But what if you never change?
Chrysalis was seriously dead. Gone, split, outta here, afterlife bug-queen. At least, that’s what she was hoping Discord would believe. Perhaps then she would be released from his pocket reality and given a proper burial in Equestria.
“Unfortunately for the narrator,” quipped the master of madness, “I don’t believe you’ve gone to the great hereafter, Chitin-butt. I don’t recall signing your release form.”
Her head had hung over the edge of a floating island, her foot-long green tongue lolling in a lewd manner across her clouded eyes.
“Careful, mister writer,” warned the chief of disbelief, “don’t make too many references to tongues doing nasty things or we’ll have to change this story’s rating to something that will get the writer a ton of followers.”
“Ooh, would you please just stop talking to yourself already!” wailed Chrysalis as she miraculously came back from the great beyond (almost as if she were faking her death).
Discord, the dean of dementia--“Hey, I want that on a t-shirt!”--interrupted me as I was about to say that he informed his prisoner, “You are my prisoner in my pocket reality, Chryssi. Even if you were for realsies dead, I could avoid the sad tag and bring you back to life with one snap of my fingers.”
Rubbing her temples with her hole-riddled hooves, she groused, “How many times do I have to apologize for my minions abducting you when you and your second-stringer friends invaded my hive?”
“When you actually mean it,” he deadpanned.
“What is the point of this abduction? You know I’ll never change. Not without you using your magic on my mind. I understand that you’re too Fluttershy-whipped to do that anymore.”
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Fluttershy blinked and looked around her cottage. “Hmm, that’s odd,” she remarked. “I suddenly have the urge to kick Chrysalis’s posterior.”
Angel Bunny lit his cigar and said, “Join the club.”
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Discord stroked his chin-beard. After a few minutes, he stuck it back on his chin. “Never you mind who I have a Dakimakura pillow collection of. Fluttermistre . . .shy once told me of a reformed changeling who’s set up shop in Ponyville and helps ponies with their emotional baggage. I figure if one of your children can help ponies, maybe I can help you.”
“I don’t suppose you know this traitor’s name? It’s not as if I have a hit list that has twenty three names or anything.”
“Let’s see. I forget his real name, but I think he calls himself Mister Saddy-Waddy.”
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Mister Lonely Heart put down his client file as he shook off a sudden chill. “Hmm. I don’t know why, but I suddenly have the urge to kick Discord’s butt.”
Luna sighed, rolled her eyes and replied, “Join the club. Now turn into my sister, please.”
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chrysalis slitted her cat-like eyes at Discord. “You have the impulse control of a filly that just discovered the joys of coffee-flavored hay-shakes. Why do you think you can,” she stuck her tongue out as if saying the R-word was akin to drinking bleach, “reform me?”
The leader of lunacy rubbed two hands together. Then he threw them over his shoulder and rubbed his own hands together instead. “Because, Miss Prissy-Chrissi, if I can prove to Flutters . . .”
She quickly added with a curled lip, “Flutters?”
Trying to suppress a snicker, he continued, “If she can be convinced that I’ve turned you to the side of law and . . .” the draconequus unscrewed his tongue and put it in a nearby jar to keep it from getting a bad taste from saying the o-word, “. . . order, then maybe I can also convince Fluttershy to marry me.”
“You want to put a ring on that Twinkie-colored mare?” Her curled lip slipped into a knowing grin. “I think you’ve been living in this cloud-cuckoo-land for too long.”
He turned up his nose, by pulling his nostrils up to his tear-ducts, and snorted derisively. “Scoff all you want, cynical Sally. If I, the master of mayhem, can make you turn over a new leaf, then anything can happen.”
“That’s the problem with you. Thanks to your reality-warping powers, anything DOES happen. I don’t have that to fall back on. I just have the ability to repopulate my hive within a few years.”
“How do you go about doing that, by the way?” Queried the commander of kookiness. “Do you go on a lot of dates?”
“Don’t be disgusting. Since I’m a changeling queen, I’m constantly pregnant.”
Discord’s jaw hit the floor, then bounced straight up and slammed into his face, making him wince. “My goodness, you must be ripping through the pickles and ice cream!”
Tilting her head like a cat hearing a new word, Chrysalis mused, “Do you practice being insane or does it come naturally to you?”
“Yes and yes.” Discord snapped his bear fingers. In a flash of cheap animation, a psychiatrist’s couch and an easy chair appeared. Gesturing towards the couch, Discord suggested, “Let’s have a session, shall we?”
Sighing, she grumbled, “I’d rather go back to pretending to be dead.”
Once Chrysalis laid down, tousling her green hair away from her eyes, she looked at the vast array of islands that floated in a sky of swirling purple blotches. “Why does your pocket reality look like this, anyway?”
“I’m not really sure. I was born here. Since I come and go as I please, all that you see here is stuff that I’ve created over the centuries.”
She pointed accusingly at him. “That right there is why you will never understand me. You’ve never had any kind of real struggle. I’ve had to scrape and steal everything I could get my hooves on in order to survive. When you don’t get given, you learn to take.”
“We might have more in common than you realize. That’s why I’m hoping you’ll see things my way. You are the only changeling queen around, right?”
“Yes. Without a queen, my race would wither on the vine. I need my minions as badly as you need ‘Flutters’, I suppose.”
“Because without your changeling children, who would have any semblance to you? Even if you made yourself look like a pony, you would never truly be a part of their world. The only thing you would have to look forward to is yourself. Your children give you something to strive for.”
Chrysalis said, “You have selective empathy. Apart from that banana-colored pony, who truly cares for you? Or even fully trusts you?”
Choosing to ignore that remark, he said, “I think you’re focusing on the wrong thing. Your biggest problem is that you’ve never had a reason to care about anyone other than yourself and your hive. That’s because you want to believe that you have no choice but to be a parasite. Something I have never been.”
Chrysalis shrugged. “I am what I am.”
“No, you are what you only think you should be. I used to be just like you, apart from the whole egg-laying thing. You tell yourself that you have no choice but to stay on your current path because you’re too stubborn to change.”
She pawed at the ground angrily. “Don’t you think I’ve tried other ways? Some people think that opening up a broth . . .”
“Careful.” The lord of loopiness raised a hand in warning. “Rated E for Everyone.”
“What?” she blinked in confusion. “Oh, all right, a cuddle shack would give me all the love I need. But all that did was get me banned from the dragon lands. And dozens of marriage proposals.”
“Hmm. I just had a thought, Chrysalis.”
“Set it free, then. Don’t burden me with it.”
“Don’t be huffy,” scolded Discord. “It now seems to me that we are both products of our environments.”
“Everypony in the world is. What’s your point?”
“You think you have to use subterfuge to get love instead of trying to earn it. You know, the way I am with Fluttermast . . .shy.”
“That makes sense. Since you’re born with the ability to get whatever you want by snapping your fingers . . .”
He held up a finger. “Except my lady’s friendship, naturally.”
“Pfft. Whatever. Because of your powers, you grew up as the most spoiled powerful idiot since the Diamond Dog’s last president.”
“I found that out the hard way,” admitted the judge of jocularity. “A thousand years as a statue can teach you a lot of things. Such as you have to earn the life you want.”
“How do I earn my freedom? My biological clock is ticking and my next egg will pop out soon.”
“Your kind feeds off of love, right?”
“Yes, only love can truly feed myself and my hive. Since it’s hard to find, even amongst those sappy ponies, I and my hive had to be predators for that emotion. It’s better than being prey.”
Discord replied, “King Thorax doesn’t think so.”
She grinned evilly, which was the only grin she knew. “His days are numbered. He can’t produce new changelings like I can. He’s enjoying his time in the spotlight now, but he’ll get older and slower. Soon he’ll become prey.”
“I recently saw him drinking tea and have honeysuckle sandwiches with Spike. I didn’t see him inhale anypony’s love. Just Spike’s lunch money.”
Chrysalis shrugged. “I suppose getting ‘reformed’, or whatever you call it, changed his metabolism. That’s my best guess.”
“Or maybe that’s just what you tell yourself.” An energy-saving bulb popped into existence and clicked on between his horns. “That gives me an idea!”
Her pupils shrank into pinpoints. “Discord, no! Don’t make me look like Thorax! If I look like a sentient candy sculpture, I’ll die of shame!”
“Don’t worry, Queeny-meany. I’m just going to alter your eating habits.” Discord fired his finger-guns at her, twin beams of blue light making her flinch.
A few moments later, she slumped to the ground, smoke trickling from her ears.
When the world decided to stop spinning around her like a demented carnival ride, she rose on shivering legs. Looking around her, Chrysalis saw that she was at a small corner restaurant in Equestria. When Discord appeared in a flash of light next to her, he hissed, “You might want to put on your outdoor clothes, Chryssi.”
“Where am I?”, she whispered.
“Oh, nowhere special. Bran Mac Muffin’s a humble little restaurant, but I love dining with my lady here.”
Her stomach began to grumble and whine. “Why am I so ravenous?”
“I took away your ability to feed off of love or any other emotion.”
“Why?” she demanded.
“I had a sudden revelation during our clinic session. A breakthrough, as Mister Boo-Hoo would call it.”
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“There it is again!” cried Mister Lonely Heart. “Why am I getting so many violent urges? Am I going mad?”
“A mad psychiatrist?” laughed Pinkamena. “That would be new. Turn back into Rainbow, huh?”
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A swirl of green fire later, she looked like a white mare with a black mane. “All right, let’s hear it.”
“Have you ever heard of Yakyakistan? The charmingly violent residents of that country will not eat food that doesn’t exactly meet their standards. Even if they’re starving, they won’t consume food that isn’t prepared just right.”
“Some people just sabotage themselves, I suppose,” surmised Chrysalis. “What does that have to do with me? And where is that waiter?”
“I think that just because you never liked chowing down regular food, you assumed that your children wouldn’t either. So you took a route that ended up making Equestria hate your species.”
Chrysalis snorted impatiently. “That’s not true! I. . . I just never ate anything better than love, that’s all!”
The duke of delirium smiled knowingly, which he knew annoyed anypony who knew him. “Maybe you’ll see things my way once I order their delightful one-of-everything platter.” He snapped his fingers and a gray Pegasus mare landed next to him.
“Hello, mister Discord!” She chirped. “The usual for you?”
“Yes, Derpy. Could you super size the gullet-stuffer platter? My pony pal’s stomach is as empty as a buckball.”
Chrysalis folded her forelegs and muttered to herself. She had reached the grinding-the-teeth stage of private fuming when Derpy gently plunked onto their table a thick mound of bagels, cupcakes and, of course, muffins. The sight of this cavalcade of confectionery wonderment made Chrysalis drool like a fire hose.
Driven half-mad with hunger, Chrysalis plowed her head into the platter’s offerings, her gaping maw chock-a-block with gluten-saturated divinity. Crumbs flew up and around her like saliva-soaked confetti.
After settling into her chair, her belly swelling with fifty bits worth of baked goods, Chrysalis burped like a rusty foghorn. “Is this what I’ve been missing?” she asked. “I never thought I’d say this, but I was actually wrong about ponies. Their food isn’t too disgusting to eat, after all. Donuts are much easier to obtain than love.”
“Now that’s a t-shirt slogan I would wear,” quipped Discord. “Although I’d never show it to my lady.”
Nodding and licking the dangling crumbs on her chin into her mouth, she said, “I think I get it now. I’ve been dealing with ponies the wrong way.”
Raising a brow, he twirled a finger at her. “Go on. What else have you realized?”
“Taking love from ponies isn’t the right way to live. I need to raise my children on a more practical diet.”
“Yes, that’s right. That’s why I’m . . .”
“Going to see my backside disappearing!” she cackled as she leapt off the table and scampered towards a nearby group of trees. “Now that I’m full, my new army will be ready in days instead of months!”
“Now how did I know that just twenty-two minutes of talking wouldn’t be enough to reform her?” He remarked as Queen Chrysalis slammed her face into an invisible wall.
Chrysalis dropped her disguise as she slumped to the ground, her head wobbling around like an untethered balloon. “Arrgh! What did I just hit? I’m . . .” Her left eye twitched. “I’m still in your realm, aren’t I?”
In a single jump-cut, she found herself in Discord’s world, sitting in the now familiar psychiatrist’s couch. Snarling, she hollered, “You mean that delicious meal was only your creation? I wish my race had the ability to vomit!”
“Never turn down free food, kiddo,” chided Discord, waggling a disapproving finger at his stubborn patient. “Even I know that.”
“If all this effort is just to impress your dopey marefriend, then a thousand years as a statue will seem like a day! Why are you putting in this much effort for someone like me?”
Settling into his easy chair and shifting, he said, “You were right about one thing, Chrysalis. I do have selective empathy. There’s too much of my old self in you. I know where that path leads, Queeny, which is why I have empathy for you.”
She blinked.
“You keep thinking that you don’t belong anywhere in Equestria unless you bend it to your will. I used to believe that and I was turned into a pigeon’s bathroom for ten centuries. At least in this place, you’ll have someone to talk to. Even as a prisoner, you’ll have more than I did at that time.”
Putting her hooves over her eyes, she groaned with bleak resignation. “Ugh! Now you sound as sappy as a pony!”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment.” In a flicker of light, Discord made a notepad and pen appear in his hands. As he plunked himself deep into his easy chair, the doctor of deliriousness said, “Now that we’ve had lunch, let’s make my reformation clinic a smashing success! Now then, tell me what’s on your mind.”
Chrysalis buried her face into the couch’s rich Equestrian leather. “I want to kick your butt.”
“Join the club.”