Love, not War

Isaac woke up surprisingly painless.  Okay, systems check, he thought to himself, trying to quell his already rising panic. Oxygen? Yes, so I must be in a safe part of the ship. Vitals? Nothing seems to be leaking... though my leg's trapped. Hostiles?... “Hello?” Isaac called out quietly. There was no response, so he shifted himself into a sitting position. “Hello? Is anyone there?” he called again, louder this time. Only silence greeted his words. Shuffling and grunting, Isaac managed to move the piece of metal and strange organic architecture off himself, and shakily got to his feet. He tried to put some weight on the formerly-trapped leg, only to find it barely supported him – that probably meant it was either sprained, or broken someplace. He’d need to find medical attention. He still couldn’t quite see anything, as wherever he was, it was very dark, and the green glow that lit the corridors had long since disappeared

Grunting with pain, Isaac slowly shuffled along the dark corridor, wishing he at least had a light source. Wait… did his phone still work? Isaac carefully leaned against the wall, before quickly giving up and sitting down. He took out his cellphone, which amazingly still had battery power. Isaac flipped through his apps, squinting at the brightness of his phone compared to the darkness of everything else. Unsurprised at the lack of wifi, he turned on the Flashlight app. Immediately, a single, bright white LED flooded the room with light, and Isaac shielded his eyes as his vision slowly adjusted to the sudden glare. Casting the light around, Isaac found that he was in the exact same corridor he’d been in when that missile had hit. The tubes he’d noticed earlier were empty of emotional magic, and the fresh smell that had once impressed Isaac so was gone as well, the corridors now smelling vaguely sweet. Isaac had heard somewhere that sweet-smelling gases could only be bad for you, and this didn’t make him feel much better. Then again, he had no trouble breathing, so maybe it was alright?

He walked through the darkness, stepping more confidently now that he could see where he was going. Whenever he could, he paused to take a look out a window, either pointed at Earth or outer space – and what he saw wasn’t pretty. The once-intact ship had chunks taken out of it, drifting around it in some sort of odd orbit as drone ships frantically worked to bring them back in. “Shit, this is like something out of a sci-fi movie,” Isaac remarked, watching them work for a while. Still, he had a job to do. Isaac made to walk onward, and as he did so, his shoe kicked against something clearly liquid. Looking down, Isaac spotted the source: A pipe that had been set into the wall had burst, and was leaking… something. It smelled the same as the sweet smell from earlier, and Isaac was finally able to place where he had smelled it before: Antifreeze. So, that explained that.

As Isaac limped along the corridor, the eerie silence punctuated by an occasional groan of pain as he put weight on his injured foot, he tried to connect the dots. Had the bio-bomb already hit, and the changelings somehow survived? Not to mention him, as the last time he checked, he was still very much alive. And in a considerable amount of pain. Maybe that was just a regular missile, then? Whatever it was, it had somehow managed to punch through the changelings’ defenses like they weren’t even there. Maybe it had some advanced circuitry on it that allowed it to do so? Whatever had happened, the United States hadn’t fired anything since: Maybe they believed the changelings had been destroyed? Shrugging, Isaac limped on.

Half an hour of walking later, he was ecstatic to discover a corridor that had lights on. Ignoring the pain in his ankle, he walked at a faster pace in an attempt to discover if there were any changelings who could point him in the direction of the Queen. “Hello?” he called out, after some minutes of fruitless searching. “I’m looking for the Queen, I need to warn her about something!”

At first, there was no response. Then, one of the doors at the very end of the hallway creaked open. “You need to see the Queen?” a voice answered, a clearly false deep pitch accompanying the vaguely female cadances. Isaac shuffled his way over, so that he was standing right outside this door.

“Yeah, it’s important! The humans are planning to send a bio-bomb this way and kill everyone here!” There was a sharp intake of breath from the other side of the door, and then…

“Drone, why are you speaking their language?” the changeling on the other end of the door asked.

“I… I’m not a drone, I’m a human. Please, it’s an emergency!” Isaac pleaded.

To his surprise, there was a frightened squeak on the other end of the door, and what sounded like furniture being moved. “I can’t help you! Find another changeling! …Go away!” the voice hurriedly answered, the deep tone it had been using earlier now replaced by what Isaac presumed to be its normal voice.

It still sounded female, and Isaac hazarded a guess that this was the changeling equivalent of a teenager. More important than the mysterious occupant’s age, however, was what Isaac was thinking at the moment: He was sick and tired of being treated as hostile. “I’m friendly, okay?!” he shouted at the door. “I don’t know why you changelings are afraid of me, I’m just trying to help! I just want the both of our races to live peacefully, isn’t that what you guys want too?!” There was no response. Isaac put a hand to his head and groaned. “Fine. If you won’t listen to me, then I guess I’ll just have to try somewhere else. Thanks a lot, whoever you are…” he grumbled as he made his way towards the next corridor. The steel door opened behind him, and he whipped around. Whatever sharp retort he had been about to make got lost in his mouth, as he beheld the sight before him.

It was Queen Chrysalis, but… younger. She was the size of a regular changeling, though significantly less bulky, and her hair only reached the bottom of her jawline. Her fangs were tiny little nubs that just barely stuck out of her mouth, and her horn was more rounded and smooth, not the sharply bent version that her other self had had. But most changed of all were her eyes: They completely lacked the additional iris, featuring solely the dark green inner iris and her usual catlike pupils. She was missing her odd crown, and her wings looked oddly small – too small to even support her weight, Isaac supposed. Realizing that he was staring at her, Isaac averted his eyes, not wishing to either appear rude or get mind-controlled.

“So… is your name…” he tried to ask, and Chrysalis sighed.

“Yes, I’m Chrysalis. But I’m not that Chrysalis! The one your people keep talking about, who’s absolutely crazy… I’m not her, okay? Please believe me!” she begged.

Isaac held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, I believe you! You don’t… look like her, at any rate,” he commented, and Chrysalis blew a strand of hair off her face in exasperation.

“I’m younger than her. Way younger. So, if you want to kill me to save the cute little ponies, or whatever…”

Isaac shook his head. “No, I really don’t. They deserve what they get.” Chrysalis looked at him curiously, but didn’t comment. “Besides, wouldn’t that cause a paradox?” he asked, and Chrysalis glumly nodded.

“Not that most humans would consider it. After all, if you could go back in time and kill Mussolini, wouldn’t you?” she asked, and now it was Isaac’s turn to look at her.

“How d’you know about Mussolini?” he asked. Chrysalis flattened her ears against the sides of her head.

“I’ve been studying up on human history, using all the radio signals your planet keeps sending out. I was going to impress your race with what I’d learned… but then this happened,” she sighed, gesturing out the window.

Isaac tiredly nodded. “So, are you the queen, then?” he asked, and Chrysalis chuckled.

“Not yet, at any rate. I’m still a nymph, I can’t be Queen until my mom dies. Which probably isn’t going to be any time soon… well, maybe. Depends on if your species succeeds,” she sadly remarked. They began walking, Chrysalis leading him presumably to the Queen.

As the pieces clicked together in Isaac’s head, he began to feel sorry for the poor changeling girl next to him. She’d been vilified for something she’d never even done, according to Burning Ash and herself, and now she would never be able to live it down. Worse, that same vilification had caused this entire mess, as humans now believed that all changelings were evil love-sucking parasites.

“I can feel that,” Chrysalis stated, interrupting his thoughts.

“Huh?” Isaac replied intelligently.

“That pity, you’re feeling. Are you feeling sorry for your fellow humans?” she inquired. Isaac shook his head, unsure of how to answer. “Changelings, then? You mentioned something about that,” Chrysalis pressed. Isaac shook his head again. “Then who were you feeling sorry for?” Chrysalis asked, and Isaac sighed.

“I was feeling sorry… for you,” he finally answered, and Chrysalis looked taken aback.

“For… me? Whatever for?” she asked, and Isaac looked away, feeling embarrassed.

“Because… you’ve gotten such a bad deal in life. Apparently, you’ve never even done the stuff we thought you did, and now, because of that TV show, an entire planet wants you dead, not to mention your family. Sounds pretty awful to me,” Isaac explained.

Chrysalis furrowed her eyes in thought, as though she’d never seen it that way before. “Now that you mention it, that’s what I’ve been feeling too… But I wasn’t able to put it into words,” she muttered. Isaac gave a short chuckle, and lapsed into silence, Chrysalis directing him through a maze of corridors.

“So… what’s your story?” Chrysalis asked Isaac, after the umpteenth corridor had disappeared far into the distance. Isaac looked at her, confused.

“My story?” he asked, wondering what she meant. Did she want his whole life? Recent events? The fanfiction he’d been writing?

Chrysalis rolled her eyes. “Why are you friendly, when every other human isn’t?” she clarified.

Isaac scratched his head. “Well, this changeling named Burning Ash crashed his ship outside my neighborhood, asking to speak with our local government representative.” Chrysalis nodded, as if she’d heard this sort of thing before. “He seemed nice, and I didn’t get any sense of malicious intent off of him – in fact, he was scared of me,” Isaac continued, a small smile coming to his face. “So, we went to the local representative, who acted really nice, and promised to forward his message of peace up the grapevine. But I listened at the door after Ash left, and it turned out she was telling the President himself to launch a ‘bio-bomb’ at your ship. So, I raced home, and managed to stop Burning Ash just in time. He offered me a ride up here so I could warn the rest of you, but we got separated upon arrival. Then the missile hit, and I… blacked out for a while,” Isaac finished.

“Then what?” Chrysalis asked.

Isaac shrugged. “Then… I woke up, made my way through the dark part of the ship, and found you,” he added, unsure of what else to say.

“Oh,” was Chrysalis’ only reply.

They walked on in silence, Chrysalis looking at him every once in a while. Isaac was beginning to think he’d seen these corridors before, but it wasn’t easy to tell – after all, everything looked the exact same. How changelings made their way through this ship without getting lost, Isaac would never know.

“Do all humans walk so funny?” Chrysalis asked, after Isaac thought he just might go insane from the silence.

“Hm?” Isaac replied, looking down at his legs as though they were doing something without his knowledge.

“Where you put one foot way ahead of the other, and then step really quickly on the other foot. Are you carrying something heavy on that foot?” Chrysalis asked, and Isaac chuckled, the chuckle becoming a pained grimace as he was suddenly reminded of how much his foot hurt.

“No, that’s because my leg got pinned down by a chunk of the ship when the missile hit. Not gonna lie, it hurts,” he answered.

“Oh,” Chrysalis replied, suddenly looking extremely guilty for some reason.

Her comment about carrying things reminded Isaac of something important, and he got her attention with a look. “Okay, I don’t mean to alarm you, but I did bring a knife up here in case something horrible happened. If you want to confiscate it from me, go ahead,” Isaac informed her, holding out the butcher’s knife he’d picked up so long ago.

“…Okay…” Chrysalis answered, reluctantly taking the knife. She looked down at it, then at him, then seemingly made a decision. “This way, the Queen’s room is just up ahead,” she called, and Isaac looked up in surprise. They made a single turn around a corridor, and there it was: a larger steel door, big enough to fit a car through and marked with unintelligible symbols.

“Wow, this ship must be big,” Isaac noted.

“Not… not really,” Chrysalis quietly answered.

She tapped the door rapidly, in a musical pattern of knocks that seemed to go on for almost an entire minute. When no response was forthcoming, she chittered and hissed at the door, and it whirred to life, the horizontal steel slabs sliding upward and downward into the ceiling and floor smoothly.

Isaac was greeted with an entire room packed to the brim with changelings, all of whom were staring at him. Sure he was blushing, he coughed nervously. “Is, ah, the… Queen here? I need to tell her something,” he announced after a moment’s silence. The crowd remained quiet, until Isaac spotted a few of them parting to reveal a single, taller changeling that was walking towards him. She was taller than Princess Celestia, standing at roughly seven feet, and carried an imposing presence, as changelings bowed whenever she passed by. Her emerald green hair was perfectly combed and parted, and an ornate black tiara with green gemstones was sitting atop her head, winking in the artificial lights of the ship. When she stopped in front of him, Isaac bowed low, deciding that this would be the best course of action.

“Rise, human,” she gently intoned, and Isaac stood up straight, trying to hide how nervous he was – it was like meeting her all over again. “I am Queen Mimica, ruler of the changelings. I see you have found my daughter, which I thank you for. Now… Chrysalis? Why do you have a knife?” she asked, looking at Chrysalis suspiciously.

Chrysalis stiffened, refusing to meet her mother’s eye. “It, um… I found it,” she answered, eyes shifting from left to right. Isaac would have laughed, if he weren’t so terrified: This version of Chrysalis was clearly an awful liar.

Queen Mimica, as Burning Ash predicted, wasn’t fooled in the slightest. “You ‘found it’? Where, might I ask?” she sternly replied, staring down at the smaller nymph. Isaac decided to intervene.

“It was mine,” he asserted, to the audible gasps of several changelings in the room.

Queen Mimica stared at him. “…And why, exactly, did you wield a knife in my daughter’s presence?” she asked coldly, any hint of politeness gone. Chrysalis frantically hissed something to her mother, which Isaac fervently hoped was some sort of explanation, but Queen Mimica cut her short with a hiss of her own. She turned back to Isaac imperiously. “Well?” the changeling queen demanded.

“I grabbed it when I first met up with a changeling on Earth, his name was Burning Ash. I didn’t know if he was truly friendly or not, so I took it for my own protection, and did not use it on him. After things sort of… spiraled, I forgot I had it, until she reminded me,” Isaac explained, pointing at Chrysalis. “So, to avoid looking like I wished undue harm upon the changelings, I gave it to her,” he finished.

Queen Mimica’s expression had softened notably by the time he had finished, although there was still a dangerous glint to her evergreen eyes. “Burning Ash? Come here, please,” she announced, loudly enough to be heard by the entire room. The familiar changeling slowly made his way to the front, pushing and shoving his way through a variety of others before clumsily standing at attention.

“Burning Ash, reporting for duty!” he proudly asserted, saluting, and every changeling within earshot snickered.

“Is what this human says true?” Queen Mimica asked, without preamble.

Burning Ash hastily nodded. “Yep, one hundred percent true, my Majesty – uh, I mean, your Majesty…” he trailed off, embarrassed.

By now, the audience of changelings was having trouble holding back their laughter, and even Isaac suppressed a chuckle at the changeling’s antics. Queen Mimica was smiling at this point as well, though she was significantly more polite about it. “Thank you, Burning Ash, you may go,” she concluded, and Burning Ash gratefully fled back into the crowd of changelings, giving Isaac one last thankful look before disappearing.

”Very well, this all seems in order,” Queen Mimica declared. She turned back to look at Isaac. “Now, I believe you had something to tell me?” she asked, back to her polite tone once more.

Isaac nodded, glad that the distraction had ended. “I came to tell you that my planet plans on launching a ‘bio-bomb’ at your ship,” he announced. There was confused muttering among the changelings, many turning to the changeling next to them and having quick, whispered discussions.

“A ‘bio-bomb’? What, pray tell, does this do?” Queen Mimica asked curiously.

“According to some rumors I heard a while back, it can destroy any living, organic matter. And I noticed that not only is your race organic, your ship is as well,” Isaac continued. Queen Mimica’s eyes went wide as the implications hit her.

“Prepare my personal ship for passage to Earth,” she instructed to a team of nearby drones. She turned back to Isaac, a noticeable hint of worry on her face. “You, human, come with me. Chrysalis, you too,” she called to the nymph, who was attempting to slink away unnoticed.

“But why do I have to come?” Chrysalis whined.

“No time for arguing, I have a plan,” Queen Mimica answered, gesturing for them to follow.