The President watched the screen, silent. He held a glass full of Coca-Cola in one hand, tilted downwards. He had no intention of drinking it.

The room around him was completely still. He told his agents to not interrupt him for anything (except extreme emergencies and his wife, of course,) and even gone so far as to turn off the air conditioning so he wouldn't have any unexpected interruptions. All he wanted to hear was the sound of the speakers. Even his own breathing was too distracting.

Methodically, the president counted the seconds.

* * *

In the surgical theater, Janeway pressed a button. The same projectors that had before created an image of the Changeling's head now drew lines on the real deal, guides for her knife. She took a breath and slipped one hand into a glove, then the other.

"Alright, we're going in as quickly as we can," she spoke. "Restrain her head."

Dorian nodded and pulled on a strap, the material tightening against the changeling's skull. Chrysalis stared straight ahead, determined not to make eye contact with anybody. She twitched slightly as the second strap tightened, just below her horn.

"Good. Everything else normal?" Janeway asked.

Dorian nodded. Janeway closed her eyes for a few seconds, taking a deep breath.

"Let's go."

Janeway opened her eyes and turned to Twilight. "You have the spell ready?"

The alicorn nodded, horn flashing to life. "This is, uh, kind of intense magic."

"How intense?" Janeway said, voice low and level.

"There's going to be a lot of... glowing," Twilight replied. "Just—wanted you to know."

"That'll be fine. We need intense light anyway," Janeway reasoned. "Let's go."

Twilight closed her eyes, focusing on the spell. When she opened them again, they projected two purple spotlights, catching Chrysails in the back of the head. A third light soon joined it, this one coming from her horn.

"That should be good!" Twilight shouted, voice strained by the spell. "You can start cutting now!"

Janeway tapped another button on the console, causing a robot arm to spring to life. One more press started the saw on the its end spinning, a high-pitched whine filling the room. Janeway grasped the joystick on the panel, looking at its monitor. There, the computer automatically drew the lines she needed to trace on Chrysalis's skull, at a 6x magnification.

Janeway exhaled, then pressed the button. The whine grew slightly louder as she pressed the saw through Chrysalis's armor plates, and the smell of burning chitin began to fill the room.

Janeway wrinkled her nose. She was used to burning flesh and bone, but this stuff was nasty. She made a mental note not to cremate the creature if the operation failed.

She worked faster than she usually would, trusting the automatic guidance system to steady her hand. An hour and a half for something like this. God. If she didn't already have a book and movie deal signed, she would have backed out of this.

Janeway curved the blade upwards, turning it around the top of the parasite. She gritted her teeth.

"Sweat," she stated. Immediately, a nurse sponged off her forehead.

Janeway glanced at the bottom-corner of the monitor, where Chrysalis' vitals were displayed. Everything seemed normal. Some weird muscle activity in her upper abdomen, but nothing too out of the ordinary.

The surgeon started to curve the blade downwards. Almost there.

"Dorian, secure the fragment," she barked, not bothering to look up. She heard the noises of the other doctor preparing for her to complete the circle, but drowned them out with her force of will. So close. All she had to do was—

"Fragment free!" she shouted. Immediately afterwards, she took a deep breath. There. Easy part over.

* * *

The president raised an eyebrow in surprise. Ten entire minutes. Much longer than he expected.

Worry started to form in his stomach. What was taking so long?

* * *

Janeway swallowed.

The parasite was just as large as the scans said. A relatively small growth on the back of her brain stem, followed by tendrils that reached down into her spinal chord. Of course, only the growth and the start of those tendrils were visible. It was the rough shape of a potato, with a smooth blue surface. Janeway couldn't really tell in the intense light, but she was pretty sure it was glowing.

Twilight stood next to her, eyes still glowing.

"Huh. That's interesting," Twilight muttered. "It doesn't seem to be resisting."

"Resisting?"

"It's not trying to cast spells," Twilight said. "Not now, at least."

"Well, let's not wait for it to start," Janeway said. "Go poke it with your horn. Or—whatever you have to do."

Twilight glanced at her, then took a step forward. She straightened her posture, then leaned over, drawing her horn near the growth. Slowly, she moved forward until she made contact.

"Huh. That's..." Twilight said, raising an eyebrow. "This..."

Twilight's blinked. "This is a conduit. All the real magic is in that thing near her stomach."

"We're prepared to remove that as well, but we need to start—"

"Wait," Twilight said, cutting Janeway off. "I can use this conduit. It's not an advanced conduit, which are based on bits of magic—like little packet ships delivering pieces of a spell. It's just a dumb antenna. I might as well have direct access right now."

To Twilight's left, Dorian blinked.

"Let me see..." Twilight muttered. A second later, her eyes widened. "The thing in her stomach is a stack!"

"A stack?" Janeway and Dorian asked, simultaneously. Dorian opened his mouth as if to say something, but closed it again.

"The most basic form of metamagic—or one of them, anyway," Twilight responded. "One constructs a stack, then applies spells to it. These spells are removed in the reverse order that they were added. Last spell in, first spell out. For this variation, anyway."

Dorian raised a finger. "Uh, that sounds awfully like—"

"Quiet, Dorian," Janeway snapped. "We don't have much time."

The surgeon turned to Twilight. "Is there anything else you can tell us about this?"

"I think—I think I can get the spells," Twilight said. "Without actually unwinding it. Let me check, here..."

Twilight's horn glowed slightly brighter.

"There's—Huh, four left. First one is a container spell. Stores a physical thing in a magical form. A huge one, too—probably more of those creatures. After that is another projection spell, which—Oh, hey, I can play these! They're in plainspell. No kind of concealment at all. Let me see."

Twilight squinted.

"It says to take the 'Changelong' to your leaders. That's it, actually. Pretty short message. Then we have, um... some kind of inter-universal magic. Probably sending a message. Huh, strange. Then after that we have a—"

Twilight's face lost all its color. "Oh."

"What?"

"After that is a rather powerful explosion spell."

Janeway drew her gloved hand into a nervous fist. "It's contained, right?"

"Uh, well. Yes. Probably," Twilight muttered. "But the fact stands that it's there. If this thing senses danger, it may decide to, well, unwind the stack early. Meaning that..."

Twilight swallowed. Dorian finished the sentence for her:

"If we don't get it out before your spell is over, there's a chance this whole place goes boom."

"Yep!" Twilight exclaimed, voice stretched. "Yep!"

* * *

The president sighed and lean back in his chair. Twenty minutes, twenty seven seconds for things to go horribly wrong. That's the longest they'd lasted yet.

The waiting was always worse.

Author's Note

I am actually not dead. Weird, huh?