dC/dt ≠ 0

Changing Time’s Notes: After the attack on Canterlot exposed changelings as more than myth, there was nary a pony in Equestria who didn’t fear being replaced in the night. The idea that there was a creature that could take the form of whatever pony they desired was terrifying. We were so wrapped up over the identities they could steal and portray that we never questioned the identities of the changelings themselves. We never asked what individual differences there might be between changelings – simply labeling them all as enemies.

It’s ironic that we never really questioned if they might simply invent an identity of their own. There was always a pony that was replaced. There was always a victim. Even when we couldn’t find any victim we simply assumed the changelings had done away with them.

It was remarkably short-sighted of us in hindsight, and it shows how little we actually knew of their capabilities. Even now I understand only the basics of changeling shapeshifting, and I’ve probably met more changelings than anypony besides the princesses.

The Elements of Surprise: A Report by Morpheus of House Sycadia

The day I met the other Elements started out well enough. I only had three chores to do while Twilight was in Canterlot dropping off Spike.

Briefly look around town for any good pools of ambient emotion to eat.

Pick up some groceries.

Lock myself in Castle until Twilight returned later that evening to introduce me to her friends.

Of course, I couldn’t gallivant around Ponyville as a changeling yet. Twilight didn’t want that to happen until she was absolutely sure the town could handle it.

Thus I was in a carefully vetted disguise.

“Wait a minute.” Twilight’s emotions were flashing through ten or twenty conflicting tastes at the end of my proposal.

We were in her office. Ve had argued it was only logical to give the presentation there. It was official business after all. The contract didn’t allow disguises without approval.

Looking back at her from the sketch I had made detailing our disguise, ve saw her tilting her head to the side.

I nodded for her to continue, but on opening her mouth she promptly closed it – starting to chew her lip with a furrowed brow. Casting her gaze down, she shuffled through her notes and mumbled to herself. Looking back up at me, she tried again only to repeat the process.

When she failed for the third time, she put her head in her hooves and groaned. Ripping a blank piece of paper from her notes, she wrote her question down and handed it to me.

“Why are you going as a pegasus mare?”

Now it was my turn to tilt my head. “Is there something wrong with that choice? I figured you’d want that body type over a pegasus stallion.”

The princess’ flush at our response did not escape our notice. The rubbery texture to her emotions suggested embarrassment, but ve hadn’t done anything to merit that reaction as far as ve knew. Rather than press the matter, ve continued to gain more context.

“You wanted us to be able to run as fast as possible, right? Pegasus mare is the way to go then. A female pegasus is more aerodynamic. I can’t use unicorn teleportation, and I’m not strong enough as an earth pony to bust through crowds.”

Twilight chewed her lip some more. She did manage to speak this time, however.

“Isn’t that awkward for you? You are kind of…” The rest of her sentence was too quiet for me to hear.

“I am kind of…” I repeated, prompting her.

“You’re kind of a boy…” She was looking anywhere but at me as she said that.

And that’s when her reactions clicked. My hoof met my face. “Of course that would be weird for other species.” Ve groused. “I feel like such an idiot. Please tell me I didn’t stomp over every touchy subject known to pony kind.”

“Well… There was the line about me wanting you as a pegasus mare… Not that you meant anything by it, but a lot of ponies might misinterpret that...” Twilight’s voice was tiny.

I felt a headache coming on as ve connected the dots.

“Great. Just great,” ve grumbled. “Let’s just add mentally filtering every single hive forsaken sentence I want to make to the list of things I need to do here. The last thing I need ponies thinking is all changelings are nymphomaniacs. To be clear, you know that wasn’t a come on, right? I don’t even know if you’re into mares.”

“After I got more context, yes. But most mares would have slapped you and stormed off by then.” The slight bit of snark in the princess’ voice suggested she was starting to calm down.

“Then let’s go back to our other little misunderstanding.” Messaging my temples, ve carefully formulated how ve wanted to deal with this. “Okay, Twilight… Ve can understand why you might think my disguising myself as a mare would be awkward, but it really isn’t an issue for changelings. There are two reasons for that.”

I felt myself flush green. “The first is biological, but for both our sakes ve’re going to skip it. The last thing this conversation needs right now is the changeling version of the birds and the bees. You may think ponies have reason to find that talk awkward, but changelings have it so much worse. Suffice it to say it is common practice to hand nymphs coordinates and passwords to certain sections of the Archives specifically to avoid ever talking about it.”

Ve paused momentarily to compose ourselves. “The second reason is how easy it is for us to shapeshift. You need to realize changelings use shapeshifting for essentially everything. Sometimes it’s even an automatic response. The number of ways we have to change our body in miniature ways means we really don’t feel that attached to the original. Honestly, ve’d be surprised if you found a changeling that did. We toss on small changes like make up. Sometimes we don’t change them back.”

Ve chuckled. “And sometimes they’re not so small changes either. One of mother’s generals was so enamored with swordplay that he figured out how to morph his leg into a permanent blade. Think of it like a peg leg that periodically had its mass shifted around to keep it sharp.”

“You’re joking,” Twilight said.

“Nope.” I grinned. “He actually had an eye-patch too. For some reason he seemed to think the pirate jokes would get old. That doesn’t really happen when ve have as much material as ve do.”

The taste of cotton candy hinted at in the air was an improvement. There was still that conflicting mass of tastes that was confusion, but it had faded enough to let me pick up more mild emotions.

Unfortunately, rubbery cotton candy tasted awful, and Twilight was still slightly embarrassed.

At least she was managing to look me in the eye again.

I trotted to the desk. Picking up her notes, I tried to get the conversation back on its now thoroughly derailed track. “Now that that’s settled, do you have any other questions?”

She smiled sheepishly. “Umm… Yeah… Could you give me the whole spiel again? You started off with the pegasus mare thing, and I couldn’t even begin to focus on the rest of the speech while trying to wrap my head around it.”

Glancing at her notes confirmed this. They appeared to consist of a collection of ahhs, umms, and other unintelligible phrases.

Once again I found my hoof meeting my face. “The train leaves in about an hour and you want me to repeat the entire thing? There was at least ten minutes in there on research into coat colors. I’m not even sure it’s valid with how bogus the claims sound, but ve found paper after paper on the subject in the Archives.”

I couldn’t help but whimper. “I don’t want to give the whole thing again.”

Twilight looked at the clock and sighed. “Did your first speech really take that long?” She shook her head. “Alright, there’s not enough time now. I need to go make sure Spike and I packed everything. I’m going to give you permission and hope I don’t regret it, but I want the full explanation later. Got it?”

I nodded.

She smiled. “Good. Now I’m going to go pack and look up the proper permission phrase. Are you coming?”

“I suppose. Why not just ask us about how to phrase it? Ve know all the syntax by heart.” Ve tilted our head to the side feigning confusion.

The princess paused momentarily. A slight bitter taste filled the air answering the question I really wanted an answer to. It was smaller than when we met, but Twilight was the Princess of Friendship. She was probably the easiest pony on the planet to make friends with. It was, however, discernable progress I could give the other lords in my report.

Her answer was given cautiously. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m already putting a lot of trust in you by giving you permission to leave Castle while I’m in Canterlot.”

I snorted, but didn’t comment. She was absolutely right, after all.

I had stayed with Twilight just long enough to get permission granted for my disguise before running off to the entrance to the library. Once there I donned my disguise and leapt skyward to perch on the enormous windows flanking the massive double doors to Castle.

It was time for some recon now that I could look out the windows without causing a panic.

Twilight’s new home seemed to be on the outskirts of town. The landmarks ve had a visual on told us the palace had claimed what used to be a field on the northwest side of town. Now it had the workings of a high end natural park.

Flowerbeds were organized in patterns of colors to draw the eye, and trees lined the paths to provide shade. There were at least two fountains and a collection of statues scattered about.

Off in the distance I could barely make out ponies going about their business in the town proper.

I leaned closer to get a better look.

“Sweet Celestia, that’s what you’re going as?!”

Startled by Twilight’s exclamation I accidentally tripped off my perch. The stabilization plates in my legs snapped into position automatically as several instinctual calculations told us a fall from this height could actually break my legs. Thankfully, I managed to get some air under my wings before hitting the ground. Instead of crashing, I merely skid twenty trots or so as I shifted most – but not all – of my downward momentum in a horizontal direction.

“Is there a problem with my disguise?” My voice was muffled by the floor. The proper thing to do would be to stand up, but the crystal was cool and surprisingly soothing to my aching pride.

“You might want a different color. You apparently can’t pull pink off like Chrysalis could. Even Celestia didn’t look that silly when she decided to give pink a try.” Twilight’s chuckles were accompanied by some reptilian snickers. Spike apparently found my current form much less threatening. There was an undercurrent of sour milk, but nothing like the night before.

I sighed as I picked myself up. My stabilization plates unlocked themselves, and I stretched my legs to make sure all the cavities were fully open again.

“Nice to know that research on coat color was actually bogus,” ve grumbled. “More obscure colors were supposed to be more welcoming. Razzmatazz was by far the most qualified color with its obscure name and bright candy-like coloration.”

Twilight tilted her head. “Wait… You seriously read Dr. Xanadu’s thesis on pony perception of peculiar pigments? That was debunked like two hundred years ago. All it took was a single paper proving the average pony simply doesn’t care enough about coat color to judge any difference between obscure and common colors. It’s a textbook classic for how you’re not supposed to do research.”

My cheeks flushed green and I realized I hadn’t shifted my blood color. A small shift corrected this while I continued grumbling. “Was there anything besides the one paper? Ve found hundreds of papers supporting that blasted theory.”

Twilight chuckled. “It was kind of already accepted as crazy talk. The paper was just making it official. How did you not find all the other stuff calling it bogus?”

Ve shook our head. “Depends on whether or not any changelings actually found out before us. In this case, I’m willing to bet the infiltrator was a novice. They probably collected the info and never bothered to double check things.”

Looking over my disguise, I didn’t really see anything wrong with the color. “I may as well stick with it to save time. Anything else before we go?”

“Yeah. If you do any-”

“Spike!” Twilight cut the dragon off. “We talked about this, and you agreed to try it my way! We need to give him a chance to prove himself, and you need a vacation from the general insanity that is daily life in Ponyville. You’re heading to Canterlot so both of those things can happen.”

Spike grumbled something I couldn’t hear.

“I know Spike, and I love you too, little guy.” Twilight nuzzled him and I tasted something other than fear and suspicion coming from the dragon for once. I savored the flavor of fresh baked honey buns and homemade cookies in the air. Ve believed a pony would describe it as just like mom used to make. I was careful not to consume it, but I could at least enjoy the sensation.

Twilight pulled back from the placated dragon. “And I promise if Morpheus leads an army of changelings on Ponyville you can swoop in and save the day. I’m sure Celestia would be livid enough to oblige. Hay, she might even let you ride her into battle.”

I sputtered – caught off guard by that – and an aching pain suddenly sprang up in my chest shooting down my foreleg. I had been enjoying the love in the air a little too much, and now I was choking on it.

The simple solution was to actually bite off the love, but I really didn’t want to ruin the moment.

Several moments passed as I stuttered incoherently. Pounding my chitin covered chest was pointless, but it helped me stubborn through the discomfort. Bit by bit I regurgitated the love back into the air.

And my heart slowly began to beat again.

The others were snickering at my expense. They probably assumed I was simply startled speechless, and I was glad to keep it that way.

Ve composed ourself and looked to Twilight. “Should ve actually be worried about that?”

One yes and one maybe did not ease my worries as we left Castle.