The Other Draconiquus - Story 2: Bite of the Changeling

They continued their search for the changeling, bringing Fluttershy along, despite her being frightened by the idea of being led by somepony the same species as Discord, or Q, as they now knew his true identity as, to find somepony even worse. They could be anypony in Canterlot.

Twilight suggested that they try to find Flash, logically deciding that, if the bride wasn’t Queen Chrysalis, then most likely, it would be the groom. L agreed to this, so they tried to find him, deciding the first place to look would be in the palace.

They eventually did find Flash in one hallway, but what he was doing made Twilight gasp. He was with another Twilight, who was giving him a kiss, having him backed up against a wall.

“Flash! I’m not me! I mean, that’s not me!” exclaimed the confused Twilight with L.

Flash Sentry’s eyes glanced over to her, with a look which read: “What in the shiblamers?” Before Flash could get away from the fake Twilight, she pulled away from his muzzle, showed her changeling fangs, and bit him on the neck. “Ow,” said Flash, in a very retarded tone, and fell to the ground.

Unlike his human counterpart, pegasus Flash Sentry was all muscle and no brains, which is the only reason he even got the job in the Royal Guard in the first place. He had nearly gotten fired after he arrested a child in a creepy mask for saying what he thought was an insult to his mummy. He often found himself unable to finish his sentences with proper words, and ends up speaking complete gibberish. It was the most improbable thing that Twilight would ever love somepony like that. In fact, it has now been discovered, that human Flash Sentry participated in an expensive science experiment, intended to increase the intelligence of retarded people, with a 1:2 rate of success. It succeeded for him, but in no way did it affect the Flash in Equestria. Bucking waifu stealer.

“Flash!” cried Twilight, running to him, worrying that changeling bites were poisonous.

The fake Twilight transformed into Queen Chrysalis.

“Wait hold on a second,” said Pinkie Pie. “Last time you imprisoned Cadence in the Canterlot caves before taking on her form! Why didn’t you do it this time around?”

“I was sneaking around putting on different disguises whenever guards showed up, looking for a place to hide in order to come out and kidnap you tonight, when Flash showed up, and I disguised as you by accident!” said Chrysalis. “Now my original plan is ruined, but my back up plan is now in effect!”

“Oh Chryssie-” said L.

“Nopony calls me ‘Chryssie’!” exclaimed Chrysalis.

“- it’s over. You’ve been found out. What plan do you think could possibly save your scheme now?”

“Twilight, I feel funny,” said Flash.

“Funny?” cried Pinkie Pie. “I feel funny all the time! Funny’s a good thing! I love feeling funny!”

“Funny, funny, how?” Twilight asked Flash.

“Oh, well, for one thing I have a strange sort of tingling sensation in my-” began Pinkie Pie, before everypony tuned her out.

“It feels like something is spreading through me from my neck,” said Flash.

Twilight looked at the bite and saw his fur around it was beginning to blacken. “Are you poisoned?” she asked.

L went over to Flash, and pointed his sonic screwdriver at his neck, and scanned his bite. “No, he’s not poisoned. He’s mutating.”

“Oooo,” said Pinkie Pie. “Is he going to get special spider powers and start swinging around from webs and start fighting crime, and become the Spiderpony? Is he-”

L snapped his fingers, and Pinkie’s mouth was gone. This was the third time in her life, since she met Twilight, that Pinkie has been unable to speak. “No offense, Pinkie,” he said, “but shut up! There are times and places to be funny and silly, but this is not one of them.”

“Tell me, L. What do you mean by mutating?” asked Twilight.

“It was said back in olden pony times: ‘One bitten by a changeling, themself becomes a changeling, and become devoid of love.’ Nightmare Moon wrote that one.”

It is curious to note that, before Nightmare Moon was Princess Luna’s evil alter ego bent on having nighttime last for all time, she was merely Princess Luna’s pseudonym, writing grim works, such as Mommy, There’s a Werepony in my Closet (a short story, which focused on the psychological aspects of being a little filly who imagines monsters in their room), that had been deemed too dark for the public’s view of a ruler of Equestria to be writing. Over the time in which Luna was writing under this name, she began to come up with an idea of what her alias would have been like, if she were real. That idea later became reality, when she developed split-personality syndrome. Moon was also quite furious when she found out that she wasn’t a real pony, and decided to make it nighttime for all time, because she was jealous of Celestia for being real.

“Oh, no!” cried Twilight. “Can’t you do anything about it, L?”

“No,” admitted L. “Only you two can. You have to fight it together with your love.”

“What a sentimental, yet absurd statement,” said Chrysalis, who is unable to love. She had a confident grin on her face.

“Oh, yeah?” said L. “Isn’t that what you said last time?”

Chrissie’s grin faltered.

“Oh, and before I forget, or you try to escape,” said L to her, “there’s something that you need to know. Something they have in my world that they don’t have in Equestria.”

“What’s that?”

He got very close up to her. “Insecticide spray.” He then whipped out a can and sprayed it into Chrysalis’s face. She began to cough, and grow weak. She fell to the ground with her legs sticking up in the air. L then snapped his fingers and chains formed around her body, locking her limbs together.

“She’s not dead,” he told the others. “Despite what the label reads, this isn’t insecticide.” He held the can out, and peeled off a false Bug-Off label, to reveal that it was actually a can of spray-on deodorant. “Let’s find out how long it takes her to realize she’s not dead.

“But, anyway,” he went back to Flash and Twilight. The blackness was spreading down his front right hoof. “What I need you to do, Flash, is to focus. Concentrate on your love for Twilight. Particularly a memory that shows it. One that is very strong. I have faith in you that you can do it.”

“Do you know for a fact that this can save him?” asked Twilight.

“I believe in miracles,” said L. “After all you’ve been through, don’t you believe in them as well?”

Twilight reflected on every time before that any danger had come into her life, there had always been some sort of miracle that saved the day, when all hope seemed lost. Yes, she believed in miracles. One will happen again. It has to. It just has to.

Twilight held Flash’s hoof in her own, and hoped for one.

“What are you thinking of Flash?” asked L, noticing that the blackness was still spreading.

“I’m thinking of the time in which I went to one of Pinkie’s parties with her,” he said. “She gave me the rest of my slice of cake, because I ended up getting such a small one by mistake.”

“Try something stronger than that, Flash,” said L.

“Twilight, do you remember that time we went to Cloudsdale together, and we ended up getting so lost, that we ended up having to stay outside in the cold. I stayed out there the whole time with you, trying to keep ourselves warm with each other’s body heat? I actually gave up my half of the food we’d had on us so that you wouldn’t starve.”

“Um, no, actually,” said Twilight. “I don’t remember that at all.”

“Huh, must have just been a dream then.”

“Okay, the Changeling transformation is getting dangerously close to being completed,” said L, noticing that one of Flash’s pegasus wings had just become a changeling wing. “Find something strong quick, Flash.”

Flash hesitated. "I can't. It's cold, so cold."

"We're losing him!" cried L.

"Flash, please don't give in! Please stay the way you are! Do it for me!"

"Mph mmhph mmimphuph!" attempted Pinkie Pie.

"Sorry, my love," was the last thing Flash said with the ability to love. Then he was a changeling. The transformation was complete.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" screamed Twilight, in tears.