been one truth about Sunset Shimmer that I have felt was self-evident—she was not going to last.  She would always overreach her abilities, Princess Celestia would scold her, and she would act out in defiance, after which they would argue and nothing would be solved.  Everypony knew about the princess’ little firebrand, but nopony seemed to think she would ever do anything about it, least of all the princess herself.

I know better.  Like I said, she’s basically me if I had been born a pony, but angrier—more impatient—and she has a right to be.  Sunset Shimmer does not have queenhood to strive for.  She does not know in her heart that she has a place in the world.  All she sees is a candle burning itself at both ends, and for what?  For a pony who will outlive her by centuries.

I can fix that.  I can give her what she wants, and in doing so, I can take the next step—the first real step—on the way to what I want.  I’ve known this since that first long month I spent clearing out the cellar and regurgitating various consistencies of slop that would become the clean, sterile laboratory I have now.  It wasn’t pretty, and such a thing was never meant to be built by a single changeling, but it has given me time enough to think.

The question has been when, where and how to approach Sunset Shimmer.  The ‘when’ is now.  She has finally had enough.  According to the hive mind, she has just told Princess Celestia off with all the pent-up frustration she’s built up over the years and stormed off.  Best of all, she’s done this without any prompting or manipulation from us—that is important.

‘Where’ has been much harder to decide.  Where will Sunset Shimmer go?  In this, I have employed a tiny little black lie, giving her the impression through one of her changeling classmates that the magical mirror in storeroom 5-B leads to a world where all her dreams will come true.  In truth, the mirror is a trap that shows the viewer a dream and delivers to them a nightmare.

I do not intend to let her enter it.  She shall be much more useful—and much happier—in this world so long as I can convince her of that.  Therein lies the problem.  The ‘how.’

I will deal with the ‘how’ just as soon as I can squeeze my tiny little black body through this even tinier hole.  It is almost as if they do not want little fillies entering storage rooms through the ventilation aperture.  I will never understand these ponies and their ‘windows.’

I wince as my carapace deforms just enough to let me scrape through.  No sooner have I landed with a clatter and thump on the cold concrete floor than the door handle begins to rattle—almost as if there is somepony on the other side hastily trying each key on a stolen keychain to find the right one.

With equal haste, I retake my purple form with one small change and hide myself behind the mirror.  The door opens, and Sunset Shimmer dashes in, slamming the door behind her.  She stops briefly to cringe at the loud noise before she throws her back against the door, holding her breath and listening for pursuit.  None comes.  Finally, all but blue in the face, she sucks in a lungful of air and heaves it out as she slides down the door onto her rump.

She sits there for a while, just catching her breath, before lifting her gaze to the elephant in the room behind which I am hidden.  The mirror is certainly, from what I understand, a marvel of magical design.  A lot could be learned from it, but it is not worth the look of absolute wonder she is giving it.  She believes that she has found her salvation.

I am going to take that from her.

It’s okay, though.  I have a replacement.

I realize that Sunset Shimmer is no longer breathing heavily at the hoof of the door.  Panicking, I quickly drop myself to the ground.  A quiet sigh of relief hits me as I see her hooves in front of the mirror.  Controlling my breathing, I ready my most self-assured voice.  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I say, my voice echoing in the small space.

I am rewarded with the sound of hooves clopping backwards on the cement as Sunset Shimmer backs away from the mirror.  “W-who’s there?”  She gasps, probably fearing that a teacher has caught her.

With a grin on my face, I step out from behind the mirror.  “Don’t worry, Sunset Shimmer.  I’m not here to get you in trouble.”

Sunset Shimmer stares at me, for a moment, clearly reassured by my strong voice and calm demeanor.  Then, for some reason, she falls over herself in a fit of giggles, unable to control herself.

“What—?” she says through gasps for breath as the burst of laughter dies out.  “Did Blitz Rush put you up to this, little filly?  Are you that wicked little sister he always brags about?  Oh, mare, I am going to get him back for—uhh.”  Suddenly, she seems to sober up.  “No, I guess I’m not.  Never mind.”

Frowning, I decide to ignore this aberrant behavior and take another step forward, putting myself between Sunset Shimmer and the mirror.  After a moment’s pause for effect, I spread my wings.

Sunset Shimmer’s eyes go predictably wide.  “You’re not Blitz Rush’s sister,” she deduces.  “Who are you?  Another useless alicorn of love and friendship that Princess Celestia thinks is better than me?”

“My name is Twilight Sparkle, and I hold no association with your ‘Princess’ Celestia,” I say with a grin.  “I’ve come here to offer you a deal.”

Sunset Shimmer visibly wavers with uncertainty, but quickly falls back to the anger that no doubt brought her to this point.  “How about you get out of the way before someone comes looking for me and I don’t do something we’ll both regret?  Pint-sized alicorn or not, I can still wring your neck.”

Shrugging, I step aside.  I let her take two steps before I mention an important fact.  “Shaggy Daze lied to you,” I say, and she freezes.

“What did you say?” she asks, turning on me.

“The senior who told you about this mirror?” I clarify.  “She lied about the world on the other side of it.  If you enter, you will lose all your magic.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she says, rolling her eyes, but she doesn’t make another step towards the mirror.  “It’s not like it’s a secret.  All the seniors got the lecture.”

“Ah, but you aren’t a senior, and you didn’t ask anyone else, did you?” I point out.

Her presence here says no, and the look on her face confirms it, but she’s not about to admit it.  “How would you even know what she told me?” she asks, not quite changing the subject, but refusing to admit her ignorance.  “No, you know what?  I don’t care, and I don’t believe you.  Get out of my way.”

I sigh, but I have not failed yet.  “Very well, go,” I tell her.  “But do not tarry.  The portal will close, soon, and you would not want to be caught on the other side.  I shall be here when you return, and we can talk.”

Sunset Shimmer scoffs at me then shakes her head.  I have offended her, but it will not last.  “Whatever, brat,” she grunts as she shoves me aside and plows on through the portal.

It is only a few moments before she comes scrambling back through, throwing herself away from the mirror as if it is the mouth of a dragon.  She collapses against the far wall of the storeroom, breathing heavily once more.  “What… in Tartarus… was that?” she asks between breaths.

I step back in front of the mirror and sit down facing Sunset Shimmer.  “What did you see?” I ask.

Sunset Shimmer stares blankly through me.  “There were these horrible pink… things, like a cross between a minotaur and—I don’t even know what else,” she says, hugging herself with her hooves.  “And I—I was one of them!”

That would explain the reaction, then.  “Humans,” I say with exaggerated disgust.  “Singularly worthless creatures.  No magic whatsoever.”

“Why?” she asks, casting a haunted look at the mirror.  “It showed me myself as an alicorn.”

“That is what it does,” I tell her.  “It is an evil thing, designed to ensnare the good and pure.  It leads to many worlds, each one worse than the last, tailored specifically to the pony who steps through.  Some say that the worlds are not even real—and that the mirror is a prison more cruel than Tartarus.  They bring it here to show the students how dangerous such magical artifacts can be, no matter what they promise.”

“That’s not what Shaggy Daze said.”  Sunset Shimmer shakes her head in denial.  “Why would she lie?”

The answer is pretty simple.  “Because I told her to.”

“W-what?” Sunset Shimmer exclaims, springing back up to her hooves.  “Why would—is this some kind of game to you?”

“No, I’m very serious, Sunset Shimmer.  By coming here, you’ve proven your mettle,” I say, lying my tiny purple plot off.  Tell somepony that their actions—their mistakes—mean something, and they’ll believe you.  “You’ve proven that you’re willing to give up everything to get what you want.  Stepping through that portal would have meant giving up your family, your identity, even your very body, if it meant getting the power you desire.  It was a lie, but it doesn’t have to be.”

There it is.  A single ray of hope lights up in her eyes.  “What do you mean?”

“I can give you what you want,” I say, ruffling my wings as a hint to my meaning.  It is a hint that is utter horseapples, but the details aren’t important.  She would come around, and my words were all completely, if only technically, true.  “I can make you all but immortal, give you a body that will live for thousands and thousands of years—like a true princess.  It will not be a copy, but unique to you, and yes, powerful.”

Sunset Shimmer makes a show of sizing me up, as if to decide whether or not to believe me, or whether or not my deal was ‘good enough,’ but we both know that she’s trapped.  “How powerful?” she asks, and I grin.

“Your special talent is fire, is it not?” I ask, cocking my head to look at her cutie mark.  “I can promise you, you will have a fire in you as you’ve never dreamed.”

She eyes the door in a subconscious desire for escape, but the world out there has already rejected her, and she, it.  She truly has nowhere else to go.  “What’s the catch?” she asks.

There’s always a catch.  Ponies do not trust anything that is ‘too good’ unless it’s wearing a crown and has a sun on its butt.  I came prepared—and with the truth, no less.  “The catch?  I suppose the catch is that it will take time for you to grow into that power, and I know you are not a patient mare, but what is a century or two when you are timeless?”

Sunset glances nervously at the door again, fidgeting with the stolen keyring around her fetlock.  Whatever she said to Princess Celestia must have been really something, since it only takes her a moment and a final glance at my tiny wings before she gives in.  “Fine.  I accept,” she says through gritted teeth as if every word is a tooth being pulled.  “What would you… have me do?”


⁂


“That was way too easy,” Sunset Shimmer says, looking behind herself with suspicion in her eye as I shut the door behind us.

I grin.  “That’s what it means to be a part of the hive,” I say.  “I don’t think I can even imagine my life without it.  To begin with, it’d make my job much harder.”

Sunset Shimmer stops in her tracks.  “The… hive?” she asks.  I am about to explain when somepony else interjects.

“Twily,” comes the warning from Shining Armor as he enters the hall from the kitchen.  “What are you doing?”

I silently curse ever having convinced him to vocalize everything he says to me.  He’s actually starting to act like a big brother.  “My mission,” I say, glaring daggers at him.

“You mission does not involve telling the template about the hive,” he says, and I wonder how much of the sourness in his voice is just acting.  I have to remind myself that he’s as far removed from the average drone as I am, just in different ways.  “If we have to release her, then the less she has to forget, the better.”

“They think she’s left this world.  We are not going to have to release her,” I snap in return, and Sunset Shimmer takes a step backwards.  I quickly glance at her and groan in frustration.  “You are ruining everything,” I say through clenched teeth at my ‘big brother.’

He takes one long look at Sunset Shimmer and lets out a heavy breath.  “Fine,” he finally relents and walks past Sunset Shimmer towards the door we just came through.  She does her best to stay well away from him as he does so.  “But I’m locking all the doors, and I’ll be on guard.  I will not have you jeopardizing my mission.”

I slap my face with my hoof.  It is a thing that I have seen ponies do when expressing exasperation.  It hurts, and I wonder if I’m doing it right.  “She can teleport, you moron!” I yell as I grab Sunset Shimmer by the hoof and drag her off in the direction of the basement.  It’s kind of awkward, as she’s four years older and nearly twice as tall as me, but she doesn’t put up a struggle, and it works out, somehow.

As soon as we are out of earshot, it stops working, and her hoof slips out of mine.  “Just what am I getting into, here?” she asks as if she had not already agreed to give up her body for the sake of power.

“I think it would be better if I show you,” I say and open the door to the basement.  Addendum: I know ahead of time that it is not, in fact, better if I show her.  I think we changelings might have some sort of instinctual shock/revelation fetish, which seems rather counterproductive, but there you have it.

Sunset Shimmer peers down the stairs.  “It’s a basement,” she states, sounding rather disappointed.

I roll my eyes, get behind her and push her towards the door.  “Of course it looks normal from up here; I’m not stupid.  Look, I promise there is plenty for you to freak out about at the bottom of the steps.”  It is an odd thing for me to promise, but it works.  Ponies.

Sunset Shimmer puts a hoof on the doorjamb, preventing me from hurling her down the steps and shrugs my hoof off.  “Alright, alright,” she grumbles and takes the first step.  I step down after her, close and lock the door, which is different than Shining Armor locking the doors because… it just is.  Shut up.

When Sunset Shimmer gets to the bottom, she finds a small clearing in the middle of… a literal sheer wall of junk precariously piled all the way to the ceiling.  You can’t see it from this side, but it’s actually all embedded in some pretty solid hiving and not much thicker than a typical wall.  Before Sunset Shimmer can say anything, I zip around her to where a standing wardrobe lies askance and open it for her.

The wardrobe opens into a warm, well-lit scene that looks like a little slice of home.  Well, to a changeling, anyway.  To Sunset Shimmer, the green resin and hiving yielding to strips of yellow bioluminescence that arc overhead probably looking like the inside of some fell beast.  Without hesitation, I hop through the wardrobe to the other side, turn and gesture with my forehooves open wide.  “Welcome to my lab.”

For some reason, Sunset Shimmer refuses to follow.  In fact, she takes a step backwards.  I sigh.  “Sunset, you came here so I can turn you into a different species—is a little biological veneer really that bad?” I ask, my excitement deflated.

Sunset Shimmer hesitates, not retreating any further or getting any closer.  She takes a breath and tries to feign self-assurance.  “Answers first,” she insists.  “You’re not an alicorn.”

Well, she’s got me there.  A flash of green fire runs up my body, and the tiny purple wings are gone.  I shrug.  “Nope, I’m not.”  She takes a step closer to get a better look at me.  A good sign, but she takes half of it back when she’s done.

“Some kind of shapeshifter?” she asks rhetorically.  At least, I hope it’s rhetorical, since she just literally saw me change shape.  I was led to believe she was not a complete imbecile.  “You’re not even a pony, are you?  That’s not your real shape.”

“Well…”  I hesitate but only because I know how much trouble I’ll be in if this goes badly.  “If you wanted to be technical… no, I’m not exactly a pony.  This is totally my base form, though—it’s in my genes and everything!  I have to work real hard to look like something else.”

Sunset Shimmer eyes me closely.  “I want to see it.  Your real form.  What your species actually looks like.  You said hive, and considering this room… some kind of bug-pony?” she asks.  Well, she’s not far off.

“Fine,” I whine.  “I was gonna have to show you anyway, I guess.  Just remember, I’m doing this because I need your trust, okay?”

She looks unconvinced.  “What, you need a friend or something?” she asks, and I roll my eyes.

“Oh, hive no,” I sneer and make a face.  What in the hive kind of question is that?  “I need a sla—err—assistant.  Studying magic is my mission, and unlike with Princess Celestia, there are no rules here.  No limits, I mean.  Obviously there are rules; lab safety is important.”

“Ri-i-ight,” she says warily.  “We’ll see about that later.  Let’s have it then.  Your true form.”

I shuffle a bit as I prepare myself.  Soon enough, though, I am engulfed in green flame once more, and Sunset Shimmer gets to see her first honest-to-hive changeling.

“Oh.  My.  Celestia,” she says, gawking.  “You are…”

I prepare to chase after her if she runs.

“A giant breezie!” she exclaims.

“What,” I state absently.  “I’m a changeling.  The ponies upstairs are changelings.  We are not breezies.”

Sunset Shimmer considers for a moment then turns right around.  “Nope.  Sorry.  I don’t want to be a breezie—even a giant one.”

“Oh for hive’s sake,” I fume as I take to the air, zipping around to cut her off.  “That is not even the plan!” I insist, but my desire to earn her trust prevents me from lying.  Shameful, I know.  “Not the eventual plan.  A few weeks at most—maybe!”

To my relief, Sunset Shimmer stops when I block her off, meaning she’s not upset enough to teleport past me—which is good, because I honestly wouldn’t be able to stop her.  Shining Armor might get the drop on her with some venom, but I’d be well and truly screwed if it came to that, so who even cares?

Oh.  Right.  Serve the hive and all.  I mumble my praise through the link.  Note to self: do not blaspheme when self-narrating to the hive mind.  Also, stop self-narrating to the hive mind.  This time, I’m not sure if it’s me or the hive mind saying it.  Probably both.  A pity, then, as I’d hate to have to disappoint the both of us.

“Though, seriously,” I add, gesturing to myself.  “What part of this is not awesome?  Magic and wings—it’s like, two-thirds of the way to being an alicorn already!”

“Uh huh.  The part where you are literally an insect,” she says, acting out an exaggerated shudder.  “And two-thirds?  Really?”

Shoot, I think she’s catching on to my desire for accuracy.  “Two-thirds… of a percent… of a percent, probably,” I admit with great reluctance.  I may be the most magically-powerful changeling outside of Queen Chrysalis, but that wasn’t actually saying much.  “I’ll fix that, but it doesn’t matter.  Improving the changeling genome is the plan for me, but it’s not the plan for you.”

“Oh, Celestia, it’s like pulling teeth,” Sunset Shimmer curses.  “Get to the point, already!  You brought me here implying that you could make me like unto a god.  Immortality—or near as—was specifically mentioned and it doesn’t sound like alicorn is what you have in mind.  Unless you have some way of turning me into a freaking dragon, then I have had just about enough of this evasive nonsense!”

“Fine.  Be that way,” I mumble.  My horn glows, and I set the large, purple-spotted egg down in front of Sunset Shimmer and mutter, “Spoilsport.”

“Oh,” Sunset Shimmer says, staring down at the dragon’s egg.  “Cool.”


⁂


Sunset Shimmer stares at her dinner with a weak look of distaste—though, I can’t quite puzzle out why.  The changelings posing as the parents of Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor are a much simpler and more pliable breed, and so ‘mother’ had shown no hesitation in fixing a meal for our pony guest.

“Is something wrong?” I ask without interrupting my preparations.  With any luck, I’ll be able to have her in the chrysalis by this time tomorrow.

Sunset stops poking at the plate with her fork to look at me.  “What… is this stuff?” she asks.

I pause, trying to deduce the source of her confusion.  “They are eggs,” I explain, believing this to be rather self-explanatory.

The plate clatters onto the resin floor, having slipped from Sunset Shimmer's magic as she physically recoils.  “What?” she cries out in shock.  “You’re feeding me your young?  That’s sick.”

It takes me a moment to process this reaction.  Silently, I open a cupboard, retrieve something with my magic, and take it over to Sunset Shimmer.  “This,” I say, holding up an oblong, luminescent yellow-green object the size of my hoof and dripping with a gelatine substance, “is a changeling egg.  Those are chicken eggs.  They were purchased at the grocer down the road.”

The disgust on Sunset Shimmer’s face slowly turns into confusion and then interest.  “Really?” she asks as if I were playing some sort of joke on her.  She needn’t have worried; as the only changeling with a functioning sense of humor, I am very careful and considerate with how I use my wit.  Eventually, she accepts my silence as confirmation and asks, “What did you do to them?”

“They have been fried,” I state rather matter-of-factly.  “I am confused.  Ponies eat eggs.  Ponies fry foods.  Why do you find this unusual?”

Sunset Shimmer resumes poking at her eggs, now showing a slight fascination as she tested their texture with her fork.  “We use them in cooking—” she explains, “—like milk or baking soda.  It’s an ingredient, not something we just eat… like this.”

“How peculiar,” I remark, considering the plate in front of Sunset Shimmer.  “I am certain that griffons eat this dish, and they are partially avian themselves.”

“Ah,” Sunset Shimmer says, sounding like she has solved the matter of confusion.  My fuzzy purple ears perk up in interest.  She notices my inquisitive look and returns it with one of confusion.  “Twilight, they’re griffons,” she finally says, as if this explained everything.

I only get more confused.  “Elaborate,” I insist.

“Griffons… eat meat, so of course they don’t think anything of the eggs of another species,” she says, sounding a little frustrated for some reason.  “Ponies would rather not think about some of the things that go into our baked goods.”

I consider this and find it logical.  “I see,” I say, thoughtful.  “Perhaps this will be a good experience for you, then.”

Sunset Shimmer pulls her head back from the eggs, which she had been sniffing.  “Why?” she asks.

“Because,” I say with a hint of amusement.  “Your diet is going to get a lot more interesting in the future.  Dragons are obligate lithotrophs, but they can eat and enjoy almost anything.”

“Lithotrophs?” Sunset Shimmer asks, not sure how much she likes what she’s hearing.  “You mean, like… rocks?”

“Well, eating just any rock off the ground would probably be about as palatable as a pony grazing by the side of the road,” I theorize.  “Primarily, dragons enjoy consuming gemstones, but a lot of organic dishes in the world today came ultimately from dragons.”

“Oh yeah?” Sunset Shimmer asked, and from the sound of it, she had finally forked herself a mouthful of fried egg.  “Like what?”

“I hear bacon is pretty popular.”


⁂


“That white stallion called me ‘the template’ when you two were arguing, didn’t he?”

Sunset Shimmer and I had relocated from the basement to my bedroom.  The bedroom still possessed its window, but it was a better option than having her sleep in the lab.  We would just have to be careful.

“It is an accurate designation describing your official function as far as my mission is concerned,” I say, summing up the situation in a perfectly clear and concise manner.  Nonetheless, I choose to elaborate further, ere Sunset Shimmer prompts me to, as she usually seems to.

“As Shiny implied, arranging for your continued cooperation—your continued operation in general, in fact—was not required, nor by him desired.  I arranged for it because I believe we are alike and that you will not only prove useful but perhaps find your peace.”

Sunset Shimmer sits quiet for a moment in the spot she has settled into next to the bed, while I lay on my back on top of it.  I frown, suspecting she has inferred some additional emotion from my statement of fact.  My suspicions are validated when she lets out a sigh, and asks, “Peace?  Is that what you have?”

I consider this for a moment.  “I know my place, I know my mission and I know my future.  I have access to all the knowledge of the changeling race, and I will do as I was designed to until the day I either die or find myself successful.  I believe that is peace, yes.”

Sunset Shimmer lets out a melancholy chuckle, at that.  “And what part of that mission requires the presence of a bitter, angry, uncooperative teenager?”

“Hrm,” I say, pondering my phrasing.  “I am not certain you will quite appreciate my appraisal.”

“It’s my body, isn’t it?” she guesses, quite accurately.  “If I’m a template, that makes sense, but a template for what?”

“As I am the most powerful non-royal changeling alive, so are you the most powerful non-royal pony.  I am afraid, however, that there is quite the disparity, should you compare the two.  Once I have you out of it, we shall use your body as a schematic to go about righting the discrepancy.  Shiny has accepted the role of prototype, as it should benefit his mission, and once I am satisfied with him, I shall rebirth myself.”

“And that’s it?” Sunset Shimmer asks.  “Just, bam, suddenly there’s a race of ‘mes’ running around?  I mean, that’s pretty freaky, I guess, but I’ll deal.”

“No, your body will be a great boon, but it will not be the end of the road, and its use is not the part I imagine will cause discontent,” I say, and predict that after such a statement, Sunset Shimmer is once again growing frustrated with my circuitousness.  I cannot be a changeling I am not, however—not yet—so she shall have to adjust.  “In fact, I believe that you should be feeling quite flattered.”

“Flattered.  Right,” she says in a flat monotone which I believe is meant to communicate sarcasm.  It is a valiant attempt, but she should really leave the humor to an expert such as me.

“Have you noticed anything odd about the laboratory and this room, Sunset Shimmer?”  I ask, hoping that if I lead her to the answer, she will be less upset when she gets there.

“Unusual?” she parrots, posing the question to herself, as such.  “Not really.  There isn’t much to comment on, really.  This could be any little filly’s room.”

“Any little filly who is not planning on unlocking the secrets of the cosmos, yes,” I agree, somewhat patronizingly.  “The only books on magic I own are of a fifth-grade reading level, Sunset Shimmer.  They were given to me at the school I have attended for the past few months as my cover.”

Sunset Shimmer lets out a yawn and stretches.  “I thought you said you had access to all the knowledge of the—your race.”

“Changelings do not use books.  With the hive mind, we do not need them.  That has always been the belief, anyway.  It only makes sense that knowledge should be shared between all, does it not?  The hive mind seems to be the ideal tool for developing a truly enlightened race, yet unity is not the changeling way.

“Changelings… change.  We grow, we evolve and we adapt.  There are many specialized breeds of changelings, from drones to infiltrators, behemoths and even unique changelings like me.  Diversity and specialization is strength, and the hive mind ties it all together in one cohesive whole.  It is too cohesive, though.  For many things, it is a wonder, but the knowledge is stagnant.  Fledgeling concepts die in the shadows of the tried and true, and nothing changes.

“That is the true meaning of my mission, Sunset Shimmer.  It is not enough just to change once, but to collect, to learn, to create, and to use that knowledge to change again, again and again.  To do this, I will need not just the best body, but the best books, the best teachers, the best… mentor.”

“In other words,” Sunset Shimmer says, her voice quiet, hesitant and hoarse.  “You need the life I threw away.”

“Yes,” is all I say.

She thinks about it for a while, and I can tell she’s trying to keep her breathing even.  “I really screwed up, huh?” she finally asks.  I suspect the statement is rhetorical, but I attempt to ease her burden anyway.  I cannot have her regretting the day’s events too much.

“Tell me, Sunset Shimmer.  How surprised do you think Princess Celestia was to see you leave?  More surprised than your other tutors, the palace staff or even me?  No, she knew that this was coming, and she did not stop it.  She could not, because what you wanted—the environment you needed to excel—was the one thing that she would not or could not give.

“I cannot say whether or not she could have made you an alicorn or not.  It’s possible that it was her plan all along, or it’s possible that even if you were the perfect student for your entire life, you might have gone on to grow old, gray and forgotten like all of her other students over the years.  In the end, it doesn’t matter, because to her, it is a perk, or perhaps even a curse.  At best, it might be a reward, but never a goal to be striven for.

“I think that even if you had gotten that reward from her in the end, it would have been hollow to you.  Would you have forgiven her years down the line when you discovered that your wish had been hers to grant all along and she had withheld it?  Maybe if you became the platonic ideal that she found worthy of such a reward, you would accept it wholeheartedly, but would you want to be that pony?  Is your fire one that belongs in a hearth or the belly of a dragon?

“Do not think on it too much.  What is lost is lost, but the future is not so bleak.  Remain by my side, and we shall both see our dreams fulfilled—not the dreams we were given, but the dreams we hold in our hearts.”  My horn glows, and I switch off the light.  “Good night, Sunset Shimmer.”

A quiet sniffle is her only response, and I begin the biological process that will put me to sleep.  As the darkness clouds in around my consciousness, I frown.

Wait, what… was that thing I just said about the both of us?
> Chapter Two 【Sunset】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	My name is Sunset Shimmer, and oh Celestia, what the hay am I doing here?  I silently chide myself for swearing in Celestia’s name, but this one time, it’s apt.  I’m not foalish enough to blame her for the things I said that brought me to be waking up in a house full of creepy bug-ponies, but she is one-hundred-percent at fault for the perfectly-aimed sunbeam prodding me in the eye.

A shiver runs down my spine, and I’m suddenly fully awake as some part of me remembers the old stories about Celestia being able to see whatever the sun’s light touches.  It’s ridiculous, but I scoot over to curl up in the shadow of the bed nonetheless.  It’s not that I believe the old tales, but even if she’s not looking in on me in truth, I find it hard not to picture her here in spirit, and that’s not something I’m ready to face just yet.  I wasn’t supposed to have to face it.

I was supposed to be in another world by now.  A world where I would be as a god.  That world had turned out to be full of sad, magicless ‘humans,’ and I among them.  Now, I am lying on the floor of a little filly’s room in the noble quarter with a tiny purple head poking over the edge of the bed, looking at me like I am some sort of curious animal to be studied.  I suppose, from her point of view, I am.

“I see that you have come to appreciate how troublesome your pony apertures can be for those of us who would prefer to remain hidden, but you need not fear discovery, Sunset Shimmer.  According to the hive mind, your princess has ‘taken the bait,’ as it were.  She believes you to be beyond her reach for at least thirty moons, if not forever.”

“Swell,” I say as I watch her crawl stiffly out of bed and stretch her tiny filly body.  Not for the first time, I ask myself if she really is a filly and if I’m really going to let her do weird bug-science things to me for the sake of… well, for the sake of making all my dreams come true.  Not for the first time, I answer… yes.

Yes, I am.

It’s not an easy choice, but I am not known for being indecisive.  It is the right choice.  It is the only choice.  So long as I believe that Twilight Sparkle can and will hold up her end of the bargain, I will see this through.  Otherwise… I don’t know where I’d go.

Twilight Sparkle opens the door and exits into the hallway while I’m still lying on the floor.  Looking back, she says, “There is a bathroom at the end of the hall.  Shower and come downstairs, but do not eat.  The less waste in your system, the better.”  With that said, she leaves, not even waiting for a response.

The contents of the instructions don’t surprise me, but their timing does.  “Wait,” I say, getting to my hooves and rushing over to the door.  Twilight Sparkle is already at the end of the hall leading to the stairs.  “You mean you’re going to do it today?”

She stops and cranes her neck to look back at me.  “Yes and no.  We will start the process as soon as you come down to the lab.  I will explain in detail then.”

The soft thumps of the filly’s hoofsteps down the carpeted stairs are drowned out by the much more rapid beating in my chest.  Now?  She was going to do it now?  Twilight Sparkle had emphasized that I would need to be patient.  I wasn’t expecting this.

Of course, if I’d stayed in the mirror, I’d already be some wretched ‘human’ thing, but even in that nightmare scenario… even if the portal had closed on me before I realized my misfortune, I’d still have been able to come back after thirty moons.  Wasting two and a half years of my limited mortal life without magic would have been a complete disaster, but that would have been the extent of it.

This is more real.  This, I’m pretty sure, is going to be permanent.

Slowly, I work up the courage to shut the bedroom door behind me and make my way to the bathroom, as requested.  After a restless night on the floor, I definitely need a shower one way or the other.  If I try, maybe I can pretend that I’m just going about my usual morning ablutions and not… preparing myself for a life-changing operation.

‘Operation.’  That’s one way to put it, I think to myself as I find the bathroom’s light crystal, drop it into the receptacle, shut the door and turn on the water, directing my magic for each process with my horn.

My horn.  I reach up and feel the smooth curves and subtle ridges with my hoof.  Even if everything goes exactly as planned, I’ll be giving it up if I go through with this.  I know, intellectually, that dragons have a rich, primal magic that can be just as nuanced as unicorns’ if they choose to develop it, but at the same time, I can’t imagine ever being without my horn.  What will it be like, doing magic without it?  To live and breathe magic instead?

I step underneath the nearly scalding water and let it warm me up.  I try to picture myself as a dragon, but I fail.  Dragons are petty, idle creatures happy enough to laze about under the sun or sleep their lives away atop beds of gold and jewels until their bodies calcify from disuse and they forget how to do or be anything else.  I punch the tiled shower wall with my hoof and lean into it, gritting my teeth.  That will not be me.

Anger fills me, and I hit the wall again, but this time, the anger is not focused inward.  This time, I am reminded of why I said the things I did to Princess Celestia.  It was so much easier to fantasize about becoming an alicorn—to be the same pony I always was, just better—but the truth is, they are one and the same.  Alicorns and dragons are both given everything I would kill to have, and they both inevitably squander it.

Twilight Sparkle is not going to squander her power.  She’s going to take it and use it to improve not just herself but her entire race.  I haven’t put much thought into her motivation of needing an ‘assistant,’ but there are worse ways I can imagine spending my early years as a dragon.

My early years as a dragon.  I repeat it in my head, as I wash myself, still trying to picture each pony feature replaced with a draconic one—hooves replaced with claws, coat replaced with scales, cutie mark with… with…

…with nothing.

In spite of the hot water pouring down on my back, I shiver.


⁂


My damp coat prickles underneath the cool, dry air as I find my way down the hall to the stairs.  The house really is like something out of a picture book, I think, as if I have ever in my life actually read picture books.  I am not exactly new to expensive architecture, having lived in the palace for the last few years, but the dark wooden hoofrail, polished by use over centuries, has a different feel under my hoof than the cold, timeless stone of the palace.

It seems odd to me that I can appreciate such a thing, given the value that I place on my own timelessness, but maybe not that odd.  Even after Princess Celestia took me in, I spent far too many nights crying myself to sleep, alone in an empty stone tower.  This… feels like a home—though, the piercing eyes of the white stallion watching from the bottom of the stairs tell me it is not my home.

The stallion says nothing as I walk by, and my hackles rise.  “Would it kill you to show me some respect?” I ask sourly, not turning to look at him directly.  “I’m here because I choose to be.”

He gives a snort at that, and the look he gives me makes my skin crawl.  “You’re here because you have nowhere else to go.”

I don’t argue.  It’s not worth my time.  “Yeah, well, get used to it,” I bite back.  “I get the feeling that I’m going to be here awhile.”

“We’ll see,” is all he says and starts up the stairs.  I guess the conversation is over.  Good riddance.

I haven’t yet had a chance to get a sense of the layout of the first floor, but I find it easy enough to retrace my steps back to the basement, where I find Twilight Sparkle.

“Remind me which one of you is supposed to be the ten-year-old?” I ask her with as much biting sarcasm as I can muster, which, this early in the morning, is quite a bit.  “Your ‘brother’ is still acting like a spoiled child who didn't get his treat at the grocers.”

Twilight Sparkle gasps.  “Not my knight in shining armor!”

My mouth drops open, and I gape at her comically.  “Please don’t tell me that’s actually his name,” I beg.  I’m actually half serious.

“Only the second half,” she informs me, and I facehoof a little on the inside.  Also a lot on the outside.

“Seriously?” I groan.  “That makes him, what, ‘Shining Armor?’  Is that supposed to be ironic?”

 For some reason, she hesitates to answer.  “Umm, I'm not… actually sure.”

“You do know what irony is, don't you?” I ask.  Given her oddly haphazard knowledge of ponies, it seems like a reasonable question, but for some reason it makes her a little snippy.

“Of course I do,” she huffs.  “I'm just not sure the hivemind does.  It has a queer—by which I mean incorrect—sense of humor, and I'm not sure ‘Shiny’ actually has one at all.”

“The… hivemind,” I say, stalling the conversation as I think back to the odd conversation we’d had before bed.  “Right, you mentioned that before.  How does that, um, work, exactly?  I mean, believe me—I really, truly do not give a shit about you or your race, and under normal circumstances, you’d be entitled to your secrets, but that only flies up to the point where you said I’d be spending a few weeks as one of you.  Also, that.  Explain that too, because that’s kind of important.”

She just looks at me for a moment, and I wonder if I’ve annoyed her or if she’s holding some sort of conversation in her head with that hive mind of hers—asking permission to answer my questions?  ‘Shining Armor’ certainly didn’t seem to think I needed to know anything.

“For the record,” she says, stressing each word until I’m pretty sure that her brief silence was indeed a show of annoyance, which is a relief.  “I had a presentation planned that was to be the first topic of discussion until you mentioned Shiny,” she tells me before turning away to rummage around behind the large chrysalis that dominated this side of the room.

I roll my eyes and remember that I’m putting up with all of this for a good cause—me.  “Yeah, well, I’m sorry your whiny sibling got in the way of what I’m sure will be a riveting ‘presentation,’ but I’m sure you’ll get over—are those charts?  And a chalkboard?  Changelings use chalkboards?”

Twilight Sparkle cranes her neck from her position setting up an easel for the chalkboard to looks at me like I’m an idiot.  When she wordlessly goes back to what she’s doing, I think for a moment that she’s chosen to ignore me, but after pulling the legs of the easel into place with a snap, she stands back up and brings it over to me in a weak green glow from her horn.

There is a strip of masking tape on the side that reads, Property of Meadowview Elementary School.

“No, Sunset Shimmer, changelings do not use chalkboards,” she informs me, and I’m not quite sure if she’s being haughty or bitter.  Maybe she doesn’t know either, considering her purpose in life is to address the failings of the changeling education system.  For all she went on about knowing her place in life last night, there sure are times when she doesn’t seem to be very happy or content.  She does seem to brighten a bit as she finally stands in front of the easel, baton in hoof and ready to lecture.

It’s a shame that I can’t really share her enthusiasm, as I don’t really like lectures.  I’ll try to make an exception this time, though, since becoming a giant bug thing is maybe not really the best time for the ‘learn by doing’ approach.  It isn’t that I never study, mind—it’s just that, nine times out of ten, I'd be better off with an hour to myself and a book on the changeling facts of life.

Pity they don’t make those.

“Okay, here’s how this is going to go,” Twilight Sparkle says, putting on a lecturing tone—and damn if it isn’t a good one.  I can feel myself automatically sit straighter.  “Your pony queen should have already taught you about souls, I assume?”

“Uhh, princess,” I automatically correct her.  “But yes; a pony’s soul is the seat of their identity, the source of their cutie mark and name, and the heart—but not the body—of their magic,” I recite for her, falling back into old habits as if I hadn’t burned all my bridges to that life just yesterday.

Twilight Sparkle nods, satisfied, and turns to a childishly-drawn diagram of a pony’s head and a glass of water.  “Correct.  Your body only performs the gross mechanisms of thought, magical and physical processes, and it is the soul which provides the impetus that drives these actions.  The body is important, as without it, you could no more think than you could eat a hamburger—”

“What’s a hamburger?” I ask, interrupting her, but she ignores me.  Typical.

“—but as far as what we call a pony, is concerned, all of it can be moved—not copied—to a new container.  Even memories, which the body is responsible for keeping separate and contained, are in fact a part of the soul, though the most volatile part.”

I nod, but warily.  “Which is why nopony has ever done it,” I tell her.  “Not successfully, anyway.  The test subjects always ended up… flat—like all of their experiences were blended together into one homogenous whole that meant nothing to them.  Eventually, Celestia forbade the research, barring breakthrough advances in other fields that could promise real progress.  I take it you have such a workaround that’s specific to changeling physiology?”

Twilight Sparkle nods, but holds up one hoof to forestall further comment.  “Yes,” she says.  “And I’ll get to that in just a moment, but first, I just need to make sure we’re both on the same parchment—”

“Page,” I manage to slip in, and it gets about the same reaction as my last interjection—which is to say, none.

“I am emphasizing for your sake that you have no reason to be attached to your meat, and you know this,” she says, staring me down and enunciating clearly.  Somehow, I get the impression that she expects me to react badly to the news.

“Look, I get it, alright?” I grouse, irritated at all the pussyfooting around the issue.  “You are going to remove me from my body, which is already all kinds of squick to start with, and then you’re going to put me in a baby bug thing—”

“Pupa,” she corrects, which, okay, I admit gets a snort of laughter from me, and I have to pause to get myself back on track.  I guess I fail at the whole ignoring interruptions thing, but I don’t let it stop me.

“You’re going to put me in a pupa,” I say, starting over from the correction.  “Whereupon we, plural, will be studying the intimate crevices of my comatose body to divine the secrets of, if not necessarily everything that makes me such an awesome unicorn, at least the physical characteristics of one so finely honed to the production and control of magic.  Somewhere during that, you’re going to move me on into a freaking dragon’s egg for me to be reborn again, and then you and ‘Shiny’ will take turns on the drawing board so you’re prepared to systematically pick up the pieces of my bucked up, aborted life and take my place!  Then, you’re going to use that information and resources of a princess’ student to produce an army of clones and take over the world!”  By the time I’m done recapping all the weird-ass crap that Twilight Sparkle’s plan entails, I find myself panting for breath.  “I—bucking—get—it!”

Twilight Sparkle just purses her lips and waits for me to finish.  “Fine,” she says after I’m done, turns to the easel and flips all of her charts and graphs onto the floor.  “I am going to liquefy your brain and lay eggs in it.”

I stop to process that for a moment, and I feel something like a claw around my heart.  My silence does not go unnoticed.

Twilight Sparkle looks up from the mess she’s made of her materials.  “Sunset Shimm—?”

A clap of thunder and a flash of light drown out her words and my world fades to white.


⁂


 I wake up to a blurry impression of trees, my horn burning.  It isn’t like waking from a restful sleep in a haze of blissful ignorance.  The sun filtering through the trees and the wind in my mane instantly fill me with an icy dread.

“Oh, balls,” I state eloquently, realizing what I’ve done.  For some reason, my panicked teleportation has brought out the Trottingham in me.

I’m not from Trottingham, nor have I ever been there.  I briefly pray that I’m not there now, but teleportation doesn’t work like that—nor does language, for that matter.  At least, I’m pretty sure local dialect isn’t plucked from the aether in the same way as names are.  I feel like somepony would have mentioned that at some point, and that the hippogriffs working in the palace kitchens would have been easier to understand if it were true.

I roll over on the grass and shield my eyes from the sun with my hoof to ease the throbbing in my head.  After lying there for a few moments just breathing in and out, I let out an audible groan.  “I am such a lily-livered, sallow-ankled, snub-nosed mule.  Buck!” I tell the trees and limply slam my forehooves into the grass at my sides.  Great, throw a tantrum, why don’t I?  Real mature.  “I don’t need this right now.”

My anger peters out into self pity almost as fast as it came for a lack of any ability to express it or a target to aim it at.  I try to stand and make it halfway, but my horn feels like a leaden weight anchoring my head to the ground, and I just flop over onto my other side.

As I lay there, I can’t help but reflect on how bad this is.  Somepony could see me—Princess Celestia could find me—and Shining Armor is going to be such a smug, self-righteous prick when he finds out I bolted just because that little bug-sister of his wants to lay eggs in my head—oh bucking Celestia, how do you respond to that?

You respond to that by running the buck away as fast as equinely possible, you literally Celestia-damned child.

And what’s wrong with that?  That’s the sensible response, isn’t it?  Not only that, but… I am a child.  I hate to admit it—I hate that it’s true—but I am.  I am fourteen freaking years old—how is this my life?

It doesn’t have to be.  Deep down, I know that.  I could swallow my pride and crawl back to the princess.  I could tell her how wrong I was—tell her about the horrible hive of shape-changing, fillynapping, brain-liquefying bugs hiding in her city.  She would take me back and set torch to the infestation.  She would.

And I would hate myself for it.  I would never be happy, and she would always look at me with that sad face full of pity, and she would never forget.  She would take me back, but there’d be no taking back what’s already been said—doubly so  not when my mind hasn’t actually changed on what’s important.

I could run, though.  I could go to Trottingham.  Do they have changelings in Trottingham?  Would anypony know if they did?

Buck.


⁂


I knock on the door with my face.  This is unfortunate because, for the moment, I’m still a unicorn, and unicorns are known for the curious quality of having rather sensitive horns attached to their faces.  Mine in particular feels like I’ve used it to plow a rock farm and then touched it up with a pencil sharpener before ramming it into the solid oak door of my buggy benefactors.

“Ow,” I mumble into the wrought iron door knocker and fumble around for the latch with my hooves.  I know I’ve found it when the wooden surface pressing into my face disappears, only to be replaced moments later by the floor, which is of similar construction but features a much nicer polish.

I’m not gonna lie—I’m kind of miserable right at this second, and I basically hate everyone and everything.  Finding my way back from the outer palace gardens without magic or the ability to focus for more than five seconds without questioning my choices in life basically sucked, and it’s a miracle I made it without drawing the attention of anyone who knows me.  I would explain how I managed it in greater detail, but the fact is, I don’t know either, since I wasn’t present at the time.

Of course, avoiding friends, family and the constabulary is one thing, seeing as I had precious little of the former, a poor opinion of the latter and all but nothing in between, but I don’t believe for a second that I avoided the notice of the vaunted changeling spy network.  Kind of makes them assholes for not lending me a hoof, but this surprises no one.

It’s as I’m imagining just how many bugs-in-ponies’-clothing must have been secretly laughing at me dragging myself dead through the icy streets, that I hear a stilted sniffle coming from the door to my left, opposite the storeroom that leads to the cellar.

You have got to be kidding me.

Getting to my hooves feels like I’m trying to push the whole world off of myself rather than vice versa, but somehow I manage in spite of the hyperbole weighing me down and make my way over to what I divine to be the kitchen by the presence of an icebox and a small, purple unicorn sitting on a high stool with her head buried in her hooves on the counter.

Mostly, it’s the icebox.

Shoot.  How do I do this?  At least Shining Armor isn’t around, from the looks of it.  Letting my body fall heavily against the doorjamb, I take a deep breath and give it a knock in lieu of the presence of a door.  “Um, hey,” I say, announcing myself without much of my usual charm.

Tiny purple ears swivel in my direction, and slowly, the head attached to them lifts out of the barrier formed by two stubby forelegs.  Damn it all, she has been crying.  She looks at me with unfocused eyes, like I might be a hallucination, and she doesn’t want to get her hopes up.  Or a changeling, I guess—wow, it must suck to grow up with shapeshifting siblings.  Do they do that?  Laugh and play and prank each other by making themselves look like old granny bug down the street?  I didn’t even know they could cry—for real, I mean—which seems horribly racist when you think about it, but then, they are face-sucking, life-stealing bugs, so maybe it isn’t unreasonable to think of them as a teeny bit inequine.

Shoot, I’m going to have to be the one to make the first move, aren’t I?

I pull myself off the doorjamb and make it over to the counter, pulling up a stool beside her.  It feels wonderful to be able to get off my hooves in a way that doesn’t use my face in their place, and my legs thank me.

“You came back?” she asks with a crack in her voice, and I’m not sure if it’s a puberty thing, a changeling thing or just a crying thing.  In any case, it works, and I’m left feeling like a heel.

I drum on the counter with my hooves for a second as I figure out what to say.  “I came back.”  Time well spent, Sunset Shimmer.  Time well spent indeed.  “I’m not gonna lie; you… kind of freaked me out back there.”

“’Mmsorry,” she mumbles.  “’Swhat I was trying to do, ‘cause I’m a dumb.”

Well, she has a point—wait, no, now is not the time for that.  “Look, I realize that I… was not at my most agreeable either, so for what it’s worth, I’m… uh, I’m sorry, too.”  I think it’s been years since I actually said those words and meant them, but this changeling, Twilight Sparkle… I don’t know.  For all she’s been talking down to me the entire time, she’s at least been treating me like an adult.  This is serious business, and I should have been acting like it.

Twilight Sparkle, for her part, takes my apology like a boss—lying down and moaning—leaving me to drive the conversation onward.  “So, how come you didn’t know that I was coming back until I walked through the door?  I mean, I kinda assume you’d have had half of your hive out looking for me.”

“Shiny is, because he’s worried about his mission, but there’s no one else,” she tells me, finally showing a little vigor, if only through bitterness, but hey, it works for me.  “They can’t be bothered.  I’ve been here six months using resources and ordering changelings around, and the first step I tried to take is a f-failure because I can’t keep my big mouth shut.  The only reason I haven’t been recalled is because they already spent the jelly to hatch and raise me.”

Harsh.  “It’s kind of early to call it a failure, isn’t it?” I say.  I am here, and all.

“You mean, you’re willing to help?” she asks, a tiny thread of  tired hope working its way into her voice.

Yeah, well, guilt, greed and an astounding lack of options can have that effect on a mare.  “I’m willing to hear you out, at least,” is my non-committal answer.

She seems confused.  “Hear me out?” she asks.

“Well, yeah,” I say, thinking that this was kind of obviously the next step.  “You said you wanted to liquify my brain and lay eggs in it in order to freak me out.  What’s the real plan?”

Twilight Sparkle stares me dead in the face.  “That is the real plan,” she says.  “I wouldn’t lie to you about that, Sunset Shimmer.”

“Um, okay…” I say, by which I mean not okay at all, but I’m not going to book a trip to Trottingham just yet.  See?  Progress.  “I’m trying to be reasonable, here, Twilight, but it’s getting very, very difficult.  I feel like this should be obvious, but pony brains don’t work when they’ve been liquified, and they respond similarly poorly to being penetrated by multiple objects the size of tomatoes.”

“That is… technically correct,” she admits, which I’m not sure is good or bad, to be honest, but at least it is honest, I guess.  “But I have charts downstairs that I’m sure will explain—”

“Twilight,” I interrupt, firm, but hopefully not too abrasive.  It’s not a skill I’m well versed in.  “Come on, we’ll get to the charts later, but for now, just sit here and talk to me, okay?”

Twilight Sparkle purses her lips like she just tasted something sour and looks away from me.  “It is a slight exaggeration to say that the brain is liquified by the process, but not by much.  After being placed in the chrysalis, certain enzymes are introduced into the amniotic fluid that render the neural tissue into a jelly-like state without compromising its structure.  There is some danger involved, as significant shock at this stage can result in hemorrhaging and death, but this is extremely unlikely unless the pony is removed from the chrysalis prematurely.”

“There, see?” I say, unable to keep myself from sounding a little patronizing.  “You made it sound almost reasonable, that time.  Almost.  And the… eggs?” 

Now that I’ve got her talking, she’s doesn’t hesitate much to continue.  She’s definitely not as comfortable as she would be with her charts and easel, though.  “Changeling eggs can be influenced in a variety of ways to produce different breeds from the same stock.  The most classic example of this is the process of using royal jelly to produce a queen, and the methods for producing soldier and worker caste changelings are as old, or older.  Using these as a framework, we’ve learned that we can tie the genetic material collected from breeding programs to specific stimuli.”

“Special goop makes special changeling,” I summarize.

Twilight Sparkle takes a deep breath and lets it out.  “Quite,” she says.  “And the ‘goop,’ as you call it, that produces one very specialized strain of changeling, is the equine neural jelly.”

No amount of scientific professionalism can make the phrase ‘equine neural jelly’ not sound disgusting.  I think I’m feeling a little green.  “You showed me the egg last night.  I still don’t see even one of those… you know… fitting.  Inside my head.”

This time, she hesitates to answer, fidgeting with a napkin in her hooves until she works up the courage.  “For our purposes, the embryo—singular, though it develops into two distinct organisms—will be removed from the egg before being introduced into the cranial cavity through the spinal column via the back of the throat, but, um… what it eventually comes down to is, there are parts of your brain that you won’t be… needing… and these parts will be… disrupted by the entry of the embryo.”

By the time she’s done with her explanation, I have to lean in to hear her tiny, timid voice.  My voice, though?  Not so timid.  “What?!”

“Th-the spinal column, brain stem, cerebellum and motor cortex a-are really not that important!” she insists.  “They just interface with the body to do meat things, and they’ll be replaced by changeling analogues once development is complete!”

I open my mouth to say something—yell about how attached I am to the motor and coordination centers of my brain and how they’re directly involved in magic, which is only my special talent, I guess—but I just…  I just…  I can’t even…

I get up, and I walk out of the room.

An empty hallway greets me, and I’m at a loss for what to do.  My rump itches where I landed on it earlier, and I realize I’m filthy from the subsequent trek back, so I head back upstairs to shower again.

Because I need a shower, not because… you know.  Not that.

I think.


⁂


My shower goes by in a haze of hot water and steam, and though my mind is no clearer getting out than it was going in, at least the soreness in my muscles and the tension in my back have gotten some relief.

Shining Armor is there when I open the door.  He looks like he needs a bath and a pair of hedge trimmers.  I expect some sour comment at least, and his face certainly looks like he’s come armed for bear, but the moment passes, and he just pushes past me and slams the door behind himself.  I guess he’s as past dealing with this crap as I am.

My opposition bypassed, I continue on down the hall, drying my mane as I go with a towel held aloft in my teal magic, still weak from my unplanned teleportation, but recovering.  I’m almost to the stairs when something crosses my mind.

I’m pretty sure that I used up all the hot water.

A moment later, a crash from inside the bathroom tells me I’m right.

Twilight Sparkle is no longer in the kitchen, so I head on down to the basement because… because.  True to my expectations, I find her there cleaning up the mess of charts and—are those index cards?  Ugh.  “Okay, lets finish this up.  Bug eggs in my brain—what does that actually get us?”

“The embryo consumes the neural jelly, effectively becoming that pony, body and soul,” she tells me, as she levitates her materials into one of the dressers that make up the makeshift wall that hides the lab.  “At the same time, the part of the embryo that would normally connect the embryo to the hive mind splits off and develops in parallel.  Eventually, the growth of the embryo pushes it out of the cranium back through the entry cavity, while the part that split off remains behind and integrates itself into the pony’s body in place of the brain.”

“So, you’re telling me that you can take a pony, scoop out their brain, replace it with a changeling one, and there’d be no way to tell the difference?”  That’s not really a pleasant thought.  “It’s a wonder there are any real ponies left in the world.  There are real ponies left, right?  It’s not just Celestia and me in a world where changelings rule in all but name, right?”

Twilight Sparkle rolls her eyes at me like I’ve read too many dimestore novels, but at this point, I think I could believe anything.  “It’s nothing like that, no,” she says, to the relief of a small, paranoid voice in the corner of my head.  “It can’t actually think.  It’s not even a brain at all, just an… antenna that connects it to the hive mind, which itself runs mostly on subconscious thought—like the sum total of everyling mumbling to themselves in a quiet room.  The neurospast will look normal from a distance and respond to commands as the hive mind understands them, but it lacks a cutie mark, and even so much as speaking is beyond it.  Honestly, they aren’t very useful under normal circumstances.”

Not useful, maybe, but supremely creepy.  “So you get, what?  Some sort of… pod pony?”

“Well, yeah, pretty much,” Twilight Sparkle says, glancing over at the large chrysalis that towers over the both of us.  “You’re looking at the ‘pod,’ after all.”

Right.  Pod ponies are real.  I probably should have seen that coming.  “And the pony?  They’re trapped in the body of a changeling, but not a changeling, since they’re not a part of the hive mind?”

“Yes and no,” she says.  “Even without possessing a specialized organ for communicating with the hive, there are still certain connections that can be made with a nymph just by virtue of changeling anatomy, particularly in close contact and especially with physical contact.  We’re going to exploit some of those qualities to get your soul into that dragon egg, so they’re good things, but all the same, we’ll probably want to keep you away from too many other changelings and minimize the actual time spent in that form.”

“Got it.  No ‘intimate’ contact with other changelings as a nymph if I don’t want them in my head,” I summarize, as if I wanted to spend any more time around changelings than I have to.  “Do I want to know why you call them ‘nymphs?’”

She cocks her head and looks at me.  “Why would we not?  They are an immature juvenile form that does not go through a pupal metamorphosis.”

“Bug science,” I grunt.  “Okay, that’s… reassuring.  What else?”

Silence.

“That’s it?” I ask, and she nods.  “Buck it.  Fine, let’s just do it.  I’ve come this far, I don’t honestly have a lot of options and I’m sick and tired of all this waffling and pretending I do.  Worst case, you’re lying, I get turned into some sort of jelly-brained mind-slave and Princess Celestia feels bad when she has to cut me down during the bugpocalypse.  Best case, you’re telling the truth and I get turned into a jelly-brained mind slave, but it’s cool because my brain already got eaten by bug larva and I grow into a ‘nymph’ with personal space problems.  That about covers it?”

“You mean you’ll do it?” she asks—though, she should know by now not to second-guess me.  “Yes, that should be just about everything.”  She nods curtly, and I step up to the chrysalis, ready for—wait.

All this talking about what’s going to happen, and I realize that I don’t actually know how the thing opens.


⁂


A short while later, everything is actually ready to move forward.  My stomach rumbles, but I’m not allowed to eat and I only have myself to blame for delaying things.

“Wait,” Twilight Sparkle says, stopping me with a hoof on the shoulder.  “One more thing before you get in.”

I pause, and a small part of me hypocritically welcomes the chance to put this off for just a minute or two in spite of what I just said.  A chance to change my mind is the last thing I need.  “What?” I ask in irritation that seems lost on Twilight Sparkle.

“I need to know,” she says, falling into a posture that reminds me of Princess Celestia when she’s acting all parental.  “What is your motivation for doing this, Sunset Shimmer?”

It irritates me, just like it used to when Princess Celestia did it.  “I think you’ve shown that you know very well what I want.  I mean, at this point, you’ve even convinced me to let you put eggs in my brain.”

She sighs, “I know what you want,” she says, making it sound like a bad thing as she paces around behind me.  As she reaches the other side of the lab, she turns around.  “But why?  You came back, and I don’t… understand that, given that you fled in the first place.  You ponies are complicated, full of conflicting goals, and last thing I want to do is misunderstand.  I can guess and plot and plan, but it seems more sensible to ask.  To… talk.”

Privately, I wonder how she manages to sound so insufferably superior and reasonable at the same time.  I just walked in on her crying a half an hour ago, for Celestia’s sake.  “I just want what I deserve,” I say, but even as I do, I know it for a cop-out.

Twilight Sparkle doesn’t call me on it directly, but I can tell that she’s not satisfied.  “And Princess Celestia?” she asks, causing me to frown.  “If I could make you into a grown alicorn this instant—I can’t, obviously, but if I could—what would you do with that power?  Would you confront her?  Attack her?  Kill her?  Would you take her throne and rule Equestria with an iron hoof?  You keep joking about changelings overthrowing her.  Is that what you expect?  What you want?”

I can’t help it, I blanch at the thought, not because I could never do that, but because I could.  My gallows humor doesn’t come from a desire to go on dates or play hoofball, after all.  “N-no,” I stutter absolutely convincingly, leaving no doubt whatsoever in my voice as to my conviction.  Well, half of that is true, I guess, but not the way I mean it.

“No?” Twilight Sparkle asks, raising one eyebrow in question.  I wish it was as easy to lie to her as it is to lie to myself.

I take a breath and try to picture it.  I am an alicorn brimming with power, what do I do?  Like earlier, when I was trying to picture myself as a dragon, I fail.  Why?  It was always so easy, before.  Of course, I was still her student before.  I still had a chance of earning her approval.

“All I ever wanted was to rule at her side,” I say, punctuating it with a groan.  “To be what she was grooming me to be.  I mean, I was her apprentice.  Apprentices follow in the hoofsteps of their mentors; that’s how it works—and I’m not just some crazy kid with delusions of grandeur, either—she admitted it!”  That gets a look from Twilight Sparkle that I haven’t seen before.  Good to know she can actually be surprised by something other than me doing something colossally stupid.

“But that just makes it worse, doesn’t it?” I ask with a bit of hysteria creeping into my voice.  “She could have done it at any time, but she didn’t.  If I went back to her as an alicorn, it wouldn’t change anything.  Celestia, this whole thing has been stupid from the start.  I don’t want to fight her, but she just makes me so mad!”

“Hrm,” she says, digesting my anger like it gives her indigestion.  “Really?  No megalomania?  I’m honestly surprised.”

“What?” I ask, incredulous.  “If you thought you could use me against her just because I’m pissed off, then you don’t know me half as well as you like to think.  If it wasn’t for that stupid lie about the mirror that you planted, I might still be her student!”

“No, no!  It’s good!” she insists with a panic that I hope is genuine.  “I don’t want you fighting Celestia at all—just the opposite!  I could keep you away from her, but it’ll be much easier if I don’t have to.  I just really expected it to be more of a problem, given your… drive.”

Oh, I guess that kind of makes sense—the whole taking over my life thing.  “Yeah, well… maybe it just hasn’t sunk in, yet,” I grumble.  “This whole thing is just so far out there.  I still kind of feel like I could wake up and find out none of it ever happened.  I mean, look at me; look at you; look at the conversations we’ve been having.  How is this even real?”

“Do you think that would make you happy?” she asks, setting a friendly hoof on my withers.  “Think about what I said last night.  She isn’t the type that sees power as a reward.”

Would I go back to being just her student if I could?  In a heartbeat.  “I’d be happier.”

Twilight Sparkle sighs and her hoof drops off my withers.  “I know you feel like you’re being strong-armed into this, and I am going to do terrible, monstrous things to you, but I really wish you’d see it as an opportunity.  For what it’s worth, I never meant for the mirror to tempt you to do something you wouldn’t otherwise do; I just wanted to be sure I knew where you would go.  I… apologize, if you feel this is my fault, but do remember… you came back, even after I tried to push you away with my childish outburst.”

“Thanks, I guess,” I say automatically, but my heart isn’t in it.  The reminder that she was planning for my falling out with Princess Celestia stings, but she’s probably right.  I probably would have screwed up eventually, and I did come back.  This is on me at least as much as it’s on her.

“Really, though, if all you want is a second chance with her… well, you’re going to get it, aren’t you?” she asks, and I can hear the excitement in her voice.  “And not just a chance to go back to your life as a disgruntled unicorn, but something else entirely.  How do you think your life would have gone if you’d been an alicorn from the start?  If you didn’t have that specter of inadequacy hanging over you?”

“I was not inadequate!” I snap with a growl, and Twilight Sparkle actually steps back.  Good.  Well, no, bad.  Ugh.  She kind of pisses me off, but she really has a tendency to be right about all the worst things.  “Look, you talk too much, and I’m kind of a bitch, but I’m not going to screw this up, okay?  I’ve made my decision, so let’s do this.”

Twilight Sparkle stands there and blinks.  “Uhh, right.  Okay.  Go ahead and step into the chrysalis, then.”

I take one step forward and stop.  There’s still one question that hasn’t been answered.

“How exactly do I… do that?”
> Chapter Three【Twilight】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It has been two weeks since Sunset Shimmer entered the chrysalis.

“Well?” says Shining Armor from behind me, his voice sour like that of a colt doing his level best to sound like a stallion.  I can’t tell if he’s an exemplar in the art of changeling mimicry, or if that’s just his normal voice.  “How is the process progressing?”

I click my tongue and pull my horn out of the observation orifice on the side of the chrysalis.  The feeling of antiseptic jelly and amniotic fluid on the crooked keratin is like a cold, wet sock, and I flick my head at the ground to get rid of as much of it as I can.  “It’s like they say—never send a glutton to get you accurate norepinephrine counts.”

There’s a pause, followed by a murmur in the hive mind.  “They don’t say that,” Shining Armor informs me.  “Nobody says that.”

“Fine then, I’m saying it,” I tell him as I busy myself wiping my horn down with solvent and waxcloth, and then finish up by lighting it up with as much magic as I can push through it for a few seconds.  Proper horn care is important.  “It’s criminal that we don’t have a better way to examine pony brains than to trust the word of an organism whose primary function is to eat them.”

He lets out a snort of displeasure.  “Be glad this is the best you can do.  If there was a better option, the hive would make you take it, and you wouldn’t get your ‘assistant.’  I still don’t see why it’s even that important.  You have her genetics already.”

A cloudy, crystalline salt block floats out of a small alcove amongst the rib-like protrusions in the wall, encompassed in the weak, green glow of my magic.  I set it down on the floor between Shining Armor and myself, lay my horn on it, and with a flash, a bolt of magic forks though it, leaving behind a lichtenberg figure resembling a parasitic embryo’s interpretation of Sunset Shimmer’s brain and spinal column.

“And now I have a record of her nervous system, too,” I say, lifting the block up in my magic holding it out for him to see.  Later, I’ll polish the surface clear and soak it in magically-charged isopropanol to bring out the chemical data in color.  

“Ponies aren’t much different from changelings in the respect that the right chemicals at the right stages of maturation can result in an entirely different set of physical and mental traits.  Where they differ from us is in the fact that these variations in growth are only loosely tied to whether the pony is a drone, pegasus, unicorn or queen.  The result is a great number of substandard specimens, but, on occasion, an outlier will present itself.  It’s crude, but the success of pony society is a testament to how valuable a single specimen can be.”

Shining Armor gives the immature unicorn inside the chrysalis a doubtful look.  “And Sunset Shimmer is that outlier?” he asks.

“Sunset Shimmer is a record-breaking, curve-wrecking outlier to end all outliers,” I fume, though I am uncertain as to why this upsets me.   Perhaps it is just the sheer mathematical improbability of a pony like Sunset Shimmer existing.  In any case, it is shameful that the ponies do not even seem to be aware of what they have lost.  If I hadn’t run the tests myself, I would think that there was some merit to the rumors that she is Princess Celestia’s daughter; the addition of wings would have been a formality.  “If I can recreate in a changeling half of what she could do on a day to day basis, the hive is sure to make me a Queen.”

“Will it, now?” asks a snide, nasally sort of voice from behind me, and it takes me a moment to realize that Shining Armor doesn’t have that much buzz in his voice, nor quite so much gravitas.  Mostly, it’s the buzz, though; it comes with being the mouthpiece of the hive mind.

Speaking of which, the hive mind belatedly notifies me that the queen is in the room with us.

“Queen Chrysalis!” I cry, whipping around to face her and almost dropping the salt block containing the graph of Sunset Shimmer’s brain as I do so.  After fumbling with it for a moment, I manage to get it settled gently on the ground with myself casually hanging off of it like an amorous gentlestallion on the prowl.  Smooth.  “What are you doing in Canterlot?  Here?  In my lab?  I had no idea you were coming, or I would have—err, I mean—my lab is always in perfect condition and does not need special attention before an inspection.”

“The sad part is that you aren’t even lying, and yet you are doing it so very badly,” the queen says, overdramatically bemoaning her lot in life.  “Maybe if you spent less time broadcasting every word that passes through your overdeveloped purple head and more time listening to the rest of the hive, then you would have been aware of something outside of this sad little laboratory you’ve built—or inside of it, for that matter.”

“Of course, my qu—”  Crack.  The sound of hoof on chitin is deafening from inside my own skull, and the room spins sideways around me.

“And my voice is not nasally!” Chrysalis shouts, though I hear it more over link to the hive mind than in my own ears as my head swims, not just from the impact, but also the mental backlash washing over the link.  “Nor am I overdramatic!”

I am tempted to say something, but, humble as I am, I do not point out the queen’s obvious hypocrisy.

“And for your own sake, stop narrating your pitiful life over the hive mind!”


⁂


Queen Chrysalis hems and haws around the chrysalis containing Sunset Shimmer as I see to the injury on my face.  The queen wasn’t cruel, and thus had only hit me the one time, but it was a good one; I had a crack connecting my eye socket with the corner of my mouth that stung like the fury of the hive itself if I talked or smiled.

Not that I would ever let such a thing stop me from doing so.

“Not that I don’t enjoy looking at the result of your hubris, Twily, but is this going to take long?” Shining Armor asks; his voice sounds strange from within his own skull.

It is an unfortunate fact of life that changelings are not fond of mirrors, and I certainly have none in my lab.  The only one in the house is in the bathroom upstairs, which is why I have borrowed the use of Shining Armor’s eyes to get a good look at myself.  The sight is not encouraging.

“This is going to take forever to heal,” I whine, chewing my lip as I dip my hoof in the hastily-prepared bowl of resin.  I have to scrunch up my face so that the chitin aligns properly before spreading the transparent green goop over my face.  Once I’m sure I have everything important covered, I unroll a square each of gauze and linen for the bandage, which are laid over the resin in layers as I ruminate on how much easier this would be if changelings had ever developed proper medical magic.

The hive mind doesn’t believe in medical magic largely because it doesn’t believe in medicine at all—at least, not in the sense of it being something that is administered to the sick and injured for the sake of their health.  A single changeling, after all, is expendable—even the queen.  We make up for it by having tough exoskeletons and the tenacity of the much smaller pests we resemble.

Changeling first-aid, such as it is, essentially falls into two categories; when grievously injured, a queen or other unique asset, such as myself, can usually expect to be rebirthed if the need is dire enough.  Otherwise, we are expected to do what amounts to spitting on it and wishing for the best.

Once the resin has begun to set, I let Shining Armor have the use of his eyes back and wave him off to let him know I’m done.  He immediately takes a moment to rub at them with his hoof while I poke at my injury, but before long, our attention naturally falls in synchrony to the elephant in the room.

It’s a very good thing that I have momentarily ceased my narration to the hive mind, as I doubt the queen would appreciate that strange and rather racist ponyism.

“Did she say what it was she’s doing?” I ask out of the uninjured side of my face through a clenched jaw, doing my best not to disturb the resin until it has completely hardened.

Shining Armor turns to look at me with a strange expression that’s not the casual disregard I’m used to from him.  “You know, she has a point.  You really don’t listen to the hive mind enough—sometimes at all, it seems.”

Really?  We’re doing this when I can barely talk without burning pain?  Fine.  “That is why I exist, Shining Armor,” I say, holding my hoof over the bandage in hopes that it won’t move too much.  “I am… a second opinion.”

“Can’t argue with that, I guess.”  Shining Armor lets out a heavy breath and shakes his head.   “It must be tough.  It certainly won’t earn you any friends.”  He glances over at Chrysalis and the chrysalis.  “Not in the hive, anyway.”

“It will not,” I say, wincing when I accidentally move my jaw.  “Fortunately, the fate of the hive does not rest on me making friends.”

“No, just creating them from whole cloth, it seems,” he counters as his gaze lingers on the yellow, red and gold figure barely visible beneath green wax and resin.  “Your pony is having trouble letting go of her body.  The queen is here to ‘help’ the transition and see to the integration of the neurospast into the hive mind.  It would seem that someling out there thinks this crazy plan of yours is worth saving.”

“Oh.”  I didn’t see any sign of rejection, but I guess the queen would know, if anyling would.  Whatever it involved, it seemed to be taking all of her attention.  “Well, good.”

The next thing Shining Armor says surprises me.  “Are you going to be alright?”

My hoof gravitates back to the crack on my cheek.  “I shall live, though it will be difficult to explain at school.  I will be rebirthed eventually, anyway, even if I am third in line at the moment.  It will be forgotten in time.”

Shining Armor frowns.  “Hopefully the lesson won’t be.  Your face looks wrong when it isn’t smug and self-righteous.”

I let out a snort of laughter, which is just about the last thing I should be doing.  Ow.  I blame Shining Armor.  “Do not pretend you care.”

“Well, if you won’t listen to the hive mind, you’re going to need someling looking after you who will.”

“I am not certain you understood the point.”

“I’m not certain I care.”


⁂


Following Shining Armor’s contradictory declaration, I excused myself from the lab so that I could head upstairs and give Queen Chrysalis the opportunity to work in peace.  As I am about to open the door at the top of the stairs leading to the cellar, though, I stop to test the resin of my bandage once more.  I believe it has hardened enough to handle a transformation, and whatever else I think of the hive mind, there are some rules that a changeling just doesn’t ignore.

No chitin in the halls is a pretty big one.

A flash of green fire restores me to my adorable purple self, sadly with the addition of the bandage still covering a significant portion of my face.  One would think that magic that turns chitin into fur and flesh could maybe just fix things like that, but it is not that simple.

I think.

I don’t actually know how the transformation magic works.

I am on the verge of another rant about the state of the hive’s magical knowledge when the green flames of my transformation finish fading away, and I open the door that leads to the foyer of the house.  All thought leaves my mind when I see that the foyer is not empty; it has a pony in it.  A pony-pony, not a changeling, and not just any pony-pony that ponied up to the door, but the pony-pony pony.  The only pony-pony pony that is pony-pony-pony.

“Oh!” remarks the tall, white pony as she turns her flank away so she can get a look at me.  “Why, hello there, my little pony.  Are your parents home?”

It’s Princess Celestia.  Why is Princess Celestia in my foyer?  This—this isn’t my fault!  I’ve done nothing to attract any attention since the day I retrieved Sunset Shimmer.  Did somepony see her when she teleported away that day?  Why would they wait two weeks to say something if they did?  Maybe they hadn’t heard of Sunset Shimmer’s disappearance?  It’s possible.  Anything is possible.

“Excuse me?” the princess prompts, and I realize that I’m just standing there with my jaw hanging limply open.

“P-P-Princess Celestia!” I cry, all but throwing my face at the floor.  The flaw in my plan makes itself painfully apparent as the tip of my muzzle impacts the wooden floorboards.  I freeze in place as the resin of my bandage cracks, sending a sharp jolt of pain straight up the side of my face.

My hasty bow immediately turns into a fetal ball of clenched teeth emitting a keening whine as I clutch my hooves over the re-opened injury.

A warm, golden glow of magic surrounds me and lifts me up off the ground.  “Oh dear,” she whispers as she turns me around in her magic.  “What ever happened to your face?”

My mommy hits me when I talk too much.  No, wait, don’t say that.  Say literally anything but that.  “I jumped off the roof ’cause I wanted to see what it’s like to have wings,” I say, injecting a little bit of shyness and embarrassment into my voice.  From the tightness in her eyes, I can tell that I’ve nailed it.

“Oh,” she says, and her eyes lose a little light as they drift up to my horn.  “You know that you can’t grow up to be a pegasus, right?”

I blink and stare at her.  What a thing to say to a filly!  What’s gotten into her?  All of a sudden it’s like I mentioned someone who… died.  Oh.  Oh.  Bad subject!  Curses—I don’t want her associating me with Sunset Shimmer and her goals.

Or do I?  I might have an easier time becoming her student if she sees a chance to make up for her mistakes with Sunset Shimmer.  Should I risk it?

I look into her eyes, and my resolve withers.  No, I don’t want that hanging over her every time she sees me.

“Of course not, but I bet there’s a spell for flying!” I say, giving her a toothy grin in spite of the pain it causes me underneath my bandage.

She returns my grin with with a warm, relieved smile.  “That, there is,” she says as she sets me back down on my hooves and brushes me off.  “It’s a very difficult one, though, are you sure you’re up to it?”

Finally, I can be honest with her.  “Of course!  I’m gonna learn every spell there is!” I say, beaming quite honestly.

“Really?” she asks, amused.  “You must be quite the little prodigy if you’ve set your goals that high.”

Ah, shoot, I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?  “W-well, no, but…”  Ugh, this really isn’t the time and place for this.  “Um—Princess Celestia?  Why are you in my house?”

Celestia pulls back to look around, as if she has just remembered where she is.  “Ah, yes.  My apologies, but the door was wide open, and nopony answered when I knocked.”

It takes me a moment to connect the dots, and then another to stop myself from attempting to bury my face in the floorboards again.  While windows are a personal vexation of mine, doors are also, technically, not exactly a feature that changeling hives are known for.  That said, they are fairly intuitive for the average changeling, and yet… well, there’s no use hiding in the hive, as the saying goes.

The fact of the matter is, Queen Chrysalis doesn’t get out much.

“Oh,” I say, inwardly cursing our malevolent mother, but I keep a tight grip on the feelings.  “Well, I guess it’s okay, then.  I bet the princess gets to go anywhere in Canterlot!”

At this, Princess Celestia’s eyes begin to wander down the hall past the kitchen.  “Ah, not quite,” she says rather vaguely, which is a way ponies have of saying ‘no, not at all; it’s quite illegal, but nopony is going to admit that.’  “Is your mother home?” she asks, hoping to be spared the awkwardness I am using to get rid of her.

Technically, yes, she’s in the basement doing brain-things with your ex-student, but I’m not going to say that.  It’s also—again, technically—not actually the question she asked.  “Dad’s at work and mom went to the store,” I tell her.  I wish I was lying, but the ponies posing as my parents are, much to my displeasure, absent.

“You’re home all alone, then…?” she asks, cautiously, raising one eyebrow.

Oh, right, that might be considered odd in a pony household.  “I read a lot, so I don’t cause any trouble,” I explain, leveraging a hint of sadness in my voice to keep the awkwardness going.  Enough of it, and she should take the hint and leave.  Normally, ponies could be quite nosey, but the herd mentality cuts both ways and those excluded from the herd are even more likely to leave well enough alone without calling foal protective services.

Unless, apparently, you are the god-queen of ponies and consider all the little ones to be your herd whether they want it or not.

“What about your brother, Shining Armor?” she asks, and the second half of the puzzle falls into place.

Shining Armor, what have you done now?

Apparently I let my animosity show on my face, because the princess balks.  “Oh dear, do you not get along with your brother?”

“What?  No, never!”  We are a perfect urban pony household and nothing is out of the ordinary—nothing!  “Shiny is my Big Brother Best Friend Forever.  We’ve never had a single fight—ever!”  Okay, maybe that’s pushing it, but the bigger the lie, the easier it is to remember, right?  Something like that.  My face can attest to how bad I am with honesty, anyway.

“Why the sour look, then?” she questions, showing no sign at all that she would rather be anywhere but sitting in the foyer of a middle-class townhouse chatting with a blank-flank filly about her older brother.  She probably wouldn’t, actually.

Immortals are weird like that.

I glance back to the door I just came out of.  “He’s, um, sulking,” I tell her.  “He doesn’t get along with the other colts at school.”

“Sulking in the basement?” Celestia says, tilting her head in question for a moment before something clicks.  “Ah, I think I understand.  I had heard that he was rather withdrawn, but that does explain a few things.  Does your brother perhaps spend a great deal of his time playing… I believe they are called ‘tabletop’ games?”

What?  I have no idea what that even means.  “Yes.  Yes, that is exactly what he does.”


⁂


I eventually give up on trying to get rid of Princess Celestia, as her experience in gentle persistence far outstrips my own ability to make things awkward.  Instead, I manage to fall into something of a rhythm between inventing facts about Shining Armor and letting Princess Celestia do the same through her questions.  I don’t simply confirm everything she suggests, of course.  Once I’ve managed to figure out the rules of the game, I manage to maintain a particular image for him that is consistent and interesting—much moreso than the real Shining Armor, in any case.

It is, rather ironically, not unlike the games which the princess has suggested he plays.  I plan to cheat when it comes to rolling out his stats, of course, so I keep my description of his actual deeds vague and colored in the innocent adulations of an adorable little sister.

“And that’s when he saved me and got his cutie mark!” I proclaim, having just finished the tale of a young colt discovering his calling in life to protect the weak and helpless, which is why, as a matter of course, he intends to go on to military academy and join the guard.

Somepony behind me clears his throat.  “Twily,” says Shining Armor, straining his words through clenched teeth.  “You know I don’t like telling that story.”  He just doesn’t like telling it because he’s never come up with a good one.  Well, now he has one—and the rest of a character sheet, besides.  He should thank me.

“You’ll have to tell me about it some time,” says that certain nasally voice again, and I cringe.  Why does she always have to sneak up on me?  I chew my lip as I turn towards the two unicorns who just came up the stairs from the basement.  Then I stop, because hive that hurts the crack in my face.

As soon as I see them, the dread in my stomach turns to ice.  It was already going to be difficult to explain anything that Shining contradicted, but with Queen Chrysalis here too and looking flushed, there weren’t a whole lot of explanations that a preteen could make.  As for the queen, she had chosen the form of a sultry, green-coated unicorn with a jet black mane.  It seemed a tad conspicuous, but like I said—she doesn’t get out much, and she has that ego.

“Are you done… fighting?” I ask, piling on the naïve innocence, for Princess Celestia’s sake.

Queen Chrysalis gives me a husky smirk.  “Yes, we’ve… reconciled our differences,” she says, doing absolutely nothing to avoid the inappropriate connotations.  Well—inappropriate for ponies.  The pony concept of ‘incest’ doesn’t exist in the hive.  It’s far stranger for changeling queens to breed outside of their lineage.

Shining Armor clears his throat again.  “I really wish you’d told me that we had guests, Twily,” he says, glancing nervously between me and the queen.  “You know you’re not supposed to answer the door.  Um, speaking of which—it’s an honor to have you here, Your Majesty.”

“Ah, please don’t fault young Twilight here,” Princess Celestia says, laying a gentle hoof on my head.  “Your door was open and I managed to wander in off the street looking for somepony.”

My eyes meet Shining Armors and I break into a beaming smile.  “Yeah!  She wanted to know all about you, Shiny!  I had no idea you had the eye of the princess!  What did you do?”

“I—what?” he says, poleaxed, then looks to the princess for explanation.  “Princess?”

Princess Celestia just smiles her radiant, tranquil smile.  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about little old me.  I’m just being a nosey old nag.”


⁂


The princess had barely excused herself when Shining Armor and the queen both rounded on me like two stallions interested in a threesome.

Sorry, changelings have no natural predators, so we’re kind of starved for metaphors, sometimes.

“What in the name of the hive was that?” Queen Chrysalis growled with all the force of the hive mind behind her.  Normally, I would be cowed, but damn it—this was not my fault.

“Don’t look at me, Your Majesty.  You left the door open, and he,” I say, pointing at Shining Armor.  “I don’t even know what he did, but whatever it is, I just spent the better part of an hour bullshitting the princess with stories about our childhood together in order to fix it.”

Queen Chrysalis bristled at being talked back to.  “An hour!” she cried.  “And why am I only hearing about this now?  The hive mind is there to prevent these ridiculous shenanigans!  Why in the hive would you not use it?”

“Because you told me not to!” I retort in anger.  “And cracked my face to make sure I’d remember.  Hive, do you know how much this hurts, mom?”

The queen’s eyes narrowed.  “Take care that you remember your position, Twilight Sparkle.  Your catch is magnificent, I shall give you that, but you are not yet a queen.”

After a moment of careful consideration, I take a breath and swallow my bile—and my pride.  “Of course, my queen.”

She gives a curt nod and turns to the door.  “Seeing as your masquerade appears intact, I shall leave you and Shining Armor to discuss the Princess’s visit on your own.  I don’t have to tell you how dangerous she could be for all of us, so pray that your luck holds.”

Click.  The door opens and the queen walks through.  She pauses on the threshold and looks back.   “And in the future,” she says with a hateful, reticent snarl.  “You are allowed to keep the hive apprised of your actions.  Provisionally.”

And with that, she disappears out into the street.

My eye twitches at the door hanging open after her.
> Chapter Four 【Sunset】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	My first thought upon waking is that there is a reason that equines do not remember their births.  That reason is, technically, that those centers of the brain have not yet fully developed and bonded with the soul, but at this point I’d be willing to believe that the process is just that unpleasant.

Because, trust me, the process is that unpleasant.

Between one moment and the next, I go from a muddling half sleep, floating comfortably inside the chrysalis, to my alien body and brain telling me I’m drowning.  The fluid around me is thick, viscous and never-ending as I thrash about, searching for a way out.  When I’d gone to sleep, it had been inside a slightly claustrophobic chrysalis barely half again as long as I was when laid out on my back; now, the only sign of anything but murky ocean was a dim yellow glow in front of me.

My newborn muscles scream at me as I scramble to fight my way through to the light, either swimming or digging—I’m not sure.  The light gets brighter, and soon enough, my nose bumps into the waxy wall of the chrysalis.

What now?

Panic wells up inside me as I feebly beat at the thin film of hazy green barrier between me and life.  I have no idea what to do—but my body somehow does.  The next time I throw myself against the chrysalis, I bend my head low and bury my tiny horn into it.  Unicorn horns are sensitive and used solely for magic, so the natural instinct is to protect them.  Changeling horns, on the other hoof, are sharp enough to take lives.

Or, in my case, save them.

Pulling my head back, I see a spot of lighter yellow in the wax in front of me.  The wall is intact, but only just.  One more time, I thrust my head forward—this time with purpose—and the barrier bursts.  

The waxy wall collapses, flushing me out onto the hard resin floor, where I fall over onto my front hooves, coughing up the stringy fluid that had nearly drowned me.  It takes everything I have to take those first few gasping breaths, and once my throat is clear, I collapse onto my side in exhaustion.

I feel a hoof rubbing my back to help me breathe and look up to see a giant Twilight Sparkle two or three times my size, and towering over us both is a statuesque, dead-eyed, pale yellow unicorn with red and gold hair.  Me.

It’s not just the cold cellar air on my wet chitin that makes me curl up into a ball as I drift off to sleep.  Those eyes and the emptiness within stir a sickness in my throat.

What have I done?


⁂


My dreams are of a Canterlot populated entirely by puppets with empty eye sockets filled with a roiling sea of insects; roaches and spiders and tiny purple Twilight Sparkles churning and writhing over each other just beneath the surface.  Princess Celestia sits above them all in her throne, completely oblivious that she is the only pony left in a city of hollow faces.  At the end of the day, she gets off her throne and returns to her chambers where her most favored, trusted student awaits her; Sunset Shimmer, her eyes the same as all the rest.  The doors close, leaving me outside.

The next time I awake, it’s to a much more pleasant atmosphere, but the feeling of sickness in my throat remains.  The terry cloth blanket I’m wrapped up in is warm, pink and has that special tingly smell like it’s just been horn-dried.  I can’t help but rub my face in it just to feel the fuzzy cloth against my fur.

I… I have fur.  For a moment, I begin to think that everything that happened since I stormed out on Princess Celestia has all been one, long, bad dream, but my heart sinks as soon as I see my hooves—tiny, barely formed, and… white?

My attempt to find my way out of the bedding and get a better look at myself elicits a titter and coo from somepony, telling me that I’m being watched.  When my face finally pokes out into the world, I feel the warmth of the sun shining down on me, as well as the warmth of… something else.

“Oh, how precious!” squeals the voice of a stranger.  “Is she yours?”

I feel my method of conveyance shake a little under somepony’s hooves, before they answer.  “Oh, Celestia no!  My two are quite enough for me.  This little one is… well… it’s actually a little embarrassing.”

“Oh, this, I have to hear,” the other voice says with a lighthearted giggle.  By now, I’ve determined that I seem to be in a stroller of some sort, but any attempt to open my eyes and see where I am blinds me.  “Come on, Velvet, you can trust me.  Do you have a much younger sister who’s not ready for motherhood, then?”

Velvet… that must be Velvet Sparkle, the changeling posing as Twilight Sparkle’s mother.  “Something like that,” Velvet says with a chuckle.  “But not quite.  I do have a much younger sister, and she certainly is not ready for motherhood, considering she’s not out of diapers yet.”

Wait, am I…?  Yes, I am indeed wearing a diaper.  Swell.

The other voice gives a gasp mixed with feigned shock and delight.  “This little thing is your sister?  How adorable!  I’ve heard of that, you know—mothers giving it another go after their first has left the house.  I can’t imagine going through it all again, myself.”

“Yes, well, mother is certainly spry for her age, and she does love children.”  Translation: the queen bug is immortal and has thousands of offspring.  Isn’t reading between the lines grand?

I make another go at trying to open my eyes, but they don’t seem to have adjusted at all, and trying to force it only lasts a second before I’m burying my face back in the blanket.

“Oh dear, is something wrong?” the stranger asks.

No, no.  Nothing is wrong.  Princess Celestia’s just being a bit of a bitch with the sun today.  Would it kill her to turn it down every once in awhile?

“Ah, well, you see, I’m afraid the poor dear has albinism,” Velvet says as she reaches down and wraps me back up in a bundle of warmth and darkness.  “The white coat and mane certainly set her apart, but sensitive eyes are an unfortunate side effect.”  Translation: It would have been super awkward to be walking around with a baby Sunset Shimmer, so they gave me a debilitating disease instead of buying a box of mane dye.

Changelings.

I hear some more cooing, though the words are muffled by the blanket now pressing my ears flat, and another wave of warmth washes over me in spite of my being shielded from the sun.  I want to jump up and curse out the changeling pushing my stroller for this indignity, but suddenly I just don’t have the energy.  I feel as if I’ve gorged myself on carrot cake, and before long I find myself drifting back to sleep.


⁂


My dreams are much more pleasant this time, I think, though I don’t really remember them.  That seems to be the way of my life; skimming over the good so I can dwell on the bad.  That’s hardly going to change any time soon, though.  In order to focus on something positive, I’d have to have something positive to focus on.

Right now, all I have to focus on is a dark room and the fact that I’m a bug, and I can’t even come to terms with that because I don’t actually look like a bug right this second.  You’d think that I’d prefer this, and maybe I will, but it’s super creepy not even knowing what I really look like.

Well, middle of the night or not, I’m awake now; might as well find a mirror and see if I can shake this transformation.  I’d rather not wake anypony—anybody?  Anyling?—mostly because I can barely stand the lot of them, not for any concern about interrupting their sleep.  I’m not waiting until morning for my changeling orientation speech if it turns out that I need it.

I thank my luck that the changelings haven’t gone so far as to put me in a crib, as demeaning and inconvenient as that would be—at least, in theory.  What they’ve actually done, at least from the look of the brass handle sticking out above me, is stuffed me in an open drawer wrapped in swaddling.  Given the lumps I feel prodding me in the back, I don’t think they even bothered to empty the drawer first.

It takes some doing to unwrap myself from the swaddling, and it surprises me how cold the air feels, but it makes sense, given the difference in my ratio of surface area to mass, so I take what little comfort I can in it.  Even more encouraging is that, if a blanket is capable of keeping me warm, then I can’t be cold blooded.  Best yet, it looks like I’ve been upgraded to toddler.

Look, I’ll take what I can get, okay?  This whole thing is incredibly surreal, considering I know that this… me… isn’t real.  My ghost-white coat all but glows in the moonlit room, and I almost don’t even notice the silken tail pooled beneath me for all the different it looks from the rest of me.  Ponies aren’t supposed to have identical coats and manes.

From my vantage point in the top drawer of the nightstand, I can tell that I’m in the same room as before, which means the lump in the bed that’s twice-my-size is, in fact, the diminutive purple form of Twilight Sparkle.

My options were clear: climb from the nightstand to the bed, and then down to the floor, and risk waking her, or jump straight down and risk landing on my face.

The answer is obvious.

Way to take one for the team, face.

The fall barely fazes me thanks to my weighing about what a cat does, just without the natural grace or even so much as a fifty-fifty chance at landing on my hooves.  Like the cold, it’s one of those changes you go through growing up that sneaks up on you, and before you know it, gravity has you under its hoof—unless you’re a pegasus, I guess.  Lucky bastards.

I try not to let my mind go straight to alicorns.  I’m not an alicorn.  I’m never going to be an alicorn.  I’m a changeling… thing.  A nymph.  I’m going to be a dragon.  Do dragons all have wings?  Am I going to have wings?  Do I have wings now?  All perfectly valid, important and even actionable questions.  They don’t feel like it, though; they feel wishy washy and theoretical.  I still feel like a pony.

I… think that needs to change.  I need to find a mirror and get rid of this transformation so I can see what they’ve done to me.  So I can see what I am now.

I manage to get the door open with a weak green glow from my horn, but doing so feels surreal in a way I can’t quite pin down.  Having green magic is weird, sure, but it’s not that, nor is it the effort it takes me to turn the knob.  It’s something else.  Something about how the magic works inside me that’s just subtly wrong.  Nonetheless, the door creaks open and I slip through.

The hall is dark, but the lack of light proves no hinderance.  I’m not sure if I’d rather attribute my improved night vision to being a changeling or just the albinism they gave me.  It’s probably the former, in any case; I’m pretty sure albinism just interferes with the eyes’ ability to block out light rather than actually making them any more sensitive.

The bathroom is at the end of the hall, past a few closed doors with changelings behind them in some configuration that’s unknown to me.  Presumably, Twilight’s parents have one room in the hall and Shining Armor another.  Apart from Twilight’s room, which I just came out of, that leaves only one left that may or may not be empty.  Not good odds.  I’ll just have to be as quiet as possible the entire way.

I needn’t have worried.  My tiny hooves barely make a sound, even on the much denser carpet running down the center of the hall, and though I trip over myself no less than three times, no one seems to notice.  I slip quickly into the bathroom, doing my best to ignore the strange feeling thrumming through my magic for the sake of expediency.

Maybe a little too expedient, seeing as I find myself in a pitch black bathroom with only the vaguest memories of where the bathroom’s light crystal is.

Once again, I light up my horn—this time, just for the dim green light that barely makes it to the corners of the room.   I grumble unkind words when the crystal doesn’t seem to be in its holder by the door where it’s supposed to be.  Usually it’s kids that do that, but Twilight doesn’t seem the type.  Probably Shining Armor, then.  Fine.  Whatever.  I can do this in the dark.

I have two options; either I climb up the side of the bathtub and then from there up to the sink, or I can just try and shed this disguise down here, and hope I can figure out insect wings if I have them.  Given the difficulty I had just walking down the hallway with these stubby legs, the former sounds daunting, but latter is risky.  I might not have wings, they might not be mature, or they might be too alien to work, and if I fail, I’m not sure chitin on porcelain would make climbing any more doable.

Hard way it is, then.

That’s… the first one, specifically, in case it wasn’t clear.  I’d kind of like to get a look at how I look with albinism anyway.

I find it easy enough to jump up and throw my forelegs over the side of the tub, and from there, it’s the easiest thing in the world to pull myself up, over… and slide down the other side using my face.  My horn sputters out as I lay there in the tub.

Why is it always the face?

Not a problem.  I flop out of my awkward position by rolling onto my back, then again to get my hooves under me and relight my horn.  It’ll be easier to get up onto the sink if I don’t have to turn around on top of the wall of the tub anyway—and that’s what I do.  I repeat my jump to get my forelegs onto the side of the tub, repeat pulling myself up, get my hooves precariously under myself and finally repeat the entire process with the sink, complete with toppling over into the basin—intentionally, this time.  Mostly.

Ah, that’d be the light crystal in my ear now.  It’s just like a bug… stallion… thing… to leave it in the sink.  I shake it out of my ear and levitate it up to the secondary receptacle above the mirror, where it lights up, leaving spots in my sensitive eyes before I can look away.

Well.

That’s me in the mirror… only not.  The identical colorless coat and mane colors are as weird in whole as they were in part, and even my eyes are only slightly bluer than the whites around them.  Strange, I thought albinos had pink or red eyes—something about the blood showing through.  Maybe that was just small animals, though.  There were a lot of subjects that I neglected on the path to power.  I guess it’s true that life, like Princess Celestia, always ends up testing you on the subjects you didn’t study.

My hoof drifts to the mirror, almost as if to touch the pony in front of me to see if it’s real or not.  I had wanted to shed my disguise, so I could see what I really am, but this form… actually doesn’t leave as much to deny as I thought.  I may look like a pony, but it’s more like I’m a paper cutout.  It doesn’t feel real.

Still, I have to see what is real.  I light up my horn and get to work poking and prodding myself with magic.  Again, I feel that same weirdness throughout my body, and this time, I focus on it.  It’s like the border between my horn and the rest of me is indistinct, and every time I try to focus magic through it, some of that magic is drawn away to the rest of the body.  At first, I suspect that it’s the magic powering the transformation, but it’s not.  It’s just… seeping away into the air.

In the end, my cursory inspection using the weak, unfamiliar magic tells me little, but even if it’s not what’s powering the transformation, I think I can use the overlap to disrupt it.  Locking eyes with my reflection, I take a deep breath and push as much magic into my horn as I can without letting it go anywhere.  It’s kind of plugging your nose to pop your ears, and the feeling is similar.  For a brief moment, I feel the pressure build up to a small percentage of what I’m used to, and then it bursts into green flame around me, leaving a pricking sensation and the smell of ozone in its wake.

I don’t know what I expected, but the image of bone-white chitin in the  mirror was not it.  Several questions of biology crash into my train of thought and exit out the other side, leaving me staring at my reflection.

 I look like a bone doll like you’d find hanging in a zebra hut.

It’s the eyes that really do it.  In her changeling form, Twilight Sparkle had solid blue eyes, probably to filter out the high energy light and let through the red and infrared spectrums for better night vision.  I don’t have that; the albinism has stripped me of it.  The entirety of each eye is unshielded, black pupil, making my head look like a hollow-eyed skull that I can barely make out from the hazy, blinding light of the bathroom around me.

All in all, I’m not sure which is worse; the fake-feeling pony mask, or the real me underneath that manages to make me creep myself out.  I swear, this Celestia-damned albino thing had better not stick when they make me a dragon.

Okay, I’ve had just about enough of eyes the size of baseballs without an iris; the light is starting to give me a headache.  I can only solve one of the two right now, so I grope with my magic for the light crystal.

Big mistake; my eyes aren’t the only thing that are over-sensitive.  That’s what that weird feeling was.  That’s how changeling transformation works.

The entirety of my chitin conducts magic, and it feels good.  The light crystal barely wiggles before I collapse forward onto the sink faucet, gasping for breath.  That… was amazing.

Too bad it’s shit for actually using magic.

I get it, now.  I understand Twilight Sparkle’s mission.  Changelings, if they want to be as good with magic as ponies… well, from a pony’s point of view I would say it can’t be done.  Taking a pony’s form is just a patch on the problem; they would need to be redesigned from the ground up to get anywhere near pony proficiency in magic.

It’s not the sensation; even though feeling magic ripple across an entire body of interlocked chitin is like being dipped in static-charged silk, that’s just a distraction, and it can be adjusted to.  The problem is the physical design of the whole thing.  Changelings are built for transformation, and they probably evolved that way from the very beginning.  The horn itself might even be a later addition to allow them to mimic pony magic.  It’s only mimicry, though.  Trying to do real magic with it…

It’s like dipping the entire quill in ink and trying to write calligraphy.

My chitin is crawling, and it’s not from the magic.  I’m excited.  Magic is what I do, and even if changelings are starting at a disadvantage, the idea of changing that is something I can get behind.  For the first time since I came here, I can actually imagine the future.  I can see the problem, and I’m already thinking of ways to fix it.  I have something to look forward to—and not even for selfish reasons.  I’m almost disappointed that I won’t get to experience the changes, but then I remind myself about the dragon’s egg and all the possibilities that holds.

I have hope, and for one, brief moment, it’s enough to make me forget about the circumstances that brought me here.

Bracing myself, I fill my horn with magic and let it flow over me while I concentrate on removing the light crystal properly this time.  It takes a moment, but my blind groping finally latches onto the shotglass-sized crystal and pulls it free, sending the room back into sweet, bearable darkness.

I elected to let my eyes relax for a moment or two before cracking them back open and extricating myself from the faucet I had my hooves wrapped around.  Interestingly, with no iris, there was no adjustment period in returning to the dark—at least, outside of the actual lingering spots left by the bright light that completely filled my vision.

As the haze begins to lift, I spot a figure in the mirror looming over me with cold, dead eyes.

“Buck!” I cry, spinning around to look behind me.  My hoof slips on the porcelain and I topples out of the sink.  As I fall, the last thing I see is the bearer of those eyes dispassionately watching me and doing nothing.

Crack, my head hits the side of the tub and my vision is taken from me once again.


⁂


I don’t think I actually lose consciousness, but it’s a while before I can process anything outside of the pain shooting through the back of my head.  I can feel myself being dragged by the hoof down the hall, the carpet an odd feeling against my chitin, and I try to kick off my assailant, but it’s useless; the force holding my back hoof isn’t physical—it’s magic.

It’s also not the green magic of changelings, but a bright teal.  My bright teal.  I lift my head just enough to drop it back down in exasperation.  Ow.  “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Sure enough, the figure stops at the sound of my voice and cranes its neck to look back at me.  It’s me.  It’s my body with those nightmarish, lifeless eyes.  It might seem like I’m overstating the matter; they’re not actually physically different form than those of a normal pony.  They are still just my eyes, after all—but that’s just it.  I know those eyes, and looking at them from the outside is bad enough, but… how can I explain it?

It’s like seeing a pony whose meaning and purpose in life has been stripped from them.  There is nothing in those eyes, no light, no life, no recognition.  The pony behind those eyes has resigned itself to a soul crushing, despondent malaise, and you can’t help but deeply empathize because that pony is you.

Stunned to silence as I am, the thing loses interest in me and resumes dragging me… down the stairs.

“Ow!  Buck!  Ow!  What—” I yell as I hit each step on the way down, until a teal glow shuts my mouth, forcing me quiet as my lungs desperately try to push enough air through my nostrils to feed my elevated heart rate.  I focus on taking long, deep breaths in order to avoid hyperventilating, and I almost have a handle on myself long enough to be thankful that the steps are carpeted.  Unfortunately, the landing isn’t.

Clunk.

The thing wearing my body doesn’t hesitate a single step as in continues on, dragging me over the hardwood floor and towards—oh no.  I grunt and do my best to brace myself as my journey continues on down the filthy, roughly made stairs and into the basement.  Just when the horrible scraping of chitin on concrete slows to a stop and I think it’s over, I remember the doorway to the lab is a wardrobe embedded askance in a wall of junk.

The wardrobe creaks open, and the teal magic swings me around and tosses me in, clipping my horn and tail on opposite sides of the passage in the process.

Ow.

A wiggle of my leg confirms that I’m free of the magic grip, and I just drop it back down in exhaustion.  What energy I had is spent, and I just lie there for a moment cataloging my hurts and bruises as my body steps out the back of the wardrobe, shuts the door and… stops.

As I lay there in silence, I realize that the glow around my mouth is also gone.  “What the hay?” I say, but there’s no response, or even so much as a reaction.  Just those eyes staring at me.  What was it Twilight Sparkle had said about the thing?

“It can’t actually think.  It’s not even a brain at all, just an antenna that connects it to the hive mind, which itself runs mostly on subconscious thought—like the sum total of everyling mumbling to themselves in a quiet room.  The neurospast will look normal from a distance and respond to commands as the hive mind understands them, but it lacks a cutie mark, and even so much as speaking is beyond it.”

Wonderful.  It can’t speak, but it can creep up behind me and drag me down to the dungeon.  My chitin shudders uncomfortably underneath its gaze and I curl up on my side in response.  It wasn’t so bad when I was alone, just thinking of myself as having been transformed into a changeling, but having my body standing there… the body that used to contain my brain but now doesn’t… makes the disturbing reality of the situation hard not to think about.

An insect embryo burrowed into my brain and consumed it from the inside out, drawing my soul inside it to inhabit its body while it claimed mine for its own.  It had all worked, my soul, memories and emotions all intact.  I was still me, and yet, it was still disturbing to think about.

Okay, that’s enough.  The thing wearing my body is just standing there doing nothing, and though I need to accept what’s happened and what I am now, exposure therapy starts with short durations, and I’m at my limit.  I roll myself up onto my shaky white legs and make for the door.

Just as I’m about to pass by the thing wearing my body, I get a facefull of canon, and for the instant it’s in contact with me, it’s as if the floor has fallen out beneath my hooves.  The sensation of drowning is all too familiar, but instead of stringy birthing fluids I find myself at the bottom of a vast a morass of tar and voices.  Individual thoughts flow like honey in winter, barely managing to overcome the sheer inertia of the whole.  Every emotion is rationed, each decision held in committee.

My request for panic is denied.


⁂


They warned me.  Twilight Sparkle told me to avoid physical contact with other changelings as a nymph, and my mind had gone straight to the gutter.  It’s not my fault—it’s the name.  ‘Nymph’ has unfortunate connotations outside of the insect world.  I pictured, at worst, getting into a fight with Shining Armor, if not the two of us working out our mutual anger in some other way like the plot of a tawdry romance novel.

It never occurred to me that, in housing the part of my changeling brain that would have connected me to the hive mind, my own body was the greatest danger of all.

They find me the next morning, curled up in one of the lab’s alcoves as far from that thing as possible, shivering in my sleep, dreaming again of the infested Canterlot from before, only this time there is no other Sunset Shimmer by Celestia’s side.  It’s just me, crying on the inside as a vast swarm of insects plucks the invisible strings of my bondage from inside my own head.

According to Twilight Sparkle, a normal changeling can control how deep in the hive mind they go, but the neurospast living in my body… can’t, and I got the full brunt of the experience.  Oh, and she tells me the reason it dragged me down here is because I’m not allowed out into the house without a disguise, and that I need a changeling in my head to help me with that until I learn to do it on my own.

I’m not sure why Twilight Sparkle’s face is already bandaged, but on the bright side, it keeps the blood from getting all over the place when I hoof her in the face.
> Chapter Five 【Twilight】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	I would say that Sunset Shimmer is being intentionally difficult, but I do not believe that I have yet experienced her behaving in any other manner.

“I am not being intentionally difficult!” she cries, and then seems to reconsider her words.  “I mean—I am not being difficult!”

That gets a frown out of me.  “You heard that?”

“Your nose touched mine!” she says, covering the point of contact with her forehooves and attempting to scurry further back into the wall behind her, which she cannot do because it is solid—

Crack!

“Hey, stop that!” I shout, realizing that she has managed to break through into the hollow, rib-like structure of the lab wall.  “I had to spit up resin for days to build those supports!”

A tiny white changeling head pokes out from between the supports to look at me.  Her eyes then turn inwards to look cross-eyed at the flat piece of green resin in her mouth, which she immediately spits out.  “Oh yuck!” she says, scraping her tongue off on one of her chitinous forelegs, which I do not think is any cleaner.  “You need to tell me these things sooner.”

“I am most certain that I have,” I insist.

She disagrees.  “You have not.  You tell me nothing unless I pry it out of your snide buggy mouth.”

“It hardly matters, anyway!” I say, rearing up and gesturing with my forelegs, getting a little fed up with the constant sidetracking.  “Changelings put far dirtier things in their mouths than my perfectly sanitary, lab-grade resin!”

Sunset Shimmer’s face curls up in disgust.  “Okay, it’s time for you to stop talking.  I don’t need your accidental innuendo in my head right now.”

“It was not accidental, nor was it innuendo,” I inform her with a haughty sneer.  “I was plainly referring to—”

“Err, no, you see,” she interrupts, “the way you said it, it sounded like you were talking about—”

“—intercourse, yes,” I finish, interrupting right back, somewhat offended.  “I placed an egg in your brain, you’ll remember.  I know how biology works.”

“Kind of hard to forget,” she grumbles under her breath.  “But that’s not… no, you know what?  Fine.  Whatever.  You’re a shapeshifter that can look like whatever you want, makes sense you’d use it to get some action, I guess, but that’s still disgusting.”

“The point,” I say with a huff,  “is that the collectors make frequent use of it in their duties, so I assure you that changelings are quite resistant to infection and disease.”

“The… collectors?” she asks, wary of both the subject matter and her attempt to slip out of the hollow where I have cornered her.  “Do I want to know what they’re collecting?”

Is the answer not obvious?  “Love, of course.”

She freezes in the middle of her attempt to get away.  “Okay… pretend this is another one of those things that you haven’t explained to me at all, because this is another one of those things that you haven’t explained to me at all.”

“This would all be much simpler if you would just let me touch you,” I insist, giving her a stern look as I move to cut her off.  I am successful, and she backs away, bristling.

“Uh-uh,” she says, shaking her head stubbornly.  “I don’t care if I’m a bug for the next couple weeks, I am not gonna let your freaky hive mind back in my head.  I like being able to think without having to ask permission.”

I find myself groaning in vexation.  If only she hadn’t found a way to shed her disguise in the first place, she never would have been traumatized by the neurospast and its absolute bond with the hive mind.  “And I keep telling you that you do not have to.  I will shield you from the hive mind.  Do you not trust me?”

“No!” she screeches, her voice reverberating like a banshee—which is totally not what we call the queen over the hive mind to keep from getting in trouble.

“Right.  Stupid question,” I admit.  To be honest, I don’t trust Sunset Shimmer, either.  I mean, sure, she came back that one time.  She let me stuff her brain with embryos and she’s pretty much stuck in the body of a changeling until I say otherwise…

…but still, she’s not part of the hive mind, and that means she can’t be trusted—and that’s fine.  Our relationship doesn’t have to go any further than that.  Give and take.  Business.  Okay, maybe it’s a little ‘take and take’ at the moment since I haven’t really done anything much for her, but… that’s just how it has to be; there’s nothing I can do to rush things.

The problem is that I kind of want her to trust me.  Strange, I know, but I do want her help.  Giving up on that now would just be admitting to Shiny that I was wrong.

And I’m not wrong.

“Ffffffine,” I whine begrudgingly.  “Come out, and I’ll… explain.  With my mouth.  Because that’s what ponies do.”

She hesitates.

I tap my hoof and roll my eyes.  “What?”

“When you say ‘with your mouth…’”

“Oh, for the love of the queen—yes!” I yell.  “I will waggle my throat flaps in precise undulations that vibrate the air, producing sounds describing the necessities of changeling life.”

Still, she hesitates.

“Well?” I say, waiting for her to do or say something.

She blinks and looks at me, before suddenly becoming flustered.  “Um.  Yes.  I just… got distracted for a second.  I really didn’t need that image in my head,” she explains, making a face of disgust.

I let out a snort of laughter.  “If you want, I can remove it for you.”

She freezes again, one hoof out of her hidey-hole.  “You… can’t really… do that… can you?” she asks, wide-eyed, then shrinks back inside.  “Oh Celestia, you probably can.  I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Nrrrrgh.”  I try not to curse.  “No, even though you have no ability to resist the hivemind, I can’t make you forget things that have already happened.  I could, in theory, prevent memories from being recorded, but there are drugs that do that anyway—alcohol and worse.  And certain hormones, which your body is capable of producing on command.  But that’s not the point.  Memories, once recorded, are a part of the soul and cannot be removed or changed.”

She narrows her eyes at me from inside the hole.  “But you could make me not care about them, like the ponies who experimented with soul transfer in the past.  I bet you could do it selectively.”

Honestly, the things she comes up with.  “You have a sick mind, Sunset Shimmer.”

“I’m not hearing a no,” she retorts with a glare.

“Well… you’re not wrong,” I say with a sigh and a shake my head.  “It’s no coincidence that you can’t regulate your connection to the hivemind.  The body of a nymph is not designed be a fair and equal member of changeling society.”

“It’s a prison,” she whispers coldly.  “Complete with all the tools you need to get whatever you want out of whoever you put in it, and no way to escape.”

Well, if she was going to be dramatic about it… “Yes,” I say, taking advantage of her more sedate mood to take a few steps closer and sit down.  “Yes it is.”  I take a breath, and slowly let it out, hoping that she will remain calm if I do.  It is a thing that Princess Celestia does, as I realized after the fact of her trespass.  “But also all the tools I need to give you what you want.  Just… remember that, okay?  You knew you were putting your life—and your mind—in my hooves.  You’re vulnerable, yes, but no more vulnerable than you were in the chrysalis and less than you will be as an infant dragon.”

She doesn’t respond for several minutes, and I consider just leaving her to think things over and get used to the idea of being what she is, but she has already spent the entire night alone, so instead, I wait patiently.

“I think it’s time you tell me how you’re going to get me in the egg,” she says.  “And everything else.  All of it.  I’m not going anywhere until there are no more surprises.”

Well, there goes my day.

Actually, no, though it would have been better if that really was the case, as it would mean I had more to offer her.

“There actually isn’t much to say about the process, from here on out,” I say, trying to sound reassuring.  “And none of it is anything you should find objectionable.”

She lets out a soft whicker, though it comes out with a buzz thanks to her untransformed state.  “It’ll be a windy day in tartarus when I take your word about something like that.”

“Look—it really is simple,” I tell her.  “Dragon eggs need to be incubated in magic in order to mature.  Usually, this just happens naturally in the conditions found in a typical dragon’s hoard, but it can also happen by chance in other magic-heavy environments, or be artificially stimulated by the directed use of magic.  Under normal circumstances, the egg would just keep absorbing magic at a steady rate for however long it takes to collect the energy required for its development, but we will actually be using four different methods of feeding it magic to get the result we want.

“For the first phase, you’ll be incubating the egg directly with your magic as it undergoes its initial cell division.  This is actually the most crucial stage, as you must stop just before the embryo begins to form a soul, and there must be no outside sources of magic to push it over the threshold.

“At that point, there should be enough changeling magic in it that your changeling body will recognize it as a rudimentary hive mind.  With some effort, you should be able to force your soul to actually enter it.  Since the soul is, by gross description, a mass of magic, doing this correctly should be a great enough influx to trigger the embryo’s next two stages of development; this is important because we want the egg to use your soul in place of developing its own—skipping that stage of growth entirely.  Once I have confirmed that everything is as it should be, I will have your nymph body destroyed in order to avoid complications.

“From then on, the egg—that is, you—will continue to be incubated in magic that you will have stored previously until your brain has developed enough to support your significantly older-than-intended soul.  For the final phase, we will have the neurospast take over using its pony magic for the remainder of your development.  By the time you are ready to hatch, the changeling magic should all be flushed out of your system with no lasting effects.”

“Really?  That’s it?” she asks, hovering between incredulous and hopeful.  “Then I can just stay down here and sit on the egg until it’s ready?”

“Ah, no,” I say, reluctant to dampen her enthusiasm and risk another argument.  “I swear, I thought this was obvious, but changelings are shapeshifters for a reason.  As a changeling, you require love to survive, and we are not allowed deliveries of it here.  We must fend for ourselves in that regard, and you will need quite a bit to make up for the magic that you will be expending.”

Sunset’s jaw tightened, but she managed to reign in her temper.  “You… you expect me to go out there and—”

“No, of course not,” I interrupt.  “You are still much too weak to leave the house; your disguise could fail or be breached.  Instead, we will be bringing in a pony to feed you.  Fear not; all you will have to do is lie back and think of—”

She makes a sputtering, choking sound.  “Twilight, I am not having sex with a random pony you picked off the street!” she says, now getting upset, which I find interesting.  “At… at least give me some say in the matter.”

I blink, wondering how it is she keeps coming up with these things.  “That is not what I meant, and will not be necessary.  Platonic, motherly love is a perfectly acceptable substitute.  The pony in question will merely be a foalsitter.”

Sunset Shimmer blanches.  “That’s worse!”


⁂


I am finally able to lure Sunset Shimmer out of the hole that she has made in my beautiful laboratory wall using a plate of scrambled eggs and the promise that a decent serving of protein would help delay her looming need for love.  It’s not a lie, but it is rather moot at this point.  The babysitting arrangements have already been made and she’s going to need to do a lot more than not die to incubate the egg, but at least it is something to distract her and, with any luck, make her feel a bit better.

It seems to be working.

“So,” Sunset Shimmer says, struggling through bites that are too large for her tiny mouth.  “I couldn’t help but notice you don’t have your lab filled with crystals for storing magic.  I suppose there’s a disgusting, slimy love-sucking-bug reason for that?”

I nod.  “The changeling body is able to produce a number of substances with the help of several glands.  One of them is for storing magic; it’s actually very important, as otherwise we would have difficulty storing food.”

Sunset Shimmer gulps down her mouthful of food and uneasily brings her hoof to her throat.  “That sounds unpleasant.  A crystal’s capacity to hold magic increases exponentially with its mass; logically, you’d want the product to be… as large as possible.”

“Trying to pass solid magic would be unpleasant, yes,” I say, trying to imagine it myself.  “In theory, that could happen if you gorged yourself too much, but it’s not a practical concern.

“Your body will collect love through your horn and chitin, even when you are disguised.  This love pools in your amoreal sac as a viscous pink gel, which your body will then digest into a green, more liquid form of magic.  Either form can be expectorated in a membrane for storage, but once the love is converted into magic, it is unique to you and cannot be shared.

“The liquid magic is prone to crystallization, as you would expect, and the process can be accelerated with additional magic.  Love does not naturally crystallize unless it is particularly strong and pure, making it much more difficult to transport.”

“Hrm,” she says, growing a frown.

“What?  What issue could you possibly have with that?”

“No, just thinking about liquid magic,” she says, busying herself with another bite that’s half as big as the last, yet still twice as big as it should be from the look of discomfort on her face as she swallows.  “That’s actually kind of cool.  If it’s really dense enough to crystallize, then that means it’s not just magic-infused slime.”

“You shouldn’t call it slime anyway,” I grumble.  “It’s unscientific.”

Her little white nose scrunches up.  “Hey—I happen to remember almost drowning in that chrysalis, and the stuff was thicker than pitch pudding.”

I… don’t know what to say to that.  “Pitch pudding?”

“Zebra delicacy, if you can call it that,” she says and mimes gagging.  “It’s not actually expensive or anything.  Ceremonial, maybe?  I don’t remember.  Castle Canterlot cuisine might be all cakes and caramel ninety percent of the time, but when there are foreign dignitaries visiting… it can be hard to tell when they’re actively trying to poison each other or not.”

“I’ll… remember that,” I say.  “There isn’t actually—”

She nods and points at me with her fork.  “Zebras.  They seem all wise and shit when they come here, but back in Zebrabwe, they’re eating ash and tree bark… and figs.  Oh Celestia do I hate figs.”

“Okay, firstly, there is no way the amniotic fluid in your Chrysalis was actually as thick at pitch or anything containing pitch to a significant degree, and second… you no longer get to complain about anything that has to go through your mouth.”

She rolls her eyes.  “Oh like you can talk.  I doubt all the cellulose in these walls came from cabbage and asparagus.”

“Need I remind you that you’ll soon have a taste for rocks?” I counter, puffing out my cheeks in indignation.  “You’d actually do well to eat a table leg or two and repair my wall; any kind of internal magic would be good practice for dragonhood… in theory.”

That shut her up.  She made a sour face and went back to eating her breakfast.

No, wait, that isn’t what I wanted to do.  That isn’t what I want at all.  

“Sorry…” I say, forcing myself to apologize.  “I didn’t mean… I don’t want to make you regret that.  It’s supposed to be a good thing.”

She lets out a sigh.  “It’s fine.  It probably won’t be a half as gross as changeling stuff; it’s just going to be a big change not having a horn at all.  At least I know that dragons are capable of the kind of magic I’m used to; not like you and your awful chitin.”

Huh?  “What’s wrong with chitin?” I ask.

She hesitates and looks away for a moment before bluntly responding, “It’s crap, Twilight.”

I let out a snort of laughter.  “You just don’t know how to use it.”

“Maybe…” she admits with less confidence.  “But I don’t think so.  I get that it’s how the disguise magic works, and if it’s part of how you feed, too, then you probably don’t want to hear this, but just being there, it draws magic away from the horn.  I’m used to having pinpoint control, and this…”  She gestures at her tiny white nub of a horn.  “It’s like trying to write a letter with my entire face, at best.  The horn may as well not even be there.

“You can make a changeling using my body as a template, but if you don’t get rid of the chitin… Celestia, I don’t even know what the result would be.  Powerful and really good at changeling magic to be sure, but don’t ask it to do anything delicate or complicated.”

“Well, we’re going to find out.  Shiny is going in the Chrysalis tonight.”

“Already?” she says, though I’m not sure why that surprises her.  “Well, it’ll certainly make him stand out.  I’m serious, though.  You really need to do something about it for yourself if you’re going to be Celestia’s student.  If you can’t get rid of it… maybe you can just separate it, but I don’t envy you if you do.  It’d be like having two horns.”


⁂


Teaching Sunset Shimmer to restore her disguise without the help of the hive mind is proving difficult, to say the least.  Somehow, though, trying has turned out to be paradoxically gratifying in spite of the time wasted.  If she’d just let me, I could show her how to do it in an instant using the hive mind.  She is only going to be a changeling for a few weeks anyway, and if she’d just stayed in her pony form in the first place then we wouldn’t even be in this situation.

And yet…

Making do without the hive mind is implicit in my purpose.  If I’m going to spend years learning magic from ponies, books, and even Celestia herself, then I might as well get used to the idea.

If only it were going better.

“Oh sure laugh,” Sunset Shimmer says, venting her sour frustration.  “But it’s not easy going against years of practice using only a horn.  It’ll be even worse for you and ‘Shiny’ if you try to learn proper unicorn magic without even a body designed for it.”

“I’m not… I wasn’t laughing,” I insist, relatively certain that it is true.  “I actually thought we were doing rather well.”

She falls back onto her haunches with a huff.  It might have been more effective if she had more stature than a loaf of bread.  “Yeah, well, we’re not,” she grumbles.  “I’ve only got another try or two in me before I collapse.  I’m used to pushing my limits, but this body is kind of pathetic.”

Yes, yes, changelings are bad at magic, I—wait.  “What?  Why didn’t you say something?!  If you run out—”

She just shrugs, and I realize that she’s breathing heavily.  “It’s no big deal.  Give me an hour or two and I’ll be fine.”

“No, you won’t!” I yell, jumping to my feet and panicking bit—just a bit, mind.  “You’re not a pony any more, Sunset Shimmer, you’re a changeling!  You need love to do magic, and you need to look like a pony to get love!”

She frowns.  “But you said food would help with that.”

“Help, yes,” I say as emphatically as I can.  “It will keep you alive and give you enough magic to maintain a disguise, but that’s all.  A changeling on its own without a disguise usually has no choice but to forcefully drain the love from somepony, and I don’t think I have to tell you why that’s a bad idea in general, let alone in our situation.”

“Well… damn,” she says, straightening her back and trying to force off the exhaustion.  “That sucks.  I guess I’ve gotta make the next one count, huh?”

She’s not going to—“Wait!” I cry.

Thankfully, she stops and gives me a strange look.  I think she’s trying to raise an eyebrow at me, but changelings don’t have eyebrows.  “What?” she asks.  “Got any last-minute tips that you haven’t mentioned yet?”

“Just… wait,” I say, trying to slow my breathing after panicking.  “Let me think.”

“Fine,” she grunts, and sits back down, crossing her stubby white forelegs in front of her.  “Hrm.”

“What?”

“Just… being in a body like this really does suck,” she muses. “I hadn’t really considered what it was like to be… not me.”

“It’s only for a few weeks,” I remind her, but it sounds repetitive, even to me.  “It’ll get better—I promise.”

She takes a deep breath and lets it out with an unintentional squeak-buzz that is, nonetheless, adorable. “Yeah, sure,” she says.  “But then what?  Am I gonna be a rockin’ dragon, or just some shmuck?  You get to keep remaking yourself until you get it right; I’m gonna be stuck with whatever’s already in that egg forever.”

She has a point.  “I don’t believe that.  You could be the weakest, scrawniest whelp in the, uhh…”

“Clutch,” she offers.  “I think dragons have clutches.”

“Right.  You might be the runt of the clutch; it could happen—though I’d hope not considering the rate and volume of the magic we’ll be feeding you—but even if you completely lost the genetic lottery, you’d still be you, and you wouldn’t leave it at that.”

“I thought so too,” she says.  “But as you reminded me, there are drugs that can make a pony forget that they care.  About anything.  I’m going to be at the mercy of whatever hormones dragons have pumping through their blood.”

“Ah.”  I take a moment to change mental gears in order to respond to that.  “That’s a different matter entirely, and not one you should worry about.”

She cocks her tiny head to the side.  “Why not?”

“I take it that you see see dragons as lazy?” I suggest.

“You don’t?”

“Well… I’m biased,” I have to admit.  “Dragons and changelings actually aren’t that different, in a way, but of the two Changelings are lazier.”

“Now that, I doubt,” she says.

I shrug.  “Fair enough, but you’ve only seen a few changelings,” I remind her.  “You see, both changelings and dragons derive magic from external sources.  Changelings feed on love, as I’ve explained—any emotion to a certain degree, actually, but love most of all—and dragons… well, they’re harder to explain in as many words, but suffice it to say, they draw magic from the fundamental structure of the world—order and chaos in equal amounts.

“The difference, though, is that changelings are, above all, efficient.  You’ve only seen special changelings like Shiny and me.  For us the hive mind is optional, but other breeds are… less capable depending on their intended duties.  None are quite so reliant as the neurospast, but then, that, too, is a changeling in its own way.”

“Oh, well… good to know there’s something worse that could have been done to this body,” she says. “I guess prisoners aren’t as useful if they can’t even think.”

That is a good way to put it.  “Yes, optimism!” I say in an upbeat manner.  “Optimism is good!”

She just stares at me with a flat look on her face.  “That was sarcasm.”

Hrm.  Sunset Shimmer’s brief contact with the hive mind seems to have infected her with its poor grasp of sarcasm.  Best not mention that to her, or she might react poorly.

“In any case,” I continue, picking the subject back up.  “Dragons are the opposite of changelings in many ways.  Dragons personify greed above all else; their sheer size demands it.  The reason we have a dragon egg in the first place—and the reason I can just give it to you—is because we’ve tried to integrate them before, and it never worked out.  It didn’t matter if we created draconic changelings gene-by-gene, or simply put changeling souls in dragon eggs; the former would drain the love reserves dry in a week, and the latter was even harder to sate.  Only the queens retain any of the changes that were made at that time, and that, I think, is only because they were the ones that made the decision.”

Sunset Shimmer taps the floor absently with her hoof, exploring its texture as she thinks.  “So, changelings are the ones at school that sit in the back of the class, chat and only pay enough attention to get by?” she suggests.

I nod.  “Usually, yes.”

“And dragons are the ones with their books out in the cafeteria at lunch so they don’t have any homework?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.  There are no dragons at your school.”


⁂


The conversation had lapsed into me detailing various breeds of changelings and what to expect from the ‘adults’ in the house.  The short answer?  Not much.

“Wait, you mean they’ll even take orders from me?” she asks, disbelieving.

I shrug, looking over my shoulder from where I am cleaning up the chrysalis.  “Yes, though ‘orders’ is not the right word.  Changelings do not actually have that kind of hierarchy.”

“But you have a queen—or queens,” she counters somewhere between confusion and curiosity.  “How does that work, then?”

My cheek stings even underneath my disguise at the mention of queens.  “Queens are… a special case, but even so, they don’t make laws and pass down decrees like you’re thinking.  A queen is—naturally—the mother of her children.  Though she does not raise them, she is always present in the hive mind, which she serves as a focal point for, but does not control.  Strictly speaking, her primary function is to breed, and to that purpose she has some influence on food and logistics.  In the end, however, she still obeys the will of the hive mind.”

“Weird,” Sunset Shimmer says, stretching out her back in a manner which, due to her size, is reminiscent of a cat.  I don’t tell her this.  “So… the egg you used had to come from somewhere.  Do I call her ‘mom,’ then?”

I can’t help it; I wince.  “No.  Never do that—though I don’t intend for you to meet her while you remain a changeling.  Only other queens are acknowledged as true daughters; it gets confusing otherwise.”

“Why does me being a changeling mean I shouldn’t meet her?” she asks.  “Wouldn’t she trust me more?”

Somehow, she always manages to ask the questions she won’t like the answers to…  I wonder if her being a hatchling has anything to do with it.  “She would trust you, certainly; you would not be able to resist her.  Much like the neurospast, she cannot regulate her connection to the hive mind, because in a way, she is the hive mind.  Unlike the neurospast, however, she would not have to touch you to establish contact; just being in her presence—or hearing her voice in particular—would override your will.”

If Sunset Shimmer could have paled, she would have.  As it is, I notice her unconsciously gravitate back to the hole she had burrowed in my wall.  “Um.  Right.  Stay the hay away from the queen.  Gotcha.”  Awkward silence.  “So, what happens if she… you know… dies?”

“A queen is connected to all of her progeny from birth, no matter the distance.  They would take it badly, but they would survive—at least, at first.  Without the queen that spawned them, a changeling’s connection to the hive mind would be limited by power and distance, and we’ve already covered how reliant the average worker or drone is on the hive mind.  Large groups of them, however, would survive, as would most specialized breeds.”

For the first time I can recall since I’ve met her, I can’t seem to read Sunset Shimmer’s face.  I guess she has some diplomatic training after all… probably an automatic response to the usual sort of genocidal thoughts that naturally arise when dealing with politicians and diplomats.

“Generally speaking, though,” I add.  “Killing a queen is a terrible idea to almost any goal.”

She snickers.  “Well of course you’d say that.”

“Please,” I retort.  “I said any goal, and I meant it objectively.  There are other hives and other queens.”

“Fine; what’s so bad about a bunch of ad-hoc drones running around?”

“Well, they tend to die or get caught, for one.  A bunch of feral drones running about isn’t good for anyone; they aren’t really capable of feeding non-destructively, so they tend to get ponies upset, making life hard for everyling else.  The real problem is the ones that don’t go feral, though, because once things settle down, any ‘ad-hoc’ changeling hivemind with a healthy food supply will find itself with a new queen whether they like it or not, and these new queens tend to not get along.”

“Wonderful,” she says sourly.  “Kill one queen, end up with a dozen more.  I see your point.  Why wouldn’t they get along, though?  Why should brother kill brother, etcetera and so-forth?”

I shrug.  “It’s just biology.  Other hives… think differently.”


⁂


The weak green glow of my magic flickers as I levitate a glass of water over to Sunset Shimmer.  “Are you feeling any better?” I ask.

Sunset shimmer groans as she stretches her tiny white chitin as far as it would go.  “No,” she admits, her head drooping as she takes the glass in her tiny hooves and sets it down in front of herself while she shifts her position.  “But you knew that.”

“I am sorry about the whole changeling thing, you know,” I say quite honestly.  “I mean, I am aware of how lousy we are at magic, obviously.”

She takes a moment to gulp down as much of the glass as she can in one draw; not much, considering the fact that it just about reaches her withers.

Maybe I should have brought a smaller one.

She exhales loudly and coughs a little as she slams the glass down “If you’re going to apologize about something, apologize about making me a freaking albino!” she yells.  “You told me I’d be a cockroach for a few weeks; you said nothing about crippling photosensitivity!”

“It shouldn’t be that bad,” I say with some concern.  “Are you in pain?  We had to—”

“I get why you did it, but it was still a surprise,” she interrupts.  “And no, I’m fine in here.  The bioluminescence is… nice, actually.  Probably changeling instinct or some bullshit.  I… can’t spend all my time in here, though.  I don’t want to spend all my time in here.”

“Um…”  I try and remember how rude it is to call somepony out on an obvious contradiction.  The appropriate response eludes, me, and I decide it can’t be that bad.  “I’m pretty sure you declared your desire to do just that earlier this morning.”

“That’s not—okay, that is what I said, but that’s not the point.  Look, Twilight.  I’ll make you a deal.”

I raise one eyebrow in question.  “Go on.”

“I’ll… let you do it,” she says, forcing the words in fits and starts.  “I’ll let you touch me… show me how to do the disguise thing… but after that, you let me go where I want.”

“That is the idea,” I tell her.

Her face twists into an adorable pout.  “No, I mean, outside; alone.  I just need some time away from all… this.”

Oh.  “I… can’t agree to that,” I tell her.  “I’m sorry, Sunset.”

“Twilight,” she insists.  “Look at me!  You’ve got to know I’ll come back!”

I sigh, set down the mess I’m working on and go back over to her.  “Sunset—it’s not about that,” I say, sitting down in front of her, close enough that she has to look up at me.  You look at yourself; even for a changeling, you’re barely old enough to be walking.  I told you that your disguise is too fragile to go out.”

Her pout deepens into a sulk.  “I know, but—”

“Look,” I interrupt.  “I’ll have Shiny take you to the park, okay?  He can keep anyone from running into you on the streets, and then he’ll hang back like a normal brother.  You’ll barely know he’s there.”

Sunset Shimmer’s face instantly twisted to show what she thought about that idea.

“It’s the best I can do.  Maybe in a week, after you’ve had a few visits from the foalsitter and some experience maintaining your disguise, that’ll change, but until then… you can still go out, but only if you have an escort for your own safety.”

“Wait—you said Shining Armor is going in the Chrysalis tonight.  How long is that going to take?”

“There are fewer stages to rebirthing.  A week, maybe.”

“Great.  Just great.”
> Chapter Six 【Sunset】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

My skin crawls as Twilight Sparkle places her hoof on my shoulder.  I hate that I’m so affected by it that I can’t even keep a straight face, but there’s no getting around it.

I’m scared.

Me.  Sunset Shimmer.  The terror of Castle Canterlot; now reduced to this.  It would almost be better if something had actually happened.  I’d feel better about being scared out of my wits when a tiny purple filly twice my size touches me.  I would feel justified.

No I wouldn’t.

That’s the problem.  How terrifying the experience is doesn't even enter into it.  It's just the idea of it that has wormed its way into my head… like the very real parasite that had actually burrowed into my brain.  It’s just there.  I have no control, no defense for what it does to me.

I never want to feel that way again.

“Sunset Shimmer?” Twilight Sparkle prompted.

Wait.  “I don’t feel anything.”  Once the words are out of my mouth, I hear them and realize what they mean.  Worry crawls up my spine as I wonder if her skill allows her to be more subtle than when I touched the thing inhabiting my old body—or maybe she has just turned off my ability to feel what she’s doing to me?

“I haven’t done anything yet,” she informs me.  “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay with me touching you, first.”

Oh.

I’m not sure if I should thank her, or hit her for making me worry, so in the end, I do neither.  “I’m really not, so just… get it over with,” I say.

The first thing I feel is the tail end of an exasperated sigh, followed by blasé ambivalence as the doorway between her mind and mine creaks open.  To my relief, I can tell instantly that she’s there, brushing up against my thoughts.  It’s almost like having somepony literally walking around in my head.  It’s the sensation of being watched from the inside, hearing hoofsteps from every direction, feeling somepony looking over my shoulder and breathing down my spine, all at once.

Then, she reaches around me and takes my hoof in hers.  More accurately, she steps inside my skin, takes a deep breath and… shivers.  A tingling sensation runs from my hooves up to my horn, followed by a tearing sensation as green flames envelop me.  The process is painless, but overwhelmingly… tactile, like being pressed through a layer of stretchy rice paper.

And then—just like that—it’s over, and my head is my own again.  Everything is fine, nothing bad happened and it feels good to be warm and fuzzy once more… and I’ll do whatever it takes to stay this way so that I never have to go through that again.


⁂


Twilight Sparkle hasn’t said a word as I make my way out of the lab, choosing instead to watch curiously as each step took me marginally closer to freedom.  Now, looking back, I think her lack of comment is because it’s taking all of her effort not to laugh—which is obviously ridiculous.  I’m certain by now that keeping a straight face is completely effortless for her.

Nevertheless, the whole hive mind is probably laughing at me as I stand obstructed by the simplest of obstacles—stairs.  They didn’t look any smaller when I was being dragged down them on my back, but at least that I probably could have managed on my own.

You’d think that if I could climb a bathtub up to the sink next to it, stairs would be no problem—but these are just crude, filthy planks of wood with no vertical surface to actually kick off of.  I suppose, if my life depended on it, I’d manage, but…

Did I mention that they’re filthy?  And that I have a white coat?  A white coat that I’m pretty sure doesn’t stay magically clean like Princess Celestia’s seems to?  Call me spoiled, but I’m pretty sure most ponies don’t go around rubbing their face in dirt if they can help it.

Thankfully, my knight in shining armor appears at the top of the stairs.

Okay, I admit, the name is amusing at times.  That doesn’t mean I have to like him.

Still, I’m allowed to be relieved when the green glow of his magic begins to engulf me… at least at first.  Magic means he doesn’t have to come down and actually make contact with me, right?  But no—Twilight had said I was going to fill the dragon egg with changeling magic so that my body would recognize it as a hive mind, and sure enough, I can feel the whisper of Shining Armor’s mind around me as he lifts me up the stairs.  I wonder if it’s impossible to insulate yourself from somepony—someling—that you’re using magic on, or if he just doesn’t care.

I’m embarrassed to say that it’s not as bad this time.  It’s not that I’m getting used to it, but at least Shining Armor stays wholly outside of my mind for the duration.  That, and… it’s magic.  Having my mind invaded by magic is just naturally less creepy than having ponies touching me.

It makes sense to me.

As I approach the top of the steps, I can see Shining Armor struggling to lift me.  The irony that my old body, with my old pony magic in it, would not only be perfectly capable of the task, but safer to my mind, is not lost on me, yet… I don’t want to see that thing again.  I’m honestly not sure how much of my aversion to that thing is the trauma of its unfiltered connection to the hive mind, how much is the disturbing image of seeing something else walking around in my body and how much is just lingering self-loathing for all the things I screwed up.

I’ll manage with the mild invasion of my mind by an irritable stallion, thanks.

Finally, I feel polished, clean wooden floorboards rise up to meet my tiny white hooves, and the green glow surrounding me disappears.  Shining Armor is visibly winded, which… actually makes me feel kinda bad.  Twilight had said that she was the most magically-powerful changeling, but she was still a filly and I was barely a foal.  Seeing a grown stallion with magic this feeble really hit home how important Twilight’s objective is for us.

Wait, us?  Where did that come from?  It was important to them.

Ugh.  This is what I get for rejecting my pony self, isn’t it?  I’m not a pony any more, and I’m not a dragon yet.  I don’t know how to think of myself, other than as this tiny white… thing.

“Are you alright?” asks a voice that sounds disturbingly like Shining Armor.  What’s more, it comes from Shining Armor’s mouth.

For a moment, I just stare at him like he’s grown a second head, and it’s then that I realize just how much larger he is than me.  I remember him being stocky for a unicorn, but now he looks huge, and I realize that I’d only really spent any time with Twilight since becoming a nymph, and she’s barely ten.  Maybe she had a point about letting me out on my own; it would be kind of awkward if somepony called the guard on a ‘lost’ foal.

“Seriously,” he says.  “If I’ve destroyed your fragile mind with my awesome display of magic, blink twice.  There’s a dumpster in the bad part of town that the just gets dumped off the side of the mountain every other week, and you’re small enough to fit in this one lunchbox I never liked.”

I blink for lack of response before my mind processes what he actually said, and I scowl.  “Sorry, I thought for a second that you’d been replaced by a normal pony and it set off a minor existential crisis.”

“Yeah, well, get your fluffy butt in gear,” he says, motioning into the foyer with his head.  “I’m apparently taking you to the park for the afternoon, and I need to stop at a ‘book store’ on the way.”

I let out a snort of laughter.  “Not a fan of books?  Somehow I’m not surprised.”

“Books are fine,” he says, rolling his eyes.  “But we had a visitor while you were in the chrysalis, and ‘Twily’ got a little carried away in explaining how her ‘goofy older brother’ loves these… tabletop games.  How she even knows so much about them, I’ve no idea.”

I look back over my shoulder to give him a questioning look as I step past him.  “And you’re going to go to the trouble of learning them just for that?”  I’m greeted by a strangely familiar feeling as I enter the foyer.  “Who could possibly be so important that—”  I stop talking when it hits me.  I can feel her magic in my chitin, even through the disguise.  “Celestia was here.”

“Yeah,” he grunts, coming out behind me and closing the second door.  “Still no idea why.  She seemed interested in me, but it makes no sense; I’m entirely unspectacular.”

“That—”  Hrm.  “I don’t know how to feel about that.  You don’t think she knows about me, do you?”

He shakes his head and glances over at the front door with a worried look.  “It’s unlikely.  Our queen had just come in a few minutes before; even if your princess is as sensitive to magic as we are, there should have been no trace of yours.  Of course, that’s its own concern, but you don’t have to worry about that.”

“I can worry,” I insist.  “You said you’re unremarkable, but we’re going to change that; it’s not good if she gets to know both of you right before you grow some potential.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Why not?”

“Twily was quite… creative in her description of me.”


⁂


It feels good to get out of the house, even if it has to be with Shining Armor watching over me—or more specifically, me watching over him, considering my vantage point in the saddle, and all.

Right.  The saddle.  It’s the slightly embarrassing lesser evil of a compromise between my need for physical separation from Shining Armor and my begrudging admission that I actually am of no age to be on my own.  It’s humiliating… but in a bearable way, since nopony knows who I am.  To them, I’m just another foal out with her older sibling—or, technically, her nephew, according to my cover story, but whatever.

Regardless, it’s a relief to feel the mountain wind in my mane, and let the babble of the busy streets wash over me.  The sun is less pleasant on my albino eyes, but it’s not as bad as the last time I was out.  Back when I was still an infant, even closing my eyes wasn’t enough to block it out; now I could even open my eyes so long as we were in the shade.

Small victories.  I'm just glad to feel remotely normal instead of tucked away in a house full of nightmares hiding from the world.  Tartarus, I don’t know when the last time was that I went for a walk just to enjoy it.  Bouncing along in a saddle as an adult goes about their errands?  That wasn’t part of my foalhood.

I don’t think about my foalhood much, but suffice it to say, it was meager and I rose above it.  Leaving it behind is one of the best things that ever happened to me, not the least because it didn’t just happen.  I made it happen.  I suppose that’s why Twilight Sparkle thinks I have in me the drive to make a good dragon, but she’s mistaken.  She thinks I have this unending drive for power that can never be satisfied… but it’s not me that was never satisfied.

It was Princess Celestia.

Whatever I did, it was just never good enough for Princess Celestia.  As warm and motherly as she likes to act, I could never imagine her doing this—walking down the street with a saddled foal.  Sure, I was past the age when she took me in, but there were a thousand other little things that never filled the hole I needed filled.  As her student, I always felt that her love was conditional on my continued success.

As it turned out, I was right.

What a depressing thought.

At least Twilight—manipulative bug that she is—isn’t going into it with any of the baggage I did.  She just wants to learn… and she’ll keep changing herself until she succeeds.  Honestly, the two of them are made for each other.

As for me… I don’t know.  I just don’t know.  I want to see Twilight succeed.  I want to see her build a perfect creature from the ground up.  I want to explore the fundamental force of creation that is dragon magic.  I want to live long enough to see the shape of time itself…

But I never wanted to do any of those things alone.  This, here and now—this simple act of domestic life—it’s seductive in a way I never would have believed in my past life; it’s almost intoxicating.  There’s a warmth in my heart that feels just as insatiable as any desire for power I may have had.

Actually, it’s not… quite in the heart, now that I think about it.  Sort of behind it and to the side.

I belch, and taste the love on my tongue.

Oh.  False alarm, I guess.


⁂


The warm influx of love from passersby on the street halts abruptly when Shining Armor enters the book store.  It’s enough to startle me into attentiveness, and I catch the eye of a clerk, who responds with a sour look.

Literally.

I can actually taste her displeasure like sour lemon, and it makes me cringe.  “What the hay, lady?” I mumble under my breath and curl up tighter in the saddle as if it’ll protect me.

Shining Armor takes notice of my discomfort and glances back to see where it’s coming from.  “Ah,” he says, going back to searching the aisles.  “That’s envy; don’t mind it.  It’s a kind of love.  You’ll know if you run into actual hate.”

“Why?” I ask, concerned.  “What’s hate taste like?”

Shining Armor glances left and makes his way down an aisle full of fantasy books.  “Poison,” he says quietly with a hint of a snarl.  “It doesn’t sustain you and there’s a separate gland for it so it doesn’t contaminate your love supply.  Hate is hard to digest and there are a number of ways to change what you produce from it—venom, hallucinogens, soporifics.  The least offensive is a sticky resin that hardens quickly and can be used to ensnare.  It’s actually a very effective material, but you don’t build a hive out of hate.”

“Right,” I say, wondering just how deep this rabbit hole goes.  Being a changeling is complicated.  “I’ll just add ‘bootleg narcotics factory’ to my list of abilities.”

“Naw, little cotton ball,” says a voice from behind us.  “The bile-letter specialization isn’t worth it.  The more hate you have, the more often you roll for odial stones.”

I’m almost dislodged from my perch as Shining Armor spins around to face the stallion.

“Woah!  Woah!  Chill, dude!” says the stallion, who looks like you took a tan-colored unicorn and rolled him around in the grass until his coat was stained green and his bones turned to mush—considering the way he sways with every movement.  His emotions have a similarly bland feel; so mellow as to be unnoticeable.  They’re there, though, which I suddenly realize must mean he’s not a changeling.

Uncertain, I say nothing, looking to Shining Armor for guidance.

He gives me much the same look.  “Well,” Shining Armor says, glancing back at the stallion with a shrug.  “He’s not wrong.  Unlike magic, which requires a certain density to crystalize, hate can do so spontaneously, and it’s not pleasant.”

With each word Shining Armor says, the odd stallion’s tasteless emotions slowly turn to what I can only guess is the tangy taste of unbridled glee—at least, that’s what I gather from the giant smile on his face.

“Oh man—I knew it!” he says, bursting with excitement as he digs around in his saddlebags for something and pulls it out.  “This is great!  You have no idea how hard it is to find somepony else that’s into Changeling: The Harvest!”

Now floating in front of him is a book; a thick, well-worn hardcover with the aforementioned title emblazoned across the front in iridescent ink.  I stare at it.  One eye twitching.

There’s a book.

I grab Shining Armor by the muzzle and screech, “There’s a book?!”  It takes me a moment to realize what I’ve done, and I quickly pull my hooves back with a squeak.  “Why didn’t you tell me there’s a book?” I cry, gesturing in question at the stallion and his book on changelings that is exactly what I asked for.

The stallion chuckles.  “Haha—oops.  Sorry if I spoiled the surprise.  That’s what you guys are here for, I guess?  She must be a big fan if she’s this excited about the new edition.  I was too, though; those old staple-bound ones were garbage.”

“Um…” Shining Armor says.  “Actually, I’m supposed to buy Oubliett—”

I smack him in the back of the head, hivemind connection be damned. “Yes!  That is what we are here for!  Show it to us immediately!”


⁂


By the time we left the bookstore, we had acquired Shining Armor’s required reading, every single Changeling: The Harvest sourcebook, novel and coloring book, one Dragon: The Hunger sourcebook from the same company just in case it was in any way as accurate as the others, and another single copy of Magic: The Harmony as a control.

Thankfully, maintaining a ruse with Princess Celestia herself was a high enough priority with the hive that money was not a problem, even with the extortionate prices.  I’ve paid less for books on real magic.

We also left with the addresses of a local game shop, as well as that of the stallion that had just been inflicted upon us, who, come to think of it, never actually gave us his name.

It took some doing, but eventually we were free to continue on with our day, which we did.  I wanted to hold my wonderful new book on the way to the park, but Shining Armor refused, citing my inability to actually get my hooves around it.  You win this round, adult bug horse.

…

I think this body is getting to me.  I’m not a foal, no matter how much I look like one.  I—wait, why did we buy the coloring book?  For the sake of appearances, right?  Right.  I don’t plan on actually using it.

Except… well, I’m going to have to spend hours at a time being cute for a foalsitter so that I could collect her maternal affection.  I guess I probably am going to actually color in it.  For the sake of appearances.

“Shining,” I say, prompting him to turn his head a little in question.  “There’s nothing… influencing me to act like a foal, is there?”

He lets out a little chuckle and grins.  “Don’t be silly, little ‘Cotton Ball,’ of course there is.”

I sigh in relief.  “That’s what I—wait what?!”

His mirth turns into a bark of laughter and he keeps walking, looking very proud of himself.  I’m just glad I can’t actually feel it.  “It’s called positive reinforcement.  You’re a foal, and ponies find foals adorable.  They respond favorably to you when you act cute, and that reinforces the behavior.”

“Ugh,” I grunt, in annoyance.  “I’m surrounded by amateur psychologists trying to get a rise out of me.  There’s no way that load of horse apples is relevant; I haven’t even interacted with anyone.”

He gives me a smirk.  “Maybe, maybe…  That is, unless you were some sort of emotion-sucking bug creature that has an immediate positive physical reaction in response to the good feelings of others.  I mean—in that case, you couldn’t walk down the street without getting different, subtle feedback for your every action.”

Well, umm…

I instantly bury my face in the saddle.

Shining Armor: 2, Sunset Shimmer: 0.


⁂


The park is a little close to my old school for comfort, but apart from that, it’s a welcome sight.  Shining Armor has been… surprisingly decent, but I need some time to myself all the same.  I’m tempted to grab one of my books and find a shady spot to read, but there’s plenty of time for that at the house.

Besides, that’s what ‘Shiny’ is doing, and sitting in the park reading together would be… I dunno… bonding or some junk.  Buck that.  I hop off the saddle, stumble on my tiny legs and set off running.

It’s surprisingly easy to find some peace and quiet when your body feeds on the emotions of other creatures.  Your body, of course, doesn’t like doing so as it goes against every instinct, but your body can go stuff it.  Sometimes you need to be alone.

After burning off some energy—climbing trees is hard with hooves—I settle down in the boughs of an old oak tree and relax.

For the next few hours, nothing special happens at all.

It’s wonderful.


⁂


It’s getting close to sunset when a pebble strikes me in the ear.  I look down and find Shining Armor waiting for me.

“Come on.  Time to go,” he says, and I can see he already has everything packed up in his saddlebags.  “Your foalsitter should be arriving soon, and you need to actually be there to get love from her.  I should put in an appearance too, since I’m not going to be around for a week.”

“Swell.”  I aim for Shining Armor’s back and make a jump for it, landing with an “Oof” from him and a much cuter squeak from me.  “I know—I know.  I need the magic to incubate the egg, and it has to come from me, but still—spending several hours at a time being doted on by a teenager my own age is going to be interminable.”

He shakes his head and starts making his way home.  “You know—I wouldn’t mind being doted on by a few mares your age,” he says with a smirk, then suddenly twists his face into a grimace.  “Your pony age, I mean.  Changelings are into a lot of things, but foals… no thanks.”

“That was implied,” I say, rolling my eyes.

“Anyway,” he says.  “You should be ‘happy’ to know that the agency is sending their cheeriest, most saccharine high schooler, but then, we all have our yokes to bear.”

I chuckle and wind up to smack him on the back of the head again—but stop myself.  “Yeah, sure.  I get to spend the night with some vapid airhead while you go to sleep and wake up a magical prodigy in a week.  Seems fair.”

Shining Armor’s pace slows.  “You don’t know?” he asks.

“What?”  I say, confused.  “Twilight said you were going in the chrysalis tonight, and that it’d take a week.”

He slowly continues on to the house.  “Well, sure, but that’s just my body.  I’ll still be connected to the hive mind, and that means I don’t get a day off.  Why did you think it was so important I get these books today?  I’m going to be stuck in the basement reading, seeing as we have, a—uhh—spare… body taking up space.”

I choke on my next breath.  “Wait—you don’t mean…?”

“Ah… yeah,” he says.  “I thought Twilight told you.”

“That—” I squeak.  “That is not okay!  No part of that is okay!  That’s my… body that I want nothing to do with ever again and… eugh…”

He shakes his head and says, “Believe me, I know.  If it weren’t for this whole thing with the Princess, there’s no way I’d be doing it, but I’ve got a whole life to reinvent, and… the body is there.  Sometimes you’ve gotta take one for the hive.  Often.  Often you have to take one for the hive, but it’s not usually this… weird.  Look, I promise not to do anything strange—”

“No,” I interrupt and take an anxious breath.  “Look, I really don’t have any right—I mean, it really isn’t mine any more.  Do… do whatever you want with it.  Whatever makes it bearable.  Have fun.  Learn something.  Just… don’t tell me and—no offense—stay the hell away from me with it.”

“I—umm—right,” he says, dumbfounded.  A few moments later, he opens his mouth to say something, then thinks better of it.

We spend most of the trip in silence.

“Look,” I say when we’re almost home.  “Today wasn’t terrible.  You could have made it miserable for me, and you didn’t, so… thanks, I guess.”

He just shrugs.  “I’ve had a few weeks to get used to the idea,” he says as we finally arrive at the house and he reaches for the door handle.  “Besides—goofy older brother, protector of innocent fillies, remember?  The whole hardass thing was doomed from the moment she showed up at our house anyway.  No idea why she latched onto me, but she’s been chipping away at it for months.”

“I guess if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that in the end, Twilight Sparkle always gets her way.”

The door opens to reveal what appears to be a shell-shocked Twilight with a strained, fake smile on her face and a twitch in her eye.  Shining Armor takes an involuntary step back.  Suddenly, as if a spell has just broken, her face turns from stilted daze to sickness and her hooves clap over her mouth as she makes a mad dash for the basement, barely remembering to slam the doors behind her on the way.

“Oh!” beams a voice from the dining room that I recognize with dread.  “Is that the other one?”

The clopping of hooves only gives me a moment to consider fleeing what suddenly rounds the corner—a gangly, pink alicorn with a violet, rose and gold mane.

Princess Cadance, the alicorn of love and my personal nemesis… has come to foalsit me.  I can feel the bile in my throat already.

Wait, that’s love.  Suddenly, I feel bloated beyond belief.

Oh no.
> Chapter Seven 【Twilight】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I can feel the hive mind churning in my head just as I can feel my amoreal sack churning at the base of my throat, and I’m forced into the exceedingly rare situation of having to correct myself.  The love of an alicorn—well, this alicorn, anyway—is worth any cost, and the hive must have it.

That’s not my job, though.  The chittering of plans and counterplans echo through the hive mind as I feel myself shunted aside with the weight of command pressing down on me.

Act normal.

Do not buzz this up.

Don’t forget to brush your teeth.

I resent the decrees and the power behind them, as would anyling when told to do something they are already going to do—well, anyling who isn’t ninety-nine percent of changelings, anyway, but drones hardly count; they’re basically furniture.

I dutifully scrub the tooth-rotting love out of my mouth and gargle some pony mouthwash for good measure; no need to risk the goddess of love smelling it on your breath.  It occurs to me too late that I don’t actually have any data on what is done with mouthwash after it has been used.  I deduce that either it is to be spat out, or ponies have no taste.

Prior experience with ponies has me leaning towards the latter.

In any case, mouth clean and stomach a little queasy, I begin making my way back upstairs before I suddenly remember something important—the dragon egg!  I just chucked up a kilonuzzle of love and left it sitting in the lab with the egg!  If the dragon’s egg absorbs enough ambient magic from the raw love, it could develop far enough to form a soul, and I’d be in real, serious trouble!  Tartarus, with as much love as we were going to have to deal with because of this, the buzzing thing could hatch!

With no time to waste, I rush back down into the lab and… and… aw crud.  I look up in dread at the egg on the shelf.  The cursed thing is as big as I am and it absorbs magic; I can lift it, but with the amount of magic down here already, it’d be like taking something out of the oven with a wet towel; I’d just be making things worse by conducting all that magic into the egg.  Just about the only saving grace of the situation is that dragon eggs are amazingly tough.

Clunk!

And my face is soft.  Mother buzzing ow!  That particular sign of maternal affection is never going to heal until I get rebirthed, is it?

Groaning, I pull myself up and roll the egg out of the lab and away from the radioactive love bomb I upchucked earlier, stopping only briefly on the other side of the faux wall of junk to hide it in a soup pot.

Should I be worried that ponies have soup pots large enough to fit several small foals?

The egg rattles around in the pot as I lift it in my magic—I’m lifting the pot, not the egg, see?  No magic conductivity problems; I am a genius!  Also, there’s much less magical contamination even on this side of the wall, so it’s not as much of an issue anyway.

Still, genius, though the dragon egg rattling around in the pot is about as inconspicuous as… an ostrich egg in a stew pot?  You try putting a giant egg in a stew pot and tell me you’ve got a better example of conspicuousness; I’ll wait.

…

Wait—no!  No waiting!  I’m rushing up the stairs when a white blur almost bowls me over.  Crud, was Shiny going down to relieve himself of his love already?  Strange, I didn’t see Sunset Shimmer with him; was her amoreal sack not full as well?  What kind of foalsitter pays more attention to a stallion than the foal she’s supposed to be sitting on?  A bad one.

The hive mind is very graphic in explaining exactly what kind of foalsitter does that, which is unnecessary because that was sarcasm.  It’s sarcasm now.  Because I say so.  Also, I totally knew that foalsitters do not actually sit on foals like they are eggs.  That was a joke, and the hive mind is dumb for not realizi—shutting up now.

Wait, if Shiny is downstairs, that means Sunset Shimmer is alone with the goddess of love.

Sunset Shimmer does not like the goddess of love.

Sunset Shimmer is not known for making good decisions.

The pot and egg reach peak conspicuousness as I burst out into the hallway hoping to prevent a disaster, all the while dozens of nightmare scenarios flash through my head.  What if she says something that causes her to be recognized?  What if she says something to scare off the princess?  What if she says… anything!  I am unable to actually come up with any scenarios where Sunset Shimmer opening her mouth makes anything better.

The hive mind once again provides graphic commentary to spite me.  Gah!  It seems to be of a randy disposition tonight and I am not sure if it’s because of the ginormous influx of love from the goddess in the next room or if the queen is just in a fertile mood.

Or, given the number of changelings that have just taken pink disguises in the queen’s presence, both, it would seem.

The hive mind is not exactly safe for foals, in case that wasn’t already abundantly obvious.  Also, ew; my impressionable foal brain didn’t need to know what the queen gets up to in her chambers with a dozen consenting adults.  Sometimes I really hate my pony maturation rate.  A small portion of the hive mind like a niggling voice in the back of my head representing foal-aged infiltrators agrees with me.

Why yes, I am a hypocrite, thank you for asking.

I hear voices coming from the communal room.  There is no shouting—yet—so even though I wish to rush in, I resist, as I still have the egg to deal with.  My commendable restraint lasts just long enough for me to ditch the pot in the kitchen sink where it is unlikely to be exposed to much scrutiny or magic.  Thus divested of my burden, I continue my mad dash to forestall any possible missteps, reassuring myself that this small delay of a few seconds will surely not make any difference in the grand scheme of things.

The door to the communal room is open, so I hear Sunset Shimmer talking before I get there; she is not quiet.  “So, basically, changelings need love to survive,” she tells the alicorn, to my shock.  “Love is—”

“Sunset Sh—” I start to yell in anger and maybe a little hurt as I burst into the room, but a weak green glow catches my front hoof and I go crashing into the carpet.  When I recover, I see the small white form of Sunset Shimmer getting her whole body underneath a thick book and lifting it up so I can see the cover, which says Changeling: The Harvest.

What.  Who in the hive—oh, her.  That doesn’t even… I mean, kind of, I guess?  My stunned silence and fitful communication with the hive mind allows Sunset Shimmer to steal a march on spinning my completely reasonable slip of the tongue.

“It’s not sunset yet!” she says with a mock pout that… is actually very good, to be honest.  The hive mind rates it eight-point-three out of ten, which is just stupid because if you’re going to use decimals on a ten scale, you might as well just go with percentages instead.  The hive mind counters by changing its rating to four and a quarter stars.

The alicorn in the room—Cadance, she had introduced herself as—looks confused, but not suspicious, thankfully.  “What happens at sunset?” she asks, glancing at the window to the reddening sky.  “It’s still a way off.”

“Dinner!” Sunset Shimmer says perhaps a little too quickly.  “She’s just excited for dinner; she likes all sorts of weird things.  You know she eats eggs for breakfast?  Just… eggs!  Fried!”

Cadance rolls her eyes.  “Fried eggs.  Imagine that,” she deadpans.

The excellent usage of sarcasm does not go unnoticed; Sunset Shimmer looks shocked.  “Not you too!”

Cadance pinches the bridge of her nose in the crook of her hoof, muttering something about unicorns before snapping back into foalsitting mode with forced cheer.  “Eggs are actually a common breakfast food… pretty much everywhere that isn’t full of stuck up—err—cultured ponies with delicate tastes… and horns on their heads.  It’s important to accept other ponies’ and creatures’ diets.  In fact, did you know that before I became an alicorn, I was a pegasus that grew up in an earth pony village?  That means that not only did I have to eat fish once in a while, but I had to catch it myself!”

“Vindication!” I cry, raising my hooves in the air.

Cadance gives a quiet giggle.  “Quite, but we also shouldn’t make little Whitewash feel bad,” she says, running a hoof down the mane of the stunned and queasy-looking filly.  I assume it is because of the subject matter until she glances to me in a bit of a panic.  Crud, her amoreal sack must be full already!

“Eheh,” I scratch the back of my neck and fake a blush.  “Sorry—uh—Whitewash.  Um, also—Shiny wanted to talk to you in the basement before he leaves so he can explain that urgent thing you need to do.  How far did you and Cadance get with the… game?”

Sunset Shimmer pauses to swallow down her gorge.  “I was telling her about changelings and love so she can get in character.  You know, see it as a resource not to be wasted, that sort of—urp—thing.  Gonna-go-see-Shiny-now-bye.”

Cadance and I watch in silence as Sunset Shimmer dashes off to relieve herself of love.  Coincidentally, this also means that she is not present to experience my reaction to this plan of hers.  Loathe as I am to admit it, this is fortunate for me, as I am not certain what that reaction should actually be.  Getting the alicorn of love to think like a changeling?  Getting her into the mindset that love is something that should be min-maxed, streamlined—even farmed?  It is the kind of idea that seems brilliant at first before rapidly waffling between ‘no, that’s dumb,’ and ‘dumb enough to work!’

So, pretty much exactly the sort of plan I was hatched for.

Cadance, with no such inner conflict keeping her busy, has already gone back to the book.  “So, tell me more about these changelings, Twilight.  It seems a little odd that they’re the heroes, doesn’t it?”

It takes me a moment before I’m hopping over to set myself down beside her and give the book a once over.  “Well, they’re the underdogs, aren’t they?” I ask, looking up at her with eyes full of innocence.  “They just want love, but nopony wants to give it to them.”

“Well, it does make them relatable,” she admits, looking over the book.  “But it’s still wrong to just take things that aren’t yours, even if you need them—and there’s a difference between wanting to be loved and consuming it.”

I pretend to think on that.  “Well, it’s spent either way, right?” I finally say.  “They feel just as loved as a pony does—more, with the emotion sense—they’re just also able to make use of it.  Weren’t you just saying I shouldn’t make ponies feel bad about their diet?”

“Um… yes.  That is a thing I said.  Still…”  Cadance flips forward a couple of pages until she finds what she’s looking for.  “I’m getting mixed signals with the thirteen kinds of acids and venoms they can spit.”

I roll my eyes.  “It’s a game,” I remind her with a pout.  “Oubliettes and Ogres is about ponies killing each other with swords and fireballs while they go around robbing graves; Changeling: The Harvest is about secret loves and hidden conspiracies—it’s way better.  If you don’t like it, though, Shiny also got Dragon: The Hunger—I bet I can roar better than you!”

Cadance seems to pale just imagining it.  “N—no, that’s alright.”

“Or!  Or!” I continue, getting excited.  “We can play sky pirates!  Those wings work, right?”

“Changelings are fine!” she rushes to say.  “They’re great!  Super, even!  Let’s read about changelings!”


⁂


In spite of her initial reluctance, the goddess of love quickly becomes enamored with the concept of changelings—so much so, that Sunset Shimmer and I are able to take turns catching her attention, filling up on love and going down to my lab to disgorge the glowing pink substance into a growing tumorous growth.  I would complain about the amount of space it is liable to take up by the end of the night, but it’s pure, undiluted love.  It would be like a dragon complaining about all that gosh darned gold that keeps piling up in their bedroom, or a gryphon complaining about the fermented whale carcass the neighbors gave them for Hearth’s Warming.

Okay, gryphons would absolutely complain about that, but mostly because they don’t celebrate Hearth’s Warming and they like complaining.

They are not dissimilar from Sunset Shimmer, in that—not that Sunset Shimmer is in the habit of keeping carcasses around as edible décor… probably.  No, no, she definitely reacted poorly to the idea of eating meat; she would properly dispose of any carcasses she creates, I am almost certain.  No, it’s the capacity for complaining that she shares with gryphons.  Thankfully, I have not had to listen to the no doubt many objections she most likely has about the process of repeatedly expectorating love, but I do not expect that that will last, nor do I look forward to reminding her that she will need to ingest and digest it in order to incubate the egg.

“…ilight?  Twilight?”

I blink away my daydreams of whiny entitled ponies as the actual entitledest pony is attempting to get my attention.  “What?  Sorry, I was distracted.  Did you finish picking your perks?”

She looks at me with some concern, feeding me even more love.  “Yeah, I finally decided on broodmother for the last one,” she says, sliding her character sheet over with one hoof.

I look it over and it seems fine at first glance.  On second glance, I realize that she has essentially recreated Queen Chrysalis on paper down to the last detail—including the name!  “She seems kind of mean,” I say without thinking, earning the… complete ambivalence of the entire hive mind, actually.   Except one.  My cheek aches in sympathetic response.

I am going to be so dead the next time she sees me.

“I—I mean, compared to what you were saying before,” I clarify, earning absolutely zero clemency from that single presence and the overwhelming enmity it is directing at me.

Cadance shrugs it off.  “Well, you had a point; it’s a fantasy.  Sometimes it’s just fun to do something different.”

“And… How did you come up with the name ‘Queen Chrysalis?’” I ask.

Cadance narrows her eyes at the sheet.  “Oh, sorry, my hornwriting is still terrible.  It’s Queen Crystalis—you know, kind of going with the bug theme, but more original than just a boring old noun.”

Yep.  So dead.

“Is something wrong?” she asks, then glances out the window at the dusky sky.  “Oh, no wonder you’re distracted.  It’s past sunset; you must be starving!”  Cadance shuts the book with the character sheets inside and sets it on the coffee table with her magic as she gets up and stretches.  “Come on, let’s get you something to—wait, where’s Whitewash?  Wasn’t she just here?”

I pretend to look around for a moment, then run off before she can stop me.  “She must have wandered off.  I’ll go find her!”


⁂


For all we have collected a gluttonous amount of love tonight, much to the detriment of the crack in my face, Sunset Shimmer looks paradoxically worn out when I enter the lab.  Well, I say it is paradoxical, but it it also expected as she hasn’t been given a chance to keep any of it to digest.  Shining Armor is also tired, but for a different reason; he is digging a cistern to store the love in.

Sunset Shimmer looks to me with vexation in her eyes.  “Tell him he’s wasting his time.”

I cock my head in question.  “He is not.  A properly insulated cistern is vital to preventing overexposure of the egg to the magic of the love that will be stored inside.”

She rolls her eyes at me.  “Yeah, sure, whatever, but he could just wait until he’s in my old body.  I could have had this thing dug by the time the perfect princess up there had her attributes rolled.”

“Perhaps,” I say.  “But changelings are good diggers on their own, and do you really want to be the changeling who has to line it with magic-insulating resin?”

Sunset Shimmer looks a little green.  “Good point,” she says and to my shock, actually reaches up to slap Shining Armor on the flank with only a minor shudder.  “Go for it, big guy.”

Shining Armor throws her an indulgent smile and gets back to work.

“Hey, speaking of Her Royal Highness, how come you’re down here?” she asks. “You left her alone and didn’t even need to rush over to empty your gullet when you came in?”

“Ah!”  I quickly jolt back upright with the reminder.  “Yes, it’s time for dinner and she noticed you were missing, so I came to get you lest she attempt it.  She should have found the peatloaf in the icebox by now, so we should really get going.”

Sunset Shimmer pushes herself up with significantly more effort.  “Alright, alright.  Ugh, give me a hoof up the stairs; you’re the only one here who’s not exhausted.  I swear, once I have claws and no fur to get dirty, I am going to climb the shit out of this place.”

I shake my head, but pick her up in my magic and head out of the lab anyway.  “I am sure no cookie jar will be safe from you.”

“Hey, come to think of it,” she says, floating upside-down beside me.  “You said all this love needs to be insulated because of the egg, right?  Where’s the egg until then?”

It takes me a moment to remember.  “Ah, I put it in a stew pot and left it in the kitchen sink.”

Silence.

“And Princess Tooty Fruity is…”

“…In the kitchen.  Buck”


⁂


By the time we reach the kitchen, hooves scrambling for purchase on the hardwood, it is clear that we are too late.  Princess Cadance has the lid of the pot levitating in her magic, an incredulous look on her face.  “Girls,” she says in a slightly stressed, exasperated tone.  “Why is there a giant egg in the sink?”

I do not have an answer prepared.

“When you were talking about eating eggs, I didn’t think you meant… what even is this?”  She pokes the egg with a hoof, gingerly, her frown becoming more and more distressed.  “I don’t know how to cook this!  It probably should have been put in the oven an hour ago!”

Sunset Shimmer and I share a look and a shrug.  “That’s an experiment,” she says.  “Please be careful with it.”

“There’s peatloaf in the icebox,” I add.

The princess blinks at us, checks the icebox and lets out a sigh of relief.  “Oh.”


⁂


In spite of the truncated episode of drama, the princess actually manages to impress me by throwing together freshly fried onion rings and sautéed mushrooms to go with the peatloaf in less than five minutes.

Sunset Shimmer, too, appears to be impressed, as she spends most of the meal just staring at the source of the fried deliciousness.  In fact, it’s so blatant that even the princess notices.  “Did you have a question, Whitewash?”

“When the buck did you get that good with magic?” she blurts out.

The question clearly takes Princess Cadance by surprise.  “Okay, first off, I’m going to have to give you twenty minutes in the corner for that kind of language,” she says, chiding the ‘young’ pony.  Sunset Shimmer looks like she wants to argue, but bites her tongue.  “But to answer your question, it may have only been six months since I became an alicorn, but I’ve had very good teachers and worked very hard to live up to the expectations of ponies who… well, the expectations of ponies.”

Open mouth, insert hoof, Sunset Shimmer.  I’m kind of tempted to kick her under the table just so I can remind her over the hive mind that part of Disguise 101 is to not remind ponies of your previous identity.

“B-but—” Sunset Shimmer stammers, apparently not willing to leave it alone.  “You were failing—I mean—”

Princess Cadance looks chagrined as she leans back and sighs.  “Well, I suppose I’m in no place to complain about gossip.”  It takes her a moment to collect herself.  “Yes, I admit, my tests are terrible.  I’ve got a lot on my plate and I’m not practiced in memorization.  You fillies are lucky, you know?  Just from what I’ve seen so far, you seem to like learning, even if it’s about make-believe changelings, and that kind of habit will be very valuable when you grow up.  As for me, I do much better with hoofs-on learning—err, or is it horn-on for magic?  Anyway, that’s why I can bring cooking oil up to temperature in an instant but can’t read a spell diagram to save my life.  I’ve still got a long way to go, but Princess Celestia is actually really happy with my progress.”

Thunk.  Thunk.  Thunk-clatter.  It is a good thing that Sunset Shimmer has already finished the food on her plate, as her horn does not agree with the tableware.
> Chapter Eight 【Sunset】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

My entire world is a lie.

Well—okay, no, that’s an exaggeration, but it is entirely impossible to keep my head on straight when this damned woobie princess is being all earnest while pumping me full of enough love to make me literally physically ill.  I have to mumble excuses and go sit in the corner for my language like a good little foal just to get away from her and her damn bald-faced kindness.

I will be more than glad when my stint as an empathic love magnet is over—not that I don’t expect ponies to fawn and coo over a baby dragon, but at least then I won’t have to taste how they feel and like it.

The worst part is… I know I’m being a hypocrite.  I shouldn’t need to keep hating Cadance in the first place.  Yes, I feel like she was just given everything I worked for, but that’s… over and done with.  Not only is there no going back, but I’ve committed to actively helping somepony else—someling else—do exactly that.

I dully bang my head on the wall, trying to get it to sink in.

I am not Sunset Shimmer.

I am not Sunset Shimmer.

I am not Sunset Shimmer.

I will never be an alicorn, never reach the end of the impossible path that was set before me.

I no longer have any reason to be jealous of Cadance.  Princess Celestia will never…

Being cute is good, because being cute gives me power.  It is absurd and humiliating, but at least it’s consistent.

I stay in the corner for longer than necessary, just trying to get these points into my thick skull.  Eventually I run out of things to berate myself over and sneak off to get rid of the love I accumulated during dinner.

It occurs to me that, while enthusiastic and a good cook, Cadance is not actually a very good foalsitter if she is this bad at keeping track of her charges.  I feel more like we are the ones foalsitting her.

With all the practice I’ve already had tonight, I’m able to hop my way down the basement stairs without getting Shining Armor to help me.  Fortunately, the… amoral sack, I think Twilight Sparkle called it, is close to the base of my neck, far above what passes for a diaphragm in a changeling, so my undoubtably adorable pronking doesn’t put any pressure on it.

I do my best to ignore the cold, dead eyes of my body standing in the corner as I enter the lab again.  Rather than getting used to it, the uneasiness I feel when looking in those eyes has only gotten worse now that I know what’s behind them.  Hopefully my previous brief connection to the changeling hive mind will remain my only connection to the changeling hive mind; I’m going to have enough nightmares about it as it is.

Not for the first time tonight, I wish there was a sheet down here to drape over it.

“The sooner we get you in that abomination, the better,” I grouse at Shining Armor, who is undisguised in all his chitinous glory and busy hacking up something thick and goopy as I make my way to the tumorous growth containing all the love we’ve collected tonight that somehow weighs more than the pony it all came from several times over.

For all it’s a natural part of changeling life, emptying myself of love is about as pleasant as it sounds, though at least the process was easier to learn than taking a disguise was.  That, or Shining Armor is just a better teacher than Twilight Sparkle.  I’m tempted to go with that one just on principle.

The taste of love sticks to my tongue and I wash it out with a splash out of the obligatory industrial-sized bottle of mouthwash that seems to be required for any changeling household.

I’m not saying I necessarily want to have more orifices to deal with, but I have strong feelings about using them for too many things, especially when those things involve my tongue.  Thank Celestia that dragons evolved past the cloaca; I mean, I’m not racist, but you’d have a hard time convincing me to become some sort of immortal gryphon if there was such a thing.

Okay, no, that’s a lie; I’d still take it in a heartbeat, but dragon magic is better than gryphon sorcery anyway… and gryphons aren’t even avian on the back half regardless.  Where was I going with this?

Shining Armor and I both finish using our mouths for things that mouths really shouldn’t be used for at about the same time, and he gives my body a glance.  “That’s really not going to be weird for you?” he asks as I approach the resin-rimmed hole he’s working on.  I have to admit, while I maintain that I could have done it faster with magic, he’s making good progress.

“It’s bucking terrifying looking at it the way it is now,” I tell him with a shiver.  “And I don’t like admitting stuff like that.  Seeing it walking around with actual intelligence behind those eyes will be a relief.  I mean, I still reserve the right to be creeped out, but I’m actively trying not to think of myself as that pony, so I’m hoping it will actually help.”

“Please be at least a little creeped out,” he says with a grunt as he spreads out the goop he previously coughed up.  “It’d be weird if I was the only one.”

“I’m still going to treat you like a leper, considering the whole direct-line-to-the-hive-mind thing, so there’s that,” I remind him.  “That still applies, right?”

“Yeah,” he says.  “There’s no difference; it just plain doesn’t have the organ that regulates the connection.”

“That doesn’t leave you unprotected?” I ask.

He shakes his head.  “It’s not as if I’m actually leaving my body.  It’ll still be my brain doing all the thinking, it’ll just be sorta… tunneling through the hive mind to use your body, if that makes any sense.”

“As much as any of it does.”  I shrug.  “Well, I guess I’d better get going back to babysitting the babysitter; Twilight’s probably getting uncomfortable.  You still able to give me a hoof?”

“Of course.”


⁂


Twilight Sparkle is less than subtle in running off as soon as I show up; she actually looks like she’s in pain this time; oops?  Wonder of wonders, Cadance finally notices that something is going on.  “Are you two fighting?” she asks with a frown.

I barely hesitate before my changeling bullshitting powers kick in.  “She refuses to acknowledge that I’m in charge when her parents aren’t home,” I say with a prim and proper huff and a pout.

…Okay, I don’t actually have changeling bullshitting powers; I’ve mostly spent the night reading next to her in awkward silence punctuated with outrageous statements like this.

The pained look on her face as she tries to process my statement makes it all worth it.   Eventually, she takes a moment to take a breath and bury her face in her hooves, mumbling under her breath.  “But I’m the one… why would… how does that…”

“Is there something wrong with what I said?” I ask innocently.

Cadance’s head snaps up to look at me before her face quickly softens into foalsitter mode.  “No, no, of course not, Whitewash.  I was just wondering how you came to that conclusion.”

“It should be obvious,” I scoff.

She looks at me with interest, expecting elaboration.  It doesn’t come.  “Yes…?” she says, drawing out the word.  “You’re, what, half her age?”

I blink.  Twilight Sparkle is about ten years old, I believe, so if I look  like I’m five, that means I’m no longer a toddler—score!

…Ahem.  I put on airs of sophistication as I inform Cadance of her mistake.  “Age doesn’t matter.  I am her aunt.”  Argue against that, you sanctimonious love-tart!

Hrm, sanctimonious love-tart… not my finest insult.  Wait, no, now I’m imagining her actually cooking love tarts, and—damn it, now I’m salivating!  I guess it’s not actually possible for changelings to get sick of the taste of love, no matter the number of times I associate it with feeling ill.

Mmm… love tarts.

It takes my entire internal conflict before I see the moment that the logical part of Cadance’s brain just gives up on coming up with a way to explain to a five year old that some number trumps familial association so long as it isn’t actively causing problems.

“Okay,” she says, looking back to the book in front of her.  “So I was looking at equipment and…”

I’m able to fend off any serious interaction with her for the rest of the night with exchanges like this, taking several more love breaks as the night goes on without too much issue.  I learn a lot of little things about changelings from the book that I’m torn between hoping they aren’t true or that I’m not wasting my time, and we get no actual gaming done, as expected.

All in all, I’ve had worse nights.  I may not have any right to hate the Princess of Fluffentuft anymore, but I’m pretty sure messing with ponies is an official changeling pastime, so I’m in the clear.


⁂


I lie bloated on the floor of the living room as Shining Armor pretends to come home and puts on his goofy older brother act for Cadance in the hallway.  Next to me is Twilight Sparkle, who is in a similar situation.

Love takes its toll on us all, and in this case it’s literal.

“So, when you’re rebuilding Shining Armor, can you just kinda… replace all of his internal organs with ones for love storage?” I suggest halfheartedly.  “Then we can just chuck him at the giggly wonder and never have to go through this again.”

Twilight Sparkle is quiet for a while.  “I am unsure.  Love storage and transportation is an issue that the hive mind has already devoted significant resources to solving.  As you say, though, it is an issue that will need to be resolved if we are to make use of the princess in the future unless she is into harems.”

A pause.

“Is anyone not into harems, really?” I say, asking the deep, meaningful questions here.

Twilight Sparkle scrunches up her face.  “Excuse you, but some of us haven’t reached puberty yet,” she gripes at me.  “Actually, that includes you at the moment.”

I frown, thinking back to the many strapping young stallions that Princess Celestia keeps around the castle.  I feel nothing.  “Well, ponyfeathers.”

We continue to lie there sore and tired, and eventually the heavy thump-and-clunk of the front door closing signals that the princess of adulting has finally left.  We probably shouldn’t have been talking about changeling stuff out in the open while she was still here, but ehh…  Shining Armor was with her and there was the whole game excuse.  I’m still kinda proud of that one, though I’m not sure we actually tempered her love output any more than any other distraction would have.

“So, you said one of the problems with love is that it’s hard to transport because it’s all but impossible to crystalize, right?” I ask, starting on an idea.  “I assume liquid love has a set concentration per volume; does the energy density of crystallized love increase exponentially with its mass like crystallized magic, and if so, could you make a changeling that unhinges its jaw like a snake to pass it?”

“It’s possible,” she says, thinking.  “Also, that reminds me: buck you.”

I blink.  “What?”

“I had to actually pass an amoreal stone because of you taking your hive-damned time at dinner, in the punishment corner and then downstairs with Shiny,” she says sourly, reaching up to rub her cheek with her hoof.  “It was exactly like you describe, except instead of a hinged jaw, it was my hive-damned hinged face because of this buzzing crack.”

“Oh.”  I should probably apologize.  “So with all of that, is Shining Armor still going in the chrysalis tonight?”

Twilight Sparkle grimaces—and then double grimaces as her grimace moves the crack in her face.  “He should be able to, yes.  The actual work was done while you were in the chrysalis.”

“What does that actually involve?”  I wonder.  “I mean, what’s the actual process?”

Twilight Sparkle flops her forelegs around in what I assume is a shrug.  “It’s not actually that complicated,” she says, then reconsiders.  “That is to say, it is massively complicated, but the process itself isn’t.  There’s a part of the changeling brain that’s present from the embryonic stage onwards which stores the genetic code for all the different breeds of changeling, and it’s tied directly into the part of the brain that communicates with the hive mind.  There’s a… representation of it in the hive mind, you could say, and from there, it’s so much mental gymnastics if you know what you’re doing.

“Now, knowing what you’re doing and making actual changes is like messing with the tax laws of a nation in hope of still having something viable after a thousand years of expansion and annexation, so I’m not saying it’s easy, but on the physical side of things, it really is just popping him in the chrysalis and telling his brain to liquefy him like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.”

“Huh.”  I take a moment to let that all sink in.  “You guys really like liquefying vital organs.”


⁂


My inevitable food coma takes until mid-morning the next day to sleep off.  How do I know this?  Because there’s a neat old grandfather clock in the living room, and they just left me sprawled out on the ground.  As a petulant child who can take care of herself, damn it, I am not sure if that makes them the best parents ever or the worst.  I crane my neck to look around, but I am alone.

When I stumble into the kitchen looking for breakfast, it takes me a second to realize there’s an orange pony sitting on a stool eating cereal with a teal glow of magic around the spoon and I freeze.  One second.  Two seconds.  She looks over at me with a completely normal, bleary-eyed expression followed by a lazy smile.  “Oh, hey, you’re up.  ‘Morning,” she says.

I swallow down on my congested throat.

It’s me it’s me it’s me it’s me it’s me, says a small voice in the back of my head, and I quash it.  It’s not me.  I’ve been over this with myself already.  I am not Sunset Shimmer.

“H-hey,” I stammer out and make my way over to the counter.  A teal aura of magic lifts me up over the island in the middle of the kitchen and onto a stool on the opposite side from… from…

I can’t help it, I snicker and she looks at me like I’ve insulted her pet marmot.  “Something funny?” she asks in a voice that is nothing like mine; gruff, but obviously feminine.

I try not to look at her.  “I just wasn’t sure what to call you at first, but then I realized it was obvious.”

She stares at me for a moment, then rolls her eyes and goes back to her cereal.  “Okay, hit me with it.”

“Shimmering Armor,” I declare with a grin.

I actually get a snort out of her and she has to wipe the milk off her muzzle with a paper towel.  “You know what? Sure, why not?”

That settled, I nod and pour myself a bowl of cereal and watch the pony across from me as I eat.  It’s a bit surreal, but I think I can get used to it.  Sometimes I have to remind myself that it’s my actual body sitting across from me and not a long lost twin or clone, and every once in a while I expect to see her turn and look at me with those horrible lifeless eyes, but for the most part it’s… nice.

And I don’t even have the excuse of being high on love to say that.

As I watch her levitate her spoon with my teal magic, something occurs to me.  “Hey,” I say, getting her attention.

She looks up from her bowl with a questioning lilt to her eyes.

I motion at her using my own spoon.  “How does that feel for you—the magic?  Different from what you’re used to?”

She waves the spoon around, similar to if she was weighing it in a hoof.  “Like I have blinders on, to be honest… or like I’m looking through a tunnel that’s pressing in on me from all sides.  It’s not the greatest.”

I take another bite of cereal as I consider that answer.  “Yeah, I can see that.”  She keeps her eyes on me as she continues eating, expecting more, and I oblige.  “You might assume it’s just because of the ‘tunneling’ through the hive mind you mentioned, but I figure you’re feeling the lack of your magically-conductive chitin.”

She grunts.  “Feels awful either way.”

“Yeah, well,” I continue.  “As I was telling Twilight yesterday, that might be how it has to be if she wants to really push changelings into the magically adept.  Like, I admit the feeling of magic running through chitin is damn nice, but when you put magic through your horn, it’s not supposed to get drawn down into your body like heat from a bare ass into a marble floor.  Waste aside, it’s a pretty big accuracy and control issue.”

“Hrn.”  She waves the spoon around a bit more trying to see what I mean.  “So, what’s the solution then?  Changelings that can’t disguise themselves?  Not sure I can see that happening.”

“Well, strictly playing Discord’s advocate, maybe changelings that can pass as ponies without shapeshifting?”  I shrug.   “Or just insulate the two systems from each other.  It’d probably be a nag to learn—like using two horns—but eh, you guys have ways of streamlining that, I gather.”

“Huh, yeah, I’m gonna let Twily tackle that one before I go anywhere near it,” she says with a shake of her head.  Done with her cereal, she gets up and dumps the bowl in the sink.  “For now, nothing should change when I get my body back, right?  I mean, aside from being able to bench a bench with ponies on it without lifting a hoof.  Miserable lack of chitin aside, your power wasn’t oversold—not that I’m any good with it.”

“So far as I know, it should just be you, but better, yeah,” I say.  “Are there any other kinds of magic that changelings are naturally good at besides shapeshifting?”

“Well, one of the most basic things a swarm of drones can do is to form crude shields with their magic and just sort of ram into things—predators, each other, the ground… though sometimes they forget the shield.”

“That could work…”


⁂


Most of the day goes by in a sickeningly domestic way.  With the surplus of love from princess sugarpear, the bottleneck for incubating the egg with magic is now my ability to digest the love into magic.  “You aren’t serious,” I whine, looking at the mug full of sticky sweet slop that has just been pumped back out of the cistern.  “I have to swallow it back in?  That is disgusting.”

Unamused, Twilight Sparkle sets the mug down in front of me when I don’t take it.  “One, we’ve already established that changelings are virtually immune to disease—” she begins.

“Doesn’t mean I want to swap spit and bile with you,” I mumble under my breath.

“—And two,” she continues, ignoring me.  “While it acts like a liquid, love is still just a flavor of magic.  It cannot actually mix with physical impurities.”

Ugh, there she goes using facts and logic again.  I give the cup of love another leery look.  “Fine,” I grumble and pick up the mug in both hooves as I am still a shockingly tiny foal.  Bracing myself, I tip the edge of the cup into my mouth and take a sip.

As expected, it tastes repulsively amazing and I continue drinking until my amoreal sack is full again.

Twilight Sparkle gives a curt nod.  “You should keep yourself topped up with a shot glass’ worth every couple of hours, at least.  You’ll digest it faster the more there is to digest.  I assume you can handle your actual thaumic levels and pushing magic into the egg?”

I nod.

“Good.  Don’t worry about oversaturating it for now; with your current output levels as a nymph and alternating between incubating the egg and storing some of your magic for the second to last stage of growth, it will take at least a couple of weeks to get the egg where we need it.”

I stare at her for a moment and wonder if she’s screwing with me.  “Or,” I say, drawing out the word, “I spend the whole time storing magic and we push it all into the egg at once because there’s every chance that the rate of magic influx during incubation will equate to incubation temperature for normal reptiles.”

Twilight Sparkle blinks at me.  “What does that matter?”

“It matters,” I growl.  “Because it would mean that higher levels of magic during incubation will have me not being reborn as a tartarus-damned male dragon.”

She cocks her head.  “Yes, I know.  As I said; what does that matter?”

I wish my forelegs were long enough to strangle her.

“Actually,” Shimmering Armor interjects from her corner of the lab where she sits, having been reading.  “Temperature-dependent sex determination in reptiles varies by species.  For some, higher temperatures means more females, but for others, it’s the other way around, or even a bell curve.”

My ears flatten in embarrassment.  “Oh.”

“Hah!” Twilight Sparkle points at me dramatically in triumph.

“But no, Sunset is entirely correct about dragons,” Shimmering Armor says in a deadpan.  “Which you would know if you’d asked the hive mind like I did.  We kind of have a lot of experience trying to breed them, you know.”

Twilight Sparkle makes the cutest indignant pout, turns in a huff and goes back to checking up on the body in the chrysalis.

Satisfied and feeling a little bit smug, I decide to add insult to injury.  “Someone who is not spending all their magic on this should probably also just cough up something to insulate the egg for the time being so long as we aren’t going to need it.”

With the look she shoots me, I am very glad changelings don’t soak up each other’s emotions.  “Actually,” she says, her mein quickly transforming from sour to smugness, “Resin production is mostly a physical process, and like I said before, experience with that sort of thing can only help in the future when you’re ready to learn dragon magic.”

Me and my big mouth.


⁂


I’m going to need a bigger mouth.

That’s the only response I can think of when Twilight dumps a pile of wood chips, candles and a giant tub of vegetable oil in front of me and tells me to get naked and start chomping.

I resist the urge to ask if she’s serious.  Not only did I see Shining Armor doing this just last night, but I also made fun of Twilight Sparkle for having done it to create the lab we’re in.

Eating crow is almost as bad as eating landscaping supplies.

But only almost.

I’m tempted to argue on the grounds of all the trouble we had restoring it last time, but it’d be a weak argument now since I already caved on that issue once when we didn’t have an abundant source of magic.  With a long-suffering sigh, I bow to the inevitable and light up my horn, searching for the feeling I had the last time I did this.

It’s not for no reason that I was Princess Celestia’s student, and I quickly have my fluffy white disguise peeling away from me in green fire, starting from the tip of my horn.  This time, I’m really able to appreciate the feeling of magic rippling down my sensitive, bone-white chitin.  Celestia damn it all, I think I might actually miss chitin when all of this is finally settled.  If scales don’t feel at least half as good as this, I’ll feel cheated.

With no further excuse to procrastinate, I try not to think about where the wood chips came from as I get to work.  Some of them are small and uniform—obviously a packaged product; possibly cedar—while others are long splinters with lacquered faces providing clear evidence of their previous life as office furniture.

It’s as repugnant and revolting as you’d expect masticating oil-soaked wood to be… though admittedly, it’s actually not an entirely new sensation for me.  In fact, it’s basically like chewing sugarcane without the sugar.  And then swallowing it.  So, yeah, all kinds of terrible, but at least no one here is offended when I gag and try to scrape off my tongue in between bites, unlike the panda delegation.  I’m not even sure where they found uptight pandas to begin with; they’re generally kinda chill and too thick to be insulted by anything as a rule.

My musings on panda culture and cuisine take me all the way through my prescribed portion of greasy splinters.  After that, taking a few bites of candle wax is downright enjoyable, though I could do without trying to cut the wick between my unfamiliar incisors and the flower scent does absolutely nothing for the bland taste.

What has my life even become that I’m mentally debating the relative palatability of candles in my head?

Fortunately, my tiny stomach fills up quickly even with the miniscule bites I have to take.  Unfortunately, that just means I’m going to have to do it that many more times in order to make enough to cover the egg.

“Eugh,” I groan.  “There, I’m full of craft supplies; now what?”

“Now,” Twilight Sparkle says putting down a ruled notebook she’d been taking notes in, “Similar to taking a disguise, you need to draw magic out into your chitin like you do your horn—but this time you want to focus it into your thorax.  Once you have it there, you’ll want to try and pull it back in towards your stomach.  You’ll know you’re doing it right when you feel several organs—glands, actually—that actively resist the magic.  Feel around for the one that feels kind of tacky and stiff; it should also be the one that resists the hardest.  Then, uhh, you poke it.”

My incredulous look is instantaneous.  “I… poke it?  Is that the scientific word for it?  Do I have buttons on the side of my pancreas?”

“It’s… hard to describe,” she says with a frustrated pout.  “You massage it?  Stimulate it?  It’ll absorb some of the magic, but you’re mostly just triggering a process that’s all but automatic for someling with actual changeling instincts to start.”

“Wonderful,” I grumble.  “And I suppose the easiest way would be to just let you show me like with the disguise?”

“That would be the most expedient, yes,” she admits.

I waffle on it for a moment, but it never really was a question.  “Yeah, well, I’m stubborn—”

“I know,” she interrupts.

“—so I’m going to try fumbling around in my gut for buttons anyway.”

In the end, I spend over a half an hour just trying to specifically draw magic out using the chitin of my thorax.  The difficulty comes in one part fighting against my horn-magic training, one part the actual trial and error inherent in doing something new and one part just trying to stay on task without being distracted by the feel of magic running through chitin.

It’s not my fault having a whole new magical organ covering my entire body is distracting.

Ironically, once I manage to focus magic in my thorax, the rest of it comes relatively easily, just as Twilight Sparkle described, and it’s only another fifteen minutes or so before I’m hocking up a hoof-full of sticky, fibrous goop and spreading it over the egg.

One down, only two or three dozen more to go.

What did I ever do to deserve this?

Oh, right.

That.
> Chapter Nine 【Sunset】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Waking up with my face stuck to a tacky mess of resin on the floor has to be one of the most horrible experiences of my life.  Discovering that the tacky mess of resin extends halfway down my throat is worse and leads me to wonder if there is active schadenfreude involved in leaving me to wake up in these positions—not that I have any reason to expect any of the changelings I’ve met to tuck me into bed at night, but… I’m still getting used to the idea that there’s nopony else actually looking out for me now.

The process of working myself free from the mangled mass of resin attached to the floor and twisting down into my esophagus is awkward and painful, involving me rubbing my cheek raw on the floor, trying to push and pull myself parallel to it with little opportunity for grip or leverage.  It’s only when I finally manage to worm myself free, gagging and coughing as I observe the tangled sculpture that was previously inside of me and consider how to get rid of it so that I can pretend this never happened, when it finally occurs to my sleep and panic-addled brain that I am perfectly capable of expectorating a solvent that would have made this whole thing little more than an issue of changeling morning breath.

I consider keeping the sculpture and mounting it as a monument to my hubris or something more applicable that isn’t coming to me at before-breakfast-o’clock, but that’s dumb and I have mouthwash, so the evidence of my lapse in common sense lasts only as long as it takes me to remember which bits of my innards to tickle to get the right mixture of gunk to erase it—not long, considering how it had piqued my interest to discover that the substances could be mixed to produce a greater range of materials.

That interest had since been snuffed out—and not because I’d had to learn about it in order to correct mistakes I’d made in magic-proofing the dragon’s egg.  You wouldn’t think that there would be many mistakes you could make when all you had to do was cover a shapeless, oblong object with goop; neither had I, which is—predictably—how I ended up making said mistakes.  Okay, so maybe making a chore of it is a part of the reason for my lack of interest, but it’s not the only part, nor is the fact that as a second-class changeling without access to the hive mind, all I can do is mix and match existing formulas—though that’s closer to the mark.

In the end, it all just comes back to the same issue that’s been plaguing me from the start: just… what’s even the point of learning about any of it when I’m only going to be a changeling for a month or so?  Not that I, in any way, shape or form want to be a changeling, but this middle ground just kind of bites.  If Princess Celestia were here, I’m sure she would have some pithy story to encourage me to ‘learn as much from this unique experience as possible,’ but I wouldn’t listen to her any more than I listen to the snark I’ve been getting from Twilight Sparkle with basically the same message.

Just about the only saving grace of the matter is that my drudgery has actually been productive.  Once I’d finished with the egg, I’d been browbeat into actually fixing the wall I’d damaged, then convinced to add storage pods for the magic I’d insisted we stockpile.  The result was a dozen head-sized pods stacked vertically and recessed in a dozen of the gaps between the rib-like structure of the hiving, making it a gross in total.

Yes, that was intentional.

Of course, of the one hundred and forty-four pods, only a few were filled—now one more than last night as I wipe the glowing green liquid magic from my muzzle.  This was going to be my job for the foreseeable future; filling up on love—either from the excessive stock of it we’d had shoved down our throats the night before last or straight from the source—digesting it into actual magic and filling these pods with the liquid form, where it will slowly condense into hoof-sized balls of crystalized magic that I can later channel directly into the egg.  If I wanted to, I could combine the hoof-sized crystals and fit all the necessary magic into a single one about the size of the egg in question, but there’d be some loss in the process and it shouldn’t be necessary with the amount of storage space we have now.

After disgorging myself of my digested magic, I dutifully fill up on the disgusting, saccharinely-sweet love that I can’t make myself hate and head upstairs in search of some real food… and a bath.  I get as far as the stairs before I realize there’s nobody to help me up them this time, and my face twists into a look of disgust at the dusty, grimy wooden stairs.

I am definitely going to need that bath.

It occurs to me halfway up the stairs that my changeling form has wings… if I knew how to use them or change back afterwards.  The latter I should be able to manage since I’m in no shortage of magic now and Twilight Sparkle did show me how, but I’ve still never actually practiced it and I’m already filthy regardless.  I probably wouldn’t get much mileage out of bug wings anyway; even assuming they come with the necessary instinct to use them, I’d only be allowed to use them down here in the basement—not exactly my idea of flying free.

Two stairs of laborious climbing later, I remember the faux-alicorn form Twilight Sparkle used to lure me in and it hits me that I could get her to show me how to do that—or just a pegasus form, more likely, since we really don’t need any more scrutiny from Princess Celestia than we’re already getting.  The point is, I could fly—outside in the open air—even if it’s just for a little while.

Suddenly, the time I have as a changeling seems much shorter.

Sure, I’ll have wings as a dragon eventually… and that’ll be great, but… damn it, I’ve been dreaming of being an alicorn for so long, I deserve to indulge at least this much.  I’m so distracted by a little voice in the back of my head telling me what else I deserve in a much less kindly manner that I don’t even register the pony in the kitchen before she picks me up and sets me at the counter next to ‘Shimmering Armor’ and pours me a bowl of cereal.

I stare at the bowl, unblinking, then turn my attention to Twilight Velvet, who is going about her business cleaning the kitchen and humming a tune with a smile.  I haven’t had much chance to really interact with the changelings posing as Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor’s parents, primarily because there hasn’t previously been much there to interact with.

“You’re not Twilight Velvet,” I blurt out about as eloquently as the majority of diplomats I’ve had the pleasure of meeting during my years as Princess Celestia’s student.

“Oh, of course I am!” she beams with the cheery disposition of a perfect housewife.  “I’m hurt that you don’t remember me, little sis.”

The mention of being her ‘sister’ tickles something in my memory and I vaguely recall a much more animate version of Twilight Velvet pushing me in a stroller and chatting with the neighbors the very first time I woke up after becoming a changeling, but this is the first time I’ve actually met her.  “You meet a lot of narcoleptic infants that recognize you when they’re adolescents?”

“Aw, you do remember me!” she coos, ruffling my mane with her magic.  I ignore the invasion into my personal space, as I’m a mess anyway and don’t have the energy to care.  “And more than you might think, since that used to be my job.”

“Used to be?” I ask, raising an eyebrow as I work on getting a spoonful of cereal into my mouth.

“Given the unique brand of attention we’ve garnered,” Shimmering Armor says, glancing upwards as ponies are wont to do when talking about Princess Celestia.  “We’ve been upgraded to a permanent pair of infiltrators for parents.”

“Ah…” I say, pausing and then just taking another bite of cereal.  I’m not sure what to think about the fact that two completely new changelings just came in and replaced Twilight Sparkle’s parents… but it’s completely okay because they were already changelings in the first place?  “I don’t think I actually knew what kind the old ones were?”

“Just basic, low-class collectors,” Shimmering Armor says with a shrug.  “Decent at playing a part, but not a whole lot of individuality and they essentially just shut down when they’re not needed in order to preserve what they collect.”

“Huh,” I grunt, looking around as I begin to wake up a bit more and ask, “So where’s the ‘brother in law,’ then?” while making sarcasm quotes with my hooves.  “Or Twilight Sparkle, for that matter?”

“‘Night Light’ is at work, for however long that’ll last,” the changeling now known as Twilight Velvet says, casually sweeping a stack of banana slices off a cutting board into my cereal bowl without question or comment.  “And junior is at school, of course; we do have lives to live, you know.”

Willfully ignoring Twilight Velvet’s choice in appellations for her ‘daughter,’ I focus on the other half of her response.  “You don’t know how long his shift lasts?”

“More like I don’t know how long he’ll last at his shift,” she says, turning my words around with a smirk on her face.  “Ol’ Nighty doesn’t really have the temperament for pediatrics like his predecessor did; he takes the term ‘infiltrator’ entirely too literally—and seriously.”

I stop and check between the banana slices to make sure she didn’t add anything else to my cereal before giving her an incredulous look.  “Then isn’t it… I dunno, completely asinine to give that changeling the assignment, then?” I ask as deadpan as I can manage given the circumstances.  “At least, the way I understand it, the point was to be less conspicuous.”

Twilight Velvet gives a carefree shrug, as if to say, ‘what can you do?’  “Eh, ponies are conspicuous, unique snowflakes just living their day-to-day lives without being secret changeling agents.  We’ve already got the great holy goat’s attention, so conspicuous is fine so long as it’s a believable conspicuous.”

I choke on my cereal, nearly inhaling a whole slice of banana.  “The great holy what?!”

“What, you don’t see it?” she asks wryly, gesturing with a wooden spoon in her magic.  “Think about it—the wispy mane, the proportions of those legs?  Blatantly goatlike!”

What?  “Princess Celestia is not ‘goatlike,’” I say through gritted teeth.  “She is tall and elegant and graceful like a… a… a swan!”

“Hrm, so she’s the grander gander?” she says, turning back to whatever it is she’s working with on the stove.

“A gander is a goose!” I snap, following up to reiterate, “A male goose!”

“Oh?”  Twilight Velvet cocks her head.  “What’s a female swan, then?” she asks, not even looking at me now.

“A pen,” I automatically respond before realizing that any response I give will just encourage her.

“What, really?” she says, looking genuinely caught off guard, though it quickly slides into a sly grin.  “So then the pen really is mightier?  She always struck me as more of a sword, if you know what I mean.”

I… what?  My face grows hot at what she’s implying and I’m not sure if it’s in embarrassment or anger; either way, I have no words but I’m sure the scowl on said face is legendary.

“You were close, right?” she prods, glancing over her shoulder at me.  “You’d be the one to ask if your picturesque pen pal has an equally picturesque pen—”

“That’s enough!” my voice interrupts unexpectedly—unexpected because it’s not actually me who speaks up, but Shimmering Armor in the seat next to me.  Coming from her, it’s more of a scolding than the scalding I’d prefer, but it mollifies me a little and prevents me from beaning Twilight Velvet with my bowl to make her shut up.

“Hrm?” Twilight Velvet asks, turning to look blithely at us as if she didn’t even realize there was anything wrong. “Ah, I suppose it is.”

Whoops, I guess my hoof slipped.  Sadly, the bowl shatters on the frame of the window over the sink, but at least I manage to land a banana slice stuck on her muzzle, so I consider it a win.  There’s a single moment of silence as she stands there covered in milk, cereal and banana before I all but throw myself off my stool, barely managing to keep myself on my hooves as I half run, half stumble out of the kitchen in a huff.

My first instinct is to retreat back down to the basement where I’ve spent most of my time since becoming a changeling, but a flash of indignation reminds me that half the reason I even came upstairs in the first place was to take a Celestia-damned shower, and that sounded like a really good idea at the moment.

I immediately come to regret my decision when Shimmering Armor catches up to me while I’m struggling with the second step going upstairs.  Without a word, she effortlessly lifts me in her teal-colored magic and carries me up to the second floor.

I definitely know the emotion behind the heat on my face now.

To my relief, she doesn’t hold onto me any longer than necessary and I soon have carpet under my tiny white hooves again when she gently sets me down at the top of the stairs.  She remains several steps down, resting her chin on her forelegs so she’s at eye level with me.  Lying there silently, she gives me a chance to either leave or say something.  Admittedly, I do kind of want to say something, but it’s probably not the something she’s waiting for.  I try to work myself up again to give her a piece of my mind, but I just… can’t make myself do it.

“Tartarus, what happened to the hardass I could scowl and yell at,” I say, dropping dejectedly to a seat barely three hooves from Shimmering Armor’s muzzle—three adult hooves, anyway; it’s a much larger distance for me than it is for her.  “I swear, I never used those eyes with half as much doe-eyed innocence.”

“I'm just doing my part to keep you from seeing yourself when you look at me,” she says, exuding a feeling of warmth and understanding to hide the snark.

“Ha ha,” I say, dryly mimicking a laugh… though entirely to myself I admit it’s actually working.

“Look,” She says, scooting a little closer.  “I’m not saying she wasn’t out of line, but you really shouldn’t take what just happened too seriously.”

“What, because of ‘cultural differences?’” I ask, making it clear exactly how good I think that excuse is.  “Believe me I've experienced a lot of people with ‘cultural differences’ living in the castle and none of them involved suggesting Princess Celestia has a—a—”  I actually can't even say it.  I did not need that image in my head, damn it!

Shimmering Armor shakes her head.  “Again, I'm not excusing what she said, but there’s more to it than her irreverency getting out of hoof.”

“Yeah?” I say, sitting up and crossing my forelegs as I wonder just how getting into this is ‘not taking it seriously.’  Buck, I should have just gone off to take my shower and that would have been it, but no, I can’t help but talk back and now it’s frigging lecture time.  I get enough of this from Twilight Sparkle.

“Look, Sunset, you already know what it's like to know how a pony is feeling from the emotions they’re feeding you, and for the rest of us the hive mind serves a similar-but-different role when we interact with other changelings,” she explains.  “You; you’re a changeling so we don't get any emotions from you the normal way, but you’re not normally connected to the hive mind, so we don't get anything from you that way either unless we’re touching you, which you… understandably try to avoid.  Aside from ponies in your situation, which you’ve already been told isn’t normally a very amiable relationship, there's really only one other way that happens, and it's…”

“Changelings from other hives,” I finish for her, burying my face in my hooves.  “Who you have an instinctual hatred for.”

Shimmering Armor rubs the back of her neck with one hoof.  “I wouldn't call it hatred or say that one causes the other… but yeah, that's pretty much how it inevitably goes nine times out of ten.”

“Great.  As if I needed another problem caused by this damn nymph body,” I grumble, trying not to get worked up over just one more thing.  “I supposed that nine times out of ten is actually better than Twilight made it out to be, at least, but just the fact that I'm considering an immunity to bug mind reading to be a handicap is pretty messed up.”

“You know, the point of telling you about it was so you wouldn't worry about it,” Shimmering Armor says, shaking her head.

“Yeah, well, you’ve done a shit job of it, haven’t you?” I bite back.  “So, give it to me straight; how much do I have to worry about one of you coming into the lab at night to kill me in my sleep?”

Shimmering Armor raises one eyebrow at me.  “None?  The hive isn’t going to get on anyling’s case for banter, but noling is going to actually hurt you—the hive mind will see to that…  not that Twilight always listens to it, but you’re here on her say-so and… uhh, you know, forget I even said anything about that.”

I give her my best unamused glare.

“Second,” she continues.  “It's only vaguely like you're a changeling from another hive.  We aren't newborn drones with no sense of object permanence.  Twilight and I may not always understand you, but we have connected to you over the hive mind in the past, so it's not like we're going to suddenly start seeing you as something alien.”

It takes exactly zero seconds for me to pick up on who she didn't mention.  “Fuck,” I curse, looking away from Shimmering Armor, oddly embarrassed for it.  “Look, I respect Twilight Sparkle, and I even kind of tolerate you, but that doesn't mean I'm going to host friendly sparkling rainbow fun times in my head with any changeling that walks in the door—let alone ones I don’t even like.”

Shimmering Armor shakes her head and lets out a heavy breath of exasperation.  “I wasn't even going to suggest it.  It probably wouldn't make much difference anyway; she's a snarky one regardless.  If you want to be antagonistic with your ‘sister,’ then be my guest, though I might remind you that she’s your only option if you want to go outside any time in the next week.”

I puff up my cheeks in a pout before I realize I’m probably just making myself look cute rather than indignant.  “The other one isn't going to be any better?” I state more than ask, remembering how my ‘brother-in-law’ had been described as a gruff and serious pony.

Shimmering Armor recognizes it as a rhetorical question and gives a lackluster shrug.

I throw my arms in the air, flop over onto my back and say “Wonderful,”  in my best deadpan sarcasm.  A moment later I perk up my head, craning to look over my chest at the mare lying on the stairs.

“What?” she asks, recognizing the glint in my eye as something mischievous.

“You know, there's no reason I couldn't show you how to actually dye your mane and coat,” I say, letting the rest of my suggestion go unsaid as I roll back up to my hooves.

She gives me a flat look.  “Aside from a complete lack of mane and coat dye?” she suggests.

I wave the issue off with my hoof.  “Send ‘sis’ after it.”

“You think I trust her as far as I can throw her?” she counters.

“Well,” I say, tapping my chin in faux thought.  “You can throw her pretty damn far in that body using my magic—just saying, in case you wanted to try—but no, you're right; best not to involve her at all. Besides, I just had a much better idea,” I add with a grin.

She drops her head into her hooves.  “Do I even want to know?” she asks.

“What?”  I give her my best innocent look.  “Don’t you trust me?”

“No,” she responds flat-out.

“That’s fair,” I say, completely unsurprised.  “But seriously, if you’re gonna take me outside, you’re gonna need an identity.  You already look like me in every other way, so I might as well bleach you white and call you ‘mom.’”

She stares at me like I’m crazy, which, I admit, is pretty normal in this house.  “Sunset, you are fourteen years old.  This body is fourteen years old—is there something you want to tell me?”

“Oh—I—uh—right…” I say, blushing and stammering at my mistake.  “L-look, you are like three times my height, thirty times my size and probably at least half again as mature as I am; you can’t expect me to notice that you’re still half a hoof shorter than what passes for actual adults around here.”

“Remembering what stage of life you were in three days ago should not require visual observation,” she says with dry disbelief.  “Wait, back up a second, did you say bleach?”

“Yeah, sure,” I say, somewhat absently as I’m still recovering from inadvertently making insinuations about myself.  “Twilight Sparkle has more than enough down in the lab; she won’t even notice if any is gone.”

“Yes, she will,” she says.

I begin to automatically object, then my mind catches up with the conversation.  “Okay, yes, she will, but we’ll be asking for forgiveness instead of permission, so it doesn’t matter anyway.”

Shimmering Armor chews at her lip, hesitating before she asks, “Did I piss you off without realizing it?  Because I thought we were having a moderately amiable, if occasionally embarrassing conversation and now you’re offering to douse me in toxic chemicals.”

“Pissed off is kind of my normal state, but that’s not relevant here,” I say, dismissing the accusation for the distraction it is.  “Look, I swear to you, bleaching hair is a legitimate thing ponies do—especially here in Canterlot, where everyone wants to look like the great holy goa—buck!”  I point at her with my hoof and snarl, “You heard nothing!”

Shimmering Armor looks like she’s in pain, but I’m pretty sure she’s just trying not to laugh.  Once she has recovered, she lets out a disgruntled groan.  “I don't suppose I can swing that into a begrudging apology so we can just smooth this over?”

“Apologize for what?” I retort, ineffectually stomping my tiny hooves on the carpeted floor.  “Being a hypocrite?”

She blinks at me, dumbfounded.  “Um, yyyeeeesss?” she says, drawing out her affirmation as if it should be obvious.

I give her a flat look.  “I thought you knew me better than that.”

“I do,” she says with a put-upon  sigh. “I was just expressing a wistful dream.”

“Yeah, well, stop it; it's distracting,” I say, attempting to pretend it never happened.  I fail almost immediately, as I can't help but add one more last word.  “Besides, calling the princess an old goat isn’t what made me bowl her.”

Shimmering Armor buries her face in the carpet for a moment, before returning to the matter at hoof.  “Right, whatever.  I’d rather know where you're going with this anyway.  Does bleach not blind and/or kill ponies?”

“No, it totally does,” I tell her, enjoying being on this side of the drawn-out exposition for once.

She has no words, which makes me smile.

“You just have to be careful,” I clarify.

“Okay, now I know you're just screwing with me,” she says, narrowing her eyes at my amusement.

“Little bit,” I say.  “But it really is true.  Ponies do it all the time.”

“You do realize you can't actually touch me right?” she says.  “You wouldn’t actually be much help.”

That holds me up for a second then I glance down at my tiny hooves and shrug.  “At this size, I was never gonna be much help anyway unless I actually got up on your head and danced a jig.  I could still do that, actually, if I had a raincoat and galoshes or something.”

“A raincoat?” she asks.

“Yes?”

“To protect you from the bleach?”

“Yes, obviously.”

“Which you want to douse me in?”

Ah, I see her point.  “You’re right, better if I just help out with my magic; I should be able to handle at least that much with it.”

Shimmering Armor presses her lips together in a show of consternation.  “This had better not be a plan to blind me to keep me from getting too familiar with your body.”

Really?  I can’t help but roll my eyes at her.  “I pretty much told you to get familiar with my body, so long as you don’t talk about it, so stop talking about it.  ”

“Ugh, fine,” she grumbles.  “But I’m still not convinced.”

“Hey, I have zero ulterior motives, here,” I insist.  “Honestly I'm surprised you're still even entertaining the idea.”

“Yes, well, it's not like I enjoy being cooped up here any more than you do,” she admits, looking a little uncomfortable.  “And as tidily as picking up those roleplaying books went for you, it turns out I do kind of need to go buy the actual franchise I was supposed to get the day before yesterday since Twilight really was that specific when she was inventing my backstory with the princess.”

“Wait wait wait,” I say, somewhat alarmed.  “What do you mean inventing your backstory with the princess?” 

Shimmering Armor blinks at me.  “Oh, I guess you didn't hear the whole story.  Yeah, when Princess Celestia stopped by that day, she ran into Twilight who… doesn’t pay the best attention to the hive mind and the two of them spent the better part of an hour bullshiting each other to collectively come up with a personality and life story for her goofy, protective older brother.”

“Oh, jeez.”  I spend a moment just trying to imagine that.  “I remember you saying that she was creative in describing you, but I didn't know it was like that.  I didn't even think the princess knew about those kinds of games; that must have been some impressive bullshitting.”

“More than you know considering the fact that Twilight didn’t know about them until then,” she points out.

I have to bury my face in the carpet for a moment.  “I forget sometimes that you guys are actually good at this shit as an evolutionary prerogative.”

“There wouldn’t be much point if it were obvious,” she points out.

“Yeah, yeah,” I say, not wanting to get into it.  “You do you—or not-you, I guess.  It's not like it was super subtle when your personality did a complete one-eighty, but whatever. It's no different from most of the ponies I met growing up, except you tend to actually know when you're being assholes and you do it anyway.  I can respect that.”

She looks me over and shakes her head.  “You are a very strange pony, Sunset Shimmer.  I think I see why Twilight didn’t want to see you wasted.”

“Heartwarming,” I drawl, stretching my legs.  “Anyway, I want to go outside; you want to go outside; we have a solution that satisfies both of these issues, so are we doing this?”

Shimmering Armor lets out a groan as she gets up and pats herself free of detritus from the stairs.  “Fine,” she begrudgingly allows.  “But we both need to shower and I’m not letting you anywhere near the bleach beyond telling me what to do—not even with magic.  No, especially with magic.”

“Oh come on,” I grouse.  “What—do you need my sworn oath over the hive mind or something?  I said I’m being honest and I said I could handle it.”

“I don't doubt that,” she says, looking down at my tiny form as she walks past me towards the bathroom.  “Well, I doubt it a little, but that's not the point.”

“And the point is?” I ask, struggling to keep up. 

“You do remember when it was that I connected to you over the hive mind?”

I frown thinking back to that day again.  “It was when you picked me up in your magic to bring me up the stairs,” I recall and immediately get the point.  “Oh, damn, magic is a conductor for the hive mind,” I say, wincing in remembered distress.  “I didn't feel anything when you helped me up just now, though.”

“That's because I used pony magic to do it,” she says.  “Your pony body’s pony magic, to be specific.  The changeling magic you have now, on the other hoof, would be no better than touching the neurospast directly.  You've expressed your feelings on that clearly enough already.”

“You're damn right I have,” I agree with conviction.  “Wait,” I say, holding her up.  “Twilight Velvet ruffled my mane with her magic during that conversation—she had to have at least recognized the connection.”

Shimmering Armor halts in place for a moment, considers that, then shrugs and continues on.  “Guess she’s just kind of a bitch then,” she says with a shrug.  “Though really, I’d have thought you'd have a thicker skin than that.  You are the same Sunset Shimmer who continually insists that you don’t have any problem with a member of the opposite sex walking around in her body, aren't you?”

“Yes, and the pony who keeps telling you not to talk about it,” I sourly gripe.  “I'm also in a preadolescent body as Twilight Sparkle was so kind to remind me, and Princess Celestia was my teacher and the closest thing I had to a…  Look, just forget it.  You have no idea how disturbing it is to have the image of an icon like her defiled by that kind of thing when you remember all the disgusting details but your appreciation for it is just gone.”

“Your appreciation for the image of your mentor with a—”

“Don’t—even—start,” I growl, getting sick of this now.  This is more attention than I’d get from storming out on the princess.

“Fine, it squicks you out,” she says, accepting it with an amused smirk.  “Still not really worth a bowl of cereal to the face, is it?”

“Yeah, well,” I say, huffing and puffing as I catch my breath.  “It's her fault for being like that when I’ve just woken up, and I didn’t actually hit her.”  A flimsy assertion followed by an even flimsier excuse, but I never claimed to be sensible, even-tempered or even likable, and if it’ll end this conversation, then I’ll own it.

Shimmering Armor chooses not to comment, finally letting the subject die, instead seeming to suddenly remember what she was doing and in turn reminding me what she was doing and why I was heading this way after her other than needing to get the last word in.  She looks at the bathroom door then looks at me.  I look at her and we both look at the bathroom door.

“Hey—no—I was on my way up here when you stopped me,” I say defensively.  “It’s been two and a half weeks an a nightmarish body-swap-slash-disgusting-parasite-birth since I had a hot shower; like tartarus am I letting you use it all up—you can wait.”

She gives me another long look of consideration before finally letting out a heavy huff of breath, opening the door and dragging me alongside her with her magic.  “Buzz it; you would probably just end up drowning yourself and I have ‘questions’ about this body anyway,” she says, a slight bit of color in her cheeks.
> Chapter Ten 【Twilight】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

 
I take a moment to double-check the bandage on my face through the eyes of my new ‘father’ before I can declare myself ready to go.  Satisfied that the bandages won't be coming loose anytime soon, I return my vision to what my own eyes are seeing and flinch a bit when the image of my own rather adorable face is replaced with that of a grim and stoic stallion.  Most changelings would broadcast at least a bit of amusement over the hive mind at that, but there isn’t even a hint of it.  He wastes no time at all in bending down so that I can climb on his back and we can set off for school.

On one hoof, it is a little frustrating having to go back to school now that we have Sunset Shimmer and a ready source of love, but on the other hoof, it's more important now than ever for me to maintain an identity, and, contrary to what some might expect, the curriculum at Meadowview Elementary School actually is moderately informative to me.  Not only does going there keep me up to date on what other children ‘my age’ knew, but it’s also a source of knowledge outside of the hive mind, which is entirely the point of my existence.

The trip to school is short and uneventful with exactly zero interaction between me and my new father.  While poor form from a disguise point of view, this suits me just fine as I’m able to keep myself quite preoccupied with more important matters, such as considering Sunset Shimmer's assertions about what is necessary to create a true magically-adept changeling.  It was an interesting subject to investigate.  If anyling has previously suggested separating the horn and chitin then there is no record of it, though that isn’t entirely unexpected as the hivemind does not exactly do ‘records.’  It would be more accurate to call information stored in the hive mind memories and it tended to forget unimportant things such as failed proposals.

So, Sunset Shimmer’s assertion was interesting and had not been disproven, but was it correct?

It might sound naïve of me, but I hadn’t really considered what qualities the breed that I hoped to eventually birth might have to give up in exchange for the increased magical aptitude that it was my purpose to develop.  Sunset Shimmer was correct in suggesting that simply separating the horn from the chitin would be the most palatable option out of the obvious ones, but there were enough hidden issues with it that I wasn’t ruling out taking more drastic measures.  The most obvious issue with separating the horn from the chitin was that if they were separate, any disguise a changeling takes might not extend to the horn question.

It would be a bit of an issue if I rebirthed myself only to find myself unable to pass as a pony.

Not for the first time I wish that I had a proper test subject for my experiments, but as much as recent events have given our household some legitimacy in the hive mind, my work doesn’t actually manage to fall under that auspice and my resources remain as constrained as ever.  In fact, the limitations I'm under will no doubt increase as Shining Armor’s role becomes more pronounced, and there are some who believe my work should be put on hold or cut entirely in order to reduce the variables of what has suddenly become such a high-profile operation.  I certainly won't be able to rebirth him quite as much as I had originally planned, as any undue absences would most certainly be noticed by somepony.

It is unfortunate that Sunset Shimmer is so adamant in her desire to be immortal as she would have made the ideal test subject—especially considering that the current issue is based on her criticism to begin with.  I don't believe that anyling has ever actually rebirthed a nymph in her situation, so it would be fascinating new ground to break on a number of levels if I could actually get her to do it.

My musing is cut short by our arrival at school and I'm relieved to discover that ‘dad’ at least has the presence of mind to perform an adequate sending off before leaving.  I have privately questioned his appointment, but saying that I was overruled would imply I have any say in the matter to begin with.  I do understand the desire to have at least one combat-capable changeling in the household, of course, but one would think that an entire hive would be able to produce at least one such willing changeling better suited to the role of Night Light, yet apparently only retired war veterans were shortlisted for the position.

Go figure.

Well, so long as he doesn't choose to live up to the name ‘Night Light’ by putting foals to sleep in too permanent a fashion, he can do whatever he likes; I have much more important things to focus on—like roll call, which is the first sign that something is very, very wrong.

A chill runs down my back as all eyes turn to me when my name is called, accompanied by a burst of chatter among the students.  After that first reaction, I remember my injured face and assume that it must be the topic which everyone is interested in, but it’s quickly discounted.  If that were the case I doubt that it would be my name that would draw everypony’s attention, nor does their attention remain focused on my bandages any more than that of the ponies on the street.  Nevertheless, I take the situation in stride, maintaining a stoic façade without succumbing to undue panic.

The hive mind requests that I stop screaming over the link.

“Present,” I announce and teacher moves on.  The rest of the students are not so easily dissuaded and continue to feed me what I now recognize as admiration and curiosity, resulting in the next few students who are called requiring several attempts from the teacher in order to get their attention.

Things finally become clear as soon as roll call is finished and the teacher's attention is diverted.  The colt behind me nearly scares me out of my chitin when he leans close and whispers, “Is it true that you were foal-sat by the princess?”

“What was it like?” the one to my left adds before I can even answer, and I'm saved from doing so to either of them by the teacher, who silences the entire class with little more than a stern glare and a rap of her yardstick on her desk.

Ah, well that explains a lot and does allow me a measure of relaxation.  From there, class is uneventful.  I’m grateful for my habit of sitting front and center in the classroom as nopony will blame me for being on my best behavior and I can safely ignore any ongoing attempts to catch my attention.  Instead, I'm able to split said attention evenly between the lesson at hoof and the more urgent question of what exactly to tell the rest of the students clamouring for a story when they inevitably corner me during recess.

I eventually decide at length that I may be overthinking things in my panic.  It should be simple enough to simply tell the truth insofar as the Princess Cadance knows it, the sole concern being whether or not to mention Sunset Shimmer.  I would really rather not complicate matters by mentioning a relative who will inevitably cease to exist in a short while, but I don't think I have a choice given I have no idea what my audience knows, who their source of gossip is or who they'll disseminate any additional information to.

As recess approaches I grow a little disgruntled that I have essentially spent two class periods deciding to do nothing in particular out of the ordinary and probably what the hive mind would have told me to do anyway.  Nevertheless, I tell myself that there is value in going through the process myself and to do otherwise would be to betray my mission.  I do wish that I could have instead spent the time on more important matters such as the horn-chitin separation issue, but I also admit that I would likely have been too distracted to concentrate on it anyway.  As it is, even with more immediate matters on my mind, the recess bell startles me and I feel a gnawing nervousness as I start to gather attention once more.

It’s minty with a dash of honey.

Oh, wait, no, that’s not my nervousness.  I wouldn't normally mistake the two, but distraction and a lack of attention have a way of confusing things and I have to admit that it is remarkably like my own.  I remain distracted as the class shuffles out the door, jostling me as I search for the source of that strong emotion.  I am surrounded by strong emotions, of course, but the vast majority of them—even the anticipation and curiosity I've been feeling all day—are not so strong or focused on me.

The herd of ponies around me seems to naturally gravitate towards the old oak tree out in front of the school without the direction of any single individual, least of all me.  Frustrated and unable to locate the source of the emotion other than to confirm that it's nopony in the immediate crowd, I'm forced to give up on the search and begin acting like I'm just as excited to tell my story as everypony else is to hear it.

“Well?” says the same colt who had gotten to me before class, now practically vibrating with anticipation.  “Is it true?  Is it?”

I match him with a bubbling joy which, as it turns out, is very much like I’ve forgotten to go to the bathroom.  “Yes!”  I beam,  all teeth and smiles.  “They didn't even tell us who they were sending; mom just opened the door and bam—there she was, standing right on the stoop!”

“Was she wearing her crown?” one filly asked, while another jumped on the end of her question.  “Wait—who didn’t tell you who they were sending?”

I wave my hooves at them to calm them down, halting the flow of questions.  “No, she didn't wear her crown, it was much more casual than that,” I tell the first filly.  “And the foalsitting service who else?”

“So, what, Princess Celestia just randomly goes to ponies’ houses to foalsit for them?” a colt asks, incredulous.  “That's sooo weird!”

“What?” I ask, cocking my head to the side in question.  “No, no,” I say, filling myself back up with the pride of having done something even more rare and special.  “It was Princess Cadance!”

The synchronized wave of confusion and disappointment from the entire crowd nearly makes me nauseated, and it's a single colt in the back who asks, “Who?”

My smile on my face falters a little.  This is, of course, entirely the appropriate expression for the situation and not a sign of my own disheartenment.  “Wha…?  Princess Cadence!” I reiterate and clarify, “The princess of love!” but fillies and colts are already leaving,  wandering off to make better use of the rest of recess after the revelation that it was a false alarm.  Soon enough, only the usual fillies and colts that I hang out with are left.

I'm honestly feeling kind of bad for Princess Cadence at this point—wait, no, it tastes like salt and watercress, meaning it’s my mysterious voyeur again—or would they be considered a stalker by now?  That seems like something the hive mind should know, but I don’t bother, instead glancing around, searching for anypony out of the ordinary, coming up empty-hoofed.

“So, uhh,” says Wind Tone, a scrawny white and green pegasus colt, grinding his hoof into the grass.  “This Princess Cadence, she's like that Prince Blueblood, then?  His sister or cousin or something?”

“No!” I whine, making my face flush in frustration.  “She’s an alicorn, just like Princess Celestia.  She’s got a pink coat with a violet, magenta and gold mane—and yes, she has a wings and a horn just like a real princess!”

The group all shares a round of uncertain looks accompanied by shrugs.  “So she’s… Princess Celestia’s long lost sister or something?” asks Opal Drop, a calm, milk-colored unicorn filly with a multicolored mane who at least seems willing to give my story a chance.

“No, I don’t think she’s related to Princess Celestia, and she’s definitely not long lost anything,” I explain, my irritation ratcheting up… because that’s how Twilight Sparkle the filly unicorn would act, clearly.  “It hasn’t even been a year since she became an alicorn.  She's only about my brother's age—that's why she's foalsitting.  It’s not weird!”

The look on their faces implies they think it is, in fact, weird.  “So, what did you guys do, then?” Opal Drop asks.

I stand there blinking.  I should have expected that question, shouldn’t I have?  “Foalsitting stuff?” I tell her, considering how to word the events of the night.  “All we did was play board games and she cooked us onion rings to go with my mom’s peatloaf.”

“‘Us?’” asks Silverwire, a slightly chubby mare who was the only earth pony in the group—and almost the entire grade.  “Like, your brother was there too?  That doesn't sound much like foalsitting…”

“Oh, believe me, it sounds exactly like the foalsitting my sister does,” Opal Drop chimes in, making a gagging sound to make her opinion on it clear.  “Usually she brings the colt, but if the job already came with one like Twilight’s brother, I guarantee she wouldn’t turn him down.”

Sometimes I wonder about Opal Drop’s home life—then I remember that changelings in glass houses should not live in glass houses, because that’s dumb and prevents you from throwing stones, which is a basic form of defense.  “Oh for—no, my brother was not there,” I say, officially perturbed.  Well, he was there, but he was in the basement so it doesn’t count.  “No, it was my mom’s sister who was with us; her name’s Whitewash ‘cause of her albinism—she’s got a white coat and white mane.  She’s nnnnnn… okay, she’s not nice but she’s okay."

“So your aunt was there…?” Silverwire asks, clearly confused.  “That makes even less sense than the brother thing.”  She looks at Opal Drop to see if she has anything to add, but the other filly just shrugs.

“Well, I guess she’s technically my aunt, but she’s also five,” I point out.

“So, you and your five-year-old albino aunt spent the night playing board games and eating peatloaf with the pink, violet, magenta and gold alicorn princess of love?” asks Opal Drop.  “Twilight, um, we’re not saying we don’t believe you, but your story… could be more believable?  Um, maybe if the alicorn princess didn’t sound like a cheap foal’s toy?  Pink is really overused and nopony has that many colors in their mane.”

What?  “Opal, your mane is teal, orange, green and violet,” I inform her, as it is apparent that she is as adverse to mirrors as changelings are.  “You have that many colors in your mane—and you’re pink, too!”

She gapes at me.  “You take that back!” she says, petulant.  “I am not pink!  I’m white!”

“Technically, you're off white with a leaning to red,” I explain, matter-of-factly.  “So yes, you actually are pink.”

“‘Leaning to red?’” she repeats in a mocking tone.  “That is such ponyfeathers and you know it; it's only ‘leaning to red’ if you use that stupid prism spell the teacher has that splits light into red green and blue—and even then it’s only by a few percentage points.  Even if you’re going to be ridiculously pedantic, it should still be yellow or gold!”

I don’t have time for a retort as that's when the bell rings for the end of recess.  The bitter disappointment from my stalker is like sucking on a poison toad, but thankfully the emotion is not directed at me so I only get a whiff of it before it and the pony broadcasting it are gone.

Well, that happened.

The truth, I decide, is overrated.




 
I decide on my way back to class that the pony ‘Twilight Sparkle’ will be sulking for however long it takes the rest of her age group to eventually forget this little disaster ever occurred.  Honestly, I’m at a bit of a loss to explain exactly how it came to pass.  I'm aware that changelings are much more familiar with our leaders—such as we have them—than ponies are, but given how obsessed ponies seem to be with their first alicorn ruler, you would think that a second one would not have escaped public notice.  I mean, there was a coronation and everything!  I wasn't even there and I remember it!

On a completely unrelated note, I admit the hive mind is useful for some things.

That said, as the changeling Twilight Sparkle, I can only consider this a satisfactory—perhaps even beneficial result.  While classes retain some value and I do need to maintain an identity, the requirements for that identity have changed; my need for friends has diminished and it won't hurt for me to be seen withdrawing and focusing more on schoolwork if I plan to get scouted as the princess’ next student without raising too many flags.

Yes, that seems to fit together quite nicely; Twilight Sparkle is a nice, sometimes awkward filly who had a chance meeting with both princesses and gained their interest.  Outcast when her friends don’t believe her about her encounter, she would feed her resentment back into trying to impress the princesses, gain official recognition and show her peers just how wrong they were.  I was caught off guard recess, but this is something that I can work with… though maybe a little villain-y.

It’s a work in progress.

With that settled, I put it out of my mind and concentrate on class, finally getting back to spending occasional thoughts on the horn-chitin separation issue.  As far as being unable to disguise my horn if it were separated from chitin goes, I suppose it wouldn't be difficult for my undisguised horn to simply have the appearance of a unicorn horn to begin with.  It isn’t the perfect solution, of course.  Even if a changeling’s horn could pass as a unicorn horn, it would still not be part of the disguise, and thus, would only ever be one color.  This wouldn't be a problem for me personally, as I only need the one appearance, but I'm pretty sure that the hive would reject such a limitation being included in a caste as a whole.

Correction, then; it’s not a solution at all.

Ironically, it might yet be possible to convince the hive to allow changelings with no chitin whatsoever; changelings like me, who have a single appearance written into their genes and no ability to disguise themselves.  It’s not that the hive mind requires a single baseline set of abilities, but that it is uniformly against imperfect and incomplete solutions.  Even if chitinless changelings are an option, though, I think I can do better than that.

Chitin, as it’s in use now, is quite over-engineered for the modern changeling.  I might be able to reduce its profile and thus the magical drain that Sunset Shimmer mentioned.  Doing so might allow precision without sacrificing the ability to disguise oneself, or it might be another incomplete solution that would be rejected.  Alternatively, it might be possible to keep the chitin as is but disconnect or dampen it while a disguise is active, though this last possibility is more a wish for the future than anything I can actually work towards now since it would involve changing the disguise ability, which I'm doubtful I can do with the knowledge available to me.

Time and time again in my brainstorming I come up against the roadblock that is my lack of somepony to experiment on.  I suppose that before there was Shining Armor I had planned to experiment on myself, but I'm under almost as much scrutiny as Shining Armor is, and if Sunset Shimmer is correct, I wouldn't know what to look for in a proper horn anyway.  I really, really need another pony, but I don't think the hive mind will let me have one.

Would it be possible for me to make do with Sunset Shimmer?  Well, yes, absolutely—but could I do it without going back on all the trust I’ve built with her thus far?  I could delay things, certainly; ask her for another month or two just until I can get things ready for my first rebirth, but I don't need someone for just my first rebirth and I would sooner cut her loose than lead her on like that.

I've gotten as far as considering the relative benefits of rebirthing my new parents while taking notes on equestrian history when class lets out for lunch.  The minty nervousness returns a taste more muted than last time and I distract myself looking for its source just long enough to trip on my way out of the classroom.

Pain splits down the crack in my face and I curl up on myself, trying not to scream—mostly to avoid letting any un-foal-like words out, because I’m definitely thinking them.  Even so, the muted keening coming from my throat as I curl up into myself communicates well enough the pain I'm in.

I'm not able to pay any attention to the crowd gathering around me for the second time today so I miss the adults taking charge and instructions being hoofed out.  At some point, a snowball wrapped in a towel is pressed to my injury and I feel somepony my height leading me out of the room with a second set of hoofsteps on the other side of me.  The second set of hoofsteps is no doubt Neon Delight, the singular unicorn teacher on staff.  He’s a young, energetic dandy saddled with teaching the magical curriculum to the entire school and the only pony who could have conjured the snowball cooling my face.

The pony my age opposite him, however, is the source of the minty nervousness—now stronger than ever under a heavy dose of strawberry concern.  It was almost worth it going through this—almost—to find out who this pony actually is now rather than later.

Now if only I could open my eyes to do so.  I scrunch my face up harder as another stab of pain shoots through me—wait, no, stop that.  Scrunching up my face in pain is exactly what I’m not suppose to be doing.  Instead, I force myself to take slow, steady breaths in an attempt to calm myself down and relax the tension in my face.

I mostly succeed, suffering only a few stabs of pain as my breath hitches beyond my control.  As my face relaxes, I let my jaw go slack and move the snowball a little lower to ease the stress on my injury.  Once that’s settled, I'm able to brace myself and open my eyes, immediately recognizing what would have been obvious if I had even thought to ask—I’m being taken to the nurse’s office.  In fact, we’re just about there already.

“Aha!  Thank you for your assistance with Twilight Sparkle, Moon Dancer,” Neon Delight says, almost bouncing the final few steps to open the door to the nurse’s office.  “Oh, hum, she doesn't seem to be in at the moment, would you like to stay here with Twilight while I check the teacher’s lounge?  And is that alright with you, Twilight?  How are you doing?  Oh, don't try to answer that; just nod once it's okay.”

I nod more enthusiastically than I probably should, and as Neon Delight walks away with a “Very well, then!” I finally get a good look of my stalker and stare, fearing I might have taken a stronger blow to the head than I thought.

The pony standing beside me is me.  Well, no, her colors are entirely different.  Instead of my dusky colors, hers are more daylight-oriented, contrary to her name—a buttercream coat and a cinnabar mane with lavender and violet streaks through it.  Colors, aside, though, she looks exactly like me in face and build all the way down to somehow possessing the exact same haircut as I have.  If I hadn't been feeding on her emotions all day, I would have been sure she was another changeling making fun of me… or one from another hive making a move on my position with the princesses.

“So, um, sorry—ah—t—this isn't how I wanted to do this, b—but I take it you've noticed?” she asks, stuttering as she self-consciously brushes a bit of her mane back out of her eyes.

I have so many questions that I want to ask her, but all I can do right now is nod and see where she's going with this—find out what her angle is.

“Ah—right, sorry,” she says, standing straighter.  “I forgot—I mean—I didn't forget forget, it just slipped my mind since I've been wanting to talk to you all day I'm rambling now aren’t I?  Sorry, this is just really awkward for me because there was already that whole stupid thing during recess and no one was even asking you about your injury which just seems really callous but that's not really why I wanted to talk to you and I don't want to be callous but I really really really really really kind of want to know if we're related because if we are, uh, I mean you wouldn't have to, but if you are actually family somehow… and… maybe you could… do something… about my situation…?” her voice trails off squeaky awkward mumbling and I feel a headache coming on.

This is not what I need right now.

Just… how could this have even happened?  I personally created this appearance from whole cloth—or, well, strips of it anyway.  There's always a chance that any random selection could be duplicated somewhere else, but the number of things that would have had to go wrong for me to run into some random pony who looks exactly like me attending the same class is mind-boggling, almost eclipsing the number of problems that this would cause me.  Our records are immaculate, of course, with the princesses looking into our situation, but the hive would not appreciate it if it had to run interference for me over this on top of the mess we already have.

I have to try very hard to not clench my jaw and cause myself more pain, and I don't entirely succeed.  Okay, calm down, this sort of thing does happen from time to time.  It's not unusual for ponies to suspect a relationship to a changeling’s disguise or for them to want something because of it; money, influence, an intervention in family affairs—it could be anything.  The mistaken family member is not usually an identical pony, but I remind myself that that isn’t what's actually important here.  What's important here is that I get this dealt with as quickly and quietly as possible so that I can go back to looking for some way to… to…

I am an idiot.

“Ohmygosh!” Moon Dancer shouts, rushing to my side to help pick my face up off the floor again.  “Are you okay?” she asks, more than slightly panicked.  “I'm so sorry!  I just looked away for a second and then something happened and you were on the floor.  I’ve been rambling on about my problems when I should have been helping you inside so you could sit down.”

This is actually exactly what I need right now—Moon Dancer, that is; not the additional facial trauma that I just inflicted on myself.  My karma is squeaky clean, so there's no way I deserved that.

If… if I could keep this pony and get her into a nymph like Sunset Shimmer, then I would have a neurospast that could look just like me with a little effort.  I could rebirth myself whenever I want without interfering with the rest of my life or bringing suspicion on my disguise.  This is… it couldn’t be more perfect—assuming it’s not some trick, but how could it be?  Nopony and noling outside of the hive should even know about my mission, let alone the complications that have come up.

No, this has to be just the stupidest coincidence in the history of changelings; clearly the universe itself is rewarding me for my excellent, virtuous behavior.

Now I just need to figure out how to convince this vulnerable filly to become my willing sla—err—voluntary test subject.

As Moon Dancer makes good on her rambling and directs me to to a cushion in the nurse's office for me to sit on, I carefully work my jaw left and right a little to test my range of movement for additional injuries.  Satisfied that I haven’t done anything permanent, I hold up my hoof to get her attention and raise an eyebrow to give her a questioning look.  “Your situation?” I ask, minimizing the amount of talking I need to do, though it’s no longer terrible.

“Oh Celestia, I'm doing this all wrong,” she mumbles, taking a seat next to me and withdrawing in on herself.  “A—actually, could we just not talk about that?  I shouldn't have said anything; I don't want you to think that I'm only interested because of that… and if you aren’t actually related to me, then it doesn't matter anyway.”

She seems about to cry, so I shake my head and let it go for now.  We sit quietly with Moon Dancer’s occasional sniffle breaking the silence and me… just sitting there slowly realizing that she isn’t going to stop.  Inwardly groaning at the things I do for my mission, I scoot over next to her and wrap her in an awkward hug.  This just causes her to cry openly, but apparently that's what she desires, as earthy emotions of thankfulness and relief wash over me.

Ponies are weird.

There is some confusion when the nurse finally arrives and immediately assumes that Moon Dancer is the one that needs medical attention.  Privately, I think this is closer to the mark than the ponies will admit, but I know enough not to voice such an opinion; she certainly desires the attention, at least, medical or not.

As for my own examination, the nurse is an earth pony, so all she can actually do is confirm that I'm not dying, give me a lollipop and send my ‘sister’ and I home with a doctor’s note.  I try to object, insisting that I'm not too injured to attend my afternoon classes, but apparently my fall has begun another hairline crack at the corner of my eye socket and she thinks my parents should take me to see a real doctor as soon as possible.

In other words, it's above her pay grade and she wants to take the path of least responsibility.

I forget, initially, to also object to Moon Dancer being called my sister, but once it's clear that the nurse is sending me home and trusting Moon Dancer to get me there, I keep quiet, judging this turn of events to be the simplest solution which wastes the least amount of my time.  Hive forbid they have to actually send somepony to get my ‘mom.’

Moon Dancer, too, does not object for reasons which I cannot guess.  Presumably she is upset—as evidenced by the excessive crying—or perhaps she’ll just take any chance to get out of school like the rest of the useless wastes of space that clutter up my classes.  Hopefully I can train that out of—err—enlighten Moon Dancer to the vast importance of education and learning.

Regardless, we are soon on our way home with not one, but two lollipops between us, further convincing me that something is medically wrong with the incomprehensible filly—because why else would she have been given one?  I cannot envision a medical professional violating the sacred ritual of treatment for candy.  Candy for treatment?  Whatever; it’s something like that.

It only occurs to me after opening the front door of the house to find a soaking wet Sunset Shimmer, Sunset Shimmer's half-bleached neurospast and Twilight Velvet wearing a watermelon rind around her neck that I realize I probably should have included the hive mind in some part of the events since lunch period had started.

Moon Dancer and I stare at them.

They stare back at Moon Dancer and me.

No one moves.

I glance over at Moon Dancer, then back at the collected ponies with my best puppy-dog eyes.

“She followed me home; can I keep her?”
> Chapter Eleven 【Sunset】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Twilight Sparkle just walking into the house accompanied by a negative-image copy of herself seems like exactly the sort of thing she would do.  Having that clone then look at Shimmering Armor, take a step back in fear and stutter, “T—that’s Sunset Shimmer,” is simultaneously more alarming and a lot less amusing.

I surprise myself, too, to realize that I’m not too concerned for my own wellbeing.  I just feel sorry for whoever this filly is because her little outburst there just ensured that she wouldn’t be leaving this house anytime soon… if ever.  She takes another hesitant step away from the group of gathered ponies before her eyes roll up and she collapses on the spot.

At first I assume that she just fainted, until the tall, masculine figure of Night Light appears from somewhere behind Twilight and her apparent clone.  He hawks and spits something to the side of the door before walking in past them, giving only the most general grunt of acknowledgment.

This Night Light is nothing like the one I remember listlessly going about his chores.  For starters, he reeks like a smoker who spends all his time loitering outside of a sardine factory with a bottle of whiskey, and I immediately dislike him.  Twilight Sparkle and Twilight Velvet, meanwhile, quickly drag the mystery filly in over the threshold and close the door.

I do my best not to focus on the filly and what’ll happen to her, so Night Light is the next obvious subject of conversation.  “So, is he just home for lunch or has he been fired already?” I ask the room at large, scrunching up my nose in disgust.  “Smelling like that, I’m surprised that he was even let in the door wherever he works.”

“Oh, do your best to ignore that,” Twilight Velvet says, still as upbeat as ever as she drags the filly into the living room, watermelon rind still around her neck.  “That’s your changeling senses at work.  Ol’ Nighty is something of a biter and fond of his poisons, but they’re made of hate, anger, selfishness and that sort of thing—really nasty stuff.  He’s probably going up to shower now.”

Shimmering Armor and I exchange a concerned look while she busies herself toweling me down after our eventful morning, but eventually both of us shrug it off.  He’ll figure it out.  Moments later there’s a slow, steady banging coming from the upstairs bathroom.  It lasts about ten seconds before trailing off, but I can still hear water flowing through the pipes.  “Is he…?”

“Continuing to shower?” Shimmering Armor asks, glancing up in the direction of the bathroom.  “Yes.”

Well, I guess that’s all there is to say about that.  I follow Twilight and Twilight into the living room where they set the filly onto one of the sofas.  “So, wait, does that mean he bit her?”

“Yep!” Twilight Velvet chirps with a smile, rolling the filly over and brushing the hair on the back of her neck aside to reveal two puckered holes.

I climb up onto the couch in order to get a closer look and instead get a whiff of the same smell that was coming off of Night Light, nearly sending me crashing back down as I balk away from it.  “Jeez, when I asked about it the other day, you didn’t even have to mention odial stones; you could have just mentioned how awful that garbage reeks.  Tell me that’s going to go away quickly.”

“Oh, sure,” Twilight Velvet says, wiping the excess away with her magic quicker than she can say it.  “Ambient positive emotions will dilute and dissolve it, but so will changeling magic, since it’s not that different from the emotions that were digested to make it.”

“Then why the shower…?” I ask.

“Our bodies naturally sweat out the bad emotions like that unless we keep a real good handle on them,” she explains.  “And old Nighty tends to keep himself topped off as much as possible.  When you’re that bad off, it’s much easier to just infuse the water with a little magic and wash like you normally would.”

“Huh.”  I search around for another topic other than the filly in the room, but I fail to come up with anything.  “You know,” I give Shimmering Armor a look.  “This would never have happened if you had just done your mane first like I said you should instead of starting with your tail.”

“Well excuse me for wanting to test it on something a little less vital.  This face is actually kind of pretty when it’s not scowling, you know,” she says, rolling her eyes at me before directing her ire at a certain purple filly.  “Besides, if we’re pointing hooves, this wouldn’t have happened if Twilight had buzzing warned us that she was bringing some random filly home.  Just what in the hive did you think you were doing, Twilight?  Oh, right, you weren’t—because the hive wasn’t involved at all in whatever you’re planning."

“She is not some random filly,” Twilight objects, retreating in on herself with an embarrassed pout.  “Look, she wasn’t even supposed to come inside.  The nurse sent her home with me thinking she was my sister, if she hadn’t, then she would’ve sent somepony else who would’ve probably seen you anyway.”

“No,” Shimmering Armor says covering her face with her hoof.  “Because normal ponies knock on the door before they come in.  Look, the hive can deal with punishments later.  Tell us who this filly is, if she’s not just some random one.”

Twilight halts at that.  “That’s kind of what I wanted to find out,” she admits.  “Look, this isn’t as bad as it looks.  I… I need her, okay?  For my work.  We were probably going to end up foalnapping her anyway, so really, we’ve only jumped ahead on the schedule a little.”

Shimmering Armor decides that one hoof just isn’t enough, so she buries her face in the other one too.  “No, Twilight, there’s no way you would’ve gotten permission to foalnap anypony with things as sensitive as they are and I think you knew that."

Twilight begins to object, but Shimmering Armor cuts her off.  “No, no excuses.  We need solutions.  We can’t just let her go, and we don’t know who she is—wait, Sunset; she knew you.  Do you have any idea who she is?  Twilight, do you at least know her name?”

Twilight doesn’t look like she wants to answer, but at this point I don’t think she’s going to risk making things any worse for herself.  “Her name is Moon Dancer and I think she just transferred into my class at school.  She was stalking me all day, wanting to ask me why we looked the same, but she only came forward after I smashed my face on the floor again and started a second crack in my eye socket.”

Moon Dancer, Moon Dancer…  I try to recall if I’ve ever heard that name before.  “It sounds familiar, but—buck,” I swear, suddenly remembering.  “When I first met Twilight, I thought I recognized her.  I might’ve seen this Moon Dancer with one of the ponies that I hung around with.  Blitz Rush, maybe?  I dunno if it’s her; he always described her as something of a spoiled little demon, but he might’ve been joking?  I never really involved myself in those sorts of conversations.”

Shimmering Armor gets a faraway look in her eyes for a moment before wincing out of the blue.  “Damn, yeah, I think you’re right.  Okay, this is how we’re going to do this.  First, Twilight, since this is your mess, then you’re going to clean it up.  Disguise yourself as Moon Dancer and make sure you’re seen leaving.  That’ll give us some time just in case things go poorly with her.”

“But—”

“If you want to know what’s going on then you can listen over the hive mind,” Shimmering Armor retorts angrily, cutting Twilight off.  She takes a few breaths to calm herself and continues, “Look, Twilight, I realize that you have your whole… thing going on with the hive mind, and that’s fine, but this is the second time you failed to use it to keep the rest of us updated for really major things, and that’s not okay.”

From the look on Twilight Sparkle’s face, I really think she’s going to talk back, but maybe she does check in with the hive mind, because her rebelliousness soon drains away.  She presses her lips together, says “Fine,” and turns to stomp off towards the door, pausing only briefly to remove her bandages and take on Moon Dancer’s appearance before opening the door and slamming it behind her.

“Was that really necessary?” I ask, looking over the unconscious form of Moon Dancer, trying to remember anything in particular that had been said about her but coming up blank.  It’s then that I realize that Twilight Velvet has wandered off, and I hear a door open and close upstairs.  Well, I did make a mess of her twice this morning, I guess she must need a shower too.

I try not to even question how far changelings take things when they’re pretending to be married.

Shimmering Armor lets out a sigh and drops herself heavily into the couch that Moon Dancer isn’t occupying.  “Kind of, yeah?” she answers shaking her head.  “There really is no excuse.  What pisses me off is that she’s going to get away with it because this really is a coup for her project and somelings in the hive are willing to cut her a lot of slack because so long as things don’t go catastrophically wrong, it will actually make things more secure around here in the long run.”

I climb up over the back of the couch to give Moon Dancer another look.  “Yeah, I can see that, I guess,” I say, jumping down to curl up against her chest, reveling a little in being able to actually touch someone without having to worry about a connection to the hive mind.  In hindsight, maybe it’s a little creepy, but she looks just like Twilight Sparkle so the part of me that objects to getting feely with somepony we just foalnapped is confused enough to let it go.  “So how bad is it really?” I ask.

Shimmering Armor cringes.

I snuggle closer to Moon Dancer.  “That bad?"

“Let me put it this way,” she says, massaging her temples.  “Her entire family is dead, and according to Twilight—” Shimmering Armor taps her forehead to indicate that the information is thanks to the changeling in question finally communicating over the hive mind, “—Moon Dancer is really hoping that Twilight’s family is somehow related to her so that we can, and I quote, ‘help her with her situation.’  I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s already been moved into an orphanage and that’s why she had to change schools."

I shrug.  “That sounds great, then, doesn’t it?  All we have to do is get her on side, as you said and it seems like that’s exactly what she wants.  Sure, you guys are weird bug things and you want to make her a weird bug thing so that Twilight can use her body while Twilight’s is in the shop, but it still seems like this is an easy-mode foalnapping.”

Shimmering Armor leans forward and drops her head.  “Yeah, kinda, except for two things; one, we’ve just undergone a thorough background check by Princess Celestia.  If we forge any documents now to say that we’re related to Moon Dancer, somepony will absolutely know because it’ll throw up red flags with all the wrong ponies.”

Yeah, that’s…  “Still, even if we can’t get her out of that place right away, we should still be able to do enough to get her on our side, and you guys will know if she’s lying, right?”

“Sure, but that’s where the second problem comes in,” she says, her ears folding back as if she’s bracing herself for a bad reaction.  “The part where she probably recognized you because you’re kind of the one who killed her family.”

“I what?” I shout, shooting to my hooves.  “Tell me this is a joke and you don’t have changelings out there doing shit like that disguised as me!"

Shimmering Armor shakes her head.  “It’s something to do with the janitors keys that you stole that day when you were going after the mirror.  The hive mind doesn’t know any more than that, but it does seem to be legitimate.”

Poleaxed, I fall back against Moon Dancer’s barrel, shutting my eyes against a wave of emotion as the quick anger that I just drew up turns against me. When I open my eyes again, I look over at her face and wonder if this is the first restful sleep that she’s had in the past couple weeks.  This filly had to go through that all of that because of me.  “Buck,” I whisper, and it’s not enough.

Shimmering Armor remains silent, instead allowing me the time for it to sink in.

“And if she doesn’t play ball, she’s not leaving the house without becoming like me,” I deduce.

“It’s a difficult situation even with her cooperation,” Shimmering Armor says, not mincing words with me.  “Realistically… she might not have the option of leaving in her own body regardless.”

I frown, considering that.  “How does that work?  We hold her for another week until the pod is free, and then another couple of weeks for her to have her turn in it?”

Shimmering Armor shakes her head.  “We’ll have to build a second pod,” she says with a grimace.  “And yes, that’s ‘we’ as in all of us.  As much as I’m sure that Twilight would enjoy making you do it, it’ll be an ‘all hooves on deck’ scenario.”

I share her grimace.  “Everyone but you, I suppose, since I don’t think my old body is capable of helping with that.”

“True enough,” she agrees.

I spend another little while just thinking about this whole situation, but it’s not doing any good.  “Well, I suppose I might as well get started on that, if you’ll help me down the stairs and explain what I need to do.”

“No, not yet,” Shimmering Armor says, getting up.  “I’m going to take you and Moon Dancer upstairs to Twilight’s room, and you’re going to see what you can do to befriend her.”

I balk at her.  “The Tartarus I am.  You just got finished telling me she hates me and blames me for her family’s death—and I can hardly blame her, can I?  I’m the last pony she’s going to want to talk to.”

Shimmering Armor picks both Moon Dancer and me up in her magic, levitating us out the room towards the stairs and ignoring any objection.  “That is the point, yes,” she tells me from behind.  “Because you’re not Sunset Shimmer—not right now.  Right now, you’re ‘Whitewash,’ a pony half her age and adorable.  If you befriend her like you are and explain things, then when she finds out that you’re really Sunset Shimmer, she’ll already have a new first impression of you.”

“I mean, most people don’t like being lied to,” I point out.  “But I guess I’m not really the expert here.  Wait, when you say explain things, how complete an explanation do you mean?"

“Eh.”  I can hear the shrug in her voice.  “Full disclosure, I guess, though obviously leave out the whole Sunset Shimmer thing until you think she’ll take it well.  Remember, we want her to agree to give up her body and become a changeling the same way you have, so we can’t really leave much out.  We’re hoping her need for a family will get her past any discomfort with the idea.”

“That’s… Gonna be a hard sell,” I admit.  “I only agreed to this because it’s temporary.  I’ll grant you it’s not actually that bad and there are a few things I’d still like to get out of it, but it’s still a body designed to be a prison.  I can’t sugarcoat that; I won’t.”

Shimmering Armor levitates us to the side of the door and opens it with her hoof before taking us inside.  “I’m not asking you to.  If it helps, Twilight actually wants to rebirth her to test configurations out, so there’s a good chance that she can mitigate some of the downsides there are to being a nymph at the same time.”

As soon as she sets me down on the bed, I turn around to give her an unamused look.  “And no one thought that I would like to know about that option?” I ask, somewhat snappish, though I know I’m just being difficult.  “I mean, I get that it’s temporary and another week in the pod would just be a waste of time, but it would have been nice to know it’s even possible.”

Shimmering Armor takes my backtalk without any particular reaction as she sets Moon Dancer down next to me.  “Well,” she says, returning my look with a flat one of her own.  “Considering it’s never actually been done before and could be risky, perhaps you’ll forgive us for not mentioning it?”

I stare her down for a bit just so I’m not giving in too quickly.  “All right, fine.  Your point is made,” I grumble, not really invested in it regardless.  “So, what’s actually on offer, then?  Twilight gets to use Moon Dancer’s nymph body as her testbed and her pony body as a drone to ride around in while she’s being rebirthed?  And in exchange, Moon Dancer gets to be a changeling, all the family she could want and any reasonable changes to her body she could ask of Twilight, pretty much?"

“Pretty much,” Shimmering Armor agrees.

“So, does Moon Dancer get to use her pony body when she’s in the pod?”  I ask, eyeing up my own body that ‘Shimmering Armor’ is walking around in.

That seems to take her by surprise.  “That might take some work,” she says, hedging her words.  “She’d need the organ you’re missing that would connect her to the hive mind, so she would have to be okay with that.”

I cringe at that.  “Yeah, I didn’t really think that through.  If she had it, though, she’d be able to control the connection?  She wouldn’t have to worry about touching one of the neurospasts like I do and she could just plain forget it’s even there half the time like Twilight Sparkle?"

Shimmering Armor stops and hesitates.  “I think Twilight’s connection has a different basal state,” she hedges.  “But I suppose that if it’s possible to give her the organ at all, there’s no reason that Moon Dancer’s couldn’t be based on Twilight’s.  I’m really not the changeling to ask; I’m just repeating what I get from the hive mind."

“Right, right,” I say, ignoring her disclaimers and focusing on considering what it is they’re asking me to do.  You’d think I might feel guilty about pushing somepony to give up what they are and become a changeling, possibly in mind as well as body, but if what Moon Dancer really wants is family, she could do worse than to join one that was connected in such a way.

At least she would always know how they actually feel about her.

“All right, fine, do your thing, I guess,” I say, walking around Moon Dancer’s prone form so that I can see her face.

Shimmering Armor shakes her head.  “Nope, no can do,” she says, tapping her horn with her hoof.  “No changeling magic, remember?  Here, I’ll show you where to massage with your magic to dissolve the soporific.  As a bonus, she should wake up feeling pretty good.”

She makes good on her word and before I know it I find myself working my magic into Moon Dancer’s neck and spine in a soothing rhythm.  I don’t even notice Shimmering Armor leaving until she turns at the door and says, “Befriend her first.  We don’t expect her to agree to everything in the first half-hour, and it’s more important that she come around to our way of thinking than it is for her to do so quickly.

“That said, I don’t imagine that holding her here against her will is going to endear her to us, but it’s all we’ve got at the moment.  If worst comes to worst, we can take Twilight out of school for her injury and send her back as Moon Dancer with something more subtle to cover it.  We can do subtle in spite of what you might think looking at Twilight."

I don’t directly answer and Shimmering Armor is satisfied with leaving it there, shutting the door behind her.

This really is a mess, isn’t it?  Not that I was ever going to be able to get out of having to befriend Moon Dancer if she was going to become a part of this whole thing, but at least we could’ve been working at it from a position of amicability.

Eventually Moon Dancer begins to stir.  I hold my breath, hoping she at least doesn’t freak out immediately.  To my relief, she seems to come to consciousness in a pleasant haze like the protagonist of a romance novel waking up in the arms of her beloved, both of them ready to whisper sweet nothings in each other’s ears without having had so much as a drop of coffee between them.

Talk about propagating unrealistic expectations.

Come to think of it, I never did manage to convince the castle staff to give me coffee.  They always claimed that I couldn’t be addicted to it if I’ve never had it before.  Well, it shows what they know; I’ve had my brain liquefied, consumed and assimilated by the baby bug thing I’m now inhabiting, and I still wake up like a zompony that hasn’t had its fill of… Err, brains…

I just realized that it was technically me that consumed my own brain.

I wish very much that I could forget that.

Where was I?  Oh, right.  Little ‘Princess’ Moon Dancer is waking up like a Celestia-damned… morning pony?  Okay, I’m really off my game and I can’t even blame the lack of caffeine since it’s been several hours and several showers spent helping bleach Shimmering Armor since I got up, not to mention several mouthfuls of love and wow that sounded less wrong in my head—err, before I’d voiced it in my head.

Mercifully, my terrible inner monologue is interrupted by Moon Dancer’s hooves wrapping around and pulling me close to her.  “Shh, shh.  Hey, little filly, no need to make that face.  Can you tell me what’s wrong?”  She asks, looking around for the source of my distress.  “Actually,” she says, blinking herself more awake.  “W—where are we?”

I feel like a medical professional would probably say something indeterminate and ask her what she remembers, but that seems kind of dumb if the point is to calm her down.  “Uh, relax,” I say, attending to squirm my way out of her grasp and not really getting anywhere.  “You’re at Twilight Sparkle’s house, in her bedroom, and everything is okay… err, by a certain definition of the word?”

“Twilight Sparkle?”  She asks, still lost a little in the pleasant haze of having my changeling magic massaged into her.  I can tell exactly when she remembers why she’s here by the smile falling off her face.  “Oh, no,” she groans, finally acting like a recently woken pony should.  “Now I remember… I saw Sunset Shimmer.  This whole thing… It must’ve been Twilight Sparkle’s side of the family trying to get at daddy’s fortune.  Now I’ve seen too much and they’re going to silence me one way or the other.  Oh mare, nopony even seemed to know I had any family left.  I bet they could just replace me with her and nopony would even realize it… or care.”

I have to parse her words several times before I’m sure I understand what she’s implying.  “There’s something very wrong with you,” I tell her.  “You’ll fit right in.”

She finally lets me go just to turn me around so she can look at me.  “What do you mean ‘fit right in?’  I have been kidnapped, haven’t I?”

“Yes and… yes,” I admit, looking away.  “Look, it’s complicated, but I promise you that nobody has said anything about your family’s money, so you probably don’t have to worry about that.  In fact, we literally didn’t even know you existed until you walked in the door and… well, yes, you saw something you shouldn’t have—but I promise you, there’s nothing anypony here wants more than to see you happy and content, able to come and go freely.”

“And all I have to do is pretend I never saw Sunset Shimmer?”  She says, split between suspicion and resignation.

I delay my answer by first making myself comfortable on the bed’s plush comforter and doing my best to look as nonthreatening as possible… So, my default state since I became a changeling.  I don’t know why I bother.

“Well, yes… and no,” I begin.  “It’s a start, but there’s actually a lot more that you can do for us and that we can do for you… or—regrettably—to you if it comes to that.  We have a lot of resources and you represent an opportunity.  I’m afraid that at the level of clusterfuck we’re at now, some of those resources will be used to fix things one way or the other.”

Moon Dancer frowns back at me with a calculating look that doesn’t quite have the confidence to support it.  “I—I thought you said that this wasn’t some big conspiracy.”

…

I can’t help it.

I try, but I wasn’t prepared.

My lips tremble under the strain and it’s too much.

No sooner does Moon Dancer begin to look confused at my behavior than I burst out laughing, doubling over and pounding on the comfort with my hoof.  “Not—not a conspiracy!  Bahahahahahahahahahahaha!  Oh Celestia!"

By the time I’ve calmed myself down, Moon Dancer looks pretty upset, possibly beginning to cry.  Shit.  “I—I’m sorry,” I say, still trying to catch my breath.  “I’m not laughing at you, specifically, just… Yes, you could say there’s a conspiracy.  It’s… I don’t even know how big it is, but it’s definitely bigger than anything to do with you or anypony you know.  In fact, you, me and Sunset Shimmer?  We’re all here for the same reason.”

Moon Dancer softens at that, as if just remembering what me being here implies.  “Oh, right…  So you saw or heard something you shouldn’t have, too?  Does…  Does your family know?”

"What?” I ask, confused for a moment.  “Oh, no, you misunderstand.  I mean why you came here to begin with.  We’re all sort of here because, in one way or another, there’s nowhere else for us to go, and they can help.”

Moon Dancer gives me one very long look which transitions sadness back into one of concern.  “Please tell me this isn’t some kind of cult,” she says.

“This isn’t some kind of cult,” I mumble, my face suddenly buried in the comforter.   “Okay,” I say, pulling myself upright again and considering how to go about this.  I don’t really have a lot of experience with explaining things to foals, except…  Dammit.  I’m really going to have to do this, aren’t I?  “I was trying to ease you into this, but since you have a very… creative imagination, how about I tell you a story instead?”

She gives me a perplexed look, and I realize, looking up at her, that it’s probably because I look half her age.  Oops.  Well, it’s fine if she thinks it’s a little weird; maybe then it won’t come as such a surprise to her when I tell her I’m Sunset Shimmer.  “Er, okay?” she says, uncertain but willing to go along with it.

Buck, how did Celestia do this, again?  I open my mouth, only to immediately snap it shut.  The first word out of my mouth was going to be ‘I,’ but I obviously can’t say the story is about me when I look like I’m five.  Well, might as well go all-in.  It takes me another moment to find the words, but once I start, they seem to come easily.






Sunset Shimmer was never a very happy pony.  When she was young, she was actually in a situation a lot like yours.  Uh, without the whole ‘heiress to mysterious fortune’ bit or whatever it is you have going; pretty much the opposite, in fact.

No, rather than coming from a wealthy family—or one of any kind of importance, for that matter—her mother was a seamstress and her father was an accountant.  They were singularly without ambition and it showed in everything they did and how they lived.  They were, as she would put it, ‘useless wastes of space,’ but they loved her and they tried to spoil her in the little ways that they could.

They succeeded.  She was, by all accounts, a brat, and it showed in how few accounts there actually were that spoke of her.  She didn’t have any friends and her parents never really had other ponies over, content as they were with their work and each other.  They lived out on the farthest reaches of Canterlot, beyond its magical foundation and protections where land was cheap if it was paid for at all.

Unlike her parents, Sunset Shimmer was not content and she had all the time in the world to build castles in the sky around all the things she wanted and wished for things that her parents could not provide.  She would spend her nights looking up at the twinkling lights of the city and believing that one day she would live there in the highest towers of her fantasies where everypony would wait on her and treat her like the special pony her mom always told her she was.

Now, it might seem unkind to judge a small filly on the flights and fancies of a five-year-old, and perhaps if she were to have continued to grow up in that environment, reality would have eventually settled in, but that chance was taken from her.  It was a landslide that took her parents, wiping her entire house off the face of Canterlot Mountain as if it were never there, leaving her nothing but her dreams to hold onto.  Suddenly orphaned and homeless, Sunset Shimmer chose to see it not as the tragedy it was but as the beginning of a quest that could only ever take her upwards into the city in the life that she craved.

Now, don’t get me wrong; she did love her parents and she did miss them after they were gone, but she never accepted that fact.  She was taken up into the city, not to the life she imagined, but to a miserable, soul crushing, dead-end orphanage where she got none of the special treatment or love that she was used to.  It was too late, then, for her to wish for the things that she’d had.  She had vastly underestimated the mountain that she would have to climb to reach the Canterlot of her dreams, and doing so would require her to leave her former life behind.

It wasn’t a bad outlook, really.  She had little, but she worked hard and studied hard at all the things that she believed would make her the pony she wanted to be.  At some point, this platonic ideal of success ceased being imaginary and was replaced by a real pony; Sunset Shimmer strived to be on the top and there was only one pony in the world who represented that, for Princess Celestia had no equal.  Even the cutie mark that Sunset Shimmer was graced with reinforced this belief, for though she told ponies that it represented fire magic, she saw it differently; she saw it as one of a pair.

Egotistical?  Absolutely.  Sunset Shimmer was that and more, and yet… she was never really proven wrong, was she?  Her drive and desire took her to ever climbing heights.  Starting with self-study at the orphanage and up through each level of schooling, she proved time and time again that she could best any challenge that was put before her, and if there was no challenge then she would make one.  This attitude took her, eventually, to Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns and finally to her position as Princess Celestia’s own personal student.  Whatever else could be said about Sunset Shimmer, she earned that placement.

In some ways, becoming the princess’ student should have been the end of her path, but she didn’t see it that way; she couldn’t, because if she did, she would have to face the fact that she still felt empty inside and would have to ask herself why that was.  Things might’ve been different if Princess Celestia had recognized the hole inside of Sunset Shimmer and saw fit to fill it with all the things that the filly was missing, but she did not.  Sunset Shimmer wanted more, and, unable to find anything else to strive for—unable to get Princess Celestia to acknowledge her in ways that she wanted to be acknowledged—decided that she must bridge that final gap between student and mentor.

The gap between unicorn and alicorn.

Mortal and immortal.

It became an obsession and she built it up in her head as the final, inevitable shape of her path—because if she was immortal, then that path would never have to end.  She was already the greatest mage of her generation, so why stop there?  Why ever stop?  It was something that she could devote everything to because there was no greater goal, no greater destiny, and it was within her grasp.  It was the destiny that she deserved, and she was ready for it.

Princess Celestia… did not agree.  She saw her student’s ambition as greed and sought to snuff it out, but Sunset Shimmer was never a pony who would let anyone keep her from what she desired—not even the princess.

And so they clashed, and—as should be expected, though it was her first time experiencing it—Sunset Shimmer lost, chased out of the castle like a vagabond and with as much to her name.  The rejection struck deep into her heart, gutting it until there was little more left of her dreams and fantasies than a barren ruin.  Her path had led her to the top, and from the top she had fallen.

In her pain, Sunset Shimmer lashed out in the only way she could.  As she had fallen, so did she think that the Princess should fall as well, and maybe then Sunset Shimmer could take her place at the top where she belonged.

It was a short-lived and shortsighted desire, but she grabbed hold of it as the last thread connecting her to the path that she had once been on.  There was an artifact that she had heard about that could give her what she desired, and so, in her flight from the princess, she made her way towards this artifact—this mirror—to see for herself what wonders it could grant her, and it did not disappoint…  Not at first.

She saw herself in this mirror exactly as she wanted to be—long-lived, long-limbed and powerful; an alicorn who would finally be at the top and remain there forever… and yet it escaped her notice that even in the mirror she was just as alone on the top as she had been at the bottom.  A bit of truth, even from the vipers mouth, that, for yes, the mirror was a viper.  Though the vision was pleasing, it spoke naught but lies, offering one thing and providing another.

Twilight Sparkle came to her then when she was at her lowest point.  She told Sunset Shimmer of the mirror’s duplicity, but Sunset Shimmer did not believe her.  She chose instead to forge on on her own, as was her way.  Her determination, however, once shattered, did not stand against this new disillusionment and when she saw the mirror for what it was, she was well and truly broken, with nothing left and no way out of her situation.

No way out but that which Twilight Sparkle offered.

The offer was simple.  Sunset Shimmer would give up her body, her life and her very identity.  She would spend years or even decades aiding Twilight Sparkle in her goals, and in exchange she would spend those years and decades not as a pony or even an alicorn, but a newborn dragon with all that that entails.  She would be given a new life, a fresh start and even a family of a sort, and when Twilight Sparkle’s goal was finally complete, Sunset Shimmer would have the rest of eternity to do what she would, be that to entreat on equal terms with the sun goddess herself or build around herself the hoard of hearth and home that she had been missing all her life.

And maybe she would finally be happy.






What.

What the Tartarus was that?!

“Wow,” Moon Dancer says, breathless and starry-eyed… for all of five seconds.  “Still sounds like a cult, though.  Like, that is one-hundred-percent cult-like behavior.”

I don’t even register Moon Dancer’s reaction because my own is taking priority.  That…  I want to say that it wasn’t me saying those words, but it’s more the opposite.  The words were just there and I didn’t realize what I was saying until the whole thing was over.

Disquieted, I back up and fall off the bed in my panic.  Thankfully, my tiny body takes the fall with a soft bounce and I quickly recover, dashing out the door with tears streaming down my face.  I make it two steps out the door before I trip and tumble down the hallway thanks to having to dodge four midnight blue legs and not making a single attempt to do so.

The legs belong to Night Light, the infiltrator of infiltrators.  The cynical part of me remarks that of course he was listening in.  At first I feel violated that he heard all that, but it’s quickly replaced by anger.  “What the tartarus was that?!”  I shriek at him, pointing my hoof at the closed and glowing door.  “That was…  That was not what I was going to say!  I was going to tell her some of that, sure, but not put my whole Celestia-damned life story out there as if it were some cautionary tale with Twilight Sparkle as my own personal savior!"

Night Light is anything but perturbed by my outburst.  In fact, as he leans there against the wall, the only impression that I’m getting from him is an infuriating smugness.  “I suppose you also forget that you are a member of this species that is ‘good at this shit as an evolutionary prerogative,’” he says, quoting the conversation I had this morning with Shimmering Armor.

That… That makes sense.  Changelings are natural storytellers, and yes, it had slipped my mind that that would also apply to me somehow.  Unfortunately, he has to go and ruin it with his next statement.

“I just helped bring it to the fore.”

My eyes widen as I slap my hoof to my neck in the same place that he bit Moon Dancer, but I feel nothing.  Of course, he could have bitten me anywhere, but the slight spicy undertone I detect from his smugness and the barest hint of glow around his horn leads me to a different, much more repulsive answer.

Magic is a conduit for the hive mind.

I feel ill.
> Chapter Twelve 【Twilight】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Making sure that I’m seen leaving the house is more luck than anything.  Oh, sure, I can be conspicuous, wave at anypony I see and so on, but I can’t ensure that there’s anypony present to see me to begin with, nor that anypony who does see me will actually pass on the information in any relevant, meaningful way.  It’s lunchtime, so there are a few ponies around, but not a whole lot since this is a residential district.  Nevertheless, I do my best and head back in the direction of the school in order to increase my chances of being seen by somepony there.

Along the way, I distract myself by filling Shimmering Armor and the hive mind in on the specifics of what Moon Dancer said to me and listen in on the resulting conversation.  I don’t quite agree that Sunset Shimmer should be the one to befriend Moon Dancer, as I could obviously do a better job, but I am overruled, and I can’t really argue the logic behind it.  As it is, my research will be crippled by my need to masquerade as Moon Dancer until she comes out of the new chrysalis they’re going to be building, but hopefully it will be worth it in the long run.  I’m tempted to request some time in Sunset Shimmer’s neurospast just to make sure things don’t go badly in my absence, though I suppose I can always spend what spare time I have in the hive mind putting together some prospective genetic combinations instead.

Unfortunately, I can’t go into that now as the events happening at home continue to hold my attention—particularly when Night Light gets a little heavy-hoofed in handling Sunset Shimmer.  A great deal of the hive mind is mildly disapproving of that, though it looks like he’s going to get away with it until he goes and tells her about it like an idiot.  My casual trot slows to a halt and I end up just standing in the middle of the street, gaping at him over the link—and I’m not the only one.  A feeling of dread comes over me when I realize that the Queen is one of the changelings so reacting, and she was already on her way to the house to deliver the egg we need for Moon Dancer.  My face aches in sympathetic pain while I consider how to ensure that I don’t have to go home until she’s gone.

The multi-layered irony of being struck on the back of the head at exactly that moment does not escape me, though consciousness does.






I wake to a feeling like my head being split in two.  I buzzing swear, the amount of head trauma I’ve been suffering lately is becoming a real problem.  Oh, and I guess I’ve been foalnapped, so there’s that, too.  Who would’ve guessed that Moon Dancer’s concerns were actually justified?  I mean, aside from when we did it; that obviously doesn’t count.

Fighting the ache in my head in order to look around, I find myself tied to what seems to be the face of a heavy old work table that’s been tipped over on its side and immediately take two stars off my rating of this foalnapping, plus another one for not having anypony here when I wake up.  The rope, too, is rough and frayed; it’s definitely been left out in the elements and not done well for it, so probably raw hemp rope that’s been misused or neglected.  Whatever it is, it’s definitely not hostage-grade, though I suppose I’ve already docked enough points for using cheap materials.

The room isn’t much better, appearing to be an unfinished basement that had at one point been used for canning.  There’s an old, wood-burning stove-and-furnace in one corner, surrounded by shelves upon shelves of filthy glass jars filled with murky, unappealing slop, many of which are cracked and rotting.  As someling who takes pride in her basement lab, I’m offended on principle.  In fact, the very next time I have the opportunity, I’m going to replace those splintered old stairs that Sunset Shimmer has been whining about just so my basement has nothing in common with this travesty.  Even the walls of this place have mortar falling out of the cracks, and the less said about the rock and dirt floor, the better.  It’s great and all that my foalnappers were at least competent enough to avoid putting me in a room with windows, but I could probably dig my way out of this place in a single night.

The hive mind reminds me that ponies are not natural diggers like changelings are.  It also expresses no small amount of incredulity at my situation, having up till now simply assumed that I was ignoring it again.  I dismiss the hive mind’s not-so-subtle reprimand as unimportant and return to considering said situation.  For all that I could theoretically escape if I were to resort to utilizing my changeling abilities, nothing that I can do would allow me to escape quickly, which means that, loathe as I am to admit it, I… actually am in some danger here.

Case in point, the heavy hoofsteps stomping around upstairs, approaching the door to the basement.  The door opens with the kind of awful shrieking that’s ominous in horror stories but is really just a sign of the poor upkeep that the rest of the building shares, and I finally get a look at the kind of pony who has decided that it’s a good idea to assault a filly in broad daylight on the streets of Canterlot and drag her to a place as ill-kempt as this.

Except it’s not a pony—it’s a donkey followed by a gryphon, which… explains a lot.

It’s not racist if you’re a changeling, especially since they both reek of greed like sour plums.

Entirely justified racial profiling aside, both of them are wearing cloaks, though they’re otherwise very different.  The donkey comes off as someone who lives in places like this, whereas the gryphon seems more like the kind of person who robs places like this.

I’m insulting both of them there, in case the hive mind’s sense of humor didn’t get that.

Thankfully, I know exactly how Moon Dancer would react in this situation.  “Please tell me this isn’t a cult,” I say before my captors can even get a word in.

It’s rather convenient having a script to work from, though I think I won’t mention my ‘father’s’ money.  No reason to distract them if they don’t know about it, and I’d really like to know why it is they foalnapped me in the first place; it could be valuable information to know so that we can apply it to our own foalnapping of Moon Dancer, if applicable.

Apparently my flippancy catches them by surprise, since they seem quite offended.  “A cult?!” the donkey shouts, nearly dropping the unlit butt of the cigar he’s chewing on, as if the idea of the donkey foalnapper wasn’t stereotypical enough already.  “What in tartarus could possibly make you think this is a cult?”

I cock my head at him in question, not quite certain if he’s being serious.  I would motion at his everything with my hoof, but said hoof is tied up behind me.  Instead, I make a show of looking him up and down.  “Well, the ominous cloaks for one.”

“‘Ominous?’” he repeats with a derisive scoff, looking himself over with a distaste like rancid oil.  “You think this thing’s ominous?  Phah, naïve little chit; though what else should I expect from Sky Dancer’s spoiled brat?  Do you have any idea what it’s like walking down the streets of Canterlot as a donkey?  Sure, the princesses talk big about equality, but a bare flank is a bare flank, and, well, on an adult that just makes ponies uncomfortable, don’t it?"

“So you've foalnapped me in order to protest against the reception you get thanks to donkeys having a reputation as foalnappers?" I ask.

“What?” he snaps, caught between anger and confusion.  “No!”

I give him a perplexed look just to rile him up.  “Well, you shouldn't be wearing the uniform then, should you?”

The amused smirk on the griffon's face, along with his generally more kempt appearance, gives me the impression that he's probably a bodyguard or mercenary—or just kind of an ass, but we've already established that the other one is the donkey of the two.  I immediately regret sending that thought to the hive mind when it helpfully extrapolates the joke and changes my location from ‘dilapidated cellar’ to ‘filthy ass-hole.’

Toilet humor.  Wonderful.  Perhaps someday the hive mind will learn how to actually be funny.

Thanks to the hive mind’s distraction, I miss whatever response the donkey yells at me before kicking me in my mother-buzzing face with an audible crack of bone.

Buzzing… bucking… Erfernaflmargh.  It's all that I can do to hold my disguise through the pain and keep myself from throwing up when I realize that with this final injury, part of my face is actually loose.  As much as I hate to do it, I have to hand over control of most of myself to the hive mind just to try and wash out the experience of my cheekbone not doing its job via the excessive application of glorious, glorious hormones.

I don't think that the donkey realizes exactly what he's done, since he seems to be continuing to monologue to me when I can barely think.  I don't even try to follow his words, since the hive mind is listening in on my behalf anyway.  It's little consolation to me that the hive mind seems inordinately pleased about whatever it's hearing, though I can at least rest assured that that is the only source of its pleasure.  I am exceedingly popular in the hive mind and noling would even think of basking in the schadenfreude of my suffering.

Soon enough, he finishes with his ranting and I feel the heavy table I'm tied to tilt back so he can get his smelly breath in my face.  "I’ll put this real clear for you, princess.  Tell me where to find the plans for Sky Dancer's unfinished airship if you want to live.”

The hive mind has me tell him… something… and it doesn't even have to encourage my body to cry in order to sell the act.  Whatever it is I tell him, he seems to believe it since the next thing that penetrates the haze of chemicals the hive mind is filling my head with is the sensation of being lifted up and tossed over the back of the griffon.

Vexingly, they're just competent enough to blindfold and gag me without considering that it would be stealthier to simply toss me in a bag.  Needless to say, I nearly grind my teeth to flattened nubs when they pull the dusty cloth tight against my broken face, even with the help of the hive mind dulling things.  Just about the only consolation I have is the fact that, with the conversation over and me unable to see anything, the hive mind might as well just push me that much closer to blessed unconsciousness and spare me what it can.

It's a difficult balancing act and not at all what the hive mind is made for.  The hive mind is additive; it can't actually stop me from feeling physical sensations from my own body, so it has to resort to the biological reactions it can trigger.  With me finally no more use than a bag of soggy potato chips, the almost dreamlike state it sends me into is a relief.

Not that I appreciate the efforts of the hive mind or anything.

Almost insensate to the outside world, I take the opportunity to review what I missed on account of the horrible, blinding pain.

Blah blah blah donkey is an old assistant of the late Sky Dancer with an inflated opinion of his own contributions to the company before he was fired for his irreverent behavior and replaced with a hot piece of ass.  No—seriously—he was actually replaced with another donkey who had two more degrees than him and was infinitely easier on the eyes of an older, married stallion.  Now he thinks that if he can get his hooves on his old boss' unfinished plans, he can finish them and make a fortune selling them as his own.  This, in spite of the fact that if he was actually capable of solving whatever issues Sky Dancer hadn’t at the time of his death, then he wouldn't need to steal anything to begin with.

Well, that tells me absolutely nothing of value that I couldn't have guessed on my own.  Really, I’d say nothing of value period—except, I guess, it does give us a better idea of what Moon Dancer's life must've been like before she was orphaned, so there is that, at least.

Frankly, I'd rather know how exactly a set of missing keys from the school janitor resulted in the death of Sky Dancer, his wife and their oldest child, but apparently noling has been able to come up with an answer to that one.  My love would be on it being cover-up for someass like my foalnapper assassinating him, except I can’t imagine Princess Celestia taking kindly to her ex-student being slandered like that, no matter how bad the terms they separated on were.

The hive mind takes great pride in informing me just how wrong I am, since, apparently, the god-queen of ponies once had a sister who is now vilified in storybooks and legends.  Wow.  Just… wow.  Note to self: never get on Princess Celestia's bad side, or she's likely to banish you and then slander you in the place that she banishes you to.

Barely conscious as I am, I don't notice immediately when my foalnappers take me outside, though the slightly fresher smell of dirt and rock that replaces the musty fungal odors of the house are a sign.  Mercifully, the hive mind takes the hint and resets my location to ‘unknown,’ signaling everyling available to look for me, though the percentage who just want a head start on coming up with the new insulting epithet for wherever I end up is a little rude.

As certain as my rescue is, considering the hive mind knows where my foalnappers are taking me, waiting for it to happen is still incredibly dull.  You'd think that the time would just fly by with me half-asleep, but the single sliver of consciousness I have left in my body is taken up by a sharp throbbing pain that has me counting every second and every bump.

This would be so much simpler and more comfortable if donkeys could fly.

There's no joke there; with the griffon carrying me, it's the donkey that is slowing us down.  Forget travel time; if we were flying, the hive would have located us in an instant, but nooooo, buzzing slow-ass donkeys have to walk everywhere—and they never hurry, do they?  I mean, have you ever seen a donkey running?  That's also not a joke.  I am entirely serious.  I don't know why questioning the capabilities of donkeys always sounds like the setup of a joke.

Bump—ow—bump—ow—bump—ow.  I'm really, really tempted to borrow the eyes of someling who is searching for me, just to fill the time, but I'm afraid that in the condition I'm in, all I'd end up doing is emptying my stomach.  Somehow, the hive mind hasn't yet solved the issue of motion sickness, which is kind of a problem given its additive nature.  Really, the hive needs more changelings like me working on improving things.

The hive mind insists that one of me at a time is more than enough.

Bump—ow—bump—ow—CRASH—ow—ow—ow!  Mother buzzing tartarus!  Someling could've warned me over the hive mind that my rescue was imminent.

Why yes, I am a hypocrite.  I think we've established that.

Unfortunately, the hive mind is just as surprised as I am, and therefore not responsible for my ending up in a ditch, though I can feel the anticipation of the insulting epithet committee waiting to turn my situation to their advantage just as soon as I get my blindfold off and find out where I am.

Wait, what?  Take my blindfold off?  No sooner do I realize what the hive mind is implying than I start to come out of my enforced tranquilization, and with full consciousness comes pain and cursing.

Lots and lots of cursing.

To my never-ending gratefulness and relief, I don't actually have to struggle with my blindfold and gag since my magic is perfectly capable of cutting them free, though frankly, I'm not sure if removing them is actually an improvement for my injury.  Who knew that having something to hold my face on would be beneficial?

Buzzing tartarus, even blinking my eyes clear hurts like the queen's own hoof that started this whole mess, but eventually I'm able to make out the shape of the northwestern gate to Canterlot.  I double check just to make sure, but the guards in golden armor pressing my struggling foalnappers into the dirt confirm that, yes, they were stupid enough to just walk up to the city with a bound and gagged foal on their backs.

I have no words.

Though I make no secret of my inability to comprehend the average non-changeling, I do not actually make a habit of disparaging their intelligence, but this…  I am embarrassed to have been foalnapped by criminals of such extraordinary incompetence.  All they had to do was take a single helpless filly into the business district and get jumped by changelings, but no, they had to walk right up to a bunch of royal guards and basically turn themselves in—which would be fine if they had just left me behind, but again, no, they had to bring me along and now I'm stuck getting processed into the system with an obvious, distinguishable injury.

Buck, if I'd known this was going to happen, I would have gone back to my Twilight Sparkle disguise and claimed the idiots grabbed the wrong filly, since they apparently are that stupid—but now they're coming over to me and I’m…

I'm…

…What was I saying?  Oh, I guess the hive mind is putting me to sleep so I don't have to talk to the nice white stallions in golden armor.

You know what?  Fine.  Wake me up when this is all over.

Zero-point-five stars.
> Chapter Thirteen 【Sunset】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


⁂


A sound like fresh celery crunching underhoof shocks me out of my spiraling thoughts and all of a sudden the looming presence in the back of my head that I hadn't even noticed is gone, as is the very real looming presence of Night Light, replaced by the slightly less so presence of my own half-bleached backside.

It takes me a moment to really process what I'm seeing, and by the time I’ve done so, someone is wrapping me up in a blanket while being very careful not to touch me with either hoof or magic.  Almost blankly, I watch Night Light trying to get back up on his hooves while wiping away a bloody lip, but he winces and stumbles, suddenly groggy and swaying on his knees before falling over unconscious, the whole thing eerily silent to someone not connected to the hive mind.

“Hive damn it,” Shimmering Armor curses quietly under her breath, pinching the bridge of her nose in the crook of her hoof for a moment before turning to check on me with a tired and exasperated look.  She apparently doesn’t like what she sees, as she curses, “Buzzing hell, we do not need this right now.”

Without my input, the changeling who was carefully swaddling me picks me up and hugs me to her chest.  I realize belatedly that it is, of course, Twilight Velvet, my brain is still trying to catch up with the situation.  “Hey, hey, it's okay,” she says, rubbing my back up and down through the blanket.

Her affections don’t really help the situation any as I stiffen, anticipating with each stroke an accidental slip that might connect me to the hive mind.  My reaction doesn't go unnoticed and she quickly stops.  After a moment of uncertainty, she simply hugs me tighter, which is at least consistent, but it's only when I hear the sound of a body rolling down the stairs and impacting the wall opposite the landing that I realize Night Light is gone and can finally calm down.

A small, vulnerable part of me says that it’s over.  They saved me; they protected me.  My tiny heart doesn't quite get the message and continues beating like a caffeinated hummingbird while the bitter, jaded rest of me takes offense to both points of view.  I feel like I should say something; make some biting remark and object to being treated like a foal, but the words don't come.  This isn't a situation I'm familiar with.  I…  I can't actually remember the last time anypony has actually protected me from something.  I've always been self-sufficient.  I haven't needed or wanted protecting.

I haven't really made any progress beyond curling up in the blanket by the time Shimmering Armor returns from doing whatever it is she did with Night Light, and I…  Damn it, that single moment of fight or flight instinct really got to me.  My pitch to Moon Dancer was supposed to be just blind honesty; I don't know if I can just walk back into that room as if nothing happened.

Do I still want to?

“Sunset?” Shimmering Armor probes, but I don't have it in me to respond.  Unsurprised, she shakes her head and lets out a sigh.  “Sunset, I'm sorry, this should never have happened.  Look, don't worry about anything; Moon Dancer, the chrysalis—we'll handle it.  Just… just try to calm down and try to believe that we're on your side here—the queen is on your side.  She's furious.  You'll never see that changeling again.”

That’s…  That’s good.  If Shimmering Armor had come any later or any less violently…  If he was just given a slap on the wrist and told to behave, I don’t think I would have stood for it.  I’d have had to do something; fight or flight, I’m not sure which, but it wouldn’t have been pretty.

Shimmering Armor waits only a moment for a response that isn't coming before she picks me up with her magic and carries me off to find some place to put me.


⁂


I end up in Shimmering Armor's bedroom—or is it still be considered Shining Armor's bedroom?  I’ve kinda taken the whole alternate name thing a little far in order to disassociate from the fact that it’s my body he’s driving.  Well, whether it’s Shining or Shimmering either way, with Moon Dancer in Twilight’s bedroom and Night Light most likely down to the lab, it’s the only place left that isn't the master bedroom, and that…  No.  I don’t care if he arrived this morning and never even used it.  Just no.

This one, though… It's okay.  It's a stereotypical colt’s room with all the paraphernalia you'd expect from a military hopeful, though here and there there's the odd thing that stands out as artificial.  Alongside the royal guard and EUP posters are a few from the Coast Guard and less impressive regiments—not too suspicious, but it gives me the impression that someling just grabbed a hoof-full without much attention to what's actually popular or poster-worthy.  It’s also cleaner than I'd expect from a colt’s room, but that's probably appropriate.

Still, it’s not great.  I'm not entirely comfortable being in someone else's space and honestly, I'd probably rather be down in the lab, but I get the logic and appreciate the chance to get a little peace and quiet without just being stuffed in a cupboard, which is about what I’ve come to expect… though I guess in hindsight that could probably be laid at the hooves of Twilight’s previous set of parents who were—how did Shimmering Armor put it?—‘basic low-class collectors’?

I really would have preferred it if they hadn’t been replaced; even if it meant waking up glued to the floor with resin down my throat for the rest of my time as a changeling.  Tartarus is it going to be great when I’m finally put into that damn egg.  At least as a dragon I’ll be able to bite and set fire to anyone who pisses me off instead of… instead of what, really?  What did I even do?  I wobbled in queasiness and indecision until someling came to help and then I slunk off to try and forget it ever happened.

I hate it, but that's about all I can do right now.  I rest and I don't think.  I don't spend the whole time obsessing over what happened or trying to figure out my conflicted feelings over what happened, because that would be pointless.  It's not bucking complicated, it's just…  You would think that a group of creatures that can read each other's minds would have better control of their people.

Then again, I've met them, so I should really know better than that.

It’s not even a sense of betrayal that lingers; I know better than that and any that I did feel would pretty well be offset by the reactions of the changelings I actually trust.  Hay, looking back, I think half of how I did feel was coming from the hive mind itself, which is simultaneously disturbing and oddly heartening.  No, what bothers me as I lie listlessly in Shimmering Armor's comparatively oversized bed is just a disquieting sense of unease.

There's just no reason for him to have gone off the rails like that.  I’m on their Celestia-damned side.  Even when the changelings and I have argued and disagreed, it's all been sickeningly domestic.  Buck it, I like them.  I don't really understand why someling would risk pissing off the hive mind and their queen just to—to what?  To seemingly ‘help’ with Moon Dancer while reveling in his power over me in private?

…

Okay, I guess it's not actually all that unfathomable.  I've known spiteful ponies and ponies that would put words in my mouth if they could.  I guess it could really be just that simple.  There wasn’t any end-goal because the hurt and hate were exactly what he wanted.  He wasn't even feeding off of it.  He couldn’t—not from another changeling, even as little of one as I am.  He was just disturbed enough to do something like that for fun.  Then again, he'd have to be, wouldn't he?  It's a disheartening thought.  Getting changelings who want to collect love—that's easy.  It takes is a special kind of sicko to go out into the world to harvest hate.

It actually kind of helps to realize that.

It's not long before I'm bored and looking through Shining Armor's stuff for something to do.  Unfortunately, all of the books we bought are downstairs in the living room and I'm not really in the mood for that kind of reading anyway.  Really, I'm just in a mood period and it's not for the first time I wish I was down in the lab getting something productive done.

Maybe I should go down there after all.  I'm not some foal that needs to be coddled.  Sure, I was a little shaken up, but it's fine.  I've calmed down, and I don't need to hide from him.  He’s certainly not going to do anything now and even if I don't stay and help with the chrysalis, I really should cycle my store of magic for love since I’ve been neglecting it so far today.  The less of that I do the longer it will take to actually get what I was promised.  I'd also feel better if I was a little less beholden to the changelings right now—not that I'm considering bailing on them or anything, but I'd just like to know that I could if it came to that.  I don't actually have many illusions as to how well I would fare on the streets as a baby bug thing that needs loves to survive.

Well, strictly playing Discord’s advocate, I suppose I am adorable.  Maybe I could make it work—but no, I am not running out on things here.  It's fine.  Everything is fine.  I'm sure that if I go downstairs I'll find that everything's been resolved and Twilight Velvet will be playing second mother to Moon Dancer, not making insulting insinuations about her dead father.  Probably.

Okay, you know what?  I'm gonna go check.  I roll up onto my hooves, grab the pillow I was resting on, heave it over to the side of the bed and kick it off.  It lands with a muffled thump and I follow after it, making about the same amount of noise, if not less.  Briefly, I consider dragging the pillow along with me, but I can't really see it helping with the stairs.  Thankfully, my faint magic is at least strong enough to turn doorknobs, or I'd be even more helpless.

The door glides shut with a harsh click, and I'm surprised how quiet it is.  The changelings’ house isn't normally noisy to begin with, but it just seems more so than normal.  It think it’s unlikely that they would leave with Moon Dancer to consider and the chrysalis to build, so they must all just be downstairs.  As I pass Twilight's room, though, I hesitate and decide that I might as well check in on her and see how she's doing.  I can't really see myself making things any worse after having run out on her earlier.

The door to Twilight’s room opens silently to an empty room.  That's either a very good sign or a very bad one.  For me, personally, it's kind of a bad one—or at least unfortunate—because it means that my only next step is to tackle the stairs.

Hopefully it won’t be literal.

It should be fine, I tell myself.  Going downstairs is more nerve-racking than going up, but it’s also a lot easier and I have a lot of practice with it.

Hop—grunt.  Hop—grunt—teeter.  Hop—grunt.

Apart from nearly stumbling a few times, my progress goes relatively fine and I stop to rest halfway down the stairs.  It's incredibly surreal being this tiny and light, and I think my heavy breathing is as much due to the excitement and stress of trying not to tumble forward after each jump then it is any actual exertion on my part.  Either way, the adrenaline actually shakes off some of the mood I was in and by the time I'm at the bottom of the stairs, I feel like the empty house is looming a little less.

A lot less, actually.

It's… strange.  I search the bottom floor of the house and even though I find it completely empty, it still feels more alive to me.  I feel less alone somehow—almost like there's always a group of ponies talking in the next room even though my ears disagree.

At first I think the feeling is strongest in the kitchen, but of course, the kitchen is right across from the stairs down to the basement, so that must be it, obviously.  I can't actually hear anything, but the sounds of whatever they're doing down there must be reverberating through the old house and I’ve been picking up on it subconsciously.

You would think that I would know better by now.

The weight of the hive mind crashes over me just as the door to the basement crashes into me.  My first reaction is to expect that Night Light is making a run for it—and he is there—except he's unconscious and floating in the magic of a pony that I've never met.  Well, a changeling I've never met, obviously; the green coat and black mane are a bit of a giveaway.  Whoever this is, she is not subtle.  She has the overly slim look that a lot of models have, so maybe she's a collector of some sort, I suspect.  The instant her eyes fall on me, though, my mouth goes dry and the weight of the hive mind bears down on me tenfold of what it was a moment ago.

Queen Chrysalis.

The locus of the hive mind.

The look she gives me is… strained.  There's no question that she sees me as something lesser, but all the same, it’s not entirely unkind even while her lips are pressed in consternation.  More than that, though, it’s what’s behind her eyes that really grips me and holds me in place.  I feel like the entire hive is looking at me en masse, confusing any impression of what she's thinking.  I don’t have much chance to dwell on it as she turns with a snap and quickly makes her way out the door, dragging Night Light along in her magic with Twilight Velvet following after her, apparently in no less of a hurry.

As the oppressive feeling of the hive mind fades away in the queen's wake, I belatedly remember what Twilight Sparkle said when she recommended that I stay the everloving buck away from her at all costs.  Specifically the part where the queen’s voice is a conduit for the hive mind.  That seems… odd.  Did the queen actually… specifically hold herself back from speaking aloud for my benefit?  Heck, even the hive mind, as intense as it was, really just kind of flowed over me in her presence, not commanding or demanding in any way.

I'm prevented from thinking much on the implications of that by the appearance of Shimmering Armor coming up from the basement with a concerned bearing similar to the queen.  Something tells me that she doesn't have good news.

It just seems to be one of those days.


⁂


Shimmering Armor takes me downstairs into the lab where we find Moon Dancer curiously prodding the chrysalis with Shining Armor in it and the barely begun shell of its duplicate.  I wipe my eyes clear and blink them a few times just to make sure I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing, but the image hasn't changed.  In fact, she even brightens up at the sight of ‘Shimmering Armor’ returning, only to cock her head in question at the sight of me.  I find myself subconsciously hiding behind Shimmering Armor's legs and scold myself.  She's just a filly; nothing to be afraid of, even if I did probably give her a weird first impression thanks to the interference of a certain changeling.

Shimmering Armor seems amused, but it's short-lived as she looks over the progress on the new chrysalis with a grimace and takes command of the conversation with a seriousness slightly reminiscent of his personality pre-brotherfication.  “Look, girls.  Normally we'd take this a lot slower.  We tried that and someling else buzzed it all up.  Now, even more issues have come up and we just don't have the time.

“Moon Dancer, if you haven't figured it out yet, this is the real Sunset Shimmer; she's between species right now and won't be a changeling for much longer, but you can still ask her what it's been like for her.

“Sunset, we've explained things to Moon Dancer and she's tentatively accepted that you're probably not to blame for the accident that killed her family.  Evidently, her father had enemies, and several things had to go wrong for her family to get locked in the alchemy lab's clean room at exactly the moment an accident started endlessly producing a certain non-toxic but extremely thick non-neightonian fluid.”  She pauses for a moment as if she's considering the wording of her next sentence then just shakes her head.  “Never mind.  How it happened isn't important.  What is important is that someone a lot less subtle has escalated to outright foalnapping and ‘Moon Dancer’ has been injured in the process.”

I look at Moon Dancer and she seems fine.

“And by Moon Dancer I mean Twilight Sparkle, who disguised herself when she left earlier today.”

Oh, right.  Awkward.

“So, here's what's going to happen.  First off, Twilight's going to have to be Moon Dancer for the foreseeable future, at least until she gets out of the hospital, which means, Moon Dancer, that we’re going to need you to be Twilight.  Don't worry, we're not sending you to school, so you shouldn't need to actually know anything about her.

“Secondly, we're getting the kitchen remodeled.  That's not a euphemism for anything, we really are going to have the kitchen remodeled, but it’s also a cover for getting changelings in here to build two new chrysalises—one for Moon Dancer, and one for Twilight, because her face is apparently punchable enough that we’re going to have to rebirth her sooner rather than later.  We just don't have the lingpower right now to do it reasonably on our own, especially without Twilight overseeing things.

“The downside is that we're going to have to feed those changelings for both jobs, which means, Sunset, that you’re going to have to do more foalsitting from Princess Cadence.  The hive wants you to maintain our relationship with her while I'm in the chrysalis anyway,” she says, gesturing at her male body beside her.  “So there's not going to be any getting out of that.  On the upside, until Moon Dancer has to go into her chrysalis, you'll have her with you to distract the Princess, which should make things easier for a little while, at least.  Oh, she’ll have to be able to be Twilight enough for that, I suppose.  It still shouldn’t pose a problem.  You’re fillies; you could spend the entire night talking like pirates and no one would think it odd.”

I want to object on principle, but… yeah, she has a point.

Not that I’m going to do that.

“That should about cover it,” she finishes up.  “Any questions?”

I shake my head, still going over everything she said, but pretty solid on the broad strokes.

Moon Dancer, on the other hoof, looks a little more dazed.  “Um, dozens?” she says, making it itself a question.

“Ask Sunset,” was Shimmering Armor's immediate response.  “You two do need to get to know each other, especially since you are going to be spending a lot of time together.  Well, technically we all will be since we need to stay out from under hoof of the construction, but you two in particular.”

Yeah, yeah, make buddy-buddy with new filly, whatever.  I all but forget about it the moment it’s said because I’m giving Shimmering Armor a hopeful look about something else entirely.

She only looks confused for a moment before she remembers the plans we had for the day before Twilight Sparkle and Moon Dancer came crashing in. “Yes, Sunset, that means we can get out of the house—and to that point, we need to finish bleaching me so we can go buy the dyes we’ll need to turn Moon Dancer into Twilight Sparkle, okay?  Good.  Upstairs, now.”


⁂


Shimmering Armor couldn't make this more awkward if she was trying.  The process of bleaching the rest of her goes by almost in silence except for the occasional instruction from me.  Moon Dancer, at least, seems enthusiastic enough about helping, and I'm stuck really wondering just how exactly the conversation with her went.  I mean, I realize that changelings are good at convincing ponies of things and Moon Dancer is in a vulnerable place after the death of her family, but that's just it.  Her family is dead; I kind of would have expected her to take a little longer to bounce back.

Watching her hand things to Shimmering Armor from my perch on the bathroom sink, I consider the fact that she was alone with the changelings when I came downstairs—and that included Night Light.  Now, admittedly, he was unconscious when Shimmering Armor took him down there and he was unconscious when Queen Chrysalis brought him back up, but I don't doubt that she could have woken him up for a bit in order to dose Moon Dancer with something.

But would she?

Probably, if she thought she could get away with it, I admit.  Sure, Shimmering Armor said that she was angry on my behalf, but even with as little as I know of the queen, I kind of doubt the severe and pragmatic leader of a secret hive of shapeshifting parasites would have any qualms about smoothing things over here and there.  It's times like this that I really wish I knew what was actually going on in the hive mind, since I don’t think you can actually lie over it—not that I want a connection to the hive mind, considering this whole clusterbuck is because that asshole connected me to it without my permission, but…

Well, no, it's more the manipulation that happened through it, I suppose, and—err, wait, Shimmering Armor had me literally soften Moon Dancer up by rubbing my magic into her, so maybe I don't actually have the moral high ground here.  I… should probably feel bad about that, come to think of it.

…

Right, maybe later.

“So, Moon Dancer,” I speak up, completely abandoning that train of thought.  “Not exactly the sort of activity you were picturing when you thought this was a cult, huh?”

She gives me a deadpan look.  “Communal bathing and grooming is not uncommon in many cults as it engenders a sense of community while simultaneously enforcing a lack of privacy in a socially acceptable way.  Some cults see significance in the first bathing of a foal or inductee and make a ceremony of it.”  She looks around at the plain, tiled bathroom.  “This is much more practical, though.”

I'm thrown off by the contrast between the vigor with which she's been acting and the flatness of her response.  “…Okay, point, I suppose, but other than that?”

“It's less common, but still not unknown for cults to form around especially large, sometimes incestuous families, especially ones led by a strong matriarchal or patriarchal figure," she adds.

“Oh, come on,” I argue back, not entirely sure if she's being serious.  “The entire point of a cult is that it's a religious organization.  Everything else has to follow from that."

“If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and bathes like a duck, it's duck,” she recites, almost emotionless as she rubs her gloved forehooves into Shimmering Armor's side.

“Okay…” I say, seeing that I'm getting nowhere with this.  I’m not sure if she’s being terse because she’s upset with me, or if it’s just because she no longer thinks I’m a foal; she had been rather doting, before.  Either way, I’m not going to let it stop me.  “So, what do you think of our little cult, then?” I ask with a wry smile.  “And by ‘little’ I mean absolutely massive… probably.  Come to think of it, I don't actually have any idea how big it is.  We are, after all, only one hive with a single queen… I think?”

Moon Dancer remains silent for a while, and when she finally responds, she seems to have simply ignored my meandering uncertainty.  “It's nice,” she helpfully responds.

Right.  Guess she's not the most talkative of fillies, which is actually what I would expect, so… you know.  Makes sense.  Seems like I'm on my own for this conversation.  “Okay, well… Changelings!  You got the talk from ‘Shimmering Armor’ here while I had to make do with Twilight Sparkle, so I don't know exactly what all was left out, but I'm still guessing it was probably a lot regardless…”


⁂


“…So yes, you basically signed up to be a giant telepathic shapeshifting breezie that feeds on love.”

“I’m aware.”

Good Celestia, it's like being stuck with somepony who never shuts up, except that somepony is me.  I'm not used to being the one to carry conversations like this, but what else can I do?  We're forcing this ‘friendship,’ and even if it crashes and burns, well, this filly's at least going to be intimately familiar with my cantankerous opinion of a lot of things.

Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating.  In the time it took us to finish bleaching Shimmering Armor's coat and mane and then do Moon Dancer too since we can't leave her in the house alone, I've gotten a few responses that were longer than two words and she seems nice and intelligent enough, so maybe it's not entirely her fault.  I mean, at least part of the blame has to go to Shimmering Armor for just sitting there silently making things awkward like a third wheel butting in on a date they arranged in the first place.  It’s not exactly a metaphor, except for the fact that this isn’t a date unless friendship dates are a thing.  Actually, at my age, I guess play-dates are a thing.  Whatever, it’s weird is the point.

“All right, well, as long as you're sure,” I tell her.  “I think that's all of the surprises I've run into so far.  It really isn't bad and I’m not trying to dissuade you, I just want make sure that you know what you're getting into.”

“…I actually don't,” she says at length, nearly making me facehoof in exasperation.

I try not to make a big deal of it since it seems like she's going to actually ask a question.  “Alright, what'd I miss?” I ask while making some pretense at helping her dry off by kneading her flank with my tiny hooves.

“What is it they want me to actually do?” she mumbles through her towel as she dries off her face.

I stop what I'm doing as I think back and realize she has a point.  “Well, uh…  Engaging with the practical actualization of research for the purpose of assaying the function and benefits thereof.”

She just gives me a look and says, “You can just say ‘guinea pig.’”

“Technically, you're also—”  She just keeps giving me that look.  “Fine, she also wants your body, obviously.  You've seen what use they’re getting out of mine,” I say, gesturing at Shimmering Armor.  “In spite of evidence to the contrary, it can actually talk when there's an actual changeling plugged into it over the hive mind.”

Shimmering Armor simply ignores me, continuing to brush her mane in silence.  Moon Dancer, meanwhile, gives her a considering look.  “Convenient,” she remarks.  “And a distraction.”

“That's… debatable?”  I hedge.  “I think most ponies would actually object more to having their body used in strange ways when it's outside of their control.  I mean, my situation is kind of unique since I am actively trying to distance myself from that identity, but I guess yours kind of is too, since you and Twilight Sparkle are just somehow miraculous coincidental twins, so, you know whatever.”

Moon Dancer silently waits for me to continue.  Huh, so this is what it's like being on this end of it.  I wonder if changelings have a natural disposition towards leading ponies on.  It would… kind of make sense with the love collecting thing, I suppose?  No idea, to be honest.

“Anyway,” I say, finally getting around to it.  “Twilight Sparkle's whole thing is that changelings are kind of monumentally bad at magic and it's her job to fix that.  Now, Shining Armor—that's her when she's not strutting around in my body,” I gesture at said pony meat-suit who has moved on to brushing her tail, “—was supposed to be our primary genetic testbed since he's going into the military, but he's kinda gone and gotten the attention of the princess of love, which would be an issue even if she wasn't an all-you-can-eat-and-then-some buffet that every changeling in the world would kill to suck on.

“Now, to be honest, I have absolutely no idea how dangerous it's actually supposed to be, but so far her record with violating the natural laws using bug science is pretty good, and I’m speaking from personal experience.  I figure, worst case, something goes wrong and you come out of the chrysalis as a horrible misshapen wretch, she'll just put you back in and fix it.  Best case, it should be a lot more fun than that.  Actually, that brings up a point, I don't think anyone's actually asked you how you are with magic, because that's kind of important.”

She gives me a flat look.  “…Basically, you're just going to keep me in a dark hole and feed me books?”

“Err, I guess that's one way to put it,” I admit, scratching the back of my neck.

She considers that for a moment, gets up, drops her towel, walks over to Shimmering Armor and wraps her legs around one of her legs.  “Thank you for foalnapping me.”
> Chapter Fourteen 【Sunset】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


⁂


Well, aren't we a sight?  After enough washing and bleaching to make my skin itch in sympathy, the three of us finally match and hoo boy, do we stand out.  Even in the white-coat-obsessed Canterlot, a single albino foal is one thing, but an entire family?  In hindsight, we probably could have worn hats or clothes or something, but even if we’d had them, I have absolutely no doubt that we’d have turned heads whether we wanted to or not.

I'm… actually not sure which we want, come to think of it.  So far, just walking down the street, it’s a subtle, lukewarm vanilla of mild interest with only the occasional sharper taste of envy once in a while.  It’s overall pleasant, so I guess there isn’t any great dislike for albinos and we probably pass so long as no one pays much attention to the eyes of the other two.  Shimmering Armor's teal isn’t too bad, being pretty close in shade to my properly-albino pale blue that it's unlikely that anyone would notice, but there'd be no explaining away the dark purple of Moon Dancer's.  Still, they're not really an eye-catching shade, so I think we should be okay.  Worst case, if someone calls us on it, I suppose we can just admit that the two of them did it to match me, which is technically true.  That kind of familial solidarity bullshit seems like the kind of sob story that ponies would just eat up.

“You’re smiling, it’s weird,” Moon Dancer states, craning her neck to look back at me, sitting on her back as she walks beside Shimmering Armor.  We didn’t have a saddle in Moon Dancer’s size, but I’m tiny and I’ll take this over having to consciously avoid touching Shimmering Armor the whole time.  Shimmering Armor had actually expected Moon Dancer to ride on her back and hold me, but my teenage body, only four years older than Moon Dancer and not too fit, just wasn’t up to it.

I blink and my cheeks heat up in embarrassment, though they’re already fairly flush from all the attention.  I’m kinda glad Shimmering Armor stopped me from filling up on love before leaving.  “Yeah, well, you’ll understand when you’re older.  Or younger and a changeling, more like,” I tell her, careful to add the last part as a whisper in case anypony has their ears pointed this way.  “It’s hard not to enjoy life more and just be a more pleasant person in general when you’ve got the aggregate impression of your presence being reflected back to you and wired directly up to the pleasure centers of your brain.”

“That’s… disturbing,” she says, trying to stare back at me without straying from Shimmering Armor’s side.  “You’re okay with that?”

“It’s biology,” I say with a shrug after a short hesitation, only slightly feigning the nonchalance.  “Love is food.  You’d probably react the same way to a hayburger if it tasted better when you’ve done your homework or something.”

“I always do my homework anyway.”

“Or something, then,” I retort with all the sarcasm I can muster—which, as per the conversation we were having, actually wasn’t much.  We’re another half-block down the street when it finally gets to me.  “Damn it, now I miss hayburgers.”

Moon Dancer stops in place for a moment before having to quickly trot to keep pace with Shimmering Armor.  “D—does becoming a changeling make the best food and wine taste like ash and tar?”

I balk at her question.  “What?  No, we’re changelings, not Zebras.  I just used to live in the castle.  They don’t serve hayburgers in the castle.  Actually, you’re more likely to be served ash and tar in the castle thanks to the aforementioned Zebras.”

To my shock, Shimmering Armor actually butts in to point out, “Sunset, that is something like the third time you’ve complained about tar in Zebrabwen cuisine since you came to us.  It can’t have been that bad.”

“It was,” I hiss, trying to keep my voice low.  “And it’s not like it was once or twice; it was several times a year!  We somehow still have friendly relations with them in spite of them constantly trying to poison us.  I swear I can still taste it on my tongue!” 

“Do you—do you taste that tongue often?” Moon Dancer asks in a timid, strangled voice.  “Because it’s kind of… in… her… mouth?”

Absolute silence falls over the three of us.

“Can we just pretend I didn’t say that?”


⁂


Nothing much happens for the rest of the trip except for the belated realization that a family of albino ponies walking into a dye shop is not even remotely in the same ballpark as subtle.  Shimmering Armor ends up spinning a story pretty similar to the one I came up with and the only really awkward point is when she and Moon Dancer have both got what they want and the assistant asks what I’m getting.  It’s not actually a bad idea, though, and I pick up some electric blue mane and tail dye just to differentiate myself as much as I can from ‘Sunset Shimmer’—and hey, I can look like a little mini-Shining Armor if I feel like it.

My plans of adorable identity theft are crushed when Shimmering Armor gives my choice a thoughtful look and steals it for herself, trading me the black and green she’d already chosen.  Yeah, no.  I put them back and pick up some royal purple since I’m supposed to be related to the Twilights, though I probably won’t use it.  A pity, really, since it is a nice shade of purple.

On our way out of the shop, the cashier notices me squinting at the glare of the sun off the white cobblestone roads and manages to guilt Shimmering Armor into buying some weak sunglasses for people with sensitive eyes, which helps a lot.  I hadn’t actually realized how much I’d already gotten used to the downsides of my albinism.

The sunglasses aren’t incredibly expensive or anything, yet much to Shimmering Armor’s dismay, the addition ends up completely wiping out the money she’d brought, meaning she still can’t get the gaming books of the brand the hive wants her to.  I ignore the scowl she sends me, though, since I remember exactly how stupidly expensive they were and one pair of sunglasses might have bought a paperback supplement or two, but none of the ones you could actually kill a pony with.

Shimmering Armor isn’t the only one who goes home a little disappointed, as she shoots down my suggestion that we stop in the park.  The reasoning is logical, of course, but she takes a noticeable amount of schadenfreude in dragging me down with her.

Moon Dancer is still mortified over her earlier comment, so there’s no need to top her off.

The house is literally buzzing when we get back home, sort of like a small drop of the effect the queen had on me.  I can just sort of barely feel the presence of the hive mind, though I’m not sure if it’s because of some hitherto unknown effect of being near so many changelings or just all the loose magic in the air from all the levitation and other spells being used.  I force myself to grin and bear it as we watch cabinets and stools get carried out of the front door while the wooden floorboards are surreptitiously snuck down the stairs to the basement to be used as raw materials for the chrysalises.

You know, if I was going to have to eat it, I think I’d insist on at least getting some fresh lumber.  Well, I mean, I did insist and they made me eat a table leg anyway, but it wasn’t exactly a negotiation.

Once we’re finally let inside, I’m about ready to collapse in a combination of exhaustion and food coma and I give Shimmering Armor my best doe-eyes to get her to levitate me up the stairs and while she’s doing so, I idly wonder when exactly I’m supposed to get the abundant energy of childhood.  Sensing my lethargy, she sets me down in Twilight Sparkle’s room this time and makes to leave.

“Hey, uh…” I blurt out inarticulately, stopping her at the door.  “How is Twilight doing, anyway?”

Moon Dancer, too, looks like she’d like to know, though it weighs a little more heavily on her since she’s the one that Twilight’s foalnappers had wanted.  Of course, Moon Dancer would probably have been less likely than Twilight to get her face smashed in if she had been foalnapped, but you never know.

“Unconscious, mostly,” she says with a shrug.  “We were able to get to her fast enough to prevent too many questions from being asked.  You probably don’t want to hear this, but that meant getting her into the care of Night Light for now, though he’ll be replaced as soon as we have someling else that can do both of his jobs.  That changeling still won’t be coming back here regardless, so you don’t have to worry about that; it won’t be unusual for the working stallion of the family to stay in a hotel while there’s construction going on at the house.

“Getting Twilight back is going to be the real headache, though.  The hive would rather build us two chrysalises than actually trust Moon Dancer out of our sight, so swapping the two of them back isn’t an option.  They seem really fixated on getting control of her legally, which is definitely possible, but a bit difficult.  We can’t claim to be family since we’ve had our backgrounds checked recently, but we can always have another couple of changelings pose as family from outside the city.  It’s just… another set of changelings, and maybe a house too, which is more of an investment than is really sensible.”

I admit that sounds like overkill.  Actually, wait.  “Why bother claiming to be her family at all?  I mean, it’s a nice picture, the long lost family come to whisk the orphan away to a life of love and luxury, but come on, she’s an orphan.  Just friggin’ adopt her.  That’s what orphanages are for.”

Shimmering Armor blinks owlishly at me.  “Uhh, that’s a… a good point, actually.”

“I’ll allow that they might be hesitant to let her go to a household that already has three kids, but the family is well off, I’m just visiting and she got jumped right after she left the house.  Just tell them we felt awful about it and she shouldn’t have to be wandering the city alone.  With her looking exactly like Twilight, we’ve got plenty of circumstantial reasons to get attached and want to take her in and take care of her.”

“No, no, you’re right, it’s completely doable,” she says, completely bewildered.  “I don’t know how we missed that.  We now have several injured changelings that decided to express their exasperation on particularly jagged rocks and lost.”

That’s… worrying, actually.  “How exactly does something like that slip by?  Don’t you have hundreds of changelings in the hive mind?  Thousands?”

“Well, sure, but a lot of them are just drones and workers running on instinct and the hive mind.  Even of the ones that are properly sapient, not all of them are paying attention to this specific event, and even the ones that are both smart and paying attention still aren’t necessarily devoting any actual level of critical thinking to solving our problems.  There’s a changeling in a family down the street getting into an argument with her mother in law about whether or not her mareibbean cuisine is authentic; it’s kind of hilarious, actually, but virtually noling is going to actually try and figure out who’s right unless they know off the top of their heads.  Someone does, though, so for the record, her mother is right, but she’s still arguing.”

No, that’s not worrying.  That’s horrifying.  This is the conglomeration of minds that’s making decisions about my life?

“That’s… kind of awesome,” Moon Dancer’s entranced-sounding voice says from out in the hall.

I’d completely forgotten she was there.  It takes me a second for me to realize that we’d been talking about how to procure her like an awkwardly-shaped couch just a little while ago… but she doesn’t seem to have minded the way she’s hugging at one of Shimmering Armor’s back legs.

“Well… we’ll do that, then,” Shimmering Armor says, picking up the conversation.  Glancing back at Moon Dancer, she frowns and asks, “Actually, you didn’t have lunch, did you?”

Moon Dancer shyly shakes her head.

“Great,” Shimmering Armor says, unable to keep herself from sounding a little annoyed.  “You should say something when you get hungry.  Right, since we don’t have a kitchen, I guess I’m going back out.  I’ll go get those books and pick up something for dinner.  Hayburgers?”

Moon Dancer and I both agree and give her our orders; I order mine sloppy and she doesn’t like onions but wants extra pickles.  Weird.

“Now, you two stay together,” Shimmering Armor says, nudging Moon Dancer into the room with her magic.  “And try to stay up here on the second floor.  When I get back, we’ll eat and then Moon Dancer and I will tackle dyeing her while Sunset tries to catch up with storing her magic since the workers should all be off by then.”

I groan a little inwardly at that, both at having ignored it for so long and in anticipation of feeling bloated all night after a double meal of burgers and love.

Not that I’m in any way, shape or form going to hold back on the burgers.


⁂


To my wide-eyed amazement, I wake up the next day in an actual bed tucked up against Twilight Sparkle.  This in spite of the fact that I know I crashed in the lab again.  Well, damn, I guess the new Twilight Velvet isn’t all snark after all.  Oh, and I guess this is Moon Dancer, not Twilight Sparkle.  Huh, they did a pretty good job.  I mean, on top of the fact that the two of them were already pretty much identical to begin with so it’s like making a cupcake by frosting a muffin, but—actually that sounds really good right now.

To my complete lack of surprise, we don’t have any muffins.

That’s it.  That’s my entire day.  No muffins.  Nothing else of note happens.  Wow, are things boring without Twilight Sparkle around.  Cadance even shows up to watch us for the entire afternoon and says she would have fixed muffins, except, you know, the whole kitchen thing.  Her pity tastes like those flavorless heart-shaped sugar candies they make for heart’s and hooves day and I hate it.  It’s also super awkward having to rush downstairs in the middle of a construction zone to get rid of it, so I don’t think the hive really thought this through.  The workers, at least, won’t have to actually raid our stores today as they take turns strutting in front of the princess in forms that acutely remind me about my lack of progress with puberty.

Puberty and muffins.

Somehow, the princess—and I struggle to give her the title, but I do struggle, which ought to count for something—doesn’t terribly notice any real change in ‘Twilight Sparkle,’ which is both a relief and possibly an insult to Twilight, I’m not entirely certain.  I haven’t ended up talking much with Moon Dancer in the times we’ve been left alone, though we have gotten a little more comfortable in each others’ presence.  Cadance, on the other hoof, seems to be able to bring her out of her shell, so it’s probably worth having her foalsit just for that.

We, of course, tell her all about Moon Dancer, the poor orphaned filly who got attacked on her way back to school from our house.  There shouldn’t be too many roadblocks to actually adopting her, but hey, when you have a princess, every problem looks like a barrel of mewling orphans—which, I mean, in my defense, it actually is.  It can’t hurt our chances anyway and I can’t actually think of any other problems to throw her at right now.

Except muffins, but as we already established, that was an abysmal failure.


⁂


The day after the great disappointment makes me forget all about muffins.  It’s the day I convince Shimmering Armor to teach me to fly.

She just doesn’t know it yet.

I wake up early and by now I feel comfortable enough leaving Moon Dancer alone in bed while I head down two flights of stairs to cough up liquid magic and chug another gullet full of love.  Or an amoreal sack full of love.  Whatever.  It doesn’t have the same ring to it.

My trip back upstairs is just as filthy and strenuous as ever and it only steels my resolve to get Shimmering Armor to show me how to fly.  Tartarus, I don’t even care if she lets me go outside to do it, I just want to be able to skip feeling like I’m climbing Canterlot Mountain every time I want to go someplace in this house without a nanny to carry me.  By the time I finally reach the second floor again, I’m ready to head straight into the shower.

Sometimes—though I refuse to admit it to anyone else—being foal-sized has its perks.  Getting to shower under the bath spout with a constant flow of hot water greater than my entire body weight is one of those times, and worth the indignity of having to use a hooftowel to dry myself off.

My train of thought goes off the rails when I see Shining Armor sitting on one of the living room couches eating a peanut  butter bagel with a bag from the nearest bakery next to him.  No, wait, it’s a mare.  Huh, I guess she got around to doing her own mane last night with that electric blue I’d originally picked out, and unlike with Moon Dancer, some effort had been made with makeup to make my old body look more like the real Shining Armor.  “I like it, but we already have one set of miraculously identical ponies,” I deadpan as I walk into the room.

Taking a bite of her bagel, she silently helps me up next to her with a gentle pull of her magic.

“Celestia, you hardly look like me anymore,” I say, getting a closer look as I fish a soft pretzel out of the bag.  “Should I still be calling you Shimmering Armor?”

She swallows her bite and says, “Don’t confuse yourself.  It’ll be awkward enough if Twilight gets her way.”

I give her a questioning look as I bite into my salty, chewy breakfast.

“She’s in the hospital and gets bored easily,” Shimmering Armor explains.  “And she has a lot of work to do.  Most of it she can do in disguise or directly in the hive mind, like planning the first round of changes for Moon Dancer, but she also wants some time in your neurospast to do some things here.”

I stare at her, trying to imagine Twilight Sparkle in that body.  I can’t do it.  Shaking my head, I ask, “She has plenty of time, doesn’t she?  I admit I don’t know exactly how it all works yet, but I kinda doubt any of those changes are going in for her first… birth?  Rebirth?  Whatever it’s called, that’s going to take something like two weeks, isn’t it?”

“Yes and no,” she says with another bite and a shrug.  She takes another moment to chew and swallow before continuing.  “First, I’m led to understand that it really is just that complicated and a lot of it is simulation, trial and error.  Second, Moon Dancer’s ingestation will be much quicker than yours was.”

I have to forcefully clamp down on my desire to tell Shimmering Armor that ingestation isn’t a word no matter how appropriate a portmanteau it is.  Instead, I just ask why.

“Why, the power of love, of course,” she says, holding her hooves together and producing a far off look in her eyes.  I refuse to give her a reaction.  “No, seriously,” she says, collapsing back into the couch and finishing off her bagel.  “We can make the process much faster with a steady supply of love in the chrysalis and as much as the rest of the hive is drooling over our stockpile, we weren’t allowed deliveries here before and our security level has only increased since then, we might as well use it.  The workers are hitting it pretty hard right now, but that won’t last long and we want to keep the princess close to us regardless.”

“Huh.”  I reflect on that for a while and ask, “So why aren’t we doing that with you?  You’re the one she’s interested in and we haven’t been able to do anything about actually encouraging that since the first night.  Seems like we should be in a pretty big hurry to get you out and strutting your stuff.”

She rolls her eyes at me, but tells me, “We are, but since the process wasn’t begun in a love-rich solution, we can only slowly ramp it up and only so much.  It’s almost not worth the effort, and the hive mind has been pushing for alternative solutions.”

“Like bringing in a substitute Shining Armor?” I ask, wiping pretzel oil and salt from my face.  “Or can you actually just puppet a drone like you can my body?”

Shimmering Armor purses her lips and grabs another bagel, this one stuffed with avocado and cream cheese.  “You would think so, but it’s not actually a common problem and there are some magical hurdles to actually designing such a thing.  A pony body is ideal for this sort of thing because its magical ability stays entirely intact.  Changeling magic, on the other hoof, is a lot more reliant on the changeling’s soul and it’s all tangled up in the hive mind in ways I’m not going to bother explaining.  Point is, a changeling body without a soul wouldn’t be able to use enough magic to disguise itself, and while sharing another actual changelings senses and body is technically possible for individual things, it’s like trying to drive a cart from the passenger’s seat and won’t actually get you anywhere.”

“So, option A?” I prompt.

She makes a face like she just tasted something bad, and takes a giant bite of her bagel to get rid of it.  “You would think so, and while I’m not entirely happy with it, it’s better than what some parts of the hive mind have been suggesting,” she says, giving me a dirty look, which only serves to confuse me.  She recognizes that I have no idea what she’s talking about and settles down with a huff before gesturing at herself.  “It’s pretty convincing, isn’t it?”

I give her a baffled look.  “Convincing of what?  Like, ‘Alas!  A magical accident has transformed me into a stunningly sexy mare!  Princess of love, won’t you teach me your womanly ways so that I might one day make a better husband?’”

“Oh please,” she says, letting out a snort of derision and rolling her eyes.  “You’re good looking, but stunningly sexy, you aren’t.  I mean, you’re fourteen.”  She purposely waits a beat before continuing, “But other than that, yeah, that’s the jist of it.”

I give her a good, long stare.  “You’re serious?  Buck, you’re serious.”  I can’t help but bury my face in my hooves and follow up by yelling, “What the tartarus is wrong with—that’s not a solution, that’s the plot of a fetish novel!  The real world doesn’t work like that!  She’s a mare, for Celestia’s sake!  No mare wants to see her crush as another mare!”

“Err, actually…” she says, nervously tapping her hooves together it front of herself.  “We have it on pretty good authority that she’s… not picky?”

I blink.  “I, uhh…  I guess, seeing as she’s the alicorn of love and all…  Not that somepony needs to be the alicorn of love in order to be like that, but… but it would make sense, I guess?”

“Also, empirically, it works,” she adds, her voice dry as ice.

“It does not!” I counter, snapped out of my stupor.

She thrusts her hoof in my direction, holding the remaining half of her bagel.  “Don’t deny it!” she vehemently cries.  “You!  You of all people told me to ‘have fun and learn something!’”

“And not to mention it ever again!” I automatically remind her before I realize what I’ve said.  My face goes red.

Shimmering Armor pulls her bagel back from my face and takes a grumpy chomp out of it.

“Okay, fine, it works,” I admit with equal grumpiness and reach blindly into the bag for something to distract me.  “It’s just, do you have any idea how—”  There’s a blueberry muffin in my hoof.

She brought me muffins.  With emotions as high as they just were, I cry.

“You’re forgiven.”

“…”

“…”

“For what?!”


⁂


It’s a good thing that I’m going to literally leave this body behind when I become a dragon, or I would be concerned about just how much I’ve been eating.  Mind, half the time when I waddle around bloated it’s with love, which I’m ninety-nine percent sure doesn’t count, but this is not one of those times.  I’m able to finish my muffin on top of the soft pretzel I already ate, but just barely.  I’m definitely not moving from this couch for the foreseeable future.

Wait—buck!  I can’t fly like this!  Nooooooooo!

…

I lick the crumbs off the wrapper.

Worth it.  I’ll just have to do it after lunch.  Which I probably won’t eat.

I look up at Shimmering Armor, who had finished eating and moved on to just slacking on the couch a while ago.  “So… you gonna do it?” I ask, starting the conversation back up.

“Haven’t decided,” she grunts, laid back and eyes closed.  “It’s just really, really…”  Her voice trails off, as she doesn’t seem to have a word for what it really really is.  “We’re already hoping to bait her into smoothing things over with Moon Dancer if it’s needed.  Why in Equestria would we then turn around and face her with a problem we don’t want her sticking her nose into?”

“Well,” I say, lying on my back and looking up at the ceiling.  “Far be it for me to encourage this nonsense, but don’t you want her sticking her nose in it?  You do want her dragging you out to the boutiques to play dress-up, have close-calls with your male friends and have all the wacky hijinks you can shake a garter belt at—you just don’t want her trying to actually solve your fake problem, which, frankly, she can’t do anyway.  All you really have to do is make sure she doesn’t go to anyone else for help, like, you know, her ancient immortal aunt who has forgotten more about magic than I have about manners.  But hey, she’s the kind of pony who would actually do that, especially if you tell her it’ll wear off pretty soon anyway.”

“Sure, sure,” she says, rolling her eyes—it doesn’t matter if they’re closed, I can tell she’s doing it.  “Except, as the princess of love, star-crossed lovers and apparently also kinky shit in the bedroom, there’s absolutely no chance she wouldn’t want to be able to do it in the future and I’m not actually sitting on some kind of magical gender-changing… magic.”

“…Okay, point,” I grumble.

She leans forward to pat me on the head.  “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.  You can’t solve the whole thing with a single, well-placed suggestion every time.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I respond, shoving her hoof off of me and she flops back down.  “So, if you’re not sure what you’re doing, you’ve got time, then?” I ask leadingly.

She cracks one eye open at me.  “I guess?” she hedges, clearly not fooled in the slightest.

“Right,” I say with a decisive nod.  “You have time, I have a growing animosity with stairs, teach me to fly.”

“Hrm.”  She taps her chin with her hoof, considering my demand.  “I dunno.  I’d just be helping you avoid the problem.  Are you sure the stairs don’t just want to be your friends?”

I reach behind me with my magic and chuck a throw pillow at her.  It barely misses my own head and tumbles to a stop next to her.  “Oh, believe me, they’re friendly enough, but really damn pushy.  In fact, I’ve gone farther with them than I ever got with a colt and I really wish I couldn’t say that.”

“Really?” she asks, feigning disbelief.  “They let me walk all over them; are you sure you’re not just a wanton harlot shirking the blame?”

“Why is Sunset being molested by the house?” asks a bleary Moon Dancer, rubbing her hoof into her eyes at the door.  Both Shimmering Armor and I remain shocked into silence as she walks up and ruffles through the bag of baked goods.

Well, at least she’s acclimating.  We should probably be a little more careful about what we talk about with an actual filly in the house.  It can’t be too hard not to pepper my jokes with innuendo, can it?

“Ooh, eclairs.”

Damn it.
> Chapter Fifteen 【Sunset】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

All muffined out, I spend the rest of the morning draped across Moon Dancer’s back, pointing over her shoulder as we go through the Changeling: The Harvest roleplaying books to give her a more thorough idea of what she has to look forward to.  She seems to accept everything with exceptional indifference, which I try not to think about, and I feel like I have to remind her that this is all actually real and she doesn’t have points to spend on things in real life.

At lunchtime, the smell of hayfries wakes me from an impromptu nap I don’t remember succumbing to, and I cringe in slight embarrassment at the line of drool running down Moon Dancer’s shoulder.  Indiscretions aside, I do feel better and I leave enough room after a trip to the cistern of love down in the basement to quietly snack on a few onion rings while the others fill up on burgers again.  I have to admit, there are probably ponies here in Canterlot who would become changelings just for the ability to eat anything they want and never gain weight.  There’s just something incredibly satisfying about having actual control of the things your body does, even if some of it is only through the hive mind.  If there was one thing I could take with me when I get reborn as a dragon, that would be it.

I’m still a little worried about what the dragon instincts will do to my incredibly rigorous and driven personality.

On that note, I’m actually torn on what to do for the rest of the day as lunch stretches lazily on.  In spite of getting a sort-of-acquiescence from Shimmering Armor on the whole learning to fly thing, nopony seems to be in any hurry to expend much effort today.  I really don’t want to miss the chance to learn to fly, but going over the changeling books with Moon Dancer kinda reminded me about Dragon: The Hunger, which I really should have gotten around to reading by now.  If I keep putting it off, I won’t be able to complain when I actually need the information… provided it’s accurate in the first place.  I was supposed to read Magic: The Harmony too, just to see how it lines up with pony magic, but I don’t think I’ll bother; Changeling: The Harvest seems accurate enough to recommend the rest.

“Knock-knock?” comes the cheerful, upbeat voice of Cadance from the hall.  Shimmering Armor and I only have the briefest moment to share a panicked heart attack before she casually walks in pushing a wheelchair with a bundled up ‘Moon Dancer’ in it.  “Ah, there you all are.  The door was open, so I figured I’d just come on in.”

Tartarus.

I’m having difficulty believing this just happened… again!  What is with princesses just wandering in off the street in this house?  Or Twilight not warning us when Shimmering Armor is in plain view?  Or, you know, this, which is both of those things!  I swear, she’d better be asleep or she’s gonna be in some serious explaining to do—rather like Shimmering Armor in three… two… one…  You can see the moment the bit drops for Cadance.  Nopony ever said she was stupid.

…Okay, so maybe I said she was stupid—many times—but that’s not the point here.  I like to think I’ve grown since then.

In any case, she briefly cocks her head, raises one hoof and opens her mouth to say something, hesitates, finally points at him and says, “Shining Armor, right?  I was… pretty sure you were older.  And a stallion.  I’m positive auntie would have given me an entirely different lecture if you were…”  She seems to have run out of words, so she just gestures to the entirety of Shimmering Armor in all her sofa-lounging glory.  The words she does find, she definitely doesn’t mean for anypony else to hear, though her blush speaks for itself.  “Not that I’m complaining.”

I have no idea how I’m supposed to take that, considering that’s my body she’s ogling.

Yeah, no, you know what?  I’m not sticking around for this.  My plans for the afternoon are obviously shot, so I grab Dragon: The Hunger in my teeth and drag it off to read it anywhere but here.


⁂


With the upstairs too much trouble on account of my stature and lack of the very flying lessons that Cadance just preempted, my only option for retreat is the often-neglected dining room, so it’s there that I drag my book.  I suppose in hindsight I could have ridden Moon Dancer upstairs, but that would have lacked the proper level of decisiveness and it probably wouldn’t have looked good for ‘Twilight Sparkle’ to ignore her ‘friend’ ‘Moon Dancer’ anyway.

It’s only with that thought that I realize what Cadance having brought ‘Moon Dancer’ with her must mean.  Huh.  She sure didn’t waste any time.  That was, what—yesterday?—yeah, just yesterday that we mentioned it to her.  I guess when you’re the princess of love you can just stop by the orphanage and pick up a few foals ‘to go.’

I mean, besides the fact that Twilight was at the hospital, not the orphanage, and the entire rest of that sentence came out about ten times creepier than I intended.

As I levitate the lighting crystal up to the receptacle with my weak magic, I note that the dining room is on the comfortably large side and connects to the kitchen in one direction and the living room around the corner from it in the other.  The only time I’ve been in here before was the first time Cadance came over and cooked for us, and I was kind of distracted at the time.  Fortunately for me, there’s a pantry and a cupboard for table settings between the dining room and the kitchen, which should keep the construction noise down to a reasonable level.  Even so, I’d be tempted to steal cushions from the living room for a couch fort if I hadn’t just fled said room and my magic wasn’t incapable of lifting more than an apple.

Briefly, I look back in the direction of the living room and wonder just how many of the hive mind’s plans Cadance just invalidated by cutting through the red tape involved in getting custody of Moon Dancer.  On the one hoof, we suddenly have access to both Twilight Sparkle and Moon Dancer, so we could—theoretically—swap them back to their real identities so long as we take some care with maintaining the charade of Moon Dancer’s injury… but on the other hoof, I’m not sure if it actually speeds anything up, since tossing them both into the chrysalises immediately would probably cause problems if anypony stops by to check on her accommodations.

Anypony like Cadance, who after foalsitting exactly twice has apparently decided it’s okay to just show up uninvited.

Meh, maybe we can be visiting my side of the family if it ever comes up.  We’ll figure something out.  Instead, I try to forget about the hustle and bustle of the ongoing clusterbuck as I position the book on the floor and open the front cover with my teeth.


⁂


Okay, in hindsight, it had been a lot easier to pick the relevant details out of the changeling books when I’d already known about most of them and had actual changelings on hoof to ask about the rest.  That’s not to say that the book on dragons was useless, but discounting the specifics of the characters, setting and mechanics—which are, admittedly, interesting—all that’s really left are a few facts of life about dragons.

Dragon society and magic, it seems, revolves almost entirely around the process of hoarding and consuming items of value, and there’s a balance to be kept between the two.  The size and quality of a dragon’s hoard is a source of power, both physical and magical, and as a dragon’s hoard grows, so do they.  Should it grow via the addition of crude and wretched things, however, so too will the dragon grow crude and wretched.  It’s for this reason that most dragons, gravitating to collecting gold and jewels as the greatest items of value in the land, tend to be prideful, arrogant and cold.

Hoarding is only half of the story, though—and a good thing, too, or dragons would be dangerously unstable.  …More dangerously unstable, anyway.  Instead, hoarding is tempered by the dragon’s diet, in a way.  Anything a dragon consumes provides only a fraction of the power it otherwise would as a part of the dragon’s hoard, yet its influence on the dragon’s personality is both stronger and more subtle; a permanent buffer and counterweight to outside influences.  What this means is that while dragons can eat virtually anything, eating the right foods is important to keeping a dragon grounded.

What I’m taking from this is that I’ll be able to eat cheap junk food and not have it go straight to my thighs or my heart, so that’s a win.

This balance between hoarding and consuming seems to be, at least in the game, a source of divisiveness and conflict among dragons, but frankly, neither path really conforms to the pony social mores.  On the one hoof, a dragon who only hoards is at the mercy of said hoard in ways both large and small, even should they be successful in guarding it, while on the other, a dragon who only consumes will eat and eat and eat, never satisfied, the endless hunger warping them in a less magical but no less dangerous way.  In fact, just about the only reason such dragons haven’t managed to devour Equus entirely is because the greater the power, the slower the digestion, and dragons who binge to too great a degree end up hibernating for hundreds of years.  Obviously, a balance is required, but the book doesn’t seem to actually address or suggest that, though I keep expecting it to.

Reading between the lines, I can see the parallels between dragons and changelings that Twilight had mentioned—not in the obsession over food, because every living creature does that, but in its source.  It’s easy enough to say that the magic that fuels dragons is ‘drawn from the fundamental structure of the world,’ but given that the ‘value’ that’s an integral aspect of the process has been proven variable, it seems almost certain that it can be traced further back to not only a sentient source, but one with values that align with the consensus of society—or, more likely, it would be traced directly back to said society.  As a changeling who has had the experience of having emotions directed at me, it doesn’t seem so far fetched at all to imagine that such energies could possibly collect in objects as well as people.  It’s even possible that this could happen on a wider, more indirect scale, given one bit or gemstone is much like the next.

Supposition aside, I can definitely see what would have attracted the changelings; it sounds incredibly promising.  Supposedly they’ve given up due to any and all test subjects eating them out of house and home, but I wonder if that’s really true.  It just seems too tempting to completely abandon.  I think, if I was going to remain a changeling, that would be something I’d like to work on.

But, you know, settling for being an actual dragon is fine too.

I roll over onto my back and stare up at the light fixture above me, considering what this could all mean for me, as I’m going to actually experience it sooner or later.  I had been concerned that becoming a dragon would lead to slothfulness and lethargy, and far from being reassured, I see it as a distinct possibility.  Look at me now; constantly bloated on love and muffins, though not all by choice.  Were I to have gone into dragonhood blind, I’d almost certainly have ended up sleeping the centuries away, as I would vastly prefer permanent power over the kind that ties me to one place and can be taken away.  Knowing what I know now, though—and assuming it’s at all accurate—I imagine I’ll be able to put together a reasonable diet that I can accept, though it does beg the question…

How is it that dragons in general can be such giant plotholes when they can literally eat themselves into being better people?  I’m not entirely happy that I could be so easily influenced as a dragon, but how narcissistic would someone have to actually be to look at themselves in the mirror and say, ‘Yep, I need more pride in my diet’?”

Admittedly, I probably shouldn’t be judging an entire race based on something I read in a gaming book; they’ve probably dramaticized it, for one, but still.  Actually, no, either way it doesn’t really excuse anything; either it’s down to their diet, which they have control of, or it’s just them being jerks, which they also have control of… though in hindsight, I’m not entirely sure what sorts of valuable things a dragon could actually eat that would represent humility… or any pony virtue, for that matter.

Potatoes?  Well, they’re not terribly valuable… so lots and lots of potatoes?

Hrm.  Food for thought, if not dragons, I guess.


⁂


Another half-hour of reading and I feel both kind of stupid and kind of annoyed.  It turns out there’s an entire second dimension to the whole diet and hoard curation thing, so I was wrong to preemptively judge them… except as it turns out, dragons that hoard gold and jewels are still doing it wrong.  In fact, they’re doing it even more wrong!

Hoards are cutie marks—which is to say, hoards produce the majority of the magic a dragon has at their command and the qualities of the items in the hoard, somewhat obviously in hindsight, color the magic they produce.  It’s a unique mix of magic that is completely wasted if every single dragon just hoards the same tartarus-damned things!  In fact, it gets me so annoyed that I have to go find Twilight in her Moon Dancer disguise and vent.

Finding her is easy, seeing as she hasn’t moved since I last saw her, though Cadance and Shimmering Armor are gone.  “Sampling bias,” Twilight Sparkle says, her voice muffled and jaw immobilized by the gauze holding her cheek in place.  “What kind of dragons have you met and who are their friends?”

What?  What does that even have to do with—“…Oh.”

“Yes.  ‘Oh,’” she says, leveling a flat look at me.  “I do not believe that any nation should wish to be judged solely by the quality of their career politicians.”

I feel like I should be able to object to that, but I really can’t.

Having deflated my rant with two lines, Twilight has already gone back to explaining alleles to Moon Dancer.  I stand there grasping for some direction and eventually default to wandering off downstairs to fill another storage pod with magic.

After just about two days of work, the basement looks pretty much done to my untrained eye.  That wouldn’t be very long for typical pony construction, but it actually seems a bit drawn out for the changeling kind.  I suppose, though, that I don’t actually know what goes into the construction of one of these pods.  They look biological, but aren’t grown, so guess all the plumbing, filtering and even the amniotic fluid must be made on the spot from scratch, so… okay, I can see it taking longer than my little art project on the wall.  They’ve also shifted things around to make room for the two new chrysalises and added an examination table, which is more work than you might expect when everything is essentially a single piece of resin with the floor.

It’s a little jarring to think that with the lab renovations almost done and the miracle twins upstairs, it really could be any day now that we’ll have as many ponies in pods as we have walking around.  Maybe then we can go back to having some semblance of quiet around here.

It’ll be nice when I finally get reborn as an infant dragon; then none of this shit will be my problem and I’ll be able to just eat and sleep all day.

…Wait.

None of it is my problem.  Bucking tartarus, I need to calm down and just let the insect conspiracy run itself.  I mean, really, it’s none of my Celestia-damned business in the first place; they’d probably thank me not to stick my nose in.

Filling up on love helps ease my temper a little and I get one of the workers to help me up the stairs again.  I’m about to retrieve my book and go back to reading, but I’ve lost the mood and I’ve probably covered the important bits anyway.  Seeing as my lazy day has been ruined, I should do something fun.

I go back to the living room and walk up to Twilight Sparkle.  “Make me a pegasus.”

She boops me on the nose and I’m briefly engulfed in green fire.  “You’re a pegasus.”

Moon Dancer looks at me like I’m her idol.  “That is so cool.”

…

Yeah.  Yeah, it is.


⁂


I spend an hour on the other side of the room just sitting there, mesmerized by my new appendages.  Opening them and closing them.  Open.  Close.  Open.  Close.  Open…

Briefly, I picture myself next to Princess Celestia.  It’s not even me ruling beside her like I always wanted, just… under her wing.  Part of the family.  It doesn’t even bother me if I put Cadance in there as the annoying older sister.

I really had been an idiot, hadn’t I?

When I first met Twilight, she pointed out how differently Princess Celestia and I saw alicornhood and asked me if I really wanted to be the kind of platonic ideal of a pony that the princess would have willingly ascended into an alicorn, knowing I wouldn’t.

She wasn’t wrong.

She wasn’t wrong to say that Princess Celestia would only ever see alicornhood as a fact of life or a burden to be shouldered, not a goal for a pony to strive for, and she wasn’t wrong to say that I wasn’t such a pony, but maybe… maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if I had been.

Maybe being that kind of pony would have been worth it.

Maybe.


⁂


Maybe asking Twilight Sparkle how to actually fly would be worth it.

Maybe.

…But not until I’m out of options.

I’m not stupid enough to take my brand-new wings someplace high and jump off, assuming my changeling imitation of pegasus instinct and magic will save me.  That said, I feel stupid enough jumping in place and flapping my wings like a baby bird waiting to be fed that I’m willing to take calculated risk.

Actually, no.  Taking a ‘calculated risk’ makes it sound intelligent, but in reality it’s just a pretty way of saying you know beforehoof how bad of an idea something is and you’re going to do it anyway.  I don’t take a calculated risk—I assume it will go badly in the first place and take steps to mitigate the consequences.

Which is to say I gather up all the throw pillows on a sofa, spread my tiny white wings and jump off the back of it.

The paff of my impact on the pillows is barely audible on my first attempt and it gets no louder on the second, third and fourth.  The volume of my internal dialogue is a different matter, though, and I have to try very hard to keep it from becoming external dialogue.  After my tenth identical paff, I remind myself that this was supposed to be fun, and I give in.

“Okay, Twilight, what am I doing wrong?” I ask from the depths of my pillow pit.

“You need to channel magic through your wings,” she answers without even looking.

Oh.  That seems kind of obvious, doesn’t it?  “…How do I do that?”

“The same way you channel magic through any part of your exoskeleton,” she says.  “You’ve focused magic through just your horn for unicorn magic, the carapace as a whole for changeling disguises and even your hooves to massage the poison out of Moon Dancer—”

Moon Dancer looks up from her book, blinking.  “The what out of who?”

Twilight ignores her.  “—I hardly think channeling through your wings should give you any trouble by now.”

I grumble as I dig myself out of my pillow pit.  I suppose she has a point and I could have tried it first, but just saying ‘channel magic through your wings’ sounds so weird.  I’ve already made my opinion clear on what I think about the whole ‘unified magic organ’ thing changelings have going on with their exoskeleton, and as I spread my wings and let the magic flow out and through them, my experience is no different.  The shiver that runs up my spine and spreads out over my skin is no less than euphoric bliss—err, I mean, it’s terrible.  Rubbish for magic.  Extremely wasteful.

…But it works.  I feel myself get lighter and every twitch and movement in my wings seems do more, like the air has thickened into molasses.  Maybe it’s just because I’m not a natural-born pegasus and I don’t know what to look for, but I feel like changeling chitin works much better for pegasus magic than for unicorn magic.  I don’t even feel the need to climb back up to the top of the couch; I just move my wings down and the rest of me moves up.

Then I move my wings up and the rest of me goes paff, right back into the pillow pit.  Okay, so there’s still wing angles and actual flying things to learn, and the way my vision is swaying I’m pretty sure I was channeling more magic than I could afford just then, but it worked!  I can do this!

…

After a small nap.

Maybe a couple of hours.

Gathering all these pillows was worth it.


⁂


Much to my relief, when I finally feel like doing something again, it’s time to head back down to the basement and fill another storage pod.  It’s a relief in spite of all the wasted time because if I’d woken up tired, I’d be concerned that my little stunt of dumping all my magic out of my wings would have wasted everything I’d converted, but I needn’t have worried.  I doubt the changeling body is even capable of dumping all of its magic that fast; all I did was strain myself.

I extricate myself from the pile of pillows to find the living room empty.  Shimmering Armor, of course, is likely out with Cadance doing romcom things, and I give equal chances for Twilight and Moon Dancer to be either upstairs or down in the basement looking in on the construction.

Well, not equal chances, I suppose.  This is Twilight, after all.

Hopping off the couch, I spread my wings and do my best to feather the flow of magic through them—no pun intended.  The effect is actually amazingly stable and I don’t hesitate to eagerly repeat my accomplishment on my way down to the basement, which it turns out is a little crowded with Twilight Sparkle and Moon Dancer in addition to the workers.  I don’t even try to pay attention to their conversation, and just go about my business as quickly as possible.  It’s satisfying to see the empty storage pods slowly being replaced by glowing green ones as a real, tangible sign of my progress, but I don’t stay to appreciate it.  I only have eyes for one thing right now.

The stairs—round two.  Not exactly the entire reason I wanted wings, but absolutely one of the more immediate ones.  Nevertheless, I reign in my hubris and prioritize success over anything else.  I haven’t yet graduated to actual hovering yet, so instead I simply intend to make an assisted jump or two.  I go light on the magic, aiming for just enough to push me up and keep me light without going so far as my previous mistake, which seemed to almost have me gripping onto the air.

With a couple of test hops to get a feel of my momentum, I take a step back and make my leap, arcing gently up to land perfectly on the top landing.

I did it!  I have achieved freedom!  Riding high on my success, I flap up to the door, kick it open and flap out into the hall only to crash directly into a familiar pink face.

Cadance delicately peels me off of herself with her magic and gives me a long, curious look.  She then looks over to Shimmering Armor and back to me.  “Okay, I’m sure Whitewash was a unicorn.  Come to think of it, I don’t think you ever explained what actually happened.”

Shimmering Armor and I share a look.  “Discordian artifact,” I say.

“Looked like a shoe,” she adds.

“Kind of exploded.”

“Destroyed the kitchen.”

“Moon Dancer may or may not be real,”

“We’re not sure.”

“But we love her anyway.”

Cadance takes a moment to process the rapid-fire bullshit, a dubious look on her face.  “That… explains a lot, actually.  Wait,” she says clutching me to her chest and rounding on Shimmering Armor.  “You said it wasn’t permanent?  Does that mean Moon Dancer…?”

“No!” Shimmering Armor and I both shout in panic, making Cadance wince.  “Nopony could find anything wrong with Moon Dancer,” Shimmering Armor continues.  “That’s why we’re not sure.  Nothing is going to happen to her; she’s not going anywhere.  So far as anypony can tell, she’s just a regular little filly who had a family all her own… except she’s the only member of said family we can actually put hooves on and she just happens to look exactly like Twilight, so…”

“Oh, thank Celestia,” Cadance says, gripping me tighter until I squeak in spite of the relief in her voice.  “Why didn’t you just tell me all that in the first place?”

Shimmering Armor scratches the back of her neck, blushing, and I wait to see how she’s going to handle this.  “Well, we’d only really just met and then you stuck your neck out for us in getting custody of her so quickly; I wasn’t sure how to bring it up or if I even should since it could all be coincidence.  Whitewash hasn’t seemed to mind her change at all, which is a relief since dad’s been staying at a hotel while the construction is going on and mom’s splitting her time between him and taking care of us.  I’m the only one who’s really been out of my depth, and kinda ironically, I’ve been too busy playing second mom to even pay much attention to it until you came over.  Since you were already helping with what I needed, I didn’t want to scare you away by bringing up the rest of our household drama.”

She doesn’t look impressed.  “Hey, I’m the professional babysitter, here,” she says, a faux scoff hiding a smile.  “You’re third mom at best.”


⁂


Cadance is impressed by my wing hygiene since I’ve supposedly been a pegasus for a couple of days now, but she insists on properly teaching me to preen anyway and I let her.  It’s… nice, though I’m distracted—torn between just not calling attention to the fact that I was a unicorn when she was here yesterday or adding another lie on the growing pile.

At length, I pick the obvious choice.

“So, wait,” Cadance says, holding me in her lap on the couch.  “You keep changing back and forth at random, but Shining Armor has just been stuck one way the whole time?”

“Yep!” I say, beaming with the most innocent, cheerful smile I can muster.  “Flying is great!  The first time I changed back, I kinda broke the fruit bowl, but now I can tell when it’s going to happen, so it’s fine!”

What?  I’m a changeling.  I’m genetically dispositioned to lie.

“Well, if you say so,” Cadance says, moving on to brushing my mane.  “Though if this all has to do with something Discord left behind, maybe we should mention it to auntie after all?”

I crane my neck back to look up at her and plead my thoughtful and well-informed rebuttal.  “Please don’t?”

She doesn’t so much fold as fail to muster up any resistance in the first place.  “Fine, fine; I won’t say anything about it if you don’t want me to,” she says, playfully squeezing my cheeks with her hooves.  “Did you teach that to Shining Armor?  She reacted the same way and was somehow almost as good at it.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”


⁂


I end up telling Cadance all about the things I read in Dragon: The Hunger while she gives me a natural-born pegasus’ perspective on flying.  I think she’s mostly humoring me, but one or two things do seem to make her thoughtful.  I figure if I could live in the castle for years as Celestia’s student and not know the first thing about how they actually work, it wouldn’t hurt to give her a heads-up.

…The two lines Twilight said about politicians counts as confirmation that everything in the book is true, right?

Shimmering Armor does her best to moderate Cadance’s attention on me, and I think my amoreal sack has been getting bigger, but even so I still end up having to take several breaks over the course of Cadance’s flight lessons, and by the time it’s getting dark, she’s definitely noticed that something is up.  I swear, with as many perks as there are to being a changeling, having incredible magical power bottlenecked by what feels like a bladder problem is definitely not one of them.

Finally, though—finally—it gets too dark to continue and I’m able to sic Cadance on Twilight and Moon Dancer when we go back inside.  She’s actually suitably embarrassed about having mostly ignored ‘Moon Dancer’ after bringing her over, first for Shimmering Armor and then me, but I hardly think either of the ‘twins’ minded… or possibly even noticed.  I’m still not really sure how the mind of Twilight Sparkle works and I can’t say Moon Dancer is entirely different in that regard.

On my way up to shower while flaunting my new vertical freedom, I discover that Twilight Velvet had returned at some point, which I probably should have expected.  I can’t imagine the hive would want to give Cadance the impression that we were being neglected, considering she’d just helped add another family member.  On my way down after said shower, however, I discover to my slight exasperation that she’s invited Cadance to stay for dinner.  I get that it’s only polite, but politeness is for extroverts.  I really wanted a Celestia-damned break.

In the end, it’s not so bad with so many people around the table of takeout to share the burden of keeping the conversation going and the love Cadance is radiating, but even for the alicorn of love, the mare really needs to learn to tone it down a bit.  I’m hardly an expert on the subject, but I’m pretty sure a first date isn’t supposed to start with the gift of a foal, go through the actual date date and drag on through foalsitting and dinner.  By the time Cadance actually gets around to leaving, I’m half dreading that she’ll suggest a slumber party.

To my relief, the slumber party gets a rain check and we’re finally free of her, though only with enough time left in the night to wind down into everyone doing their own thing for an hour or two before getting ready for bed.

“That was… a day,” I say to myself, lying in a nest of bedding in Twilight Sparkle’s dresser that night, but it doesn’t feel like enough.  Even with the occasional annoyances and aggravations… it was more than just a day.  It was a good one.

Fancy that.
> Chapter Sixteen 【Sunset】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It takes several days of attempting to wean Cadance off of her frequent visits to the house before the hivemind takes my advice and stages a little vacation for Twilight and Moon Dancer with a nonspecific relative out in the country, though when all is said and done, I feel like they might as well have just said that they were having a slumber party at a friend’s house for how long the incubation actually took.  As Shimmering Armor had said, with the sheer amount of love that we can spare for the process, it progresses an order of magnitude faster.  Instead of the two to three weeks it took me to be rebirthed, they’re out in under two days, which is barely enough time for Cadance to get some friends together and drag Shimmering Armor off to her own sleepover while she’s still a mare.

When they finally do come out, I end up missing both Twilight’s and Moon Dancer’s rebirths, which is a little disappointing, but frankly I have better things to do with my time than sit around all day waiting for them to hatch.  You’d think that once the lab was done I’d have gone back to spending most of my time down there, but that was before I’d gotten wings, which are everything I imagined they would be and then some.

…Well, they’re everything I imagined so long as I forget about the whole immortality and divine right to rule bits that I had expected to get with them.

Flying, though?  Flying was awesome enough that I could forget.  The best part was the sheer freedom it gave me—not just inside the house, but outside it, too.  Sure, with Shimmering Armor dyed to look like Shining Armor she could take me out to the park or wherever, but apparently it’s a lot less of a problem for a pegasus my age to be flying around than it would be for me to be underhoof on the street, so I can basically go anywhere and everywhere so long as I come back home once in a while to fill my storage pods with glowing green magical goo—and I do.  Go anywhere and everywhere, I mean, but the storage pod thing too, I guess.

The slowly growing number of filled pods on the wall is both satisfying and a small source of unease.  I really, really wish I wouldn’t have to give up my wings for some unknown period of time when I become a dragon.  It’s frustrating enough that my lie to Cadance has me going back to being a unicorn once in awhile just to sell it, which is something I never thought I’d say, but changeling magic is so weak at my age that using it is as aggravating as it is useful—something Moon Dancer will be learning as soon as she’d out of swaddling, I expect.

I’m a little fascinated at just how small Moon Dancer is compared to me.  I’m still pretty tiny compared to everyone else, but right out of the chrysalis, she’s almost a foal to me, which is just bizarre.  Apparently, when I was this small I was just swaddled up so much that nopony could actually see my excessively diminutive size when Twilight Velvet took me out to harvest love.  I wouldn’t have guessed that that would actually work or that it would be any more than indirect love, but I suppose the logic behind that sort of thing is kind of fuzzy.  As for Moon Dancer, she’ll be getting love from the cistern for the first few days until she’s a proper size for showing off, though we’ll have to be very careful about that, since we don’t want Cadance to see the foal-sized one at all regardless.

That’s a problem I hadn’t really thought about.  I’d forgotten that Moon Dancer getting split into nymph and neurospast would mean she’d be starting over as a foal, if one with temporarily accelerated growth.  Kind of a stupid mistake to make, but, well, I’ve been reminding myself that the hive’s problems aren’t my problems and clearly they have it under control.

Very much literally.

Part of what Twilight had been talking to Moon Dancer about for the days up to their going into the chrysalises had been preparing her for the experience of the hive mind.  She’s still not a proper changeling with a connection of her own, but as a nymph she’s still able to connect through contact with another, and through them, control her body like Shimmering Armor has been controlling mine.  From what I can tell, she’s been taking her submersion into the hive mind well, but the truth of it is, with everything she says and does going through said hive mind… how would I know?

I just try not to think about it.

The new granite kitchen counters are nice.  Retconning the project as repairs from a magical accident instead of a remodel saved us from having to deal with the construction for the several weeks a proper remodel would have taken.  The whole Discordian artifact lie really was a good one for something cobbled together on the spot.

…

Moving on, things have almost calmed down when Shining Armor finally comes out of his chrysalis, and this time I don’t miss it.  Actually, the entire household—sans Night Light, who we still haven’t received a replacement for—is present, I guess because we actually have Twilight to give us some idea of what’s going on, instead of the… nobody who was monitoring Twilight and Moon Dancer when they were in the chrysalises.

I’m sure it was fine.

Shining Armor splashes out onto the ground in front of the chrysalis, the clatter of his chitin on the ground muffled by the thick liquid.  The ribbed flooring does an amazing job at containing the splash of amniotic fluid, but I still cringe in disgust as a few droplets splatter across my face.  I make note to stand further back next time.

Actually, why did I want to be here for this, again?  Twilight Velvet is drying him off with towels while Twilight Sparkle casts spells and little mini Moon Dancer watches in fascination from her position perched atop her neurospast’s head.  Everyone else seems to have something to do or a genuine interest, while I’m just standing here having more in common with my own empty neurospast standing in the corner just blankly watching the proceedings, still dyed to look like the stallion in question with a manestyle and makeup straight out of a fashion magazine.

It isn’t long until the actual Shining Armor has recovered enough to stand on his own.  Twilight Velvet moves on to first helping him with a glass of ice water, then a glass of lovemuck, which is a word I just invented on seeing the cloying, sticky pink substance in an actual regular pony drinking glass, looking all kinds of wrong to me.

“Okay, Shiny,”  Twilight Sparkle says, levitating a clipboard in front of her and checking several things off.  “Everything looks good so far.  Try levitating the—”  The glass shatters.  “…rubber ball and place it in the glass.  Well, raw power seems to be a success, but spending a week and a half as a mare doesn’t seem to have improved your impulsiveness and ability to listen.  Please attempt to retrieve the glass from the ribbed flooring.  As a test of your fine control, of course, and for no other reason.”

To Twilight Sparkle’s disappointment and my entire lack of surprise, Shining Armor soundly fails the fine control test, though with some coaching, he’s able to sort of press a semi-tactile blob of magic into the crevices and pull everything down there up like it’s stuck to a giant wad of gum.  Doing the same exercise after retaking his proper pony disguise shows a marked improvement except for the part where he nearly singes off everyone’s eyebrows with the blast of green fire that accompanies transitioning to said disguise.

I’m getting bored and considering going back upstairs to find something to do when a loud bwomp interrupts my thoughts and the entire lab is lit by the glow of a pink bubble around Shining Armor.

“At this level of output, you’ll definitely be able to fake a proper shielding specialty as utilized by an above average unicorn,” Twilight Sparkle tells him almost absently.  “Which is fortunate considering I had the foresight to include that in your cutie mark story.”

Shining Armor is rolling his eyes and insisting that it’s not foresight when every changeling in the world has an affinity for shields, but my mind is stuck on something entirely different.

“How is the bubble bubblegum-pink?” I blurt out, interrupting the argument before it can really get started.

Everyone stops to look at me.

“I mean, I thought changeling magic was always green?” I say, gesturing at the absolutely one hundred percent pink bubble.

Twilight gives me a flat glare.  “I have, in a single step, advanced changeling magic by generations and you’re worried about the color?”

I blink.  “Aren’t you?” I ask, honestly wondering if she doesn’t see the  point.  “I mean, woo, the incredible power of an above average unicorn and all, but you expected at least that much.  Colored magic—that seems like the sort of thing that a species whose primary survival tactic is disguise would have solved already if it had the ability to do so.”

Twilight rolls her eyes and turns back to Shining Armor.  “Yes, it’s a useful mutation and I’ll look into it, but I didn’t come here to pioneer pink magic.  Now, Shiny, try to pick up the pencil without crushing it…”

Ugh, fine.  I didn’t want to be here anyway.  I fly upstairs and go looking for a snack.


⁂


The brief, unguarded moment of disappointment when Cadance sees Shining Armor in all his stalliony glory is an adorable kind of schadenfreude I don’t normally find amusing.  It’s too bad changeling disguises have that whole ‘burst of fire’ thing going on, or he could say the accident left him with a permanent ability.  Maybe he could say it only works when he’s alone?  Hmm… nah.  Too complicated and he’d never go for it.  Considering she didn’t let his renewed appearance stop her from taking him out for a slightly more masculine version of their previous outing, I figure they’ll be fine anyway—though I do notice Cadance eyeing me and biting her lip on the way out for some reason.

I don’t have to wait long to find out what that’s about.  She shows up at the house the very next day insisting that she take me to Cloudsdale while I still have the opportunity.  The look on her face is just so eager, and it does sound interesting…  I have a bad feeling that I’m going to regret this, but my wall of glowing green pods is actually looking rather full these days, so this might actually be one of the last things she actually gets to do with ‘Whitewash’ and I’m not that cold-hearted.  “Sure, that sounds fun.”

“Eee!” she squeals, picking me up and squeezing me like a plush doll.  “This’ll be great!”

I’m less enthusiastic about spending the entire day with her, but I do make sure to run inside to empty myself of love and top up on magic before we go to give myself the best chance I can to actually enjoy it.  It’s actually the first time I’ve reclaimed any of the green, liquid magic.  It tastes… like nothing, actually; almost like water, but instead of a mineral taste, there’s a faint creaminess?  I wholeheartedly regret that description, but it’s accurate and my body has no problem gulping it down so I do my best to try and forget all about it as I rush back upstairs.

I find Cadance in the kitchen getting permission from Twilight Velvet for our little trip.  There’s no trouble there, of course, and Cadance lifts me onto her back with a smile when she sees me.  I get her to make a short detour upstairs to fetch my sunglasses, and we’re off.


⁂


I still find it a little uncomfortable going back to riding on ponies’ backs like the foal I am, though at least with Cadance I don’t have to worry about accidentally connecting to the hive mind just by touching her.  Actually, riding on Cadance’s back is just about the ideal position for me since it tempers the sheer force of her love to a gentle glow when I’m not actually in her field of view.  Even so, I expect I’ll be spitting little pink love bombs off the side of Cloudsdale every chance I get.  Actually, I should probably start sooner rather than later.  There’s no reason to wait until I’m completely bloated and have to act like I’m hurling when I could deal with it a mouthful at a time.

…

Wow, we’re all idiots, aren’t we?  Admittedly, Cadance pretty much invented the problem of ‘too much love’ and she sprung it on us that first night, but has not a single one of us really thought of keeping a sippy cup, flask or something with a straw handy to discreetly discharge love rather than constantly running downstairs to the cistern?

My muffled scream of frustration sounds like a whimper and draws Cadance’s attention while she’s busy paying for our ferry ride.  She pretends not to have noticed anything as we board the, squat, open-sided airship, but once we’ve found someplace near the railing to sit, she turns up the doting foalsitter act and asks if anything is wrong.

I’m quick to deny it, but, well, I suppose I might as well just lie.  “It’s just… I hafta go back to Trottingham this week.”

It takes her a moment to remember the details.  “O—oh, that’s right, you’re technically Twilight Velvet’s sister, aren’t you?”  She actually looks a little sad.  A small, mean-spirited part of me wants to look down on her for it, but the rest of me is actually kind of touched that she cares that much about some foal she only met a couple of weeks ago.  “You’re from Trottingham?  You don’t have the accent.”

“Well, we only just moved there,” I tell her, thinking quickly.  “That’s why I’ve been staying with my sister’s family, actually.  Mom—mother—has been getting things set up there.”

“Ah, that makes sense,” she says, accepting the lie easily.  “I know what it’s like to have to move to some far off place where everything is strange and you don’t know anypony.  You might think it’d be less complicated as you get older or that living in luxury in the palace would make everything easier, but it can still be difficult and scary when you’re thrust into a new situation and things don’t go like they always have.”

Wow, way to comfort the foal, Cadance.  Who here is supposed to be reassuring who, again?  “Did something bad happen when you came to Canterlot?”  Shit, is that the sort of thing a foal would say?  I don’t even know.

“You could say that,” she says with a sad smile, looking out over the landscape as it passes us by.  “There was somepony I tried to make friends with, but she didn’t want to be friends with me.  I thought, as the princess of love and all, that if I just kept trying and kept being nice to her that she would eventually come around, but that’s… not right.  It was actually kind of naïve and selfish of me, since I didn’t actually consider what she wanted.”

My life is a sitcom.  My only lament is that I don’t have a connection to the hive mind to broadcast it to.  “For you to go away?”

“If that’s what somepony really wants, then that’s their right.  Not everypony easily falls into friendships like you and I do, and that’s okay,” she says with a helpless shrug.  “But a lot of the time, ponies want to be left alone because they’ve been hurt or—actually, no, that’s too condescending; forget I said that.  A lot of the time, ponies want to be left alone because that’s how they’ve learned to live their lives and it’s what works for them; maybe it is because they were hurt in the past, maybe they didn’t have anypony worth caring for or maybe they just had other things that were more important, but they’ve already made their decision, probably long before they ever met you.”

“So… leave them alone?”

“Sometimes,” she says.  “Maybe… but regardless of life’s ups and downs, most ponies do desire companionship of one manner or another.  In the right circumstances, even the grumpiest pony could find a lifelong friend in the unlikeliest of places, but it’s getting there that’s the problem.  Ponies who don’t respond well to overtures of friendship generally want most of all to avoid the shallow kind.  I think the best thing you can do in that kind of situation is to just… well, this probably isn’t the best example for you, but I’d suggest treating it like a date.”

I… what?  “What?”

“Well, a platonic, one-sided date, of course, but if you think about it…”  Her mood improving a bit as it leans toward teasing.  “The purpose of a date is to get to know somepony, compare your likes and dislikes and see if there’s any room for the two of you to grow together.  If the only option for friendship with someone is a serious one, then you have to treat it seriously and that includes asking yourself if you could really fit with that person and moving on from there.  If the answer is yes, then that should give you some idea of how to reach them.”

“And did it work?”

She shakes her head.  “She… left… for reasons that weren’t directly related to me but might as well have been.  I never really properly got to know her, so I don’t know what would have happened if I’d done things right.  It really hit me hard and I spent a lot of time talking it out with auntie—um—that is, Princess Celestia.  That’s one reason I jumped into foalsitting with all four hooves;  I had to go back out and keep trying to make friends, though, uh, in the end I haven’t really actually run into anypony like that since then.”

Cadance lapses into quietly looking out of the ferry for the rest of the trip, which isn’t too long this time of year.  Eventually, we can see Cloudsdale in the distance, which seems to bring her back to the present.  “Oh, uhh, sorry; I guess all of that wasn’t really what you wanted to hear.  I’m not good at the…” she gestures vaguely in the air.  “Uplifting princessly wisdom thing yet.  All I was trying to say was that moving to a new place can be hard, but you can’t let it stop you from going out and making new friends.”

“O…kay,” I answer as the ferry pulls into Cloudsdale and the half-full cabin is suddenly full of bustling ponies and flapping wings as most of them just leave over the side.

Cadance waits until all the activity has died down before finally getting up and lifting me onto her back, which seems like a very Celestia thing to do.  “Well, enough of that.  We came here to have fun, didn’t we?”


⁂


We do have fun.  The end.


⁂


Okay, okay, so the trip is worth more than that.  I find Cloudsdale rather fascinating in spite of it not really being a tourist town like Las Pegasus—particularly because it’s not a tourist town like Las Pegasus, actually.  There really is no way to make Cloudsdale ground-pony-friendly, even for those who can actually cast the cloud-walking spell, so instead everything is taken to the other extreme; there are no roads, buildings have entrances on all levels and the deep-fried fish stand where I get a drink the size of my head to quickly finish off and slowly fill back up with love is on its own little cloud floating around the city not unlike an ice cream cart.

Since there’s no brochures or tour guides telling us what to do, we just fly off, heading nowhere in particular.  It’s interesting enough just flapping from roof to roof looking at all the things that are different from life in Canterlot, and Cadance has more than enough enthusiasm for the both of us, prompting me to ask if she hasn’t been here before.

“Nope!” she cheerfully admits as we fly over what looks to be an empty sports stadium.  “I’ve told you before that I grew up in an earth pony village, right?  It was way out in the Baahamas; not even technically part of Equestria, but out in sheep country, so we didn’t even get weather deliveries out there.  I’ve wanted to come, but I’ve never just made the time since it wasn’t urgent and I didn’t have anypony to come with.”

Well, I can hardly argue with that.  I mean, there are touristy things in Canterlot that I’ve never done.  I can’t name any of them off the top of my head, but that also kind of proves the point, doesn’t it?

As for the sights, sounds and smells of Cloudsdale, there are plenty of interesting things to see and do, but the prevalence of fish in restaurants and cloud vendors is less an interesting curiosity to me and more something I could do without.  I’ve seen plenty of meat dishes served at the castle, but it’s always been politely subdued, not something you can smell from a mile away.  Unfortunately, Cadance notices me turning up my nose at them and gets it in her mind to take me to a fish and chips place for lunch to try and change mine.

She fails completely.  

I suppose, in theory, if changelings can eat pony food in order to fit in then I should be able to stomach fish, but… no thanks.  She pulls out the “When will you ever have this chance again?” argument, but it’s ineffective—not that I can tell her why.  At length she pouts and gives in once she realizes we’re making a scene and orders me the hayfries and mushroom burger I ask for, but it’s too late for our disagreement to go unnoticed.

The fish and chips shop has more than the usual complement of gryphons, which we’ve been seeing a few of here and there, and Cadance makes the mistake of asking if I’ve ever known one before.

“None I’d like to mention,” I grumble without even thinking about it.  “Even the nicer rich ones think honor means walking around with a chip on their shoulder and the poor ones are apparently in the business of kidnapping orphans.”

Cadance seems to be in a hurry to leave after that.  I make sure to bring my second drink of the day with me.


⁂


Late in the afternoon, we chance across a field of clouds that looks like it’s been put together as a three-dimensional playground.  Several areas are set up for different sports, while the rest is a mess of obstacles that form a series of courses.  It looks fun, so we give it a shot and I learn three things.

One, I’m apparently not nearly as good a flier as I thought.

Two, neither is Cadance, in spite of her having actually grown up as a pegasus.

And three, I get lost easily and am therefore an absolute master at cloud-hide-and-seek.

Ironically, it’s the third point that actually outs me as a tourist—sort of.

A whole group of fillies and colts gather around after the game, which I apparently won.  “That’s cheating, right?” one gruff voice says, though I think it’s good-natured.  “That’s gotta count as cheating!”

“Hey, be nice!” somepony else with a softer voice retorts.  “Albinism is a serious disease, can’t you see the glasses?”

“Your face is a disease, Breaking Wind!”  I seriously hope that’s a nickname.

A slim, older filly with a lightburst cutie mark comes up beside me.  “Hey, name’s Dazzleflash, what’s yours?”

“Whitewash,” I tell them.  Everypony stares at me.  “What?”

“Ah, don’t let em bother you,” Dazzleflash says, waving it off.  “You’re from the ground, right?”

“Yeah?” I say, prompting an explanation.

Dazzleflash shrugs.  “Eh, with your coat and mane, there’s no way if you were born here that your name wouldn’t have ‘cloud’ in it at least once.”

I give her a level look.  “At least once?  So, what, someone might have named me Cloudy Cloud?”

“Ask Nimbus Thunderhead the Seventh over there if you think I’m joking,” she says, jerking her head in the direction of a slate gray colt with black hair and a thunder cutie mark.

I’m tempted to tell them I’m actually a unicorn who’s been turned into a pegasus by a Discordian artefact.

We play tag instead and the clouds are lava.


⁂


Staring out into the sunset on the ferry home, I wonder how it is I had to become a changeling to feel like a normal pony… and feel like being a normal pony is actually an okay thing to be.


⁂


Twilight Sparkle and Moon Dancer are waiting for me after Cadance drops me off at home and says her goodbyes.  It’s moderately creepy having them both just standing there with blank looks when I open the door, though the second, smaller Moon Dancer riding on the original’s back tilts the situation back towards merely surreal.

Nopony would ever accuse changelings of not having a sense of drama.

I sigh.  “It’s time?”

Twilight nods.

“Figures,” I say, shaking my head and walking over the threshold.  “The cup on the stoop has something like a half a litre of love in it.  It’s a fraction of what I produced today, but it’s something and my amoreal sack hasn’t crystallized wholesale, so there’s that.”

I can hear Twilight banging her head on the threshold as I glide down into the basement.

A minute later, it’s actually Moon Dancer’s neurospast that comes down with the cup on her back, the real, nearly foal-sized Moon Dancer holding it in place.  I’m never going to get used to that.

“So, you’re giving up being a changeling to become a dragon?”  Moon Dancer asks through the neurospast as she empties the cup of love into the cistern.  I think it might actually be the first thing she’s said to me since Twilight came back and possibly the most normal that I can remember off the top of my head.

I shrug.  “Yeah, that was the deal,” I say, noncommittally.

She cocks her head.  “You don’t have to.”

I hesitate.  It would be a lie to say that I hadn’t considered it, but it would also be a lie to say I’d done so properly, so I stop and think.  Is becoming a dragon really what I want?  To become a creature of greed and hunger who will eventually grow too large to even enter a city, let alone properly interact with ponies?  Would that make me happy, or would settling for a life as a changeling, knowing I’m loved, make me happier?

The answer comes easier than I thought it would and actually surprises me.

“No, I don’t have to, but it’s what I want.  The hivemind makes me too uncomfortable and I hate having to avoid touching anyling.  The sheer capabilities and potential of changelings is incredible and there are things I’d really love to do with them… but I’d want to be in charge.  I’d want Twilight’s job or even my own hive.”

Moon Dancer looks me dead in the eye and says, “You can have them.”

I… frown.  “No, I can’t.  The hive mind would never allow it.  Changeling hives don’t get along, so helping create another one wouldn’t make sense.”

“Twilight is sure that she can rebirth me into a more proper changeling,” she says, walking over to the wall and sitting down next to it, the smaller Moon Dancer climbing on top of her head.  “She can do the same for you—anything you want to be.  She can make you the kind of changeling she is and you’d be able to shut off the hive mind completely.  You could completely isolate yourself… and you might even metamorphose into a queen while still technically being a part of ours when you want to be.  You’re smart, Sunset Shimmer.  I have no doubt that any project you want to do would benefit the hive enough to justify the resources.”

I wonder, offhand, when I stopped talking to Moon Dancer—or if I ever was?  “That’s flattering, but still… no.  I don’t plan on abandoning Twilight and her project, so having another kind of magic on hoof can only help when we need to approach problems from another direction.”

“Huh… yeah, I can see that,” Moon Dancer responds and I blink at the sudden casualness of it, as if she wasn’t invested in it at all.  “So, how does one become a dragon?”

“You don’t know through the hive mind?” I ask.

Moon Dancer shakes her heads.  “The hive mind’s collective knowledge doesn’t store every last bit of information.  I could try to work it out from the information that’s there, or I could ask someling who knows, like Twilight, or I could ask you.”

Oh, yeah.  Twilight had complained that the hive mind doesn’t make a very good library, hadn’t she?  “Well, the way I understand it, I saturate the egg with the changeling magic I’ve stored until it’s about ready to grow a soul, at which point it should essentially be my own little hive mind, which I then enter, and Twilight straight up murders my changeling body, leaving my soul nowhere else to go.  From there, someone uses my old body to feed more magic to the egg until it’s clear of any changeling magic and eventually it hatches.”

“That is correct,” Twilight Sparkle says from the door.  “Or mostly correct, in any case.  You neglected to include the stage after I ‘straight up murder your changeling body,’ wherin we shall continue feeding the egg your stored changeling magic for a time before slowly weaning you onto pure pony magic, but at that point it will be… none of your concern, so your memory of the procedure is adequate for your needs.  Shall we begin?”


⁂


There’s some shuffling as the cistern is capped off, Twilight procures the egg, I shed my pegasus disguise and everything is prepared.


⁂


The magic-resistant resin peels off the egg like one of those stupid wax-coated cheeses, except without the little tab of cloth that makes it easy to break the seal on.  Seriously, a little foresight would have helped a lot more than getting the bread knife from the kitchen.


⁂


My horn grows bright and hot as I pump magic into it, stop to gulp down more of it in liquid form and continue as quickly as possible.  I probably have nothing to worry about since it’s orders of magnitude faster than a natural incubation, but I press on anyway since my immortal gender is at stake.


⁂


I lose track of time somewhere around the tenth pod of stored magic.  When I’d insisted we do this in a single sitting, I hadn’t actually considered what it would entail.  If my horn wasn’t already curved, I think it would be warped that way by now.


⁂


I’m desperately chugging another pod of glowing green fluid when Twilight finally yells, “Stop!” and I freeze.  She lets me finish the pod and I wipe the spillage from my mouth with my bone-white arm.


⁂


For some reason, I had expected connecting to the egg as if it’s a hive mind to be difficult, but with no ability to regulate my connection, I all but fall in the moment I touch the egg.


⁂


The sensation of an empty hive mind is completely unlike the real thing.  Is this what it would have been like if I’d taken Moon Dancer up on the offer to become queen?


⁂


I only have a moment to think about it before a sharp pain enters the back of my head and takes away my ability to think.


⁂


Wait.


⁂


Was that the bread knife?


⁂


Did she seriously just kill me with the bread knife?


⁂


Really?
> Chapter Seventeen 【Twilight】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------




⁂




Moon Dancer was staring at me with both sets of eyes.

My voice was muffled by the bread knife in my mouth.  “What?”

Moon Dancer shot a look at the dead changeling body on the lab floor.  It was quite the sight, the tiny, bone-white figure lying there in a growing pool of its own green blood.  It had already been difficult not to notice how small she’d been, but she looked even smaller and more delicate now that she was broken.

“What?” I repeated, levitating the knife out of my mouth with my weak, green magic and cleaning it off with an only vaguely slimy rag.  I really needed a sink down here; slimy, sticky and gooey substances were all too common of an occupational hazard in my line of work and now there was blood, too.

Moon Dancer was still focused on the body.  “She’s… okay, right?”

I rolled my eyes and said, “She’s fine.  I don’t make mistakes.”

For some reason, she didn’t seem to be reassured.  In fact, if I didn’t know better, I would say that my statement had somehow had the opposite effect—incredulous disbelief.  “Can you check, somehow?”

I shook my head.  “No, that would not be a good idea; we want to minimize contact between our hive mind and her rudimentary one.  The danger will shrink as each treatment of magic by her neurospast flushes out the changeling magic, but for now she’s still a hive mind of one.  Regardless, we’ll know how things are going fairly quickly as the introduction of her soul to the egg should have pushed it two stages closer to hatching.  If it does not change from its mottled grey color to something matching the soul inside, then we shall know that something has gone wrong.”

Moon Dancer gave the body one last look and shuddered.  “Can I go?  I think I’m going to be sick.”

I frowned.  Both she and the nerospast she was riding were looking a little green.  “The hive mind can take care of that.  It should have done so already.”

“I—”  She turned away, heading for the stairs.  “I know.  I asked it not to.  I’m okay with a lot of things, but I’m not okay with it making me okay with dead bodies.”

I followed after her, shrugging the matter off as we headed back upstairs.  “Do as you like.  Someling will need to produce some more resin to shield the egg again, but the hive mind will take care of the rest with Sunset Shimmer’s neurospast, including the disposal.  It’s amazing, the options a fourteen-year-old prodigy has for that sort of thing.”

Moon Dancer let that comment go without a response and headed off in the direction of the living room as I made my way into the kitchen.  “Wait,” she said, holding me up.  “You’re not putting that back in the kitchen, are you?”

I blinked at her, looking up at the bread knife floating above me in the glow of my magic.  “Yes?”

Ponies have some of the strangest hang-ups.




⁂




Princess Cadance showed up unscheduled the very next day.  Moon Dancer and I had prepared sippy cups ahead of time as per Sunset Shimmer’s inspiration, but ended up not needing them after all.  For some reason, the princess of love seemed to take Sunset Shimmer’s absence rather poorly.

Hopefully she would get over it.




⁂




The house was noticeably quieter with Sunset Shimmer incubating in her egg.  If asked—I wasn’t asked—I preferred it this way, though I also found it somewhat unnerving.  Moon Dancer was a sound replacement; she was intelligent and quick to take instruction, but not quite as creative or driven as Sunset Shimmer.  If I were to rank the two of them, I would definitely place Sunset Shimmer as my number-one assistant… or, I would if Sunset Shimmer had actually done much assistant-ing to date.  She was rather behind on that front and would have a lot to make up by the time she had actually hatched.

That was going to be a while.

Come to think of it, I’m not sure if anyling ever told her just how long she’d be left incubating in her egg.  In fact, it had been implied that we would simply be dumping all of Sunset Shimmer’s stored magic into the egg, flushing it out with magic from her neurospast and hatching her forthwith.

The problem with that was that it wouldn’t explain where the family had acquired a dragon; they weren’t exactly the sort of  thing one picks up at the pet store… or so the hive mind said.  I wasn’t entirely convinced we needed a convoluted explanation or to play out the overwrought dramatization that the hive mind had collectively come up with like a committee script-writing team, but I couldn’t argue that it wouldn't, at the very least, be egregiously effective in gaining the god queen’s attention.

I had to remind myself that gaining the god queen’s attention was a good thing.  It was, in fact, the plan.

Oh well.  It wasn’t as if Sunset Shimmer would be noticing the passage of time while she incubated… probably.  Eggs obviously don’t have brains to think with, much less count the seconds, but we’d put her in there as a rudimentary hive mind so it would be interesting to see how she described the experience afterwards.

I was sure it would be fine.

As it was, Moon Dancer needn’t have worried over Sunset Shimmer’s health; the egg had taken on a gaudy red and gold pattern and was, by all indications, perfectly healthy.  Moon Dancer seemed relieved at this, which was strange since I still considered her my number-two assistant and her competition was literally an egg… though said fact might be more relevant if I had actually mentioned the assistant rankings anywhere outside of my own head.

A quick note to the hive mind and a “What?!” screamed from somewhere upstairs fixed that.




⁂




As of the monday after Sunset Shimmer got laid—the hive mind noted that Sunset Shimmer’s egg was laid many years ago, but I ignored it—the ongoing experiments with Shining Armor were going promisingly well.  As per my number-one assistant’s prediction, fine control remained an issue for him, but his improvements in power had already begun to be noticed by the adults at his school, which would likely prove useful—and the children, which would likely not.

He came home with a broken nose and sent five of the resident bullies to the hospital.

In spite of my previous assertion, data suggested that this result should produce excellent progress on all social tracks.  Empirical evidence suggested that Princess Cadance would rather deal with her own problems, but thought the undertaken actions were sweet.  This confuses me, as the colts in question had not been harassing Princess Cadance, but it is not unknown for ponies of her stature to assume that everything revolves around them.

Arguably, this is actually the case for God-Queen Celestia.

Changelings, of course, are much more humble.

In any case, back to the subject at hoof, I was able to record an improved mood in Princess Cadance and increased incidences of unambiguously positive interaction with Shining Armor on the following days, surmising that the data was correct in spite of the seeming contradiction in Princess Cadance’s initial reaction.  Thankfully, science does not require understanding—only writing things down—and once again, I thanked the hive that my mission did not hinge on any kind of social interaction.

Having run through most of my checklist, I frowned at the last item on it.  “Has anyone noticed the change in the color of your magic?” I asked Shining Armor, who was busy abusing his changeling form’s sleek carapace to clean himself of the sweat he’d accumulated during my tests.  It was rare to see him out of disguise, but that was true for all of us.

“Why would you ever think that anyone would notice a stallion with pink magic in highschool?” he asked, his voice slightly nasally from the brace over his nose.

“…That’s a yes?” I asked for clarification, getting a roll of his eyes in return.

“Yes, that’s a yes,” he said, tossing his sodden towel aside and resuming his disguise in a burst of pink fire.  “A few of the teachers have been giving me looks that suggest they think it has to do with my involvement with Cadance, Cadance has joked that it might have something to do with my time as a mare and the colts just think it’s hilarious—if they’re thinking at all.”

“No one is suspicious?” I ask.

He shakes his head.  “No, it’s apparently something that happens in rare occasions.”

I note that all down on my clipboard; ingenious things, these ponies come up with.  “So, would it be your estimation that, even should the matter be solvable, the return of your natural magical color would be detrimental to either your disguise or your social status?”

“Probably not, to the first,” he guessed and I nodded along with him since the first change didn’t seem to have raised any suspicions in that regard.  “Socially, it might make me seem flighty.”

“Not ideal,” I summarize.  “And Cadance?”

“Would probably be sad,” he admitted.  “Or at least a little pouty.”

“Something to avoid,” I agree and conclude that no attempt should be made to return the color of his magic, or indeed, risk it happening at all.  As it was, Princess Cadance was still putting off more melancholy than I liked since the little sometimes-pegasus ‘Whitewash’ had ‘gone back to live with her mother’ in… wherever.  Manehattan or something.  The whole thing had become far more of a headache than expected and I wondered how much of the hive mind’s offer just before we put her in the egg had actually been about maintaining that particular status quo; there were so many different perspectives mixed into such decisions that it could sometimes be difficult to tell.  The queen would be able to tell me, but I was smart enough not to ask.

“So?” Shining Armor said, getting my attention.

I scanned my notes again, just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.  “You’re stable and we want to keep you that way.  We’ll put you in a chrysalis over the weekend to heal your broken nose, so make sure to get your homework done early, but other than that, we’ll switch to Moon Dancer for all testing tracks from here on out.”

That seemed to be what he wanted to hear.  “Thanks, little sis,” he said, ruffling my mane as he took my words as leave to leave, leaving me alone with Moon Dancer, the tiny changeling nymph perking up from doing her own homework on the floor at the mention of her name.

“Am I…?” she asked in her tiny nymph voice, looking up at the chrysalis towering over her.

Since she wasn’t connected to the hive mind without physical contact with her neurospast, which was hibernating in the corner beside Sunset Shimmer’s, I had to guess at interpreting what she was alluding to.  “Yes.  Whatever happens to you, your neurospast will be fine, so I see no reason not to combine your experimental rebirth into a proper changeling with the experimental magical upgrades we’re testing.  I will also be adjusting your growth curve to catch you up to my height sooner rather than later, as there is no purpose in having an extra body lying around if you cannot pass for yourself without it.”

Moon Dancer seemed to have acquired a look of concern over something that I had said.  “…Is it a good idea to combine two experimental procedures like that?”

Ah.  I mentally raise my estimation of Moon Dancer by a notch for her excellent attention to laboratory procedure.  “Normally, yes, there would be a danger of cross-contaminating the results, but I’m not concerned,” I told her.

Odd, she seemed to be waiting for a continuation to my complete and self-contained statement.




⁂




With circumstances being what they were, Moon Dancer, too, had to wait until the weekend to be rebirthed as she would not be able to control her neurospast from inside the chrysalis until after said rebirth.  This meant fitting in another awkward foalsitting with Princess Cadance on friday night in hopes that it would prevent her from showing up over the weekend when nopony else would be around.  Explaining the absence of Shining Armor and Moon Dancer in such a situation would be easy, of course, but it meant that I would have to deal with her alone and noling wanted that.

Moon Dancer filled in admirably for Sunset Shimmer and recommended we simply tell the princess that we wouldn’t be around for the weekend.  No one listened to her, so we went forward with the awkward evening.

Why was it awkward?  It wasn’t, as one might otherwise expect, due to Shining Armor having joined in in order to do his part in soaking up Cadance’s ample radiant love.  That, at least, was on-script, as Opal Drop from school could—and often did—attest to.  No, it was the previously mentioned fact that Moon Dancer still couldn’t control her neurospast without physical contact that had caused so many headaches with the princess since Moon Dancer’s rebirth.

Solutions for the situation came in wide and varied from across the hive mind.  Someling had suggested that Moon Dancer could have a young, foal-aged sister that she would never be seen without, to which the rest of the hive mind had responded with unanimous castigation and firmly instructed him to watch the reruns before making any more inane comments.

Personally, I detest the very idea of reruns.  Having other changelings methodically recalling previous events and broadcasting them to the hive as best as they can remember causes its own morass of misunderstanding—especially by changelings who do not realize they are reruns and begin to inundate the hive mind with suggestions for year-old problems.

It is what it is, however, and I try to ignore it so long they don’t go about running reruns of reruns of reruns.  Anything beyond a second-generation recollection at most begins to get downright dangerous, creating strange and bizarre in-jokes that I’m not convinced make any logical sense.  Unfortunately, I have observed that not only changelings, but also ponies and especially gryphons not only engage in this sort of egregious mutation of facts through repetition, but actually enjoy it.

It’s the only possible explanation for Moon Dancer being referred to as a ‘suitcase filly’—a truly ridiculous appellation.

Anyling who had actually been paying attention would know that Moon Dancer had been spending her time at school and being foalsat by Cadance secreted away in her neurospast’s left saddlebag, not a suitcase.




⁂




“You have a most peculiar ability,” Queen Chrysalis mused, just standing there observing the form of Moon Dancer  floating in her Chrysalis.  Nothing had gone wrong this time; she had just come to check in on things in person.

As much as it is core to my being to dismiss the opinion of the hive mind, I cannot help but bask in the praise just a little.  “Thank you, my queen.”

She turned her head to look at me, raising one eye ridge.  “Don’t misunderstand.  I’m not talking about your adequate splicing work,” she said and turned back to the form in the chrysalis.  “You can hardly take credit for the quality of your samples.  I’m talking about your seeming ability to attract such interesting specimens.”

I cock my head and ask, “Interesting?  So far as I’ve observed, Moon Dancer’s sole unique quality is her apparent similarity to me, which likely comes down to little more than than a stray thought through the hive mind caused by someling seeing her on the street when I was choosing my appearance.”

Queen Chrysalis clicked her tongue in disapproval.  “And that is why you cannot take credit.”

I said nothing, as I knew the opening to a monologue when I hear one.

“Do you know, Twilight Sparkle, why it is that we live as we do, impersonating ponies and stealing the love meant for others?” the queen asked rhetorically.  “It does not take a brilliant mind to conceive the idea that the ruse is unnecessary—or even doing more damage than good.  Every time one of our collectors spends a day in a pony’s shoes, the feelings of confusion and of betrayal they leave in their wake results in there being less love in the world.  We are parasites in spite of our biology allowing for a more symbiotic relationship.  Why?

“The answer is ponies.

“Ponies, as a rule, do not like us.  I don’t blame them; changelings aren’t very likable to begin with.  We are a contradiction, and were it not for the hive mind, I doubt that our race would have survived as long as it has.  There are always exceptions, of course; you are not the first changeling to bring ponies into our confidence, nor even the first to bring them into the hive as changelings.  You might be the first to give one a proper, permanent connection to the hive mind, but it hardly counts when she’ll be like you—able to completely cut herself off at will.

“Regardless, the point is that such situations are not unknown to us.  They are rare, however, and yet you come across them so easily that you consider it normal.”

I frown.  “Is that why you offered Sunset Shimmer her own queenhood?  I don’t really think she’s as accepting of us as Moon Dancer is.”

Queen Chrysalis walked over to the resin-coated dragon’s egg and lifted it up to eye level with her magic.  “No.  Quite the opposite, actually; that was just good sense,” she said, running one hoof down the side of the egg.  “I would rather have a changeling connected to the hive—even tentatively—than a dragon whose work would not benefit us—a dragon who could one day betray us.  Remember, Twilight, that there are always exceptions to the rule, just as there are exceptions to the exceptions.  You may have attracted interesting specimens, but take care that you do not take their loyalty for granted.

“If there had been any sign that Sunset Shimmer meant us harm, I would smash this egg without a second thought.”  Slowly, gently, she set the egg down and walked back to the three chrysalises, two of which were occupied.  “She has grown attached, but not loyal as Moon Dancer has, even though they were both nymphs, and she, for longer.  She is a risk, but not too great a one that I am terribly concerned.

“This cannot be said for the… ‘princess of food,’ as she has been referred to humorously.  The situation is far from humorous.  Do not mistake your playtime with her for any real affection.  Do not think that just because you have been lucky so far, that she, too, will accept us as we truly are.  You are making progress, but she is more important than any of your work here, and you need to remember she—is—not—your—job.”

I was confused.  This had all the hallmarks of a reprimand, but I didn’t recall doing anything worth reprimanding, even in hindsight.

Queen Chrysalis pressed her chitinous non-lips together in a scowl.  “I’ll make it very clear, then.  You are not in charge here, Twilight Sparkle; Shining Armor is.  The hive will consider your input, but you do not decide anything about his life.  If he asks for your improvements—if he asks for anything at all—you will not only give it to him, but you will do so on his schedule.

“You will always—always keep a functional chrysalis available for him unless the hive says otherwise, which will only happen in an emergency.  You have three of the cursed things now, so that shouldn’t be a problem unless you attract even more hangers-on, and on that note—don’t.

“Sunset Shimmer was a special case.  Moon Dancer was a special case.  You do not need any more ‘assistants.’  I’m of half a mind to pull the cord on this whole foolish notion of you becoming Princess Celestia’s student, but enough of the hive mind likes it and even your colossal buzz-ups have been productive so far, so for now we’ll see how well your charms work on her, but don’t push your luck—do you understand me?—do not push your luck.”

I… blink.  I think that is the longest reprimand I’ve ever gotten from the queen that did not involve physical violence, but then, that crack in my face had rather complicated things to no end until I’d finally gotten a turn in one of the chrysalises, so maybe she’s keeping her temper in check.

“I said—do you understand me?” the queen repeated, demanding a response.

“Yyyyyyyyyyes?” I manage to answer, unthinkingly letting my reluctance draw it out into a question.

She snarled, but left it at that.  “That will have to do, I suppose,” she said and made to leave, only stopping at the door, to say one final thing.  “Oh, and you will be looking into Sunset Shimmer’s suggestions about chitin and horns.  It is fine to have one changeling with great power and no control, but any brood with so obvious a tell will be considered a failure.  If you wish to have any hope of fulfilling your aspirations, you will solve the issue immediately.”

I winced at the door slamming behind her, though at least she remembered to close them at all this time.  “You are not in charge here, Twilight Sparkle,” I mimicked in a squeaky mockery of the queen's voice.  “Yeah, well, neither are you, you cantankerous old sow.  Just because you speak for the hive mind doesn’t mean I have to listen to you.”

It actually did, but I didn’t concern myself with that.  Instead, I held my breath, anticipating the queen coming charging back in to injure me for my impertinence, but it seemed that I had successfully avoided broadcasting that thought over the hive mind.

Unfortunately, my relief turned out to be premature as I heard hooves stomping back down the stairs.  I attempted to scramble behind something, but before I knew it, the door to the lab had burst back open and two twisted black hooves had bucked me painfully in the side, sending me crashing into the wall between the two occupied chrysalises, narrowly avoiding an incredible disaster that would no doubt have been blamed on me.

“For hive’s sake!  How stupid do you have to be to gloat over the hive mind about not broadcasting your contempt over the hive mind!”

I groaned, wedged behind Shining Armor’s chrysalis.

For the record, I had been going to do the experiments on horns and chitin anyway.

No one came for me.




⁂




To my eventual relief, I had managed to avoid breaking anything thanks to the pony fluff and squishiness of my disguise.  Even so, I was still walking gingerly by the time Shining Armor and Moon Dancer came out of their chrysalises.

Shining Armor was the first out since the only reason he’d been rebirthed was his broken nose from the week previous.  As it was, the procedure was overkill for the scale of such an injury, but changelings weren’t built for long-term healing, so we had to make do.  Technically, as changeling chitin was used for channeling magic, we were actually damn lucky that it remained mostly functional when damaged and could be repaired so easily; it was my understanding that unicorns were not so lucky.

Shining Armor hadn’t bothered using Sunset Shimmer’s neurospast during his time in the chrysalis this time since he’d have had to stay in the lab or risk Princess Cadance seeing him when she inevitably showed up at exactly the wrong moment.  I didn’t see why we couldn’t just tell her that he’d relapsed, similar to how ‘whitewash’ had been changing back and forth before she’d left since that would have certainly made the princess happy, but apparently my opinion wasn’t wanted.

I mean, my opinion had pretty much never been wanted in the first place, but it had previously been slightly more common for them to listen to me regardless.  Shining Armor did, at least, wait for me to give him the all-clear before rushing upstairs to get back to his own projects, patting me on the head as he left, so it wasn’t as if I had become changeling non grata in the house.  Even so, I missed the days when I’d at least had basic collectors for parents that I could just order around.

Actually, I’d settle for having parents at all right now.  The kitchen remodel had been done for a while now and we were still working with a Night Light that was banned from actually approaching the house.  Frankly, I thought it wouldn’t hurt anything to have him around while Sunset Shimmer was in her egg, but a decision is a decision and I admit that doing so wouldn’t have sent the right message.

The problem was, we were sending an entirely different wrong message to everypony else.  The neighbors were beginning to talk about the virtual disappearance of our ‘father’ and the only thing keeping the worst rumors at bay was the fact that ‘mother’ was spending a great deal of time out with him at night.  It was a great excuse to have Princess Cadance over often, but that didn’t actually explain anything to nosey neighbors.  I once again prodded the hive mind about the subject as I had been doing fairly regularly, but the response was still ‘reply hazy; ask again later.’

Sometimes I wonder if the hive mind remembers that it’s supposed to actually disseminate information.

Moon Dancer finally came out of her chrysalis coughing and sputtering around dinnertime.  Physically, she looked fine, having even grown a few inches during her rebirth, but the rest of her improvements remained to be seen.  Sure enough, though, as she recovered and her body found its rhythm again, a new presence began to open itself up to the hive mind.

It was tentative at first, slowly sinking in before jerking back—closing itself off out of shock and reflex.  I found the behavior odd, as Moon Dancer had previously acclimated to the complete and unrestricted connection of a nymph while riding her neurospast, but it matched the behavior of newborn changelings so it wasn’t that it was unexpected, just unexpected from her.

What was unexpected was getting jostled aside while noting down the previous reaction by what turned out to be the neurospast in question.  The soulless shell made its way over to Moon Dancer and picked her up, clearly under her command.  I had thought she might be recovering slowly due to her fresh connection to the hive mind, but apparently she just hadn’t seen the need to struggle with her weak nymph body when she had a perfectly good pony one just standing around.

Actually, I supposed she technically wasn’t a nymph anymore.  ‘Nymph’ referred to the special type of changeling that resulted from the creation of a neurospast, but as evidenced by her variable connection to the hive mind even while in direct contact with said neurospast, that word no longer described her.  Of course, even with such proof already in evidence, I still had to approach her and touch her with my own hoof to test her ability to control her connection to the hive mind.  That it felt no different than touching any other changeling in the hive admittedly made me smile.

I even allowed her to rest and eat something before moving on to test her new magical strength.

I defy anyone to find a nicer changeling than me.




⁂




Moon Dancer’s changeling magic was a pale pink.  

This was, by and large, the worst possible result that I could conceive of because Moon Dancer’s pony magic had been a slightly different pink.  It was close, but not the same.  We knew this for certain thanks to her neurospast, which still retained the original color.  It was also close to Shining Armor’s new color—but again, not the same.  We knew this for certain because Shining Armor had graciously cooperated by providing his own for comparison through a process which involved me throwing pastries at him.

I got results; he got eclairs.  The hive mind judged this to be a fair trade and bakeries across equestria profited from a rash of strange ponies with pastry cravings.

This…  I wasn’t certain what I could do with this.  If Moon Dancer’s magic had deviated significantly enough from Shining Armor’s pink… well, it wouldn’t have been pretty, either.  I’d have had to throw out virtually all of my previous theories about why Shining Armor’s had turned pink, because they were almost all based on the color’s similarity to that of love.  Everything from there being some contamination or actual utilization of undigested love in the magic to other more esoteric theories involving the increased concentration resulting in the spent magic actually condensing back into love relied on that pink color.

Then I would have had to go digging three quarters of them back out of the trash because they might still apply to changeling-born changelings.  Moon Dancer might be an entirely proper changeling now, but her soul was still the soul that was born as a pony.  Noling actually knew if it made any practical difference, but I couldn’t rule it out.

Okay, so that would have been just as bad, I suppose.  This was apparently just how science worked, and the moral of the story was that Moon Dancer’s results would be stricken from the records and color theory was a waste of my time.  Thankfully, I had been banned from acquiring new assistants and I had not been ordered to make the color issue a priority, so I could afford to let it slide.

The hive mind was nice enough to point out that Queen Chrysalis’ line about obvious tells would apply to magic color, too, which is clearly a lie based on the existing body of evidence that was every single changeling in the world other than Shining Armor and Moon Dancer.

The hive mind refused to acknowledge this.




⁂




I missed Sunset Shimmer.

No one must ever know this.

The ever helpful segment of the hive mind informed me that I shouldn’t broadcast things to it if I wished them kept secret.

The less helpful segment of the hive mind recommended that I broadcast all my secrets to it, as that was what it was there for.

I told the hive mind to shut up while I was narrating.

I missed Sunset Shimmer.  No one must ever know this—especially not Moon Dancer.

Moon Dancer gave me a flat, unamused look from across the living room where she was double checking her math homework before we left for school.

Moon Dancer was just… too good of an assistant.  She did everything I told her to do quickly and efficiently with little to no complaint.  Frankly, she was boring.  That’s why she was still my number-two assistant.

Moon Dancer’s math book struck me directly between the eyes and I swore.

“Language, honey,” shouted a cultured, masculine voice from behind a newspaper in the kitchen.  That was our new father—our third Night Light—and the primary reason I missed Sunset Shimmer.

He was… kind of an asshole, and I really wanted to see her reaction to him.

“Love you too, pumpkin!” the cheery, stereotypical ‘father’ voice responded.

Okay, so he wasn’t exactly an asshole asshole, he was just fastidious, gregarious, dicacious, a whole lot of other ‘ious’ things and kind of anal about all of it.  He absolutely never broke character, especially when acting in character was beyond annoying, but what could you expect from someling whose job is to make ponies hate him?

Oh, yes, he was another one of those.  That was what had taken so long.  Some part of the hive had been stuck on the household having at least one changeling who had seen combat and was experienced with poisons, and he was apparently the nicest of the bunch.

For a certain definition of ‘nice,’ in any case.  While I was certain that Sunset Shimmer would not wish for the old one back, I very much wanted to see the look on her face when he made her clean her room—which was my room.  My room and Moon Dancer’s room, actually.  It wasn’t ‘proper’ to have any of us fillies rooming with Shining Armor, so it was going to be crowded.

Sleeping down in the lab?  What lab?  Ponies don’t have labs, silly filly!

It was going to be glorious.

“Come on, girls!” he announced, peeking in from the front hall.  “Time to head off to school!”

I squinted at the grandfather clock that told me it was six fifteen in the morning on the dot.

Imagining Sunset Shimmer seething in hate was the only thing that kept me going.
> Chapter Eighteen 【Twilight】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was time.

The chrysalis loomed over me not entirely unlike its namesake, more ominous than malicious.  It would have been a momentous occasion even if all I needed to do was to flip a switch, but this was far more than that.  I was going to be reborn.

Technically, I had already had been reborn once in order to fix the repeated trauma to my face, but this was a different matter.  This was a true rebirth.  The tests had been done, the experiments run and the chitin issue solved to the hive mind’s satisfaction.  I would step into that chrysalis with a nearly useless magical network, and when I eclosed, I would have taken the first step on the road to queendom.

I had wanted that step to be fuzzy changelings, but I had been overruled.  If chitin interfered with spellcasting, the simplest and most direct solution would be to just get rid of it.  I was, of course, biased; as a changeling who had a single disguise burned into my genetics, simply making changelings that are indistinguishable from ponies seemed like a starting point that was worth exploring.

The hive mind had disagreed.  I had argued that there was every possibility that I would be able to recreate the ability with a more internal structure, but I was overruled.  A changeling’s ability to disguise itself was one of the oldest things written into our genetics and not well understood.  I wasn’t forbidden from performing experiments to that end somewhere down the line, but here and now, the hive mind wanted me to start with the impossible and work my way down.

It burned inside that the hive mind’s directive had turned out so well.

I had started with Sunset Shimmer’s fantasy solution of separating the horn and chitin from each other.  It was harder than it sounded, requiring not only an insulating ring at the base of the horn, but an entirely separate magical network as well.  Fully expecting it to fail miserably, I hadn’t even bothered with the physical alterations to the horn that would have been needed to match it to Moon Dancer’s disguise, said disguise not being able to cover that which was insulated from it.

It had, unfortunately, worked.  In fact, it had worked so well that Moon Dancer had discovered the ability to disguise her horn.  I had simply copied the original magical network, never even thinking that doing so would allow the horn its own disguise.  Casting spells on top of maintaining disguises with two separate magical networks was apparently a bit of a shift to manage, but Moon Dancer found it entirely manageable.  You couldn’t even see the insulating ring at the base of the horn; the disguises were able to bridge the gap.

My attempts to take credit for this failed, which was hardly fair.  Disagreements or not, I’m the one who put in the hours upon hours designing the alterations.  Call it luck, but I doubt it would have gone half as well without my attention to detail.

Story of my life.

Well, fine.  The story had barely begun, and from here on out, things were going to change.




⁂




My back itched.

More specifically, Moon Dancer’s back itched, but since I was using it, I was the one who was stuck scratching with irritation, cursing my impatience.  As it turned out, skin irritation was not a completely unexpected result of re-bleaching and re-dyeing a pony between different coat colors, especially when you hurry the process.  In hindsight, with as fast as the rebirthing process was given all the excess love we have, I probably should have just taken Shining Armor’s lead and spent the two days doing something in the hive mind.   It wasn’t as if I didn’t have plenty of design work and growth simulations to immerse myself in.

But no, this was the entire purpose I’d acquired Moon Dancer for and I’d wanted to actually use her neurospast for once.  Admittedly, it was summer break and I probably hadn’t even needed to re-dye her neurospast to my colors, but I’d wanted to do the thing properly, damn it.

I suppose, at the very least, that I’ve learned not to rush the dyeing process—or at least not the rinsing afterwards.  I was tempted to go up and take another shower right now, but I was busy instructing Moon Dancer on how to check up on the progress of my rebirthing.

Pulling her horn out of the chrysalis with a wet, sucking sound, she spread a glob of waxy resin over the small access aperture and announced, “You’re fine.”

“The spells don’t return ‘fine,’” I told her, feeding my irritation into my sarcasm.  “I need more details than fine.”

“Hive mind says the results are fine,” she said, clarifying herself while still re-forwarding the information to me.  Attached to the packet of information was a distinct exasperation that implied I had been a recipient of it the first time as well and had simply ignored it.

That was entirely possible.

And irrelevant.

Also, I was fine.




⁂




Kneeling on the ground coughing and hacking my lungs free of amniotic fluid is not a pleasant experience.  Unlike Moon Dancer, I didn’t spend all day controlling one of the neurospasts, so I had to struggle to my hooves and stagger over to where I kept the lab rags and towels.

It was empty.

I curse everyone and their mother over the hive mind.

Most of them are amused; their mother, not so much.

Well, fine.  Since noling seems to have shown up to see me rebirthed, I’ll just stomp upstairs like this and take a shower.  I do as I’ve always done to assume my disguise, but the pink flames sputter and flicker, leaving me as bare and chitinous as the day I was born.

I let that sink in for a moment.

The flames were pink.

My magic was pink.

You know what?  No.  I didn’t have time to think about that or how many samples I would need in order to actually prove that it wasn’t just a coincidence and pink was the new green.  I didn’t care what it meant that my pink was exactly the same as Shining Armor’s pink, leaving Moon Dancer the odd changeling out, because my disguise had failed to take hold.

That was a problem—and not just a problem problem, but a massively actually terrifying problem because the exams for Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns were tomorrow and all of my plans hinged on me actually being able to be there.

I tried to calm myself—tried not to panic.  Surely one failed disguise didn’t mean anything.  I hadn’t changed a single thing from Moon Dancer’s previous rebirth, so there was no reason there should be any actual problems.  Just to reassure myself that everything was going to be fine, I directed my magic to levitate the two day old glass of water I’d left for myself because I couldn’t count on anyling actually helping me for anything.

If the hive mind had expected me to drop the glass for it to dramatically shatter like all my hopes and dreams, it would remain disappointed.  Instead, my horn just sparked and sputtered; the glass failing to even so much as wobble.

I was doomed.

If I couldn’t use magic, I would fail the exams.

Me.

Fail exams.

Everything would be ruined.

The hive would turn on me like sharks scenting blood.

I set to panicking.  In theory, some would have said that there was no time for panic, but I would argue that there was no time not to panic.  Rather than waste time trying to calm myself, I worked myself into a fervor casting again and again—levitation, light spells… levitation… light spells…  Okay, I didn’t actually know a whole lot of actual pony magic since there hadn’t been much point as weak as changeling magic was, but I hardly think it mattered.

None of it worked.

No matter how hard I tried and tried, all I got was sparks and the odd wobbly mote of pink.

This wasn’t working.  I was going to need…  I cringed to even think it.  I was going to need… help.

“Moon Dancer!” I shouted as loud as I could and waited.  One.  Two.  Three.  No response.  “Moon Dancer!” I shouted again, and again there was no response.

Frustrated, annoyed and a little bit scared, I took to my wings and buzzed out of the lab and up the basement stairs.  I’d be in even bigger trouble if I went out into the house without a disguise, but I could yell from here, and…  Actually, that wasn’t a great idea either—hadn’t been a great idea to begin with.  Not only was there the chance that an inconvenient princess could hear me, but my voice had the typical changeling buzz to it.

I did not want to end up attracting the wrong kind of attention, which meant… ugh, fine.

I opened myself up to the hive mind and shouted for Moon Dancer there.  The irritated grousing I got from Shining Armor informed me that the two of them were out having hayburgers with Cadance.

I was not jealous.

In no way was I jealous.

It was just funny that the moment I have to spend a couple of days in a chrysalis, suddenly they’re off to have hayburgers.  Moon Dancer doesn’t even like hayburgers as much as I do.

Whatever.  It was fine.  I wasn’t upset.  Instead, I focused on informing Moon Dancer that something had gone wrong with my rebirthing and I needed her help to narrow down what could be causing it in the blind hope that it would be fixable before the exams.  If this had happened only a few weeks later, I would have the option of borrowing Moon Dancer’s changeling body for the exams, but while she had almost caught up to me in apparent age, she still looked a year or two younger.

Wait, wouldn’t that mean that Moon Dancer was having hayburgers with her neurospast and should be lazing around the house somewhere in her changeling body?  I did not appreciate being jerked around like this when I had a real, serious problem here and I said so over the hive mind.

…

Apparently Moon Dancer’s changingling body had joined them as a friend from school.

That meant that Moon Dancer… had gotten two hayburgers.

That just wasn’t fair.

I didn’t have time to bemoan my lack of hayburgers, however, so I had to push past my sorrow and growling stomach.  I needed Moon Dancer as soon as possible and I said as much.

The hive mind informed me in no uncertain terms that the four of them were going to the theatre.

Surely Moon Dancer’s friend from school could bow out?  It wasn’t as if Moon Dancer hadn’t already gotten her two hayburgers, and this was important!

Apparently Cadance had gotten ahold of four tickets and wanted to take Shining Armor and his sisters and they’d had to go through a whole mess of hoops to explain Twilight’s absence and stage a meeting for Princess Cadance with Moon Dancer’s ‘friend’s’ parents in order to set this whole thing up, so no, Moon Dancer would not be coming home.

I cursed and I swore over the hive mind; I’m not even sure what the difference between the two is, but I’m sure I did both.  This wasn’t happening.  This could not be happening.  I hemmed and I hawed and I fretted, trying to come up with something I could do rather than just spend the entire afternoon and evening trying to set myself on fire with tiny little sparks from my horn.

There was… one option, I supposed.  I was loathe to do it, but there was too much at stake here for me to ignore the possibility.  Out of options, I swallowed my pride and… gave Moon Dancer permission to use my body in any way she wanted.  In order to troubleshoot my magic issues, I mean.  She was the only one who actually had experience with this magical network configuration, so she might be able to tell me what was wrong.

It wasn’t actually an absolutely terrible experience, having someling else use your body.  It wasn’t comfortable by any means, but it was… bearable.  Actually, it wasn’t unlike the feeling of being bloated on love, which was a sensation that we’d all gotten very familiar with in the past few months.  What I wasn’t used to was having that bloated feeling localized in other parts of the body or, worst case, in my entire body.

Moon Dancer was not gentle.

I would have staggered if I’d been able, but Moon Dancer had a significant amount of experience with neurospasts and she managed to keep me on my feet just fine, but it was clear she’d never actually had need to practice with bodies that were actually occupied.  There were reasons that borrowing entire bodies wasn’t common.

Just when I thought I’d gotten ahold of myself, my entire world tilted—or half of it did, anyway.  The profound sense of vertigo was so intense that I didn’t even notice my horn lighting up and… lifting the glass of water to my lips with no problem.  The two-day-old water tasted stale, doing nothing to wash away the overwhelming disdain of the hive mind.

I slammed shut my connection to the hive mind.

The glass fell and shattered.




⁂




I sat leaning up against the chrysalis I’d come out of in the complete and utter silence of an empty house on top of an empty hive mind.

I was shaking.

It was obvious in hindsight, I supposed, that a changeling who had gotten used to riding her neurospast around and using it in tandem with her changeling body would have no problem channeling magic through two magical networks into two different foci at the same time.  I had known that the sort of things she could do with her neurospast hadn’t been quite what you’d call normal, but the sheer vertigo that even now turned my stomach spoke of an ability to multitask that I don’t think I could have predicted.

And I had to learn to do it in less than a day.

And I was still shaking.

It was more disorienting than I had expected, shutting myself off completely from the hive mind.  Even when I wasn’t listening to it, even when I was keeping secrets from it, my efforts to block it off had always been… less than perfect, like voices behind a closed door.  Now, the door was still there; I knew I could open it with just the slightest effort, but for once all the cracks had been filled in—the whole thing buried behind layers and layers of insulation.  I was completely isolated.

It was slightly maddedning… and a tiny bit addictive.

I was, after all, genetically predispositioned to separate myself from the hive mind—to do exactly what the hive mind wouldn’t.  It seemed to forget that a lot.  It rankled, being told what to do as if I’m just a normal changeling with an independent streak.  Yes, this whole thing with Princess Cadance was important, but as had been made very clear to me, dealing with her was not my job.  I shouldn’t have had to deal with the changelings whose job she was complicating everything I do.

That was… neither here nor there, though, I suppose.  I can’t blame her or Shining Armor for my current situation, but all the same, I’d be handling this all a lot better if it wasn’t for the constant pressure and disagreements from the hive mind… and if I could actually ask for help from my own assistant without being shamed out of the room.

Maybe… maybe I should cut my losses and move on.  Moon Dancer was entirely capable of being both Moon Dancer and Twilight Sparkle.  I could go somewhere else—find another identity to take over and work in silence.  I would, at least, still have Sunset Shimmer to be my assistant.

Then again, I doubted that the hive mind would entirely appreciate me leaving my lab and three entire chrysalises behind to a family that didn’t even really need a single one.

Although…  Hrm.  Actually, I did have an out, and it was even a pre-approved one.  Not for the first time, I don’t think anyling in the hive mind really thought through what it would mean if I became the god-queen’s personal student like Sunset Shimmer had been.  True, Sunset Shimmer had been an orphan, but she had hardly been the only young pony that Celestia had ever taken under her wing and a lot of those young ponies had lived at the palace with her—especially the particular fillies and colts who had special needs.

There was a light at the end of the tunnel.

All I had to do was learn to use my horn properly in under a day.

My stomach rebelled at the idea, but I got up anyway and tried to remember how Moon Dancer had done it.

I wasn’t going to enjoy this.




⁂




It was early evening by the time the others returned from the theatre.  I would have thought that my continued absence from the hive mind would have made it clear that I didn’t want to speak to any of them, but it unfortunately had the opposite effect.

Head hanging low and panting from exertion, I stiffened when I heard the door to the basement open and close.  The heavy clopping of hooves on the stairs could only be one pony.

“Oh good, you’re not dead,” came the voice of Shining Armor from the door to the lab.

I didn’t even look at him, nor did I have the breath to curse him out.

“I’m serious,” he said, walking in and circling around me, giving me a once-over.  “We actually weren’t sure you hadn’t had a brain aneurysm and keeled over; I was worried.”

“Well, that would have made things awkward with Cadance, so I guess the hive mind can’t blame you for that,” I snarked back, not mentioning my previous thoughts about being easily replaced if it should come to that.

Shining Armor didn’t seem to know what to say.  One awkward silence later, he pinched the bridge of his nose in the crook of his hoof and let out a sigh.  “Can you not do that?”

“I’m not doing anything,” I told him, and it was true.  My head felt like it was splitting in two and just talking to him was enough to keep me occupied.

“You’ve completely blocked out the hive mind,” he reminded me as he made his way over to the cistern and began to unload six saddlebags worth of love.  “It’s making this weird.”

“Your face is weird,” I grumbled with no particular heat or meaning as I swayed on my hooves; not exactly my best rejoinder.

Shining Armor shook his head and continued emptying various identical sports bottles into the cistern in silence.  Once he was done, he packed the bottles back up into the saddlebags, reserving one.

“Hey,” he said, making sure he’d gotten my attention before tossing the last bottle of love in my direction.

I stared blankly at it the entire time until it struck me directly in the face and sent me tripping over my hooves to the floor.

Shining Armor cringed at the impact, looked like maybe he was going to come over and help me and then thought better of it.  Eventually, the sheer awkwardness pushed him to edge his way over to the door and step out.

I was sorely tempted to just lie there for a while, but I couldn’t ignore the deadline bearing down on me and figured that some love was probably just what I needed right now.  Slowly, weakly, I pulled myself up into a sitting position.

Sitting there scanning the room for the bottle of love I’d been assaulted with, I noticed the sound of the door at the top of the stairs opening.  That would be Shining Armor leaving, I assumed, but I didn’t hear the door close.  Just when I began to suspect I’d just missed it, he spoke up.  “In case it wasn’t obvious, Moon Dancer is up here if you need her.”

I, of course, didn’t answer, and eventually he shut the door and walked off, the soft clopping of hooves echoing through the wooden structure of the house and turning to barely audible thumps when he reached the carpeted living room.

I finally spotted the bottle of love at the back of the lab, wedged underneath one of the tables.  Scowling at it and not feeling like crawling under there, I tried to fish it out with my magic.  It wasn’t entirely hopeless; I had, at least, made some progress, now able to make pops and sparks at the location of whatever it was I was trying to manipulate instead of just at the point of my horn.

As expected, this didn’t help me actually get the bottle out from it’s dark and sticky domain.  I could, of course, have just gone to get some love from the cistern, but I was annoyed and feeling stubborn, so I continued to try, closing my eyes against the hissing and spitting of the magic coming from my horn.

I was doing it wrong.  I mean, obviously I was doing it wrong since what I was doing wasn’t working, but no amount of attempting to brute force it would help.  I knew that; I was just too tired and spent to try and twist my perception in any attempt to do it right.  Maybe I was hoping that if I pushed enough power into my attempt, one of the little pops or snaps would be strong enough to jostle the bottle free, or maybe I was just so disassociated from what I was doing that I didn’t care.

Either way, that was when it happened.

The rugged, steel sports bottle lifted up in my pink magic… and crumpled, splattering love everywhere like a teenaged colt getting attention from an attractive mare.

I just sat there, stunned, absently wiping the love off my face.

Looking down at my pink-smeared foreleg, I licked it.

Buzz it all, that had been good love, too.




⁂




I was not so lucky as to be able to repeat my stunt at will.  Honestly, I can barely remember what I’d been thinking, let alone the twisted mental gymnastics required to only use half of the magical network in my body.  Even so, I had a few more near-successes after filling up on love from the cistern that there was some small amount of hope that I would figure it out in time so long as I didn’t actually manage to give myself a brain aneurysm as Shining Armor had suggested.  The love did manage to take the edge off my splitting headache, but I still felt like I was trying to pry my head apart every time I tried to do two different things with my magic.

It wasn’t until two in the morning that I realized that I could have been using Sunset Shimmer’s neurospast to practice identifying the feeling of having two different magical networks in the same way Moon Dancer had with hers.  I hadn’t thought too much about it before, partially because I couldn’t actually cast anything in my current body and partially because I hadn’t wanted to connect to the hive mind, but, with it being a neurospast, I didn’t actually need to connect to the hive mind to connect to it—just touch it physically—and I was getting desperate.

At the very least, using the neurospast allowed me to clean up all the love from my little accident.  I poured all of the recovered love into a jar; since love wasn’t actually an entirely physical thing, any contaminants should filter out easily and noling should be the wiser about my carelessness.

The neurospast turned out to be a massive help.  It would have been a lot more help if I’d thought of it before ruining my own magical network, but at length it paid off—eventually.   It was after five in the morning, going on six, when I felt a sensation from somewhere behind my horn not unlike pony ears popping, and the levitation I’d barely managed to do finally stuck.

I struggled to keep it up—struggled to keep that feeling going so I could get a better grasp on it.  Once again, the remains of the sports bottle I was levitating crumpled in the grasp of my magic, but I didn’t let it distract me.  I held onto it desperately, and, to my triumph, I was able to hold onto it.

“In your face, you stupid hive mind!”

The hive mind took that opportunity to inform me me that it didn’t have a face.  Also, my desire to gloat had reopened my connection, so there was that; I didn’t let it ruin my morning.

What ruined my morning instead came five minutes later when my complete and utter exhaustion had caught up to me and was dragging me off into blissful unconsciousness.

The basement door opened.  “Time to get up, honey!  Today’s the big day—best to get an early start!”

I was going to kill that changeling some day.




⁂




I would deny to my grave any assertions that ‘daddy’ not letting me sleep had any kind of silver lining… but I had to eat my breakfast cold because it was an extra two hours until I was actually able to maintain my disguise and use my horn for magic.  Normally, maintaining a disguise wouldn’t take any additional effort, but, I’d already established that having two different magical networks is apparently ten times more complicated than using just one for two different things, which just sounded backwards, if you asked me.

“You’re sure you’re ready?” Shining Armor asked as I spooned soggy, room-temperature Celesti-O’s that had been poured two hours ago into my mouth.  “You’re only going to have one shot at this.”

“All I have to do is feed a bunch of magic into the egg to hatch it and all the extra should be automatically dumped into fueling temporary growth,” I told him.  “With all the adjustments I’ve made after putting Moon Dancer through half a dozen rebirths, I should have the power to slingshot Sunset Shimmer to manticore-sized, at least.”

“And you think a rampaging dragon is all it takes to become Princess Celestia’s new student?” he asked, unconvinced.

I stared blankly into my Celesti-O’s, trying to remember the rest of the plan.  “It’s been six months since Sunset Shimmer disappeared, and ponies have started to talk about whether or not it’s time for her to move on.  Stuff like that.  In her presence.  Changelings.  They’re changelings.”

Shining Armor stood there for a moment, then sat and buried his face in his hooves.  “Great mother,” he groaned.

“Hey!” I objected, insisting, “There’s more to it than that!  They were subtle and… and…”  I stopped to yawn.  “I did research on how she came across all of her old students and… stuff.  All I have to do is stand there and… magic.”

He looked me up and down and gave me a look that asked if I could even do that much.

That… was fair.




⁂




We weren’t actually due at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns until the second testing period at one in the afternoon.  This gave my ‘doting father’ enough time to take me out to the park to ‘wake me up and get my mind off the tests.’  We spent two hours playing frisbee, catch, dodgeball and anything else he could think of to run me ragged without having to actually do anything himself.

I was wide awake and exhausted when he decided we could shower and spend the other half of the morning picking out a nice outfit for me to wear to the exams.  Tragically, in spite of starting out with over four hours, we were ‘running late’ and didn’t have time to go several blocks out of our way for hayburgers; I was given a fruit cup from the grocery store followed by unsweetened yogurt that he’d somehow forgotten to give me with the fruit cup.

It was going to be painful when I killed him.

Just about the only bright side to the day was that I was apparently adorable in a white blouse with a plaid skirt and tie, because the only necessity I wasn’t short on was love.  Actually, it was kind of concerning the amount of love I was getting from certain ponies as we found our way around the CSGU campus, though by far the one that made me grind my teeth was the scowl I got from the old tawny mare who was overseeing the exams.

“I’m afraid that clothing is not allowed during exams,” she informed us, looking down her nose at me through thin-rimmed half-moon glasses, her lips pressed into a thin, unapproving line.  “We’ve found that it encourages prospective students to smuggle in…  Hrm…  unapproved exam materials.”

My left eye twitched.

I… breathed.  Every muscle I had was aching and taught with pure, focused hate, and if I said or did anything, I was liable to actually make good on my threats of entirely justified murder.  I tried, instead, to focus on Sunset Shimmer’s egg, which was being wheeled down into the front of the room.

‘Daddy’ patted me on the head.  “Aw, that’s too bad, honey; I know how much you were looking forward to showing off your outfit.”

And that’s how I became the princess’ student by hatching a dragon and turning my parents into potted plants.
> Chapter Nineteen 【Sunset】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------




⁂




Between being born as a changeling and being born as a dragon, I had to say I preferred the latter, though I was a little concerned about the ability of my baby dragon brain to process the world in a sane and sensible manner.

One moment, I was floating in empty silence of my personal hive mind shrinking and solidifying around me while I expressed my incredulity over being killed with a bread knife on repeat.  My sensation of time seemed to slow and stretch as the biological processes of my unborn body took over, then the next thing I knew, I found myself breaking free of my shell.

The thing was… my shell, as far as my infantile dragon brain was processing it, appeared to be the domed roof of the CSGU testing wing.  More than that, instead of seeing what must have been a nest of baby blankets, the entire city of Canterlot seemed to spread out into the distance.  Even the palace itself was barely a stone’s throw away—a mobile?

All in all, it was the most surreal thing I’d ever seen.  So much so, that in any other circumstance I’d have dismissed it as a dream, but having spent so long alone in my own mind waiting to be hatched, there was no doubt in my mind that what I was seeing was at least partially based in reality.  In spite of my obviously fantastical interpretation of the world, there was a life and energy to it that screamed out to me that I was alive.

I felt… good.

Not only was it entirely unlike any sort of dream, but it wasn’t what I’d expected the experience of being in the body of an infant reptile to be like, either.  Maybe my metabolism would catch up to me eventually, but right now, I felt like I was glowing with power.

Actually, I was literally glowing with power.  How odd.  It actually reminded me of Celestia’s—suddenly, the entire world seemed to collapsed out from under me, both physically and metaphorically.  The buildings and scenery shot up around me, growing first to their proper size, then slingshotting in the other direction into great white monoliths.  At the same time, I felt all the energy I’d been bursting with drain out of me until all I was left with was a tiny candle burning deep inside of me.

I blinked.

I blinked again.

Now I was sitting in a pile of straw, there was a hole in the ceiling, and Princess Celestia was telling Twilight that she had ‘a very special gift’ and inviting her to become her own personal protégé.  I was about as confused as she was pretending to be, but by the moment of overwhelming relief that flashed over her expression before she started jumping around shouting “Yesyesyesyesyes!” I guessed things were going to plan?

Small bits of marble rained around me and I sneezed.  I looked up at the hole in the ceiling and my tiny infant brain finally made the connection.

I guess my life as a dragon came with a free preview?

I had to admit, not only were the enchantments that kept Canterlot standing impressive work, but even more impressive was the faith that ponies had in them.  Maybe it was just me, having lost my parents in the way I did, but I found it hard to take my eyes off the hole in the ceiling, some part of me insisting that the rest of it would come down any minute while the princess talked to Twilight and her family.

I was only listening to the conversation with half an ear, partially because I’d heard it all before and partially because half an ear was all I had.  That… was something that was going to take some getting used to.  An exploratory claw found some sort of frill on the side of my head, and that was it.  The world seemed muted, and any attempt to focus my ears on the conversation came up blank.  I wasn’t deaf by any means as I could still follow the conversation, but the loss was noticeable.

My attention then naturally passed on to the appendage I was using to probe the side of my head, and the rest of my body.  I was… a pudgy yellow, red and gold blob with claws on the end of each leg.  A sense of déjà vu tickled in my memory as I wiggled the claws until a moment of panic overtook me as I remembered my brief experience on the other side of the mirror.  My… hand… immediately went to my forehead and felt nothing there.

I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel about that.  It turned me up inside and my eyes began to water, but I refused to cry, infant body be damned.  If I hadn’t already spent a while as a pegasus, I don’t think I would have handled it nearly as well.  As it was, my sniffles attracted the attention of the rest of the room and I self-consciously realized that the first thing Princess Celestia had seen was me sucking on the end of my tail.

When had that happened?

“Oh my,” she exclaimed, and I wasn’t sure if her response was concerned or adoring as she lifted me up in the warm, golden light of her magic as she had countless times before I’d become a cantankerous, ungrateful bitch of a teenager.

Now I was crying.  The world closed up around me as my sniffles turned to sobs and I felt large white forelegs wrap around me.  This…  I…  I couldn’t remember the last time she’d held me.  Sometime while I was growing up it had just… stopped being what she did, and after everything that had happened, I’d felt in my bones that it would never happen again.

I cried and I cried and I clung to her as hard as I could.  There was a tiny, remote part of me that insisted I should feel guilty for pretending to be something I wasn’t, but I didn’t care.

I was home.




⁂




Ah, narcolepsy, my old friend, how I missed you not at all.  Dragons, it turned out, were no exception to the rule that infants spend at least sixteen hours of the day asleep, and the remaining eight invariably coincide with the adults trying to get some of their own.  I was therefore a little grumpy when I was awoken by the cold metal of a stethoscope to find myself in a brightly lit and distinctly crowded hospital room and expressed my displeasure in as natural and instinctive a manner as my body presented me with.

It involved teeth.  Lots and lots of teeth.

“Ah, hrm.”  The doctor pursed his lips, levitating the severed end of his stethoscope up for his inspection as I chewed… and chewed and chewed and chewed.  I was busy trying to drowsily snuggle myself down into whatever bedding I’d been placed on, not really concentrating on what my mouth was doing, but it did seem to be taking a while.  The consistency reminded me of those cheap wax candies accompanied by a few bits that resembled gummies, but they were no match for me.

“Doctor?” the voice of Princess Celestia prompted, voicing her curiosity.

“Ah, yes, well,” the doctor prevaricated.  “I’ve sent for any records we have on dragon physiology, but I’m not expecting much.  ‘Hardy’ doesn’t begin to describe them, and I don’t believe we’ve ever had one in our care.  I can’t say much without knowing what I should be looking for, but her breathing and heart rate are low, but stable; no sign of arrhythmia.  Temperature is wildly beyond what would be normal for a pony, but as I don’t see any accompanying signs of inflammation, I’m going to assume it’s within her normal range… and I suppose I might as well mark her down as ready for solid foods, as well.”

“Quite,” the princess agreed with a light chuckle.  “And what do the naming spells say?”

If I had ears, they’d have perked up.  This, was kind of an important moment and I didn’t want to miss it.  The light was still excessively bright, but I fought myself to wakefulness.  It was unfortunate that that wakefulness brought with it a terrible realization.

Naming spells had nothing to do with the body and everything to do with the soul.

Wide awake, I took in my surroundings, trying to come up with some way to stop this, but short of outright attacking the doctor, I came up blank, and even if I’d wanted to do that, I couldn’t actually seem to locate him.  Between Twilight’s family, Princess Celestia and a nurse, by the door, there would barely be enough space to fit another pony in the room.

“No response,” the doctor said, allowing me to track the voice back to… uh… well, the only stallion in the room.  The one with the remains of the stethoscope around his neck.  Twilight’s father.  Right.  He was some sort of pediatrician, wasn’t he?

Look, I was an infant dragon who’d just been hatched.  Give me some slack, okay?

It took a moment for my little infant brain to actually catch up to what Night Light had said.  No response?  I…  I do have a soul, right?

“They’re rather delicate spells, and I expect even as a newborn, this one is resistant enough to magic that we won’t get anything useful out of them.  Why not let little Twilight do the honors?”

Oh.  Oh, that was brilliant.  Right, of course.  Night Light was a changeling, so of course they’d have this all handled.  I gave him a closer look, and he gave me the impression of a gentleman professional, which was something of a relief.  Could it be that we finally had a decent father figure for the family?

Wait, let Twilight Sparkle do what, now?

“Spike!” Twilight shouted.  “Imma call her Spike, like her tail!”

Oh tartarus no.  No way was I going to let that overgrown cicada stick me with a name like that!

“I don’t think she likes it,” Princess Celestia observed, coming to my rescue.  “Nor do I think that will be necessary, my little pony.  It just so happens that I know the old draconic version of the spell, which I’ll cast in just a moment, with the doctor’s permission?”

Night Light stood stock still for a brief moment, and while I would never again be able to feel it, I could easily imagine the panic that would be running through the hive mind right about now.

It would be very similar to my own, I expected.

Night Light’s hesitation only lasted a moment, unfortunately, as there was only one possible answer.  “Of course, your majesty,” he responded, quickly bowing and backing away.  I got the peculiar impression that he was placing himself closer to the door in case he was going to have to make a run for it.

Having been distracted by Night Light, I flinched away when a flash from Celestia’s horn startled me and I had to blink my eyes clear.  Wow.  That was a lot of power for a naming spell.  Was my magical resistance that high, or was the spell intended for full-grown dragons?  Hopefully it was the former, because if the changelings pulled a runner, I wanted to be right behind them.

I glanced down at my stubby legs.

Yeah, that wasn’t actually going to happen.

Cornered and lacking any real options, I prepared myself for Princess Celestia’s declaration and the inevitable subsequent anger.  I wasn’t sure if trying to pass myself off as somedragon else in an attempt to infiltrate the royal family was actually a crime, but I got the feeling that the princess was going to be very, very disappointed in me.

“My little ponies, may I introduce to you…”  Princess Celestia hesitated, taking a sharp breath.  “Iskloreat Valignat Ixenvorel.”

I blinked.

The changelings blinked.

Princess Celestia had her lips pressed together, not in consternation or anger, but something entirely different.  She…  She looked…  Her eyes had started to water and her breath grew shallow.  Nopony said anything and I tried to look like a dumb, innocent foal, though I’m not sure if she could actually see me clearly through the… the… tears.

“I—I’m sorry, my little ponies,” she said, turning quickly away and ducking out of the room.  “I’m afraid I need to… go.  Something has come up.”

The silence lasted for several minutes, nopony seeming to believe what they’d just seen.  All except for Twilight, that is, who seemed to be crossing her eyes as if trying to touch the bridge of her nose with her tongue.

“Isk-ixen-what?” she blurted out, breaking the silence.  “Imma just call you ‘Spike.’”




⁂




It wasn’t long before the royal guard arrived.  My tiny heart threatened to jump out of my scaly chest at the sight of the gold armor, but in this case, the potentially-collective noun was singular, representing only a scrawny recruit who’d been sent to inform Twilight Sparkle and her parents that the princess would be occupied for the rest of the day, but the timetable they’d discussed for moving Twilight into the palace would remain unchanged.

As for me, I would obviously be spending at least a few days in postnatal care here at the hospital, after which I would apparently be joining her.  I was frankly a little lost as to the convoluted chain of events that would’ve had to have taken place for me to be hatched during what had evidently been Twilight’s entrance exam for Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, let alone the legal gymnastics involved in having me declared the legal child of a ten year old filly and remanded into the care of the crown until she was of an age to take care of me, but so long as everything was working out, I was adamant not to worry about it.

Of course, even if something did go wrong, I’d still have to force myself not to worry about it.  Mental capacity aside, I was an infant and the near future promised to be very, very boring.  As it was, I counted myself very lucky that my infant lizard brain actually seemed to be functioning alongside my teenaged soul, but then, I’d formed a sort of hive mind to hold me when I moved into the egg.  Presumably, if the container was too small to hold me, then the rest of me would still be running on that virtual hardware.

Okay, to be honest, I just pulled that out of my supple, scaly ass, but it sounded like something that could happen.

Once the princess’ message had been delivered, I was taken out of the exam room and placed in isolation, which amounted to a glass box in a cubicle amongst a whole lot of other glass boxes in cubicles.  It wasn’t that anypony suspected anything wrong, Night Light explained to his ‘wife’, ‘daughter’ and the nurse, but I did have claws and they had plenty of room here, so better safe than sorry when they didn’t know how much of a climber I would be.  I tried to give him a flat look, considering I could damn well be counted on to behave and he knew it, but given the cooing from the nurse, I don’t think that I succeeded.

In hindsight, once I’d been fed a bottle of milk and left behind, I decided that isolation was probably actually preferable to getting left in a room with a bunch of crying babies.  I might be one now, but I wasn’t going to…  I…  I…

I made Princess Celestia cry.

It might sound callous, but I didn’t even think she was still capable of it.  Sad?  Sure.  Melancholy?  All the tartarus-damned time.  Wistfully staring at the moon like it stole her cake but she couldn’t bring herself to yell at it?  Only when she didn’t think anypony was looking.

What was the point again?

Right.  Celestia.  Crying.

Why did the first sign of love she’d shown me in the past year and a half have to hurt so much?




⁂




With as boring as being a newborn infant was, my newfound ability to sleep through most of the day was a blessing in disguise.  Sure, it meant that I was that much more likely to get woken up in the middle of sleeping, which always managed to put me in a foul mood, but there was only so much I could do in a glass box.  But eat and… uhh… huh.  

Come to think of it, of all the necessary biological processes I was used to, eating was the only one I actually seemed to require.  I guess when your entire magical physiology is based around consumption, your body naturally evolves a really efficient system.

Right.  That was the first and last time I was ever going to think about that.

The isolation ward went entirely unused during my entire stay at the hospital, which was just fine with me.  I saw Night Light a few times a day, usually to feed me and take notes.  I couldn’t help but I was being treated more like an adorable pet than an infant under his care, but I couldn’t be entirely sure, as he was difficult to read.  I’d tried talking to him while we were alone in order to feel him out, but to my complete bafflement, all I’d been able to vocalize was slurred baby talk, which got me a pat on the head.

I’ll be honest.  When I’d realized that I couldn’t talk, the fire in my stomach had become a pit as my mind immediately recalled the time the changelings had made me an albino instead of buying a box of hair dye.  Now, admittedly, the whole bleaching and dying thing had turned out to be a huge pain in the ass when we’d actually done it, but it still wasn’t any excuse to give me a debilitating disease without so much as asking.

Would the changelings give me some sort of intentional brain damage to prevent me from breaking my cover and force me to learn to speak entirely from scratch?  In a heartbeat, probably, but a little critical thought calmed my nerves when I realized that I hadn’t actually brought any of my brain with me to begin with.  Muscle memory was stored in the brain, but apparently not part of the soul.  That… made logical sense, I supposed, but it still came as a bit of a shock.

The more I experienced being an actual infant, the more I realize just how many shortcuts I’d been able to take as a changeling.  Frankly, I was still a little jealous over all the things that changelings could do, which was annoying but also a bit of a relief.  Hopefully that meant that those feelings hadn’t been artificially induced while I was a nymph.  I was going to pretend it was that simple, anyway.

Okay, I wasn’t jealous of the entire changeling package.  There had been a reason I’d chosen to stay the course and become a dragon, after all, and no amount of temporary setbacks were going to change that.

Still, I was going to miss the feeling of magic coursing through my chitin.  Oh, don’t get me wrong.  Scales were better in almost every respect.  There had been something unnerving about having a solid carapace, and I didn’t miss it.  The silky feeling of scales sliding on scales was almost as novel as the bliss of magic on chitin.

But only almost.

These were the sort of thoughts I came up with when my doctor-slash-grandfather all but abandoned me in an empty room of a hospital.  I got the feeling that dragons didn’t actually need much in the way of postnatal care, though, and while the changelings would be the ones to know, I still felt rather neglected.

It was a familiar feeling.




⁂




On the third day, I awoke to find myself being wheeled back out into one of the examination rooms by one of the nurses.  I think it was the third day, anyway.  It was hard to keep track of the passage of time when kept in a dark room and sleeping off and on through most of the day.

My glass box had been replaced with one of the standard infant beds, and while my previous accomodations had been ventilated, it was still nice to be out in the open again.  I wasn’t sure if that made me a lousy dragon or not, considering my kind’s tendency to hole up in caves, but I’d spent some of the most innocently enjoyable time in my life as a pegasus very recently, and I would be very much looking forward to the day when I would eventually regain that freedom.

I was surprised to be welcomed in the examination room by almost the entire family.  Twilight Velvet was absent this time, but in her place stood Moon Dancer, who was looking at me with not a little wide-eyed wonder.  I felt a tingle of pride at that because, you know, I was a dragon and that really was all kinds of awesome, but it was tempered by the fact that I’d seen other fillies give that same look to plain, ordinary, uninteresting mammal babies.

Oh, and Princess Celestia was there too, along with a pair of the castle’s maids.  I was a little surprised that nopony brought Cadance, but the elder princess’ presence had stolen all my attention.  Acting had not been my forté before I became a changeling and I doubted being turned into a dragon had improved matters any, so just about all that was between me and some very awkward questions was a collection of baby sounds and the sheer improbability that I could be anything but exactly what I looked like.

And what I looked like was adorable.

Whether she was just incapable of sensing duplicity in a three-day-old baby or she saw right through me and had simply chosen not to say anything, things proceeded from there in as predictably mundane a manner as could be expected.

I was weighed, measured, fed and examined and I sat through it all while doing my best impression of a particularly dim iguana.  Night Light, too, displayed a particular lack of basic pattern recognition when he lost a second stethoscope to the yawning pit that was my stomach.  That was for leaving me on a liquid diet for the last three days.  My expectation of hospital food had been pretty low to begin with, but I was beyond ready for some solid food, damn it.  At least this time he didn’t see any point in trying to salvage the bit I couldn’t get my claws on, so I got to gnaw on the rubber tube for a while like it was a gummy worm.

“I think that’s everything,” Night Light announced to the room at large, though his attention was on the princess and the two maids who each had a stack of papers on the care and feeding of ravenous lizards.  The older unicorn gave a stoic nod, while the younger pegasus was busy keeping a nervous eye on me with the distinct impression that she was going to be checking to ensure that her health plan covered burns, skin-grafts and prosthetics.

At least someone was taking me seriously.  I made sure to show my appreciation with a wide, toothy smile, eliciting a quiet “Eep!” from my new favorite maid.

While I was distracting myself with my own special version of peek-a-boo, the group as a whole was making their way out of the examination room.  Night Light led us to the admissions area of the maternity wing and handed my discharge papers to the attendant on staff.

“You’re sure this is what you want, pumpkin?” he asked, turning to Twilight Sparkle and managing to give off every impression of a doting father while still keeping an eye on Princess Celestia.  “I’m sure we could come to an arrangement with the princess that wouldn’t require you to live in the palace.  I know how happy you were to have Moon Dancer as a sister, and I’d hate to separate you two.  Think of all the memories you’ve made in the last few months with her and Princess Cadance.”

Twilight Sparkle shook her head.  “It’ll be fine, dad.  It’s not like we’re never going to see each other again.  I’ll still be attending most of my classes at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns with Moon Dancer; it’s just better if Celestia is nearby until I can get these magic surges under control.  Besides, Moon Dancer will probably enjoy a little time studying on her own.  We’ve spent so much time together that I bet it’ll be like I’m right there with her.”

“If you’re sure…” he said, looking unconvinced as he took one copy of the completed discharge papers from the attendant and handed them to the stuffier of the two maids.  Receiving a curt nod from her, he turned back to his ‘daughter’, bent over and gave her a hug.  “Don’t be a stranger, dear.  I’m sure the princess won’t mind if you spend a weekend at home once in a while.”

“Of course,” Princess Celestia graciously responded.  “While it is traditional for my students to join me in the castle due to my unpredictable schedule, I always encourage them to hold on to those that are important to them.  I know that Princess Cadance would be more than willing to watch over Moon Dancer should she ever wish to spend some time with Twilight in in the castle, though I expect both of them will be seeing plenty of her regardless.”

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes.  Fortunately, I don’t think anypony saw me do it.  Why the changelings in the room felt the need to speak in allusions and metaphors under Princess Celestia’s nose when they had a perfectly good hive mind, I wasn’t sure, but at least they were having fun.  I hadn’t considered what it would actually mean for the household situation if Twilight Sparkle became the princess’ student, but I guess they’d pretty much covered things in that hoofful of oblique innuendo.

I was kind of impressed, actually.

“Yes, well, we can only hope, but I’m afraid I’m well aware what she’ll choose if she’s given a choice between us and the castle library,” Night Light admitted with fond chagrin, gracing his ‘daughter’ with a rueful smile.  “Be good for the princess, kid.”

“Daaaaaaaaaad!” Twilight Sparkle whined, pouting and stomping her hooves.  “I am not a goat!”

“Are you sure?” he teased her.  “I’m positive I’ve seen you absolutely devour every book I’ve ever bought you.  You’d think a filly would get indigestion.”

Even knowing it was as real as a zebra duchy, Twilight Sparkle’s blush was absolutely adorable.
> Chapter Twenty 【Sunset】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------




⁂




Returning to the castle was a surreal experience.  It hadn’t been that long since I’d stormed out in anger, and being brought back under guard, in a way, brought up a feeling of apprehension that wasn’t warranted.

Probably.

There was no sign that Princess Celestia had suspected the truth.  Having my name come out of the naming spell in some form of ancient draconic translation had been a stroke of luck.  The princess had obviously recognized it, but by the way she’d acted, I could only guess that she’d come to the conclusion that I’d died and been reincarnated.

It… wasn’t entirely not true.  There was a bread knife back at the house that was proof enough of that.

A tartarus-damned bread knife.

Our small procession split up once we were inside the castle.  Princess Celestia took Twilight off to give her the grand tour, leaving me to be carted off to whichever corner of the castle was going to serve as my nursery.

Idly, I wondered if the plan had changed or if I’d just been left out of the loop.  If it was the latter, then I wasn’t the only one.  The changeling who had taken over as Twilight’s father during my incubation certainly hadn’t seemed to be on board with the situation, and I kinda agreed.

Twilight had asked me back when this had all started if I would be able to put my past with Princess Celestia behind me and I had no intention of going back on my word, but moving back into the castle made me… feel things.  We’d had a good thing going back at the house and I’d been looking forward to using my new claws to conquer those damned stairs.  What on Equestria had possessed Twilight to abandon her lab, her assistant and her autonomy to come live in the castle?

I couldn’t make much sense of it.

Now, if Twilight had been kicked out to protect Shining Armor’s mission… or just because no one could stand her… that I’d have no trouble believing.

This was going to be a long foalhood, wasn’t it?

I drifted off to sleep while trying to remember what baby dragons were actually called.




⁂




It turned out that not only was five years a long time to spend in cribs and strollers, but it was also more work than you’d expect.  As much as my changeling body had been an insidious prison that hadn’t truly been under my control, I’d really taken it for granted.  You never really appreciate how much inane baby babble it actually takes to figure out how to shape out different sounds and train them into your muscle memory until you have to consciously dedicate time to practicing it.  For every hour of development I was able to skip thanks to already having a working knowledge of the Equish language, I’d probably wasted two more burned out on trying to recover a skill I’d already learned once.

Walking was similar, but it came more naturally and wasn’t as onerous to actually practice.  My biggest roadblock in achieving bipedal locomotion had been not actually knowing that I’d been aiming for it in the first place.  Apparently that was a thing.  I’d been unconvinced until Princess Celestia had explained in the most ridiculous baby-talk that dragons only tended towards quadrupedal in their adulthood.

No, infancy was not a simple or easy period, even for the infant.  At times, I still felt more like a disabled pony than a baby dragon, and it was all I could do not to be more of a terror to the staff than I already was.  Even so, it was usually after those times when I was at my lowest that the maids came to wonder how I’d managed to chew up yet another chandelier.

…

Look, I’d declared my intent to climb the shit out of the house as a dragon and I wasn’t about to let a change of venue stop me.  It wasn’t my fault that marble is actually a relatively soft stone that was easy to dig my little baby claws into.

All in all, I was not, as you might expect, a very well behaved little lizard, but then, I’d been a surly teenager to begin with and I’d never handled boredom well.  It was enough to drive me up the walls.  Literally.

Hence the chandeliers.

I think what baffled the castle staff most was the fact that I gnawed and chewed on the chandeliers, but I refused to actually eat the damned things.  I remembered what I’d read about dragon diets and I wasn’t about to fill up on pride and… whatever else a gold and jewel-encrusted light fixture actually represented, no matter how good they tasted.

In the end, there was just one problem with that.  See, I hadn’t actually put any thought to what sort of thing it was that I actually wanted to eat and make my hoard out of.  Sure, I might have been overthinking things for that stage of my development, but I couldn’t be sure.  All I knew was that the things that I ate would have some level of permanent effect on my mind and my magic, and the greater the value, the greater the effect.

I’d rather be safe than sorry.

Of course, the greater issue was that even if I’d known what it was I wanted to eat, it wasn’t as if I’d had any way of actually communicating that information to the poor ponies who were taking care of me.

I… might have gotten myself a reputation as a picky eater, among other things.  I mean, I would eat regular food on the occasion they’d give it to me, but nothing excessively expensive, which was its own problem for a growing dragon.  For a couple of weeks after I’d been hatched, the only source of valuables in my diet were stethoscopes, since I’d already shown a taste for those and I couldn’t really claim that I thought that they’d have a negative effect on me.

But… what did I want?  What kind of magic did I want to do, and what kind of dragon did I want to be?  I’d had a particular talent for fire spells as a pony, but I’d only rarely had a chance to actually use them.  There was a lot more to magic than burning things down, and even so, as a dragon I would pretty much have that covered no matter what I did.

They’d stopped giving me wooden cribs after the first three had mysteriously burst into flames in the middle of the night.

That said, stethoscopes were a nice contrast of tastes and textures, but while a little altruism or whatever the medical field represented in symbolic dragon magic terms wouldn’t hurt, I didn’t actually want to take it much further than that.  I’d make a horrible doctor, and I’d wanted to stay that way.  I hadn’t been willing to change myself to become Princess Celestia’s little alicorn princess and I wasn’t going to start now… ignoring all the ways I’d already changed since I’d thrown my lot in with the changelings.

No.  To put it in cutie mark terms, I wanted… well, I wanted the cutie mark that Twilight Sparkle had given herself.  I wanted a cutie mark in magic, full stop.  I didn’t want to specialize.  I wanted to explore everything that dragon magic could do.

So… what could I hoard and eat to make that happen and how could I get them to actually give it to me?  It would have been simple if I could have spoken or if Twilight hadn’t decided to drag me along with her to the castle, but things were never that simple.  If we’d still been living with the changelings, I’d have had all the solidified magic I could eat, even if scarfing down something the consistency of lukewarm jelly wasn’t entirely pleasant on its own, let alone the fact that my previous experience being force-fed it had ended rather badly.  Instead, with things as they were, it would be a long time before I got that chance for good or ill.

Probably ill.  I had little doubt that trauma was stored in the soul.

Unfortunately, reflecting on the options I didn’t have hadn’t gotten me any closer to coming up with a solution.  The world would be much simpler if things worked like that.  Eventually, the compromise I came to was, somewhat ironically, the chandeliers.

More specifically, it was the fruit thereof.

Light crystals were crunchy and went well with a truffle butter reduction.  Of course, as a dragon, everything went well with a truffle butter reduction.  Or saffron.  Or foie gras.  Look, it wasn’t my fault that expensive things tasted good to dragons and just in general.  I tried not to gorge myself.

I tried.

Eventually, after several dozen light crystals went missing, the castle staff got the message and started bringing me enchanted things for dessert.  It  wasn’t exactly the message I’d been trying to send, but was close enough, and in hindsight, actually the better choice as plain crystallized magic was actually kind of bland.

Yeah, I could see the changelings impoverishing themselves trying to raise dragons.




⁂




My room in the castle wasn’t far from Princess Celestia’s, but the two couldn’t have been any more different.  Hers was mostly as you’d expect, full of antiques and finery.  Even some of her stationery was older than most of the laws of Equestria, provable by the fact that much of it still bore the hallmarks of her first royal stationer, Gilt Leaf.

My room, on the other hand—and I was still getting used to having hands—looked more like a warzone between two sides who believed in a scorched-earth policy.  I mean, you could say that about most foal’s bedrooms, but in my case, the soot and melted marble made it a bit more literal.

Look, there was no proof whatsoever that I’d have burned down Twilight’s house if we’d stayed there.

More than the damage, though, was what it lacked, which was pretty much everything.  There were no rugs, no tapestries.  Nothing delicate or in any way flammable.  It was, in some ways, as close to an empty cave as it was possible to turn a room of the castle into.  It was a sanctuary that no ambassador or foreign dignitary had ever set hoof in, nor would they ever, in no small amount because it was, at this point, entirely impossible to make presentable.

In my defense, the overall emptiness, at least, was only mostly my fault, and I hadn’t actually done any significant damage in the past year or so.  I was happy with it as it was, which only made the current situation more of a chore.

“C’mon, Spike,” came a playful voice from the door.  “Let’s get going.  You’re just moving rooms, not leaving the castle.”

A very large part of me inwardly groaned, but I said nothing.  My name was Iskloreat Valignat Ixenvorel, but nopony called me that.  I’d wanted to go by Ivi, but nopony called me that either.  No.  For five long years it had been “Spike” this and “Spikey-wikey” that.  Before I’d been able to speak, I’d tried acting up any time somepony called me by Twilight’s stupid nickname, but they were all too dim to get the message.

There was a small chance that I’d been hungry and grumpy and trying to complain about a dozen other things using the same methods, but that so wasn’t my fault.

Oh, and Princess Celestia winced any time she heard my real name.  As in, she actually visibly winced.  That probably had something to do with the castle staff’s unanimous adoption of any alternative.

“Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled, giving the empty room one last look and turning away.  The weirdest part of moving out was not having anything to take with me.  I hadn’t been allowed a hoard yet for reasons that should probably be obvious and represented in numbers of bits I’d cost the crown without any additional power or size to my name, so that meant I had no possessions to speak of.

“Hey!  Cheer up!  You and Twilight are gonna have a whole tower to yourself!  Aren’t you excited?!”

River Breeze was a sky blue pegasus who’d been taking care of me since the very first day I came home from the hospital.  She’d been timid back then, barely out of school and still holding onto some baby fat.  Now, she’d shed all that and grown into a chipper mare who loved taking care of ponies and dragons and felt no shame in being largely stereotypical as both a pegasus and a maid.

I liked her.  Originally, I’d tried to get Twilight to replace her with a changeling. Twilight had agreed, but it hadn’t actually happened.  She’d been denied any more resources and spent the days and weeks afterwards grumbling about the stupid hive mind and its stupid queen.  Really, it would have simplified so many things, but it had worked out in the end and it was all water under the bridge now.  In hindsight, there was something nice about having nice, honest, real ponies around, no matter how inconvenient it was for them to be in charge of me.

“Ehh…” I hedged and made a kind of shrug.  “I guess.  It’s nice and all, but lately Twilight’s been…”

“A teenager?” River Breeze finished for me as she lifted me up onto her back.  “Yeah, I getcha.  Seems like she’s frustrated about something, but she adores the princess and the princess says she’s doing really well.  You ask me, it’s the princess that should be frustrated.  She’s been trying to get Twilight to make friends, but it’s just not happening.  It’s got her concerned, after…”

After me.  There was a certain amount of irony in that.  Still, I had to play along.  “After what?”

“Well…”  River Breeze glanced behind us to make sure she wasn’t overheard.  “We don’t talk about it in the castle since it bothers the princess, but before you were hatched, the princess had another student.  I mean, she’s had plenty over the years, but this was the one we all got to know.

“She was… not that different from Twilight, really, except where Twilight just ignores ponies who aren’t the princess, Sunset Shimmer always made it super clear how little she thought about you.  Not always with words… but she wasn’t shy with them either.”

I couldn’t help but shrink inwards at being described like that.  I knew that I hadn’t been a nice pony—I’d known it back then, too—but it still wasn’t a great thing to hear.  I’d like to think that it would have helped me if I’d heard it more back then, but I knew better.  I was remorseful, not stupid.

“So, what happened to her?” I asked.

I felt River Breeze shrug under me.  “Nopony but the princess really knows for sure.  By the time I got hired, they’d fought pretty regularly over things.  Lessons, mostly.  Sunset always was chomping at the bit to learn more, and I heard the princess tell her more than once that she wasn’t ready.  I’d guess that one day, she’d either had enough or she went too far.”

It was sobering hearing it put so succinctly, but that really was the gist of it, wasn’t it?  Back when I’d first met her, Twilight had told me that nopony should have been surprised that things had finally come to a head, and looking back, I guess it really had been obvious to everypony but the two of us.

Or maybe it had just been me.

“So, you think Twilight…?” I prompted, leaving the specifics unsaid.

River Breeze shook her head nearly hard enough to dislodge me.  “Oh, no.  Celestia no.  Twilight’s a good kid, she just… needs to lighten up a bit and get out more.  A lot more.  At all, really.  I know she spends weekends at home once in a while, but you never actually see her with Moon Dancer and her friends.  But hey, at least she’s got you.”

That was fair.  Of course, I’d mostly gravitated to Twilight because it’d allowed me to plop myself on the floor next to her and read magical theory while giving anypony who looked in on us the impression that I was just mimicking her, but I was pretty sure that was about as close as Twilight came to being friends with anyone anyway.

I was a little disappointed in her, to be honest.  My time as a changeling had changed me, and my time as a dragon had forced me to learn a certain amount of patience.  Not a large amount, by any means, but it was better than nothing.  Along the way, I’d gotten to know a significant portion of the castle staff, like River Breeze, and, like River Breeze, I’d grown and matured at least a little.

Twilight… hadn’t.

It seemed very odd for a changeling.




⁂




River Breeze and I met up with Violet Rose at Twilight’s new tower.  Violet Rose had been the prim and proper violet unicorn at the hospital, and while she was still prim and proper, the smile she gave River Breeze and me was slight, but genuine.

“Everything went well, I take it?” she asked once we reached speaking range.

“Yep!” River Breeze chirped.  “Room’s empty, and there were no surprises.”

“Got all my luggage right here,” I added, miming myself holding an invisible suitcase.

“Excellent,” Violet Rose remarked, scanned down her list, checked something off and took another moment to make a note.

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the excessive pageantry.  “Can we just get this over with?  It’s not like I have anything to put away, but I’d still like to get settled in before Twilight gets back and starts demanding books.”

Violet Rose adjusted her glasses.  “Yes, well.  You’ll be glad to hear that that is finally going to change.”

“Eh, it’s fine,” I said, waving the matter off.  “I don’t actually mind being her librarian.”  Also, I’d signed myself into servitude for an unspecified amount of time in exchange for power and something close to immortality, so there was that.  The changelings had less to hold over me now that I was no longer a changeling, but they were still a widespread conspiracy of shapeshifters who I had no way of identifying.  I wouldn’t say I was scared of them, exactly, but I also had no intention of making an enemy of them.

“You are barely five years old, Spike,” Violet Rose chided, and my eye twitched at the usage of that name.  “It is frankly amazing that you are even capable of fulfilling such a role.  I suspect there is magic of some sort at play in the way you seem to absorb knowledge from that young filly.  That does not make it fair or appropriate for her to treat you as nothing more than her assistant.”  Violet Rose pursed her lips, which then twisted into a hint of a smile.  “But that is not the matter at hoof that I was referring to.”

I blinked and tried to rewind the conversation in my head to remember what I’d missed.  My eyes widened and I looked up at her with unbridled hope.  “You mean…?”

“Yes, Spike.”  Twitch.  “You’re nearing the age when we’d normally be sending you to school, and it would be a crime if you weren’t able to start experimenting with your magic the same as any other filly or colt.  We believe, and the princess agrees, that you’ve been well enough behaved that we can trust you to keep a small hoard.”

“Yes!  Finally!” I cried, pumping my pudgy little fist in the air and doing my best not to cackle.  Cackling would give the wrong impression.  Not necessarily an incorrect impression, but it wasn’t the one I wanted to give.  In excited haste, I scrambled and jumped off of River Breeze’s back, stumbling into a run to the door of the tower only to run into the very mare I’d just dismounted.

“Woah woah woah!” River Breeze said, blocking the door and warding me off.  “Hold on a sec.  There are gonna be a few rules.”

I couldn’t help but squirm in place, dignity be damned.  This was what I’d been waiting five years for.  I’d traded my life and my freedom for this.

“Yes,” Violet Rose agreed.  “It is a given that you will, of course, be expected to maintain your current record of good behavior, including any ‘accidents,’ be they accidental or not.”

“You’d actually be better off taking responsibility, even if they are,” River Breeze added.  “Accidents mean something’s out of control, and that’s a problem.”

Violet Rose gave River Breeze a short, unamused look before addressing me again.  “While I wouldn’t encourage either lying or taking too many cues from Twilight, that is indeed where the rules lead us.  We’ll start you off with three small items of your choice and see how things go from there.”

“We’re mostly worried about keeping you a manageable size,” River Breeze explained further.  “From what the princess has been able to get out of the dragons, we can only guess at how any single thing will affect you, so it’s all going to be trial and error.  We pretty much expect you to focus on things that give you as much power as possible while keeping you all cute and cuddly, so there’s no need to try and be sneaky about that.  It’s too bad, too.  I thought it’d be great fun to take you to live with the dragons for a few years, but they’d have had you bulking up until you were looking down at the princess, at least!”

“Quite,” Violet Rose agreed, giving the impression that there were probably a few more reasons beyond size that that plan had been rejected.  “More importantly, you also need to avoid any large changes in your hoard.  Accumulating too much too quickly will actually retard your development by spreading your essence too thin.”

River Breeze nodded along.  “Trust us.  You don’t want stretch marks on your soul.”

“Or anywhere else,” Violet Rose added, garnering startled looks from both River Breeze and me.




⁂




It was hard to believe, but the tower was actually impressive enough to distract me from thinking about my hoard-to-be.  It was, essentially, a live-in library, but the focus was more on the live-in than the library—not that it skimped on either.  Almost the entire top half of the structure was dedicated to a collection of wide open spaces and half-floors absolutely packed with books and bookshelves.  There were several different nooks with couches and coffee tables, at least one lab station that I could see and the entire south wall was one big, multi-pane window over a hundred hooves tall.

I was a bit taken aback.  I’d never had anything like this when I was Princess Celestia’s student.  Admittedly, that was probably a good thing, but it stung all the same.  This was, in a way, very real proof that she hadn’t trusted me out of her sight.  Proof that she hadn’t thought that I was ready.

I mean, aside from all the times that she explicitly told me that I hadn’t been ready.

Also, I probably would have taken it as a rejection since I’d kinda sorta probably been looking for a mother figure in her back then, so I’d preferred living close to her.

Yeah, that… hadn’t worked out in my third life.  Aside from the fact that my soul was nearing twenty years old and aside from the fact that running Equestria gave her very little free time, Princess Celestia could never quite manage to forgive me my name and the things it reminded her of.

Specifically, my name reminded her of me, which was entirely unfair considering all the effort I’d gone to in order to become an entirely different species.

Oh, sure, she hadn’t been avoiding me or anything.  She was as kind and loving as she’d always been, but we weren’t close.  I’d never cried myself to sleep under her wing in this life, or crawled into her bed after a nightmare.  Part of it was that I hadn’t done much of those things at all since my rebirth, but even so, what comfort I had sought had come from River Breeze, Violet Rose and occasionally other members of the castle staff.

Twilight Sparkle, of course, need not apply.  That was probably obvious, but I’d tried it.  Once.

But anyway, yeah, the tower was pretty spectacular and I would probably enjoy living here.  All I had to do now was not burn it down and keep Twilight Sparkle from doing the same.

Living with Twilight again… might be a challenge.  She’d branched out into real magic since becoming the princess’ student and had been using everything she learned to inform her continuing improvements to Shining Armor and herself, as had been the plan.  She still hadn’t solved the magic color issue, though, and her continual failures in that direction were one of the direct causes of her deteriorating attitude.  Lately, she’d gotten a reputation for refusing to listen to anypony but the princess about little things like the dangers of experimental thaumaturgy.  Admittedly, she was usually right, but most ponies were able to look past that.

It was going to be an interesting few years.

As I continued my tour of the tower, something began to bug me.  As much as I liked the place, it didn’t really feel like I belonged here.  It wasn’t just that I was a secondary consideration compared to Twilight, either.  I’d gotten used to that to the point that I would no doubt be unrecognizable to the old me.  No, what was really rubbing me the wrong way was the fact that that the part of me that was so enamored with the tower was the part of me that remembered being a pegasus and was counting the days until my wings came in as a dragon.  The practicalities of it, on the other hand, left something to be desired.  The grand, open spaces that made it so great… well, they were Twilight’s and they wouldn’t really make for good hoarding anyway.

I had learned humility.  I hadn’t learned to share.

It was a wrench, but I eventually settled on a room just below the open area of the tower.  It was smaller than the room I’d had in the castle, but not small, and it had a walk-in closet that would be the perfect place to hoard… whatever it was that was going to end up in my hoard.

I guess I should have given the specifics some thought, huh?




⁂




“Spike?  Spiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike?”

As much as the name still grated, I only really properly hated it when it was her saying it.  Or shouting it.  Or shrieking it.

Those last two are different, trust me.

It made sense, really.  Twilight was, after all, the one who had come up with it in the first place.

“Spike!” the surly changeling disguised as a purple unicorn shouted once again, finally showing up at the door to the room that I’d chosen.  “Spike, we just moved in.  Why are the light crystals from the big chandelier missing?”

“No idea, Twilight,” I told her with an innocent, guileless smile.  A slight tinkling sounded from underneath me as I shifted my weight.

Yeah, well, I’d had to start somewhere.




⁂




“Hoarding gold is for chumps,” I declared with a grin, holding my first success out in front of me.

The girls all crowded around the café table to get a closer look.  “It’s a light crystal,” Moon Dancer deadpanned.

“I know!” I exclaimed, admiring my work.  “Isn’t it great?”

Minuette, Lemon Hearts, Lyra and Twinkleshine, at least, all made the appropriate encouraging noises for a five year old with her first art project.  Hah!  The joke was on them.

I popped the crystal into my mouth and began to chew.  The tingle of the lighting enchantment was weaker than the commercial type, but it also felt… warmer.  I liked it.  I guess homemade really did make a difference.

“So, wait,” Lemon Hearts said, watching me enjoy my snack.  “Are you learning to be an enchanter or a chef?”

I waited until I’d finished chewing to respond.  “Enchanter, but it’s better than that.  I can make things that go in my hoard.  It’s like… if you could use your horn to grow a better horn!”

The girls all looked up, giving their horns curious looks as they considered that fantasy.  All except Moon Dancer.  “Wouldn’t a dragon that hoards gold have magic to find more gold, though?  Or be able to turn ponies into gold?  Stuff like that?”

I blinked.  “I—uhh…?  Well… they’re still chumps.”

“Uh huh.”




⁂




Spending the day with Moon Dancer and her friends was fun.  Sometimes it was nice to just go out, shop, chat and relax.  In addition to my light crystal, I’d had five donuts, a milkshake and two bags of pretzels and I still had room to top up on magic at the Sparkle household… if they’d let me.  They hadn’t been interested in emptying their reserves into my bottomless gullet yet so far, but Twilight had said they’d consider it now that I was actually allowed to begin experimenting with my magic.  I’d tried to see if I could get a hint of what the decision had been from Moon Dancer, but I’d gotten nothing, and before I knew it, she was carrying me home at the end of the day.

To be fair, that wasn’t why I was there.  Aside from just having a fun day out, what I was actually interested in was to see if there was any value in hoarding either love or magic.

I just also suspected that they’d be delicious.

The house was quiet in a way that I still couldn’t get used to.  It had always been quiet, really, but when I’d been a changeling, there’d just been a sort of… background noise of the hive mind that I’d never really noticed until it was gone.  Even though my nymph form hadn’t been able to connect to the hive mind, the accumulation of changeling magic in the house meant that there had always been something.

It was insidious and kind of disturbing if I thought too much about it.  I did my best not to.

That said, there was a good reason for the house to feel quiet and empty.  With Twilight living at the castle and Shining Armor in the royal guard proper now, the only changelings living here were Moon Dancer, Twilight Velvet and Night Light the Third.

I felt sorry for the adopted changeling, though at least she had the run of the lab.  She wasted no time in taking me down the stairs, which were still the dirty, rough lumber they’d been during my stay.  It wouldn’t do to give anypony the impression that the basement was under heavy use, so very little on the public side had changed since my short but memorable stay in the house.

The lab, on the other hand, had changed impressively.  The three chrysalises that had been built during my time at the house still remained, but almost everything else was different.  The cistern that Shining Armor had dug to contain the copious amounts of love that Cadance was all but bursting with had eventually proved insufficient and had been replaced by a circular shaft lined in honeycomb-like cells.  The changelings had dug deep, seeking more and more space to store the seemingly infinite resource, and eventually broke into a network of crystal caverns beneath the city.  They’d refused to expand on exactly what was going on with that, but if they weren’t using the caverns to smuggle love out to the rest of the hive, then they really weren’t very good changelings.

I was still admiring the rest of the lab and all the various bug science apparatuses I couldn’t identify when Moon Dancer shrugged me off like a pair of saddlebags and went to stand in the corner.

Oh.  Right.

The real, changeling Moon Dancer was wearing a lab coat and examining a flask with a reddish-purple slime in it.

“Do you regret it?” the real Moon Dancer asked out of the blue, though I immediately questioned if it really was Moon Dancer or if it was the hive mind again.  “It’s been five years.  Where is the help that you promised?  Solutions from another point of view, you said.  Twilight Sparkle struggles tirelessly while you fetch books and make light crystals.”

The fire inside of me rose up until I could feel it in my throat and on my cheeks.  “Yeah, well buck you too,” I shot back, certain now that it was mostly the hive mind that I was talking to.  “You knew better than I did that this wasn’t going to be a quick solution.”

The changeling that was at least some percentage Moon Dancer gave me a long, flat look, then scoffed, placing the flask of slime back on the shelf before grabbing another one.  “You didn’t answer,” she said, and somehow it sounded infinitely less ominous and hostile.  “Do you regret it?”

As quickly as it had come, the fire in me guttered out.  “…I think about it,” was all I was willing to admit right off the bat.  “It definitely would have been the easier thing to do.”

“Easy isn’t always bad,” Moon Dancer observed, continuing to give most of her attention to whatever it was she was working on.  “It’s easier to write with a pen than a stick.”

“Yeah, and the best tool for the job is still a tool,” I countered.  “Some ponies can live with that.  I don’t think I could.  I wouldn’t have been able to trust the hive mind, even with the ability to shut it off.  That’s no way to changeling.”

Moon Dancer paused what she was doing.  “The hive mind would like to vehemently insist that changeling is not a verb.”

“It’s not a verb yet,” I corrected.

“If you wanted to make it one, you should have remained a changeling.”

“You know,” I said, aiming to get the subject back on track.  “Light crystals weren’t my first choice.  Enchanting is a pretty good broad-spectrum field of magic, but if you really want my help with things, there’s a more obvious solution.”

“You think you can twist your dragon magic to do what changelings do?"

“I think I’m a dragon and that means I can damn well do anything I want.”

Moon Dancer considered that for a moment.  “That might be, but how do you plan on actually accomplishing that?”

“That… is a good point, actually,” I was forced to admit.
> Chapter Twenty-One 【Sunset】
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------




⁂




I went home empty-handed.

Moon Dancer had spent a while walking me through the process of rebirthing a changeling, but there wasn’t really anything that I’d forgotten.  Most of the actual work required to make changes to a changeling was performed in the hive mind, planning things out and using the shared cognitive abilities of dozens of changelings to extrapolate the results.  As far as actual physical representations of the process went, there were only a few, and I didn’t think that hoarding changeling amniotic fluid would cut it.

So I’d asked for some royal jelly; the catalyst that was used to make changeling queens.  She’d refused.  Vehemently.  It was apparently exorbitantly expensive to produce.  That didn’t make much sense to me, as I’d been told you could get a changeling queen just by disconnecting a regular one from the hive mind and feeding it after midnight or something, but apparently it wasn’t quite as simple as that.  The royal jelly was still required in cases like that; it was just synthesized by the queen-to-be itself at the expense of excessive amounts of love if it couldn’t be provided in another way.

The fact that it was exorbitantly expensive only made me more certain that it was what I needed.  Somehow, this was not a convincing argument.

It would also have raised some questions.

That was the real reason I went home empty-handed.  Royal jelly aside, Moon Dancer had been willing to part with a few small things for the sake of my experiments including a gallon of her liquid magic slime, but I hadn’t really considered the fact that my hoard was under scrutiny until I was faced with a glowing green jar of the stuff.  That… was a problem.

Moon Dancer hadn’t been impressed at the oversight, but I wasn’t a changeling any more; lying was no longer my first instinct, and the lies I did tell were about whether or not I’d brushed my teeth or snuck into the castle kitchens.

Celestia, but that made me sound boring.




⁂




When I first hatched, I’d wanted to have my maids replaced with changelings so I could relax and do whatever I wanted without giving myself away.  I’d gotten too close to River Breeze and Violet Rose to still want that, but I’d expected living with Twilight to be a nice middle ground.

In some ways, it was.  River Breeze and Violet Rose were still around fairly often when Twilight was in school or having lessons with the princess, but there were also larger portions of the day when we were completely unsupervised.

Unfortunately, Twilight had somehow gotten it in her head to fill that gap personally.  Probably, the princess had given her a little speech about being responsible if she was going to live on her own, yadda yadda yadda, but the weird part was that she actually seemed to be taking it to heart for some reason.  I knew that she’d gotten really attached to Princess Celestia, but actually listening to her lectures about responsibility was overdoing it.

“I heard you the first time, Twilight, and like I said the first time: I’m in the middle of reading about how ancient ponycian runes were used on their enchanted ships.  I don’t think I want to bother hoarding anything with runes, but I can’t deny that adding language to enchanting really increases the potential complexity.  I’ll go to bed when I’m done.”

“Wait, if that’s what you want, then shouldn’t you be looking into the language of the—”

“No, Twilight,” I snapped, glaring at her.

Twilight’s ears flattened as she frowned at me.  “But—”

“No, Twilight,” I repeated.  “I don’t care how useful it is.  I am not going anywhere near Punic.”

Twilight was nonplussed.  “But the caninites brought—”

“I said no.  I refuse to have my magic tied to puns in any way, shape or form.  End of discussion.”

Twilight pursed her lips like she’d just bitten into something sour.  “Well, you can go to bed, then, because you’re just wasting your time,” she declared, stomping her hoof.

“Hrm…”  I pretend to give it some thought.  “Nah.  I still have something I want to check about Zebra oral traditions after this anyway.”

Instead of receiving a response, my book and I were abruptly surrounded by the pink glow of Twilight’s magic and lifted up into the air, separately.  The book snapped shut and floated over to the bookshelf while I was dragged off towards my room.  “You didn’t even bookmark my place!” I shouted, tumbling weightlessly around.  “Rude!”




⁂




I was beginning to suspect that getting anywhere with dragon magic was going to take a very long time.  I’d enchanted light crystals and a few other things, but no matter what Moon Dancer and the changeling hive mind said, that had been a real accomplishment.

For the fourth time in a sitting, I blew a fine, wispy tendril of flame out of my mouth and watched it curl around the glass marble in my hands.  Unlike with unicorn magic, there was no controlling it after the fact.  All I could do was imbue the flame with my will and intent and see what happened.

Or at least… that was the only thing that worked that I’d discovered.  What books existed were written by and for ponies—or changelings—and dragons… well, what could you expect?  They hoarded knowledge just as much as anything else of value.

I could relate, but it was still annoying.

I waited with bated breath as the flame sank into the marble, half out of anticipation and half to avoid disrupting the process with another breath, even if I didn’t intentionally put any magic into it.

The flames spiraled down into the center of the marble and sparked a small, green ember that glowed with a gentle light, and… that was it.  That was all it was supposed to do.

It was the wrong color, though.  Too seafoam-y when I’d been trying for more of a lime green.  I popped it in my mouth and pulled out another marble to try again.




⁂




I felt like kind of an idiot.

“Hey, Twilight,” I called across the room from where I’d been working on shaping a hollow glass sphere with my fire.  Dragons were the best glassblowers.  “You’re getting plenty of love from the princess, right?”

“Of course, Spike,” she confirmed.  “I am her most faithful student.”

My mouth twisted at the reminder.  “You know, I can’t believe she actually calls you that.  It’s super rude when I’m standing right there.”

“Did you have a point, Spike?” she asked, emphasizing the horrible name she’d saddled me with as a sign that she was growing irritated.  “I’m trying to read this new study on the properties of unicorn keratin.  I’d kill to have the same work done on changeling horns and chitin so I could compare them, but I don’t have the equipment.”

“Right,” I said, dismissing the subject.  It actually sounded pretty interesting, but I had to remind myself that it wasn’t relevant to me any longer and part of that was not letting myself get distracted by it.  “Yeah, so if you’re all flush with love and magic, would you mind coughing up a bunch so I can hoard it?”

Twilight let out a groan and craned her neck to look back at me.  “How much?”

I picked up the hollow glass ball that I’d been working on and held it up above my head, which it was easily larger than.  “A gallon.  Gallon and a half, maybe.  I’ve got a couple of old crystal balls glowing green in my hoard already.  Violet won’t notice if this one’s got magic changeling goop inside it instead.”

“Fine,” she says, drawing the word out in something that’s just barely not a whine.  “Isn’t that a waste, though?  Aren’t you past hoarding things that glow?  You should have some better things, even if they aren’t things you’ve made.”

“They’re real crystal, so they hold magic pretty well,” I explained.  “Nowhere near the density of actual crystalized magic, but they’re not terrible.  You’re right, though, that they’re not ideal, especially with the connection to scrying that I’m not interested in.  The point is to replace them with these.”  I tapped the glass sphere in front of me with my claw.

“And hoarding things that do nothing but store magic is worthwhile?”

I scratched the back of my neck as I considered how to answer.  “I’m still developing my sense for it.  They don’t seem to have much physical effect, though, and there’s something there magically, so it’s not a bad thing.”

Twilight shook her head.  “Sometimes I agree with the hive mind that this whole dragon thing is a long shot, then I remember that you’ve somehow worked it so you can fill your hoard up with magic that comes from you having a hoard in the first place.  It’s ridiculous!”

I put on a thoughtful pose.  “I’m pretty sure Cadance would say that love works the same way.”

Twilight froze, her face slowly twisting in bewilderment.  “I… can actually see that, now that you mention it.  The hive mind is trying not to think about it.”




⁂




Basking in the multicolored glow of my hoard was magical—literally.  It had been a year since I’d been allowed to start it and it was a sizeable pile now, a large percentage of it in the form of glowing green spheres full of liquid changeling magic.

I still wasn’t sure if it was actually doing anything, largely because I still wasn’t sure what it was I was looking for it to do.  Replicating pony magic was hit and miss, but it was a process I could work at if given enough time and information.  Some things just weren’t appropriate for the prepare-and-release method I’d come up with for dragon magic, while others hadn’t been broken down enough by theorists for me to figure out the pertinent details.  Changeling magic was enough of the latter that I couldn’t even guess about the former.

Even something as integral to changeling life as the disguise spell was actually a complete mystery to them, which had caused me no end of frustration.  There was actually a good chance that it would work for me if I could figure it out. True, I didn’t have chitin, but I did have scales, and unlike a unicorn, my magic came from somewhere in my chest below my heart.  True, my scales were resistant to magic, but so was chitin until you broke the flow of magic running through it.  I hadn’t yet found a way to test if my own resistance was active, like changelings, or passive, like lodestones.   You’d think that it would be as easy as testing shed scales, but they seemed to retain a sympathetic charge of magic regardless.

As for anything more complicated… I just didn’t know.  Dragon magic was good for changing one thing into another.  In a rare moment, Princess Celestia had taken me aside and shown me a spell that could burn something and send the smoke somewhere else where it would reconstitute itself.  It was a perfect example of the sort of thing that dragon magic in general worked well for, even if I could only manage a scroll.

Oh, and I was Twilight Sparkle’s mailbox now.  So there was that.  The damn things manifested in my inner fire, too.  Training myself not to burp the cursed things out wasn’t a process  that anyone had enjoyed.

Still, the more I discovered about dragon magic, the more it seemed to line up with changeling magic in eerily similar ways.  Hopefully it wasn’t in a complementary-but-opposite ‘two sides of the same coin’ way… but even if it was, I wish I at least knew.




⁂




It was a day like any other that I got the biggest shock of my short, short lizard life.  River Breeze had just shown up to the tower and told me that we were going shopping.  This wasn’t an unusual occurrence just to get me out and about from time to time.  Quite often it meant that the castle was going to be hosting foreign dignitaries that either needed something specific during their stay, or, more likely, were willing to throw their weight around to get the crown to pay for their excesses.

I was understandably curious, and after washing up, the two of us headed out.  We met Violet Rose near the castle entrance, and I finally asked what was going on.

The answer was not what I’d been expecting.  “What do you mean I need to get a graduation present for Twilight?  She’s not… I mean, it hasn’t been that long, has it?”

“You were hatched over the summer break when she was ten, Spike.” River Breeze reminded me.  “You’re nearly eight years old, now, and that means she’s eighteen.  I’m pretty sure that fact came up at her last birthday party.”

“Yeah, but…”  It actually hadn’t.  Changelings didn’t really do birthday parties, so whenever hers came up, she’d just go home and spend the night in the lab.

Twilight… was an adult?  It was hard to wrap my head around.  I’d been fourteen when I met her, and even though she was ten, I’d seen her as a sort of peer.  I guess, since then, I’d always thought of her as being that age.  She certainly hadn’t matured much… though I guess she pouted less nowadays, and she’d certainly gotten more organized and responsible.

Buck.  Had she grown up?  I looked down at my chubby hands and pudgy body and wondered when I’d gotten used to them.  I’d grown a hoof or two taller since I’d started hoarding three years ago, but I was still… basically just a baby dragon.

“Aw, cheer up!” River Breeze insisted, hoofing me off to Violet Rose so that she could properly look at me.  “It’s not like she’s going anywhere, you know.  She’s only graduating high school.  She might go to university or she might just step up her studies with the princess, but either way, I’m sure you’ll be with her the entire way!”

Well, yes.  Whether I wanted to or not.  Not that I really minded our arrangement any more.  It was comfortable, though I did kind of miss living in a full house with two parents, three other kids and Cadance coming over every other day.  Cadance was… around, but Twilight and Moon Dancer had ceased needing foalsitting years ago and I had my own caregivers.  In hindsight, I don’t think that Princess Celestia ever told Cadance about my name, or she probably would have been all over me.

“I… guess you have a point,” I said, though it probably wasn’t the point that she’d intended.  “I mean, can you imagine Twilight living on her own?  She’s barely capable of buying groceries!”

“Oh, don’t be like that,” River Breeze chided.  “She’s perfectly capable of doing her own shopping.”

“What she can’t do is cook,” Violet Rose interjected, killing the conversation.  That, at least, couldn’t be refuted.

“So,” River Breeze piped up.  “Where should we be heading?  Got any ideas for what you want to get for Twilight?”

I gave her a look that said, ‘Really?’  “It’s Twilight, so… book?”

“Doesn’t she already have all the books she could ever want, though?” River Breeze asked, walking backwards so she could talk to me while Violet Rose took us in the direction of Canterlot’s upscale market quarter.

I shrugged.  “Kinda, but it’s Twilight.  She wouldn’t even care if you gave her constant-weight enchanted saddlebags, because she just reads a book from cover to cover and drops it on the floor for me to return or reshelve.”

“Yeesh,” River breeze remarked.

Violet Rose, on the other hand, frowned.  “That is inappropriate.  It’s fine for you to help her, but if it’s enabling behavior like that, then perhaps somepony should talk to her about it.  She certainly doesn’t behave like that in the royal archives.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it,” I said, waving it off.  “It’s not like you’re thinking.  Working or reading, I’ve usually got all my stuff spread out on the floor anyway, so her dropping her books off on a table somewhere would only make more work.”

“I see,” Violet Rose said, acknowledging my justification, but not necessarily agreeing.

“Yeah, that’s not really better,” River Breeze clarified.  “You’re basically a ward of the princess and you live on the castle grounds.  You should have a desk that works for you.”

I shrugged, unconcerned.  “Maybe if I can ever get a shrinking spell to work.  Otherwise, books are just too big for anything built to my size.  My arm span is barely a book span, which doesn’t make working from a seat easy.”

“Levitation spell still no good?” River Breeze asked.

I shook my head.  “It’s never going to happen unless I figure out an entirely different way to use magic.  I can cast a spell that makes things float, but I can’t control them afterwards.”

“Wouldn’t that be good enough, though?” River Breeze asked.  “Just have a bunch of books and things floating around you?”

“Ehh.”  I scratched at my arm uneasily.  “It’s also that not burning stuff with the magic is fiddly, especially things like paper.”

“A horseshoe shaped desk would allow you to work properly and with the proper decorum,” Violet Rose countered.

“Things are fine how they are,” I insisted.  “Weren’t we supposed to be talking about what to get Twilight for her graduation?”

“You say that like you’re not just going to pick up the first interesting book that’s been published recently enough for her not to have read it yet,” River Breeze observed.

“That… is pretty much what I was going to do, yeah,” I admitted without shame.

“Alternatively,” Violet Rose spoke up.  “You could gift her a book, but select one on a subject she is unfamiliar with.”

“What, like ‘How to win friends and influence ponies’?” I asked.

Violet Rose hesitated.  “…I can neither confirm nor deny my opinions on the suitability of that book for the young miss Sparkle.”

“I can!” River Breeze chirped.  “I just shouldn’t.”

Hrm.  There might be something to that idea.




⁂




As a stroke of luck, Princess Celestia had expressed interest in the graduation party, meaning Twilight had had no choice but to not only allow one to be thrown, but also participate.

I would call it a small affair considering only a few ponies outside of Twilight’s family had been invited, but it would be disingenuous to do so when there was a cake the size of a buffalo in the middle of the banquet hall, and it wasn’t alone.

I wasn’t sure if the kitchen staff had gotten bored, or if it was just the fact that Princess Celestia was attending.

Fortunately, there was real food at the table, too.  There was a tray full of sapphires, amethysts and the occasional spinel, all enchanted with a variety of artistic effects for snacking, plus some kind of golden scepter for a proper meal.

Oh, and there were salads and little plates of palace food for the ponies.  Was it any wonder that Princess Celestia always gorged herself on cake?

Food aside, it wasn’t a terrible event, even if it was kind of insulting to Twilight.  I mean, in all honestly, she probably could have tested out of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns years ago if she’d actually been allowed to, but the princess had wanted her to have the experience, so what accomplishment were we actually celebrating?

On second thought, the fact that Twilight hadn’t managed to get herself expelled on account of her mouth was probably a minor miracle, so I guess we could be celebrating that.  I wonder if she ever cursed Princess Celestia out over the hive mind like she always did Queen Chrysalis?

Hrm.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of any way to get the princess temporarily connected to the hive mind.  Too bad.

I popped another spinel into my mouth and took in all the ponies and not-ponies that had come.  It really was a small party for the banquet room, but there were a few interesting attendees, including Shining Armor and Cadance, who I hadn’t seen for a while and were talking with Princess Celestia.

Cadance, I knew, had been traveling around Equestria for a couple of years now on… I guess you’d call it a publicity tour, spending a few months in each city ‘connecting with the populace’ and that sort of thing.  It was really entirely the sort of thing I could imagine her doing… though there was also a small, vindictive part of me that liked to point out that even miss prissy princess herself had trouble standing out in Princess Celestia’s shadow.

Not that I was bitter or anything.

Shining Armor, on the other hoof, I hadn’t heard anything specific about, but I expected that he’d have managed to swing bodyguard duty for Cadance, even if it had required there be a few disappearances in the guard.  Whatever he’d been doing, it had apparently been very good for his career.  I knew nothing about military ranks, but his dress uniform was looking pretty shiny.  Possibly, there had been more disappearances than I’d first assumed.

No.  That wasn’t fair.  I shouldn’t make assumptions.  I’d never actually seen or heard proof of the changelings getting rid of ponies like that, especially if it meant they could play out some convoluted plan involving a rubber duck, a length of silk rope and seven bottles of vodka.

It really was a wonder they’d managed to remain secret for so long.

As for the rest of the guests, they were as you’d expect.  Twilight’s ‘parents’ were off in a corner, mostly keeping to themselves.  I’d talked to them even less than I had Moon Dancer in recent years, but we got along.  For some reason Twilight had been heartbroken when I’d given her my approval for the Night Light that had taken over the position while I was incubating.  It was weird, because he’d only ever been nice to me, and he’d gotten even nicer since she’d admitted her frustration with the fact.

Moon Dancer was hovering nearby, not quite with her adoptive parents, but close enough to not attract any attention for being all alone.  Her friends, I guess, hadn’t been invited, which surprised me only in that Twilight had gotten away with it.  True, Twilight only occasionally existed on the periphery of the group, but inviting them would have looked good for the princess.

River Breeze and Violet Rose had also come, but in their case it was mostly for my sake.  They hadn’t even brought gifts, the cheapskates.  That was fine, though.  My gift was better than anypony else’s.




⁂




"Slumber 101: All You Ever Wanted to Know About Slumber Parties But Were Afraid to Ask," Twilight recited by rote, then looked up from the book with a fixed smile on her face.  “This is… great… Spike, but it’s a little odd for a graduation present, isn’t it?  Graduations are supposed to be about growing up and looking ahead, but slumber parties are…”

“Well, I think it’s a wonderful gift, Twilight,” Princess Celestia observed, beaming with her usual serenity.  “I think we could all use a reminder from time to time that becoming an adult doesn’t mean that you have to leave behind the things that you enjoy, and that one of life’s greatest joys is to have good friends that you can rely on no matter what stages your life takes you through.”

Suddenly everyone was nodding in agreement, while Twilight was holding the book to her chest and looking up at Princess Celestia with stars in her eyes, and possibly the beginnings of tears.

“Actually,” I said, coughing to get everyone’s attention and putting on my most adorable, sincerely earnest expression.  “I thought the same thing at first—that it was childish—but I was completely wrong!  It’s super comprehensive, and even goes into some college level material!  For some reason, that and the chapters on ‘experimentation’ are enchanted so only adults can see them, though, so I couldn’t actually check to see if they were any good.  I hope they’re as thorough as the rest of the book!”

It took Twilight and the rest a moment to parse what I’d said, and confusion was slowly replaced by a dawning realization.  Slowly, Twilight opened the book to somewhere near the back, then slammed it shut, blushing like mad.

Everypony gradually turned to look at me, completely lost as to what they could say to my wide, hopeful grin that wouldn’t spoil the mood or my supposed innocence.  As a point of fact, my soul was indisputably past Equestria’s age of majority, and those chapters had been very educational.

It was only when she spat her drink down Twilight’s neck that anypony realized that Princess Celestia had snuck up behind her most faithful student to get a most enlightening peek.

Very educational indeed.

Best.  Graduation present.  Ever.