Out of Froggy Bottom Bog
Having once again saved the day from certain inconvenience, Twilight Sparkle and her five best friends were making their way back home to Ponyville from the depths of Froggy Bottom Bog. In spite of the rousing success of their latest mission, the six heroes were walking under a cloud of awkwardness. Well, five of them were. Pinkie Pie was feeling irrepressible and doing her best to lift her friends’ spirits by recounting the climatic finale they had all just experienced.
“-and then Twilight finally manages to pull out the big spell that banished all the illusions so Applejack could lasso Fluttershy and pull her away from that big nasty will-o-the-wisp! Wasn’t that spell just amazing?”
“Yes, it certainly was,” Rarity replied flatly.
Twilight stopped walking, prompting the rest to stop as well, and sighed. “Ok,” she said, “I get it Pinkie. We should finish… dealing with this before we get back to town. Fluttershy,” she said, turning around to face the friend in question, “how long have you been a changeling?”
Fluttershy no longer had a long, pink mane to use to hide her face, but she turned her head to the angle that would have accomplished that feat anyway as she nervously rubbed one chitinous yellow fore-leg against the other. “Um… all my life?” she suggested. “I mean… I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to turn a pony into a changeling, so I guess that’s obvious. If you meant to ask if I kidnapped and replaced Fluttershy, then no, I didn’t.” She lifted her head and met Twilight’s eyes with her own pinkish compound eyes. “I am the Fluttershy you’ve always known, I swear.”
“Let’s say we believe you,” Applejack said, “fer argument’s sake. That raises the question: if you’ve been a changeling since the day we met, why were ya so shy and hermit-like until recently? That don’t sound like a smart way ta go about stealing love from ponies like Chrysalis would’ve had you doing.”
“And why didn’t Cadance and Shining Armor’s love-blast send you flying out of Canterlot like the other changelings?”
“Because” Fluttershy said as she changed back to her pony shape in a flash of pink fire, “I think that blast was just meant to drive out Chrysalis and her Love-eating Changelings. I’m not a Love-eater, I’m a Kindness-eater.” Twilight opened her mouth to ask for clarification on that, but Fluttershy managed to cut the alicorn off, guessing the question. “There aren’t nearly as many of my kind as there are Chrysalis and Thorax’s, and we figured out Changeling Reformation several generations ago. I think that’s because sharing Kindness is easier to do without thinking about it than sharing Love is. Both my parents Reformed within weeks of being born, and they claim I was practically Reformed from day one. Zephyr Breeze was a bit of a late bloomer,” she added as an aside.
Twilight’s mouth opened and closed a few times as she thought through Fluttershy’s claims. “Ok,” she said at length, “so ‘your kind’ of changelings haven’t had a reason to prey on ponies in a long, long time. Why bother to hide what you really are, then?”
Fluttershy shrugged her wings helplessly. “Tradition and habit,” she said. “Changelings of all kinds have always disguised themselves when among other races. Chrysalis broke away from that, but the way she did it...”
“Ponies wouldn’t have liked realizing that their friends were never actually ponies,” Rainbow Dash said, nodding.
Pinkie was nodding too, vigorously. “And even after Thorax Reformed the Love-lings,” she said, “you were just so used to being Fluttershy the pegasus pony that you never really considered telling us you were actually Fluttershy the changeling.”
“Exactly,” Fluttershy said, visibly relaxing a little.
Twilight did not look nearly as convinced as Dash and Pinkie, though. “So why didn’t you take me seriously back before the Wedding when I told everypony I suspected something was wrong with Cadance?” she asked.
“You never said you thought she was a changeling, Twilight,” Rarity pointed out.
“Well, I didn’t even know about changelings at the time,” Twilight shot back before returning her suspicious look to Fluttershy.
Fluttershy took a deep breath to steel herself against Twilight’s intimidating glare. “Even if I had a reason to suspect there were other changelings around then,” she explained, “I don’t think I could have identified her because Chrysalis is a Love-eater. I only know how to spot fellow Kindness-eaters, and since no Love-eater that I’ve met has ever realized that I’m a changeling, I think that’s something we all have in common: we can’t detect changelings that eat different emotions.”
Pinkie’s eyes widened. “Oh, so that’s why-!” she half-shouted before clapping a hoof over her mouth.
Everypony, and Fluttershy, immediately turned their gaze on Pinkie Pie.
“What’s why what?” Twilight asked.
“Uh, um...” Pinkie’s eyes darted about nervously for a second, but then she sighed and calmed down. “Ah, why not?” she said wistfully, and then, with a flash of ruby fire, transformed into a bright orange, wingless changeling with green eyes. “Surprise, I’m a changeling too,” she said with nervous enthusiasm.
“Uh...” Applejack and Twilight both said, glancing between Pinkie and Fluttershy.
“This is a surprise to me too,” Fluttershy volunteered. “She’s not my kind, or I’d have known.”
“So, what kind of changeling are you then, Pinkie?” Rarity asked.
“I actually have no idea,” Pinkie declared. “I’m actually adopted; my whole family is earth ponies. I’m definitely not a Kind-ling because I just surprised Fluttershy, and I’m not a Love-ling cuz those guys never figured me out either. I might eat something like happiness or joy, since I kinda recall being more sickly before I saw the Sonic Rainboom and started throwing parties to make others happy.” She looked herself over, stuck out her tongue, and changed back to her pink pony form. “By the way, Fluttershy,” she said, “you lucked out on the post-Reform color scheme.”
“Thank you,” Fluttershy. “You didn’t look… too bad.”
“I looked awful,” Pinkie protested. “Not to mention totally off-brand. Everyone comes looking for Ponyville’s Premier Pink Party Pony, not the day-glo orange bug-pony. It just doesn’t roll off the tongue, and there’s no alliteration at all!”
“Right,” Rainbow Dash said. “so, if you were raised by ponies, how do you know how to do the whole...” She twirled a hoof at Pinkie before settling on “...the whole changeling thing?”
“Instinct and a lot of practice,” Pinkie replied. “A lot of practice. I’ve probably figured out shape-shifting tricks that even Chrysalis doesn’t know, just because I had to experiment.”
Twilight’s eyes widened slightly. “Wait,” she said, “so all the weird things you can do that seem to defy physics, that’s just changeling shape-shifting magic?”
“Hmmm… maybe,” Pinkie said cryptically.
“Wait, how did you Reform, Pinkie?” Fluttershy asked suddenly. “You have to share the emotion you eat with a changeling of the same type to Reform, but if you’ve never met another like you…?”
Pinkie shrugged. “Not sure,” she said. “I know that I didn’t Reform until about a year before Twilight moved to Ponyville, but I can’t say exactly when it happened or who was around me. I only change out of my pony shape once a year, just to give myself a check-up. Either there’s a changeling like me in town that I have never been able to identify despite knowing everything about everypony, or the changeling was just passing through and got caught up in a party and we triggered each other without realizing.”
“I suppose that’s possible,” Fluttershy said.
“This is fascinating!” Twilight exclaimed, stepping up between the two unmasked changelings. “So many new avenues of research into changelings have just opened up, I’m not even mad you two were keeping secrets!” She pulled the pair in close to her sides with her wings as her smile took on a slightly manic gleam. “What do you say we postpone further discussion until we get home? I need to write all this down, and organize some proper courses of inquiry and – oh! – we need to let Thorax know about this! I bet he’s either got tons to say about the various kinds of changelings or lots of questions of his own.” Pinkie and Fluttershy shared a nervous look over Twilight’s back.
“Hold up,” Rainbow Dash said as Twilight started to lead Pinkie and Fluttershy off, “before we go, are there any other changelings in the group?”
“Not I,” Rarity said.
“I’m earth pony to the core,” AJ said proudly.
“Same,” Twilight said. “Er, that is, ‘same’ as in ‘I’m not a changeling either.’”
“I was about to say...” Applejack drawled, smirking.
“Ok,” Rainbow said, “cool. Guess that means it’s my turn, then.”
One flash of light later, and the nearby mountainsides began to echo with cries of shock and confusion. Surmounting all the rest and retaining clarity for at least three sonic rebounds, was Fluttershy’s uncharacteristic bark of “Rainbow Dash, what the buck?!”