Converted

by Shaded Changeling

Rating: teen
Tags: Adventure, Main 6, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Alternate Universe, Drama, Changelings, Original Character
Length: 255473

What happens when a Dragon born outside of Equestria suddenly finds himself not only in an invasion, but turned into a Changeling? How does he cope with the changes, all the while trying to return a young Foal to Canterlot? Only time will tell.

Canterlot was not the first place Chrysalis attacked, before she moved to Equestria, she picked up a certain creature, a Dragon. His name is Shade, and he suddenly wakes up as a Changeling with only the smallest hints of his past life remaining.
Now thrust into an Invasion, he disregards the orders of his new Queen to save a single filly who he vows to protect. After being launched from the city, Shade must find a way to bring her back, but just how far is he willing to go?
With the secret of Changelings revealed, and Shade’s inexperience, he knows it is only a matter of time, just how long until he is convicted.
(Gore Tag placed for certain sequences that may not be suitable for some)

Published 2016-02-13 05:10:02 UTC
Last updated 2016-04-03 14:36:09 UTC

Prologue

“I’ve Failed…”

This was all Shade thought as he watched the place he had called home for so long, covered in green flames, smoke rising to the smog filled sky. His home was destroyed, and he lay, crippled, the last defender of the city.

Above him, the strange four legged insects flew, bombarding his city with green flame. Looking back, his own wings lay bent, broken, and unusable. He didn’t care about them, the pain in his leg was much more pronounced, looking back at his body, laying down on the ground, he saw parts of the bone, sticking out of the scale covered leg. His tail appeared to be cut, half of it laying a few yards away, bleeding from the stump.

He barely held onto consciousness, craning his head to look forward, he saw his swords, long black blades. His only hope was to get to them…

He began to crawl along the ground, his left arm appeared to be broken, as it refused to follow any of his commands, but his right hand, barely managing to pull him along with intense pain.

With every pull, his claws dug further into the dirt, now saturated with a mixture of blue and crimson blood.

His world began to blur, pain overtaking him. He just had to get to the swords…

Just before he could grab them, a large black hoof slammed onto his hand. A very distressing cracking sound came along with a very distant cry of pain. Shade raised his head, trying to look at the creature. It was tall, about his own height with long slender legs, each having various holes scattered through them, her wings were insect-like, holes rampant through them as well. Looking further up, he saw it’s face. Green slit eyes staring down at him, two large fangs coming off of her evil smile and a small crown atop her black head, leading to a strange dark green colored mane. There was a horn, which much like her legs and wings, had holes in it, but still managed to be coated in an eerie green glow as it levitated his weapons into the air.

Shade tried to remain conscious, intent to kill her. But his vision quickly became clouded, as he lost much of his blood. He heard a wicked laugh before his vision blurred out. And the world became black.

Chapter 1: 30 Years Later

Shade woke with a loud gasp.

He flailed his arms, frightened by the memories that had welled up suddenly. He quickly found himself face first on a cold floor. Cursing under his breath. He pushed himself up and stood on his two…no wait…four?

Shade looked down at his legs, he was not imagining it, he now had four legs. Each one being covered with holes, and now that he looked at them, they weren’t covered in scales…

He began looking around. Turning his head rapidly. Mirror, mirror, mirror… need a mirror Shade needed something reflective. Anything! He found it in the form of a nearby green crystal.

Rushing over. He heard clopping noises as his legs hit the ground. Hooves? Do I have hooves now? That would be dealt with later. He came to a stop at the crystal; he almost didn’t want to look for fear of what he would see. But he had to know.

He regretted it instantly.

His face, once covered in black scales, was now smooth and shiny…he had a carapace now. And a single curved horn jutted from his now smaller skull. Along with that, he had two fangs that jutted from his shorter snout looking like bat fangs.

His eyes were what really got him though. His left eye, had turned solid blue, no pupil at all, and was now taking up a good portion of his head, while his right eye, while still taking way too much space on his face, still looked like it had before. An orange eye with a rounded pupil, But after seeing himself, it shrank to a slit from surprise.

He touched his new face with his han… hoof, he needed to get used to calling it that. It made a small clink sound when he touched it. And a single tear began to form in his right eye. But he wasn’t done with his new body yet, he had wings yes. But they were Insectoid, and were full of holes. How am I supposed to fly with these things?

He began trying to flap his wings, and was met with a slight buzzing sound. Like that of a fly or a cicada. He was pleasantly surprised when he actually lifted off the ground. But looking over his shoulder, he saw his wings were flapping rapidly, making it seem as though he had half of a fan strapped to his back. But in-between them, what looked like a bluish saddle covered his back, like a large scale.

He took the time to look at the bottom of his body, black carapace the full way, ending in a small black tail, nothing like he was used to.

As he began to land, he was pleasantly surprised to see the wings actually responded much like his normal wings, at least in effort needed. When he started to think about walking, he found himself face first on the floor again. kay… just going to not think about it then…

As he sat down on his haunches, he started looking around the room. He noticed the strange green lighting, the entire cavern was being illuminated by those green crystals with pods scattered around the wall. Looking back where he thought he first woke up. He saw another pod burst open from the inside. He wanted to look around more, but he was interrupted by a pounding in his head.

“All soldiers prepare to leave the Hive!”

Hive? What Hive?

Shade looked around the room to see a few other pods beginning to open. And more of the what even are these things? Shade remembered them, but he never knew their name.

He was brought out of that thought process by an insect-like voice from behind him shouting “Hey! Nymph!”

Shade turned to look towards the cry. To see another one of the…Uhh…Until he found out there names they would be called Equibugs.

“Didn’t you hear the order?” The Equibug called back. “All Soldiers are to report to the top of the Hive.”

Shade had no idea where that was. So just replied with a “Huh?” Before quickly snapping his mouth shut and putting one of his ha…hooves up to his mouth to be sure that sound came from him. It sounded like him, but with a small distortion.

“Typical…” The Equibug said under his breath. “Turn to face me, Soldier.”

Shade obliged but was very shocked to see the expression on its face being one of surprise. “What in the Hive happened to your eye?”

Shade unconsciously touched his right eye before replying “It’s always looked like that.”

The Equibug looked at him in disbelief. “Drop the disguise. You aren’t going to fool another Changeling with that.” Changelings! That was their name!

“Disguise?” Shade asked completely lost now. Oh right! Changelings except… “I don’t have a disguise…”

“Whatever…” The Changeling clearly didn’t care. “You must have hit your head on something. Just follow me. If you even remember how to fly.”

This made the Changeling laugh but Shade just took off and followed him through the tunnels, which were strangely winding. Shade had no idea if he could even find the exit if it weren’t for this horse bug guy.

They flew in silence which Shade didn’t mind; it let him take in everything around him. Including that he now had fur-covered ears, which strangely weren’t covered in chitin, but that the smells in this tunnel seemed strange, there was a constant smell of what Shade compared to skunkweed and another smell, that Shade could have sworn was cotton candy.

By the time the two of them got to the entrance, Shade stopped and just stared, there must have been hundreds of the black carapaces of Changelings, all lined up like a military force. Most of them wearing some kind of dark armor, which curved around their head to look like a helmet, but left their face and eyes completely exposed. So for Shade those seemed pretty pointless…unless rocks fell on them…but the carapace should handle that more than fine. But what got him was the leader…

Even though Shade had no idea what gender it was, because most of the Changelings looked the same, somehow Shade knew it was a female… But she was slightly taller than the others, only by a head or so, but somehow Shade recognized her as superior.

Another voice in his head. “Last call! All Soldiers. Report to Princess Ceymi.”

Princess? Where have I heard that name before? His thoughts again were broken by the same Changeling as earlier. “Nymph!”

I guess that’s my name now… Shade thought as he flew down to where the Changeling was standing, perfectly in formation. “So…” Shade said kind of unsure of how to ask this, after all, he wasn’t sure if this was just a dream, or if his last memories were a dream, or if he was even alive right now. “You got a name?” He asked to the Changeling “I mean given how many times you’ve…”

“Spine” He replied. “It’s Spine. And you will call me Sir, as I am your commanding officer Nymph.”

Alright then… Shade was having trouble with this, and the fact that his name was apparently now ‘Nymph’ did nothing to help him find out anything.

Princess Ceymi turned to look at the Changelings behind her. Smiling, before speaking in a loud booming voice that still seemed regal. “Subjects! You are all about to aid the Hive in a valiant way! You are about to attack our prey! If we succeed you will be honored! However… if you stand in the way of our conquest, I promise,” Her voice was suddenly seething with anger. “The Queen will punish you personally.”

Throughout the entire crowd, Shade could hear a slight chattering of Chitin… He was one of the only ones that weren’t shaking slightly.

“Now then! You fly to Canterlot!” At once the large group of Changelings began to flap their many wings, creating a cacophony of buzzing and Shade was only slightly slow to take off. He managed to quickly meet up with Spine and stay in... basic formation.

“So this Canterlot place?” Shade said trying to shout over the wind, his strange new ears picking up everything. “What is it exactly?”

“Chrysalis damn it Nymph what do you remember?” Spine said turning his head to look towards Shade.

“To be honest…” Shade thought about for a few seconds. “I remember having claws…aside from that…not much.” Spine seemed to roll his eyes, it was difficult to tell with a solid blue eye but his mouth gave it away.

“You really must have been dropped when you were an egg.” Spine called back “Do you know what Equestria is?”

“Uh… kind of… Not really…”

Spine lifted one of his hooves up to his head with a very loud CLUNK! “Have you heard of Ponies?” And under his breath he added, “Please say yes…”

“Yeah…” Shade replied, “Quadrupeds, hairy, kind of... colorful… if I remember correctly.” Truth be told Shade had only ever seen one of them, even in his, I guess his past life, from what he remembered. She was regal, sort of a god like appearance saying something about Equestria…Shade wasn’t really paying attention.

“Well at least you aren’t completely brain dead Nymph.” Spine replied. “Equestria is where they live…and they are weak compared to us.”

“Never underestimate an opponent.” Shade replied, something he remembered. “Those that seem like a small threat can still put a dent in your armor.”

Spine looked over at Shade raising an eyebrow…ridge…whatever they had… “You sure you're a soldier?”

“No idea… Like I said…only remember a few hours ago. And… some kind of… weird visions…” Shade had to think back to it, while Spine looked beyond Shade as another Changeling flew over.

“Darkblaze? What are you doing here?” Spine said as the Changeling flew next to him.

“Just taking in the sights. Having some fun getting out of the Hive. Going to try and…” He caught Spine’s eyes looking at him seriously. “What?”

“You know what I mean, joker. What is an Infiltrator like you doing in a Military outfit?”

“Well I figured that just in case this whole thing goes south we may want a few spies in there. Just to weaken ‘em up a little.” He noticed Shade. “Who’s the new guy?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Spine replied. “He broke out of his pod a few hours ago and I picked him up. Figured we could use the extra Hooves. Now I’m not so sure…”

“Why’s that?” Darkblaze was looking between Spine and Shade.

“He has a bit of a… condition… He can’t remember anything since before he woke up. Even then it is useless stuff.” Spine said. “See for yourself.”

“Hey, Nymph!” Shade looked towards them and Darkblaze got his first look at Shade’s right eye. “Whoa! What happened to your eye?”

“It’s always been like that.” Shade replied. Turning to focus on where he was flying, but not really needing to. He still understood how to fly, it was more about him trying to figure out his memories, put them in order. He clearly remembered having claws and was pretty sure he had only two legs before… but… something was different. He couldn’t put his fing…hoov….No idea what to call it now… on it. His mind was jumbled, the last real thing he remembered was…that burning city… and… that face… laughing…

“Hey, Nymph!” Spine said looking toward Shade, who just noticed he was losing altitude “Something wrong?” Shade corrected his height as he looked back towards Spine.

“I’m…just thinking…”

“Hey I got a name for ya” Darkblaze said looking towards Shade. “Snake Eye”

Shade was looking at him with an expression that just said ‘No’ but Darkblaze was busy laughing at him.

Night fell quickly over the Swarm, so much so that Shade didn’t even realize it was getting dark. But his right eye didn’t seem to be affected. Well at least there’s one good thing about this.

Looking towards the ground, Shade noticed that they were flying over a section of forest. And that there was a small piece of movement. Looking around, Shade saw almost no deviation with the rest of the Swarm but he wanted to check something.

Shade lowered himself down, just so that he was flying over the tree line. He heard from above Spine shouting “Nymph! What are you doing!” but he wasn’t going to look away. He could have sworn he saw something, and he thought it looked like a lizard tail.

Spine had flown down next to Shade and was giving him a look of reprimand. “What are you doing Nymph?”

“I could have sworn that I saw something…” Shade began before a single sound hit his ear, a whistling. Not the wind, he had long since gotten used to that. It sounded almost like…

“Nymph? Are you okay?” Spine asked looking at Shade as he wobbled through the air “Nymph?”

Green fire fell from the heavens. Bashing into buildings.

“Nymph? Are you alright?”

“What’s up with Snake Eye?” Darkblaze had asked when he lowered himself down.

Those black creatures…fell like hail. Smashing through buildings. Landing on soldiers. One of them grabbed Shade, but he had burned it with fire from his mouth.

“Snake Eye?”

Then… Her… their leader… Burning the capital… the council… dear god… they were…

“Darkblaze, grab him!”

Author's Note

I'm willing to take any comments or criticisms you may have about this story.

Some minor editing done on: March 26, 2016

Chapter 2: Changeling Basics

The Changelings fell on the city. Green missiles burning through roofs and ground. Leaving craters.

“They will burn,” came a voice from inside. “You think they are friends? They wish to use you. They know not your power.”

A shadow had overtaken the burning hostile city. Replacing it with a mountain. A city was built into the side, looking pristine with gold and white towers. A waterfall to the right flowing in front of the city a pink bubble surrounding the city, it looked to be protecting the city from some unseen threat.

“They would destroy you.” The voice began. “Unless you show them the truth.” The barrier broke down and those piercing green eyes remained over the city. Like an omen hanging in the sky. “She will be there. And you will be hunted.”

“Do not forget what you were.” A reflective surface came up to show Shade, as he was, a dragon. “And do not squander what you are.” Green flames enveloped the dragon, turning it into a Changeling. “Use what you have…”

“Nymph!”

“Play along. Until…”

“Snake Eye!”

“It is time…”

“Nymph! Wake up damn it!”

“To strike!”

A quick stinging pain brought him out of his trance. He opened his eyes to see Two Changelings staring at him. One, who Shade guessed was Spine, stared at him angrily. While the other, who Shade could only guess was Darkblaze, looked like he was trying to contain a laugh…poorly. Behind them, was the ceiling of a cave.

Shade raised a hoo… hand? Yeah definitely a hand. Up to his carapace face. “Ow!” he said as his hand had been enveloped in green flame and turned back to a hoof. Awww. I wanted to keep that... hold up how did I do that?

“Nymph, what in the Hive were you thinking?!” Spine shouted clearly mad.

“I thought that I saw something down in the tree line sir. I went to check it out. Then I don’t know.”

“That amnesia of yours must be worse than we thought Snake Eye.” Darkblaze responded. “I was worried we would have to carry you all the way to Canterlot.” Hadn’t they? “But you just sort of, flew while you were half asleep. The instant you landed you just passed out fully.”

“When was the last time you fed Nymph?”

That is actually a good question. When was the last time he ate anything? Last he remembered was some kind of…bird-ray. And the ground was on fire...

“Uhh…” was all Shade could respond with.

“Well it isn’t like he had a lack of energy.” Darkblaze replied, “I mean he flew all the way here, half conscious, besides, as soon as we get the signal from Chrysalis it should be easy for you to feed off the emotions of…”

Wait! What? “Hold up. Emotions?” Shade said now completely lost. How did Changelings feed off emotions? Okay, so he may have been able to tell when someone was afraid, but there were visual cues and sweat was not exactly a subtle smell.

Darkblaze just stared at Shade with his jaw hanging open. “You are kidding me?” Shade immediately knew he said something wrong. “You never fed off…!” He turned to look at Spine, who had a much less surprised look but had his eyes slightly wide instead of completely stupefied. “Sir, permission to teach Snake Eye here.”

“Darkblaze you aren’t under my command. So why are you asking me?” Shade was just looking between the two of them, only slightly aware of the looks from the other changelings around him.

“But he is under your command so I have to ask.”

Spine raised a hoof to the bridge of his nose…snout…whatever… “Fine…”

Darkblaze quickly grabbed Shade by the hole filled leg and was dragging him off deeper into the cave. While his left eye was trying to adjust to the lower light, his right eye seemed perfectly fine throughout the entire ordeal, until he was suddenly dropped on his haunches with a clink.

“Alright.” Darkblaze said walking a few more steps before turning to look at Shade. “Tell me what you DO know about Changelings…” He lay down with his forelegs crossed in front of him.

“Well, apparently we feed off Emotions, can transform, and have holes everywhere.”

“And?” Darkblaze said expectantly.

“Umm…no idea…” Shade said completely truthful.

“Well… we have a lot of ground to cover…”

“So go over it one more time.” Darkblaze said as Shade was now hanging from the ceiling, sticking to it with his hooves.

“I thought you were supposed to be teaching me?” Shade asked as he flew down from the ceiling with a pleasant buzzing sound. As much as he hated to admit it, he was getting used to having these strange new wings and this body, walking was still a much more subconscious thing, as every time he tried to think about it he tripped over himself. Having a horn was still a bit strange to him, but he would get used to it.

The last hour or so had just been Darkblaze trying to teach Shade some of the basics of being a Changeling, such as the mental connection, walking on walls, and a bit of feeding on emotions. While Shade in turn was talking about what he remembered through his dreams, or whatever those visions were.

“It is, but can’t help me being curious. Especially when you don’t know how to transform but know this... Dragon race thing.” He talked about the race while spinning his hoof like you would a wrist.

“Well no I can’t…” Shade sighed. “I must sound like a madman…”

“Not sure about madman but madpony definitely.” Darkblaze said with a little chuckle.

Ah yes, terminology. Shade had to commit these to memory as well. Those would be quite a nuisance. Particularly when attempting to ‘blend in’, as Darkblaze had phrased it, with ponies. The whole amount of new things he had to learn was making his head hurt. Along with being told that the sun and moon were somehow controlled by two sisters. And one was banished but wasn’t and… it all just made Shade’s brain hurt. Oh, and there was also the four races he had to memorize. One of which Shade was sure was the name for the substance a unicorn horn was made from but turned out to be a horse with wings and magic.

While in contrast, the Dragon race he knew about had an idea of magic, it was a kind of sub division of the race. They lived in a smog covered area so they never really saw the sun or moon that much, but they knew it was there. They just preferred seclusion to all this multi race mumbo jumbo. The poison gas from the lava rivers may have also had something to do with it.

Shade had put his hooves on the side of his head, while he rested his head on the ground. “I don’t really know. I remember fire everywhere, blood, smog, and then... I can’t remember much else. Except for those burning eyes…”

“So you don’t even remember much about your own life?” Darkblaze replied. Starting to stand up. “Well…I might as well teach you to use that horn on your head.” He stood up and his horn began to glow slightly green. Before he was engulfed in a flash of green fire and before him stood…a horse?

“Whoa…” Shade had unconsciously said, surprised by the rapid change.

“Neat huh.” The Horse in front of him said. It still sounded like Darkblaze, but different. He had sort of the same voice without the vibrating distortion effect, but the horse in front of him didn’t have the horn. And didn’t even look remotely like Darkblaze. He was gray, with two feathery wings where his insect ones used to be. and back where his hind leg connected to his body, there was some kind of image. Shade couldn’t make it out. He had a mane that was sort of scraggly and black, if Shade hadn’t seen it happen, he would have sworn this wasn’t a Changeling.

“You try it.” Darkblaze replied. But when Shade just stared at him with the look of disbelief he became accustomed to, Darkblaze rolled his eyes. “Just relax your body and focus on a form. It would probably be good if you tried just a normal Earth pony.”

No idea what a normal Earth pony is, but Shade had indeed seen a horse before. So he just focused on what he knew. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath, in his mind, he focused on what he was trying to look like. Standard, just brown, a little shaggy, he was surprised when suddenly a flash of green pierced through his solid black eyelids.

As he opened his eyes, he was surprised to look down and find that he didn’t have any holes in his legs. And that they were a light brown. Looking over his shoulder. He noticed the wings were gone but he had a small brown tail near his rump. “So?” Shade asked. “How’d I do?”

“Impressive!” Darkblaze said walking around, judging him. “You forgot the Cutie mark.”

“The what now?” Shade said. He had no idea what this Changeling was talking about.

“Think of it like an identifying mark, it shows the ponies special talent and calling in life. Without it, it’s pretty obvious you’re a Changeling.” Darkblaze had explained pointing at the image on his hind leg which appeared to be a brown tornado. “This stallion was named Tornado Dust. He was a local weather control pony in charge of the winds. Nopony even noticed I had taken his place.” Then Darkblaze had looked closely at Shade’s right eye. “You also seem to still have your eye trouble Snake Eye. At least it changed color…”

Alright, so there is a problem with that, hopefully he could come up with a reason if he needed to address it. Well, one better than ‘I used to be a Dragon’ or ‘I was born with it’

“Well I think you should make your own persona to try and make up for it…” Darkblaze had said as he changed back to his sleek black carapace. “We can work on that later. Right now let’s try and get your telekinesis down.”

“Telekinesis?” Shade said as he dropped his own disguise. It was remarkably easy, he just stopped thinking about the form he had taken and thought about his ‘normal’ form, or at least the Changeling form.

“Yeah, we can use basic telekinesis.” He said. His horn glowed with a light green as he demonstrated it by picking up a few pebbles around the cave. “It’s basic magic. But you seem to have no idea what you are doing…” Shade was staring again, completely lost.

“Its basic knowledge, I barely think about it.” Darkblaze had stopped levitating the pebbles and was tapping his chin with one of his front hooves. Trying to figure out how to explain it. A few times he opened his mouth but didn’t commit to his phrasing. “Perhaps you should just stick to Pegasi disguises until you learn to actually use some magic.”

Shade was alright with this idea, walking on his new legs was still very strange to him, even though his wings weren’t much better, he preferred flying to walking at the time being. So he was fine with it.

“Anyway.” Darkblaze said through a yawn. “Might want to get some sleep. We’ve got a big day ahead of us.” He began to walk towards the entrance of the tunnel. “All the love we can hold. Ripe for the taking.”

Shade wasn’t really in the mood to feed off of love from any sentient being, it went against something of a moral code. If they attacked him first, he wouldn’t mind. But he doesn’t just attack for no reason. Would his new Changeling body need that? From the sound of it, he did.

“Tomorrow… Somehow I don’t feel good about this…”

Author's Note

Basic edits done on: March 26, 2016

Chapter 3: Invasion

The sun had risen in the sky, and Shade was just looking outside the cave towards the city. It looked almost exactly like in his vision, as he had started to call them, even down to the pink bubble shield. He had been watching it all night.

He couldn’t sleep. Less of couldn’t, he didn’t want to sleep. He had so much running through his head, Transformations, magic, the burning city, the fact that he was spared. Was his past life just a lie? Maybe he was a Changeling the entire time, but then how did he breathe? The Burning Fiords had toxic gas coming from the lava flows, maybe Changelings could change their anatomy as well? But he remembered his family... barely. And if he was a Changeling, then why did his eye refuse to listen to him?

These thoughts had kept him up all night, along with the practice of Transforming. He was trying to figure out his own identity as well as how much he could get away with. He had managed to turn his hooves into claws, more like bird talons really, but he needed to focus on that only. He had managed to get a Pegasi disguise, it wasn’t much, but he had managed to get used to having the feathered wings,much more so than the insect-like ones he currently had. His eye was still a problem, but he could work around that if necessary. He also picked up a few magical abilities, he still hadn’t figured out Telekinesis yet, but he had managed to light fire to small stones, and lasting fire walls. Aside from that he couldn’t do much.

He had to admit though, out of all the sights he had seen, watching the sun rise over the Castle in front of him was beautiful. The white and gold city had practically irradiated the welcoming glow of the sun, like the city was built with that exact purpose in mind. The waterfall off to the side was shimmering like gemstones, and the valley beyond gleamed at the returning sun.

Shade couldn’t help but smile slightly. He hadn’t seen the sun itself in years of memory. The closest he ever got was when flying through clouds of toxic gas back in the Burning Fiords. Well, at least he had a backstory now…

As the large flaming ball began to spread its light over the small woods in front of the cave, Shade turned back into the cave, not willing to get caught before he understood everything himself. He had wandered through the small woods, looking at small woodland creatures scurrying away from him.

He found himself looking at two different images through both eyes. His right eye was showing a normal image, with the standard coloration on them. While his left eye seemed to color them a little differently, they showed some kind of, fire around the animals. Usually a black color, but sometimes it was green, yellow, or blue. He didn’t know what the colors meant, but if he had to guess, it was emotion. Even the few animals he had seen were mostly full of fear, standard when a horse sized insect is walking forward at them.

There was just no way around it now, Shade was sure of it. This was his life now. A small part of the larger Changeling machine. The only problem is he really didn’t feel like it. There was no way this was a dream. It was almost... too real to him. He hadn’t found anything strange his sleep deprived or even unconscious brain would create. Everything made sense, there were no holes in the theories, no possible other explanations. But he knew one thing for sure.

He had the mind of a Dragon, but the body of a Changeling. And there was nothing he could do about it.

The hive mind once again spoke to him, as well as the others. “It is nearly time, my children.”

The only real difference was the voice, it sounded familiar. Not in the friendly ‘I know that guy’ way but in a more, ‘Did I hear that right?’ kind of way.

The Swarm had begun to stir. The entire Swarm. Hundreds of slick black carapaces, all waiting for the call to begin an attack on the unsuspecting populace. While the rest of them all stood proudly waiting for the call, Shade remained staring off towards the sun, now crawling up the sky.

“Begin my children” The mental connection had ordered, and all at once, the army of Changelings had taken off, flying towards the shield covered city. It only took Shade a few seconds of flying to figure out a problem with this plan. How are we going to get through the shield? Shade was no expert in Magic; he preferred to be up close when fighting mano E… uhhh Equiis. Whatever. But he was pretty sure a shield wasn’t going to let an army of flying bugs through.

As soon as they reached the shield, Shade could see what the plan was for it, and judge it as kind of dumb.

The plan appeared to be to smash into it until it broke open. While maybe if the shield wasn’t made out of a corporeal energy field, it could work. This just seemed like a waste of effort. Luckily Shade wasn’t required to participate in this show of strength…or stupidity…

After only a few moments. Shade had noticed something very interesting.

He was looking down on the city, not really paying much attention to what he saw, when his right eye caught movement in one of the castle halls. While he couldn’t make out everything. He caught enough…

From where he was, he saw a sudden flash of green fire, something was happening, and then he saw her. His right eye immediately dilated upon seeing the shape of the Changeling. It was tall, taller than most of the other Changelings, but that wasn’t what Shade was looking at; he saw the horn that gnarled mess of holes attached to her head. Her strange dark green mane flowing behind her, and then the eyes… Those eyes that had followed him every time he closed his own. He recognized them at once. She was the one who he saw, Queen of The Changelings...

He hadn’t even noticed he was grinding his teeth, the fangs making a small scratching sound as they rubbed against the carapace. He hissed out her name “Chrysalis…” He was so focused on her, that he didn’t notice the other large quadruped walk up to her, at least, not until a flash of light shot through the glass.

She seemed to be the same height as the Queen, but from this distance, Shade couldn’t be sure. Her feathered wings were larger than any he had seen since… wait, is that? Shade quickly focused on the mane. The strange rainbow colored flowing mane, twinkling slightly and floating in a non-existent breeze. Then turning to her head in which a single horn protruded, reaching the same size as the Queen’s, Celestia… She was one of the two that Darkblaze had told him about and she…was losing?

The two of them had engaged in what could have been a magical duel, at first it looked like Celestia would have easily won, but the tables turned quickly. Shade couldn’t help but wince slightly as the green magic from the Queen worked its way up to Celestia’s horn, blasting her back to the ground. As the Queen laughed at her triumph. Shade saw other ponies, six to be exact.

A purple unicorn, an orange Pony wearing a Stetson for some reason, a yellow Pegasi, a Pink pony, a blue Pegasi with rainbows attached to her head, and a white Unicorn. From this distance it was difficult to pick out details, but they seemed to be worried about something.

As Shade watched, the six of them began to run out of the hall. Just as the other Changelings hit the shield with a large THUD! And the Shield began to shatter.

“Go! FEED!” Those were the only words Shade heard over the destruction of the shield, it sounded as though a thunder cloud had burst open, firing its stored lighting everywhere it could.

Shade had no choice in the matter. He was pulled along by some unseen force into the city. He began to fly around, trying to find the six he saw earlier. He frantically scanned the streets, he needed to find them, to try and help them, or at the very least, stop them doing anything stupid.

As soon as he thought he found them, a green missile flew in front of him, smashing into the ground right in front of the purple unicorn. This is a bad place to be… Shade thought. If the other Changeling saw him, they would question him. That could lead to strange complications. He needed to get out. Find something he recognized, something he could…

“OOF!” Shade said as the wind was knocked out of his lungs by a very quick head-butt to his stomach. He flew spinning a few yards away before he managed to correct himself to look at what hit him.

A white Pegasus clad in golden armor was hovering where he had been. It looked like a stallion but Shade had no idea what the difference really was yet. But he had been head-butt before, and that was definitely a male.

The Pegasi charged at him again, attempting to knock him towards the ground, but this time, Shade was ready.

Quickly, and with all the precision of someone who had done it their whole life, he lifted himself slightly into the air, turning over so that he facing the same direction as the Pegasi, and latched onto his feathered wings with his hooves.

Shade pulled up on the wings, causing both of them to begin losing altitude. Quickly, he turned the Pegasus over so that he was staring straight into his eyes, before Shade’s horn had lit up slightly, and a cloud of green was forced out of the pegasi’s mouth, moving straight to Shade’s horn. “I’m sorry…” Shade said, a small tear in his eye as he forcefully pushed the pegasi towards the ground faster while pushing himself into the air.

“Hey Nymph!” Came a voice from above Shade, looking up, he saw Spine hovering above him, he was wearing one of those strange dark blue helmets that didn’t look very affective at protecting the eye. “Good job taking care of that Royal Guard.” He called lowering himself to be at the same height as Shade. “You sure this is your first time in a raid?” Then noticing Shade staring at the broken Pegasus lying on the ground. “What did you-?”

“Nothing…” Shade said sighing deeply, “He attacked me first.” Shade had to repress another tear. He had just done something unbelievable. This wasn’t the first time he had to take a life. But it didn’t make it any easier, particularly when he absorbed the emotions beforehand, that Pegasus had a family, a wife, a kid. Now it was all going to be taken away from him. There was only one way to stop himself from feeling ashamed…

Shade had flown down to where the Pegasus was lying. Broken, but not dead. “Hey” Shade said to his ear, hoping to get some kind of response. It came...

The Pegasus had opened its eye. A cold blue eye that stared daggers into Shade’s heart, and it only added to the pincushion.

“Stay still…” Shade said,standing up to look at the wound in the center of the Pegasi’s chest. “This will only hurt for a moment…” Mentally adding Please let me still remember how to do this. Shade lowered his horn to the location where the blood was flowing and began quietly saying something in a long dead language. “Hashha Me al hassa…” As he spoke, the green magic of his horn began to change to a bluish light. “Morro Cothra Jusin, corra hassah coran…” As Shade continued, the wound began to seal. After a few moments, the wound was healed, but the Pegasus remained on the ground. “I am sorry for what I did to you.”

Shade took off and flew up above the buildings, hoping to catch up to those ponies. He still felt guilty for forcefully draining the guard…but he had stopped him from bleeding to death, maybe it would be enough.

Ten minutes of searching had turned up a fruitless effort. There was no sign of any of the six ponies he had seen with Celestia, the closest thing he got was a large group of Changelings all laying in a circle near a big tower. But now he had something else on his mind. As he flew over the city, he watched what his... he shuddered at the thought... Fellow Changelings were doing. Some were openly draining ponies in the street, sticking them to walls, and flying near the castle he even saw Celestia herself locked in a cocoon. He was just about to give up hope and then…

There were two ponies running through a small alleyway, there didn’t seem to be any Changelings after them, but they clearly weren’t eager to be found.

Shade took a look around him, making sure he wasn’t in the sightlines of any other Changelings, before he dove down into the alleyway, landing with a louder than planned THUD, behind the two of them.

One of them was a cream colored Unicorn, bordering on near perfect white, her mane was a strange shade of purple that bordered on being pink and white. Her ‘Cutie mark’ as Darkblaze had called it, was that of a candle stick. The shorter of the two looked like a child, she was a light shade of brown that reminded Shade of dried mud, and her mane was a strange shade of green. She too had a small horn jutting from her head, however unlike the other, she had a distinct lack of any ‘Cutie mark’

From the instant he landed, he knew this was going to get bad.

Author's Note

Minor edits made: March 23, 2016

Chapter 4: The Foal

As the Bug pony landed behind us, I heard Candlelight, my mother, give a small scream and start to pull on my hoof to get me to move faster. As we tried to get away from it, I tripped from the slight increase in speed, and fell over, my hoof getting trapped under a trashcan that had gotten knocked over from my fall. I couldn’t get out. “Mom!” I shouted trying to get her attention.

She turned around and looked at me, then at the Bug Pony and yelled my name “Meadow!” She looked conflicted. She wanted to run but she didn’t want to leave me behind. All the while I could hear that Bug Pony walking up behind me. “Mom!” I shouted again. “Go mom! Run!” I didn’t want her to risk herself for me. And I could see that she was crying.

The Bug Pony was getting closer.

“Meadow! I’ll come back for you!” My mother had shouted back.

“Mom! Run!” I was crying now. And I saw her turn and rush down the alley, turning out into the street. Right As the Bug Pony sounded like it was right behind me.

I held my breath…not wanting to make a sound, just in case it didn’t see me. It had stopped behind me, probably waiting for me to drop my guard so that it could gobble me up.

I heard it start to move again, its hooves clopping on the ground as it walked around the over turned trashcan. I raised my hooves in front of my face, hoping he wouldn’t see me. As the Bug Pony walked around the trashcan, I looked up slightly to see it’s hole covered legs.

I let out a little squeak before shrinking back behind my hooves. It walked a little more, and I heard it come to a stop right in front of me. It was waiting for me to look at it, if I look at it, it will gobble me up. I was shaking so hard.

“Hey.” I heard it say, its voice was all strange sounding. Like a rubber band was twanging in the background. I kept myself hidden.

I heard a soft clunk, like it was laying down right in front of me. I can’t look at it…

“Hey.” It said again, softer this time. Almost as though it was trying to comfort me, the twanging sound in its voice was going away. It’s trying to trick me…don’t look at it…

“Hey kid…” It said again. All vibration in its voice gone, it sounded concerned. “How old are you?”

I was confused by the strange question. Why did this monster want to know my age? Did it only like little ponies when they were good and old? “I-I-I’m-m-m f-f-five…” I stuttered. I was still shaking from fear.

“Are you afraid of me?” The Bug Pony had asked it as though it was concerned again. I just nodded my head.

“Are you hurt?” The Bug Pony asked. It sounded genuinely concerned for me. I nodded again. And the Bug Pony stood up and walked next to me. I felt the trashcan move off of my leg, and I stopped shaking.

“Does it still hurt?”

I shook my head. I refused to stand up.

“What’s your name?”

“M-m-Mead-dow S-s-song.”

“Meadow Song?”

I nodded. I still refused to look up.

“Stand up for me…” The Bug Pony replied. I wasn’t going to until I heard it say “Please.” Monsters don’t say please.

I stood up, my eyes still foggy, as I looked at the hole filled hooves of the Bug Pony.

“Hey,” it said placing a cold hoof to my chin and lifted my head up to look at his face. “Don’t be afraid.” He looked different…his eye was…strange. One eye was solid blue, but the other was orange. I couldn’t tell you what it was. But it looked like he was in pain. I cleared my tears with my hoof.

Though his face quickly changed when his ears perked up and more of the Bug Ponies landed around us.

One of the larger ones walked up to the Bug Pony. “Great job Nymph.” It said with a pleased expression. “First a Royal Guard and now a filly? Keep this up and you’ll be one of the Queen’s Elites in no time.”

The Bug Pony gave the new arrivals a stern look. He didn’t look happy to see them.

“Excellent deception, you didn’t even have to disguise to get her to trust you. I’m impressed.” The big Bug Pony was looking at me. Almost like he was sizing me up. “Well she is your catch. So she’s yours.”

The big Bug Pony was looking at the Bug Pony expectantly. When nothing happened he looked back at me. “Are you going to-?”

“No. I can’t.” The Bug Pony said looking back to me.

“What do you mean Nymph? Of course you can.” The Big Bug Pony said catching me in his green magic and lifting me up to stare right into his blue eyes. “Here I’ll show you.”

The Big Bug Pony opened his mouth, staring right at me. But before he got a chance to do anything. The Bug Pony flicked the Big Bug Pony’s horn, forcing him to drop me.

The Big Bug Pony didn’t look too happy about that, “What in the Hive are you doing Nymph?”

“It isn’t that I can’t drain her. I won’t drain her.”

“And why not?” The Big Bug Pony asked.

“Oh for the love of…Look at Her Spine!” The Bug Pony nearly shouted. “She is just a child!”

“I can see that Nymph.” The Big Bug Pony, or Spine replied. “Which means she is full of Love…sweet…unconditional love.”

“You want to know what is holding me back? Morals. Soldiers? Fine. Civilians? I would prefer not to. But Children?” Nymph seemed very serious about these morals he had. Why weren’t all the Bug Ponies like him? “I refuse to seriously injure a child. Under any circumstance.”

“Sadly Nymph,” Spine replied. “We don’t have those morals. We serve to better the hive. If you would stand in the way of that, then you are an enemy.”
The other Bug Ponies started to lower themselves down, almost as if ready to pounce on us. The two of us backed up towards a nearby wall. The other Bug Ponies encircled us. Nymph kept me behind him the entire time. When we almost ran out of room, he talked to me while keeping his eyes on the incoming Bug Ponies.

“Meadow…I need you to do something very important alright?”

“Uh-huh”

“Climb onto my back. And hold on…don’t let go…no matter what. Got it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Alright climb on…” He ducked down to let me climb onto his back. I wrapped my hooves around his neck, and held on tight.

“Ready?” He asked.

“Mm-hm” I replied.

“Good” Nymph said, his horn glowing green, before he placed it on the ground and dragged it in a half circle around us. Where his horn touched, green fire erupted out of the ground. “Hold on!” He spread his insect wings and took off. They flapped so fast. And made a nice buzzing sound.

After Shade took off, Meadow Song clinging to his back, he immediately tried to fly towards where he saw her mother go earlier. Though he would not voice it to the little…Filly? Yeah filly. He wasn’t sure whether he was going to be able to find her mother, especially with all this chaos. The only thing he could hope for is that no other Changelings would question why he had a filly attached to his back… In fact the only Changeling he really wanted to meet was…

“Hey Snake Eye!”

Speak of the devil…

Darkblaze was flying down to where Shade was quickly flying to try and get away from Spine.

“Uh…Snake-Eye? You know that there’s-?”

“Yes I noticed Jack Ass!” Shade was not about to deal with Darkblaze being a joker while he was running from a Changeling who had more experience in the body than he did. Whether he had more combat experience was debatable.

“Hey I was just asking.” Darkblaze looked at Shade. “What’s gotten you so wound up?”

“Is it really that obvious?”

“Yeah well…you aren’t exactly trying to dampen your emotions are you?”

Crap… Shade had to focus really quick on that, one of the basic techniques, made so you couldn’t just be found via your emotions.

“There you go. Now uhh….where did you pick up the filly?”

Shade sighed. “Do you believe in the Hive fully?”

“Meaning what?” Darkblaze asked.

“Are you willing to harm a filly if it can be avoided?”

Darkblaze was tapping his chin with his hoof, thinking about it. “If it could be fully avoided I wouldn’t. Why?”

“Spine wanted to ‘drain’ her. I wasn’t going to let that happen.” Shade said. Then turning to Darkblaze he saw the look of shock. Whether this is because of what Shade did or what Spine did was up to debate.

“You’re sure it was Spine?” Darkblaze asked.

“Oh yeah.” Shade replied. Looking over his shoulder. “Ask him yourself.”

Darkblaze looked behind them and saw Spine and his little patrol of Changelings following them. Spine was eyeing Shade specifically. “Yikes…He’s a bit…different.”

“Yeah see-ya…gotta lose ‘em.” Shade said as he made a 90 degree turn facing up to the sky. “Close your eyes kid.” He was lucky that his draconic eye was easily adjusting to this…otherwise this would end very badly. After he was well above the limits of the city, he closed his wings and turned to face the ground. Swiftly changing from flying to falling. He had to be sure that he didn’t mess this part up…

As he hurtled towards the ground, he tried to think about the green missiles he saw in his dreams… hopefully this works…

When he looked at his body, he noticed the green shield had formed around it. Now he just needed…

CRACK

He had managed to hit Spine right in the chest. Sending both of them careening towards the ground. “KID HOLD ON!” He shouted as he grabbed Meadow with his hooves and tightly wrapped her in front of him, hoping that his back would take most of the fall.

He just barely managed to correct himself, turning so he crashed through one of the large buildings with his back while keeping Meadow safe. However he did not plan for the second impact.

When he hit the hard stone floor, his grip faltered and he dropped Meadow to skid along the ground. And then Shade heard two things…neither of them good. The first was a very noticeable cracking sound, which turned out to be his Carapace gaining a rather large fracture, the second was the sound of shattering glass as it fell on top of him, scattering over his body. Luckily he didn’t hear anything squish, so hopefully Meadow is okay.

He struggled to stand up but found that he couldn’t place any pressure on his back left leg. Apparently that is where the fracture was located. This caused him to limp heavily. Oh and apparently he had something caught on his horn.

He moved a hoof to grab it and found that it was actually a sheath, with a rather large knife inside of it. Granted it was probably at most only 10 inches, but that was all he needed. He slung it around his back and pulled the belt strap with his teeth. Which was very strange.

“Meadow?” He shouted out. “Meadow? Meadow Song? Where are you?”

Shadow could hear a small whimpering sound coming from a nearby fallen tapestry. Shade limped over and began trying to move the tapestry. “Meadow? Are you alright?”

“I’m…fine…” Shade let out a small sigh. Sure he had a broken leg and probably a few other injuries he didn’t feel at the time. But on the bright side, he could probably still fly, he had no new holes in his wing, and his only real disguise was a pegasi, so he wasn’t too torn up over his leg, and now he had something that he was familiar with…but aside from that, the fact that Meadow is fine was all Shade needed to hear right now.

After he managed to get all of the tapestry off of Meadow, the little filly looked up at him and practically shrieked. “Can we do that again?”

Shade couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Not right now… Maybe later. Now hop on…” Shade lowered himself down, being very careful not to put any pressure on his left leg. “Now try not to move around too much.” Shade said as Meadow wrapped her hooves around his neck. “My leg took quite a beating in that fall.”

“Alright Mr. Nymph.” The Little Filly said with a slight giggle.

“My name isn’t Nymph, Meadow.” Shade said happily as he walked through the hole that was probably broken through by a Changeling. He had been looking at Meadow on his back and not paying attention when he walked out of the building. “It’s-“

“Changeling!” said a white unicorn in golden armor as Shade walked out of the building. Almost instantly, he was met with at least five spear heads pointing at his throat.

“Crap…” Shade mumbled, knowing there was no way out of his current situation without putting either his own or Meadow’s life in danger. So he just stood there, not wanting to move for fear it would be taken as an aggressive act.

“Meadow?” Came a familiar voice…Shade heard it before…but…

“Mom?” Meadow had replied.

“Meadow!” A cream colored unicorn was shouting over the heads of the soldiers. It was the same one that he saw earlier but his attention was more geared towards the castle. His left eye was picking up something strange, the building was glowing with a bright pink fire, and every one of his senses was telling him this was bad.

“Meadow...” Shade was whispering to her. “Hold on tight…do not let go…”

“But my mom…” Shade saw the pink fire; it was getting brighter, almost like staring at a sun.

“Meadow…hold on…” Shade was mumbling as the spearheads got closer. But Shade was more focused on the nova forming around the castle. Which was now looking like it was… oh no…

“MEADOW! HOLD ON!”

From the castle, a large ball of pink energy was growing out from the castle, like some kind of spell, or shield…it was growing quickly. And Shade could see the Changelings being blasted back by it, and he was not too far away…

The blast hit Shade like an oncoming truck. Lifting him up into the air, along with Meadow, and launching them over the walls of the city. Shade could barely make out the cream colored unicorn shouting “MEADOW! THAT’S MY DAUGHTER!” While Meadow was shouting “MOM!”

While all Shade could hear was screaming. Whether it was his or Meadow’s he couldn’t tell. What he could tell was that both of them were being flung through the air very fast and they were also spinning, so that wasn’t very helpful in determining which direction they were flying, but he suddenly realized they were losing altitude. And there appeared to be a rather large stretch of forest. Please land somewhere soft…

“MEADOW!” was all he managed to say, right before everything turned black…

Chapter 5: Of Forests and Changelings

Those green eyes glared back at him. Fiery hell burning through him. ‘You disappoint me’

The Queen was not pleased with what he did, nearly killing one of her best warriors, saving a filly, getting blasted to who knows where.

but that wasn’t what got him, he was just fine with the Almighty Changeling Queen being perturbed…but the next image was…bad.

It wasn’t a fiery all powerful image, nothing like that…It just showed Meadow’s mother…crying…

“I’m sorry…” was all Shade could say. “I’m sorry.”

A light was shone off to the side, and all he could see was a shadow. Wings, horn, glowing white eyes…yup…That’s one angered god thing.

Shade could just feel himself shrinking in her presence. And for good reason. He was a small insignificant gnat and, by comparison, she was a rather large bug zapper. And he had just been a part of an attack on her people, those she swore to protect.

A bright light was radiating from her horn and a blast of light shot out at him.

He blinked slowly as he found himself hanging from a tree. Looking up into a bright shaft of light coming through a hole in the trees. He blinked for a few moments, before he heard Meadow’s voice.

“Mr. Nymph? Hello? Mr. Nymph?” She was saying it so casually, as if looking for a small pet. “Mr. Bug Pony? Are you here?”

“Over here Meadow.” Shade just barely managed to make it audible. His head was pounding, his leg was fractured, and he was fairly certain that he had puked at some point. So needless to say, he felt pretty drained.

Some of the bushes nearby rustled as Meadow stepped out of them, looking along the ground for Shade.

“Mr. Nymph?” She said unsure of where he was.

“Up here, Meadow.” Shade said. Looking down at the light drown filly.

As Meadow looked up at him she let out a small giggle. “What are you doing up there?” She asked as one might say it to a cat that had just climbed up the counter.

“Currently I’m thinking about how many times my life has changed in the past few days…oh and probably having a concussion.” For some reason the little filly just giggled even more at this.

“Silly bug pony.” Meadow replied looking up at Shade and placing a hoof over her mouth. Shade had to look up to his legs to see how he was hanging there, only to see a branch perfectly fitted into one of the larger holes on his back right leg, perfectly holding him in place.

“Umm…Meadow?” He said halfway between being tired and helpless. “Help?”

It took about twenty minutes of fidgeting with the branch, trying to magic it, and even Shade gnawing a little at the branch before it finally gave out. Sending Shade face first into the earth. Even after that he still had a piece of wood jammed into his leg…so that wasn’t pleasant. Luckily Shade managed to pull it out with his teeth. So at least that wasn’t impeding his movement, he had his left leg for that.

“So where are we?” Shade asked, looking around as Meadow climbed onto his back. The forest looked gnarled, the entire place looking uninhabited. Vines crept everywhere, and even the bushes were crawling with vines. Given what Shade had heard about these ponies, they apparently controlled nature. So why had this one forest been completely left to grow on its own?

“Umm…” Meadow said slightly shaking on Shade’s back. “I-I Think this is the-the-the…”

“Spit it out…” Shade said for two reasons, one her shaking was vibrating his carapace, which was not comfortable, and second he wanted to know without the stuttering.

“Everfree Forest.” After she said this, she wrapped her hooves tighter around Shade’s neck, which would be bad, if he didn’t have a hard carapace blocking her from squeezing too tight.

“The Everfree Forest?” Shade repeated. “What’s so bad about it? Aside from general creepiness.”

“The plants grow…the clouds move…and the animals live…all by themselves.” She started shaking again, so much so that Shade’s vision was starting to blur slightly.

“P-ple-e-a-a-s-s-e Sto-o-o-o-o-p” Shade said not noticing that the vibration in his voice was back, and being shaken didn’t help much.

“Oh…sorry, Mr. Nymph.” Meadow Song said as she stopped shaking. Shade’s eyes still had a few seconds of shaking before they stopped.

Once his eyes finally stopped jiggling. He looked up, found the sun climbing down from its pinnacle. Assuming that they had been out for…about 2 hours… that should be the west. And if he remembered correctly from his mountainside view, there should be a small town near the edge of the forest… The only issue is that he had no idea where any of this stuff was. And while he would easily be able to fly above the tree line, he didn’t want to risk getting caught by any of the spear wielding guards no doubt looking for any sign of horse shaped bugs. And probably just to make him seem like an even worse pile of chitin covered crap, more than likely it would be shown that he had kidnapped the little filly, so that complicated things.

Meadow had taken notice of Shade’s slight changing of expression. “What’s wrong, Mr. Nymph?”

“Nothing, Meadow… don’t worry about it. And by the way, my name isn’t Nymph. It’s Shade.” He had begun half-hovering half-walking so that he could keep pressure off his right leg. Causing a very slight buzzing sound as he walked.

“Then why was that nasty Bug Pony calling you Nymph?”

“Well…the only thing I can come up with is that he’s a bit grumpy.”

“Like mom when she comes home late from work.” The little filly giggled slightly and with that Shade got a slight smell of cotton candy, which seemed to be coming from… Meadow?

Shade turned to look at the little light brown unicorn on his back specifically with his left eye, and…she had a small pink aura around her, with another small mixture of black and light blue. Were these…her emotions towards him?

“Yes Mr. Shade?” he noticed him looking at her, which wasn’t difficult as he stopped moving to look at her.

“What are you feeling right now?” Shade asked.

“Well…I’m a little scared” That explained the black wisps. “But I know that you’ll protect me. You’re a good Bug Pony.” Shade cracked a little smile as she said that. While he was never a big fan of kids, he couldn’t deny that they could be some of the best motivation he could find. In fact one of his more recent dreams involved him going and saving the eggs before the Changelings attacked and placing them in a nearby lava flow…luckily dragon eggs are pretty heat resistant.

“I’m also kind of worried…” Meadow said, cutting into Shade’s concentration.

“Why’s that?” Shade asked genuinely wanting to know.

“Mom…she must be so scared for me…” The fire turned a slightly darker blue; she seemed to be getting sad. “But I’m also worried about you.”

Me? “Why are you worried about me Meadow?” Well he had a good idea about why, fractured legs aren’t exactly painless.

“Because you’re hurt…but if we take you somewhere to get it healed, they might just lock you away.” This hit Shade…this little filly, which knew almost nothing about him, was worried about his well-being.

“Why?” Shade mumbled.

“What?”

“Why are you worried about me?” Shade asked, curiosity and a bit of emotion getting to him.

“Because you helped me.” Meadow replied as though it were obvious. “You kept those nasty Bug Ponies away from me, and you even hurt your leg in order to protect me.” If Shade’s carapace could blush, it probably would be.

“Come on,” Shade replied. “Anybody would have done the same. If anything you were the brave one. You didn’t run when you had the chance to, and you held on with all your might.” Even though Shade couldn’t see the filly’s face, he could tell she was blushing.

“I was just listening to your-“

BOOM

The sound startled both of them; Shade’s wings snapped shut and his back leg landed on the hard earth with a forceful thud. Cursing under his breath in an ancient language, he turned towards the sound, and he saw something he never expected.

The sound came from the direction of Canterlot, and it sounded exactly like a sonic boom, which Shade doubted was a normal thing, especially with the giant rainbow blast.

“Whoa.” Came from both of them as the giant Rainbow waves expanded out from the city. If Shade hadn’t been thrown, slammed, head-butted, crippled, and been knocked unconscious three times, he would have thought it was a dream.

“What is that?” Meadow said, looking bright eyed at it, so clearly this wasn’t a normal thing.

“I have no idea…” Shade replied, finding himself looking at it for much longer than he should have. Mostly because as he was looking at the city, he noticed the sun was beginning to set…rather quick transference from day to night… then again…the cycle is controlled by two flying unicorns so…whatever.

Shade had to shake his head to get back to focusing on the task at hand…they needed shelter and they needed it quick, mostly because he wasn’t too eager to see this place at night.

There was only one option to try and find a cave quickly, it wasn’t Shade’s best idea ever. He opened up his wings and flapped them quickly. Only stopping once he was above the tree layer.

Please let there be no patrols…

He managed to spot something that was…much different than he expected. Up on the top of a nearby hill, there was what looked like a ruined castle… So they had attempted to build here… Shade started to wonder what could have caused them to give up on building… Then he remembered where he was. He quickly got the direction of the castle in his mind and ducked back down under the trees.

“What did you see?” Meadow asked as Shade landed, being very careful not to land on his back leg.

“I think I saw the ruins of a castle up ahead, hopefully it is safe in there so I can go and scout ahead.” Maybe I’ll find that village I saw earlier…

“A castle?” Meadow asked making sure she heard right. “You sure it was a castle?”

“I think so…” Shade replied as he rubbed the back of his head with his hoof, which made a strange scraping sound. “Hopefully my eye didn’t lie to me.”

When the two of them managed to get to the ruin’s clearing, Shade took a look at it. The building itself looked sort of like those he had seen in Canterlot, but very aged. The windows were mostly gone, the skeleton of the structure was mostly gone, the towers all eroded, and Shade didn’t really trust standing on any of the towers for longer than a few seconds. If you fixed it up, it might look almost exactly like the main one in Canterlot. But that was for someone else to figure out.

There was a small canyon in between them and the castle…luckily Shade could fly. So it was no big issue, even though there was a bridge up, he didn’t trust it given how it looked almost as old as the castle. So he flew over it.

Looking up to the sky, it had begun to shift from orange to a dark blue. So they had got here with a little bit of time to spare. Meadow was dozing off on his back; he could hear the little filly breathing. When he was at an arch which could have been an entrance at one point, He moved his hoof behind and nudged her slightly. “Hey Meadow?” he said quietly.

The little brown filly’s eyes opened, her light green eyes slightly bloodshot, and Shade didn’t blame her. She had seen a lot today. She deserved to rest…just not right now.

“Yeah?” Meadow replied rubbing her eye with a hoof before giving a big yawn.

“We’re here.” He said quietly. “We should be safe here. Just a few more minutes.”

“Alright Mr. Nymph…” She said as she closed her eyes again.

As Shade walked inside the building, he saw that the entire roof had basically crumbled onto the ground. Luckily there was a pretty good pile of rubble at the far end of the hall. Right below a large hole between two ripped tapestries.

As Shade flew over, he lightly dropped Meadow under the large hole, grabbing one of the smaller tapestries from the wall and draped it over her like a blanket. And just as a safety precaution, he drew a large circle around Meadow with his horn, making walls of fire spew up from where his horn touched. He made sure that he didn’t put too much energy into the spell so that it wouldn’t wake her up, just enough to deter any possible predators.

“Sleep tight Meadow.” Shade whispered as he flew through the hole in the wall and headed towards where the bridge was attached. He grabbed the rope that was holding the right side of the bridge closest to the castle and loosened it just to be safe.

He flew over the crevasse and found a dirt road leading further into the woods. Looking up at the sky, Shade saw that the red was overtaken by the cool dark blue of night. Something he was familiar with, everything else was still a bit strange to him.

After what felt like a half an hour, he managed to reach where the path opened up to a valley. And Shade couldn’t have been happier. He looked out of the opening and saw a small village. A few houses were lit by candles or some form of magic.

Looking around the valley, the closest building was a small cottage made from what looked like a cross between a hill and an acorn… While he couldn’t see any real details about the cottage, as there were no lights on.

As Shade turned his head to the rest of the valley, he saw what could have been an orchard, or just a lot of trees, but they didn’t look ravenous like the ones in the forest, they seemed tamed. While he couldn’t make out any details on the trees, he did see a building through the trees. It looked like a barn. Could have just been a house…Shade had no idea.

Shade was too busy looking around to notice anything else, but luckily his ears still worked. Because a few seconds later, he heard two ponies talking to each other, and they seemed to be getting closer.

Shade jumped up to the nearest tree, hiding himself in the rugged branches and leaves. He couldn’t make out what race they were, but he did pick up what they were saying.

“You’re kidding me?”

“Nope, according to Shimmering Star, the entire city was under attack.”

“No way…There must have been thousands of them.”

“Must have been. The Guards were overrun in minutes.”

“Do you think Lyra’s going to be alright?”

“I hope so… I wouldn’t forgive myself for letting her go otherwise.”

“How did they get in?”

“Their Queen was apparently disguised as one of the Princesses and got by undetected…”

As the two of them got closer, Shade was beginning to hope that he was hidden, up until a rather large growl came from underneath him. The two ponies stopped in their place, backing up slowly, before turning and running back to the town. Shade let out a relieved sigh. Which was immediately replaced by a light clicking of his carapace as he looked down.

Below him was a rather large wolf, made almost completely out of sticks and branches, its eyes were glowing with an eerie greenish yellow glow. And as it opened its mouth, Shade nearly puked from the smell. The closest thing he had ever smelt to it was a place called the Dump Pool. It was essentially a large lava pool that had been infused with all the smells poured into it. Even the dragons didn’t like to go near it without a filtering spell to purify the air.

But whatever this wolf thing was it seemed to really want to eat Shade, as it was scratching at the tree. Almost like it wanted to shake Shade off the branch. Which may have worked if Shade hadn’t quickly stabbed a tree branch through his front hoof to keep himself steady.

“Shoo. Shoo.” Shade was flicking his free hoof in a manner to get the wolf to leave. But it wasn’t really working, as now the wolf was trying to jump up and grab him with its jaw. Shade had to look over towards the village to make sure he wouldn’t be seen if he did something stupid, luckily the only ponies he could see were running back to the town.

Shade lifted his head as his horn began to glow with a green light, right at the tip, a ball of green fire was forming when it was about as large as the wolf’s jaw, he whipped his head down, throwing the fire ball down the wolf’s throat, causing it to burst into flames. It began to turn over, the fire moving through its body quickly, and soon it had stopped moving and was lying motionless. The fire dying down, Shade had pulled his hoof free from the branch and landed softly in the charred chest of the wolf.

Alright, Shade thought to himself, I found the village that was good enough. I’ll deal with everything else tomorrow… Shade was taking off from the ground when he saw the wolf reforming itself from the spare scraps around him.

“Are you kidding me?” Shade said out loud, quickly clasping one of his hooves over his mouth, and turning back towards the path he had followed before and flying away from the wolf. He didn’t want to use anymore of his energy on fighting a fruitless battle. “Well at least I have something good to tell Meadow when she wakes up.” Shade said to himself as he flew above the tree lines, trying to get back as quickly as he could.

Chapter 6: My Day in Ponyville

As I began to wake up, the first things I noticed were that I was wrapped in some kind of blanket. Whatever it was, it was comfortable. The second was the walls of fire surrounding me. It wasn’t scary fire, it looked slightly comforting, and the fire was really low, only up to my knees. But it didn’t seem like it was meant to keep me in.
I blinked slightly as the sunlight hit my eyes; it was coming from a hole in the wall next to me. The wall itself had a big crack through it, hopefully that was there before.

I let out a yawn and looked around the room, I tried to find Mr. Nymph. But all that I saw was a red Pegasus lying next to a pile of rubble nearby. His mane was orange with streaks of black through it. His mane looked unkempt and shaggy, he had both his eyes closed and looked like he was sleeping.

After I did a little stretch to loosen up my legs, I hopped over the ring of fire around me and walked over to the Pegasus. I walked around to his left side; his hind leg was elevated slightly on the pile of rubble while vines held two branches around it. His Cutie Mark was of what looked like an upside down sword behind a detailed sun.

I poked him lightly in his side and tried to speak with him. “Um…excuse me, Mr. Pegasus, did you happen to see a Bug Pony around here?”

The Pegasus blinked his orange eyes, adjusting to the light before letting out a yawn. “Huh?”

“Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Pegasus…but I was wondering if you’ve seen a Bug Pony around here?” The Pegasus was rubbing his eyes with his hooves, trying to clear them. He sat up on his haunches before letting out another yawn and rubbing his right eye a little more.

“What time is it?” He said. Looking towards the hole in the wall. “Alright it’s still early.” He stretched his back, being careful not to put much pressure on his hind left leg.

“What was your question again?” He asked, keeping his right side facing the wall.

“Um…my name is Meadow Song…I was wondering if you’ve seen a Bug Pony around here?”

The Pegasus tapped his chin with his hoof. “Just to be sure.” He replied. “This Bug Pony, did he have a black shell?”

I nodded.

“And a curved horn?”

I nodded again.

“Little bug wings?” He said lifting his own wings.

I nodded again.

“And did he have a weird right eye?”

I nodded again. “Did you see him?”

“Well that depends,” he replied. “Did his eye look like this?” He turned his head to show me his right eye; it looked like a lizard’s eye. In fact, it looked almost exactly like…

“Mr. Nymph?” I asked looking at the red Pegasus in front of me. At this he cracked a little smile.

“Who else would it be?” He said opening his hooves to give me a little hug. I accepted the hug and wrapped my own hooves around him as a flash of green fire swirled around him and I was staring at Mr. Nymph.

“And just so you know,” Mr. Nymph said. “When I look like that, the name’s Sunstreak.”

“Yes, Mr. Nymph.” I replied looking up into his eyes.

“How many times do I have to tell you, my name is Shade? You don’t have to call me Mr. Nymph all the time.”

“Alright, Shade.” I could tell that he was smiling. “Did you fix your leg?”

He let go of the hug as he tried to steady himself on all four of his hooves. “Barely…I managed to splint it with some branches and vines I found.” He looked back at his leg. “It doesn’t stop it from hurting, but it certainly helps.” Then when he looked back at me, he seemed to remember something. “I found that village I was looking for.”

“That’s great!” I replied, then seeing the look of slight fear I added “Right?”

Shade sighed. “I’m just… kind of nervous about it.” His thin ears lowered to press against his head. “They already got word about the attack… And I’m sure they won’t think twice about convicting me for that. As well as in your ‘Kidnapping’” When he said “kidnapping” he made a circular motion with his hoof.

“But you didn’t foalnap me.” I replied.

“Yes, but they don’t know that. For all they know I might have you under some kind of…” He twirled his hoof while trying to find the word he was looking for. “Mind control spell or something. Sort of made you think I didn’t do it. Granted that is a load of horse feathers but again…they don’t know that.”

I walked up to his hoof and touched it with mine. “If they try to blame you for that. I’ll stick up for you.” Shade’s horn glowed a faint green color as a little smile began to creep up his face.

As he moved his hoof away he pulled the belt holding that knife he got from Canterlot out of the pile of rubble and slung it over his back. “Quick question, Meadow,” he said as he tightened the belt around him. “Could you really not tell it was me?”

I shook my head. I honestly had no idea that was him. It was so accurate. He looked like a pony. If I didn’t know about his eye, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell. “Why didn’t your eye change?”

He was bending down to let me climb up on his back. “I honestly don’t know…” He said as I wrapped my hooves around him. “I haven’t been able to change it. I was trying almost all night.”

“You were up almost all night?” I asked slightly concerned for his health. “Aren’t you tired?”

“Ehh….” He responded, stating to flap his wings and lift us slightly off the ground. “I’ve had worse. Besides, I had to make sure that you were completely safe before I decided to sleep. That was what the fire wall was for…well that and it gave me enough time to find the village.” Then he looked at my concerned look. “Don’t worry, Meadow. I’ll be fine.”

“You should rest a little bit more.” I said, slightly worried about him. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

He let out a small chuckle that harmonized with his wings. “I’ll tell you what, Meadow.” He said still chuckling slightly. “When we reach the edge of the forest, I’ll stop flying for a bit. Alright?”

“What about your leg?”

“I can handle a little bit of pressure; just don’t make me jump from any buildings or anything. The splint will help with some of the shock. So what do you say?”

“Alright,” I replied nodding slightly as he looked back at me with his solid blue eye. “But you have to promise me you’ll get some sleep tonight.”

“Fair enough.” He replied as he flew us over the crevasse and onto the small dirt path. “Whatever makes you happy, Meadow.”

His horn was glowing slightly again. “What’s your horn doing?”

He looked up at his horn than back at me and sighed. “Promise you won’t get mad.”

“Why would I get mad?” I asked.

“Just promise me okay.” He added. So I nodded at him and he let out another sigh. “I’m feeding off some of your spare emotions.” He quickly turned his eye to look at me “I didn’t think you would mind… and there’s just so much…”

“It’s alright.” I replied, stopping him from continuing to ramble. “Were you hungry?”

At that exact moment I heard his tummy rumble. He lowered his head. “Yes… But it isn’t doing much…I probably still need physical food, so far you’ve been giving me energy. I’m not really sure how to handle it when I’m disguised though…”

“Well so long as you needed it.” I replied. He did say that he was only taking little bits. So it wouldn’t be too bad…right? “What would happen if you did take a lot?”

Shade stopped suddenly and began to look around as if searching for something. He then fully landed and took me off his back. “I’ve only ever drained one other pony, he was a Royal Guard… and…” He took a deep breath. “I could feel what he felt, I saw his family… and… He had no energy left. I’m not proud of what I did. That’s why I’m trying to limit myself. I don’t want to hurt you.” He looked at me. And he looked like the memory of that event hurt him. His right eye was slightly larger almost like he didn’t want to remember it.

“Don’t worry. I trust you.” I replied. At this his eyes seemed to widen and I could see a small tear form in his right eye. He put me on his back and I saw his horn glow again.

“Thank you, Meadow…” He said. “You have no idea how much I needed to hear that.” He said as he started to hover again, keeping his hind leg off the ground. “We should be getting pretty close. When we reach the edge of the forest, I’ll land.”

A few minutes later, I was no longer riding on Shade’s back; instead I was riding on Sunstreak’s back. And we were heading towards the exit of the forest. On the path there was a strange burnt patch of ground that Sunstreak told me he caused.

As we reached the edge of the forest, Sunstreak landed and let me get off. “Now remember. No reference to the fact that I’m a Bug Pony alright?”

“Uh-huh.” I repeated. Sunstreak had made me promise that I wouldn’t make any reference to him having magic or being a Bug Pony. He was very stubborn about it too. “Are you sure you want to walk with your leg like that?”

“Yes, Meadow. I’ve had worse…granted I wasn’t a horse then. But I’ve had worse.” He kept making these references to a past life, but he seemed like a normal pony so it must have been a long time ago. “So do you have any idea where we are?”

“Uh…” I replied trying to remember the map I’d seen dad looking at before, pointing out the cities. “I think this is…”

“Ponyville.” He said looking at a sign half covered in vines. “Population: 235. Founded in…can’t really make it out…” Sunstreak’s voice still sounded a bit strange to me. I had gotten used to him having that weird vibration in it, so much so that the absence of it was actually weird. “This sign looks too old to be useful.”

“We’re in Ponyville?” I asked, walking over to Sunstreak. “I’ve heard about this place before. My mom visited it on business before.”

“Interesting. So do you know anyo-pony here?” Sunstreak was having trouble with saying Anypony and everypony. Maybe it’s just different where he came from.

“Well… No. Mom just kind of stayed here for the night. She had to hurry on her work in Manehatten.” Sunstreak laughed silently, he did this every time I told him about the names of the cities. He hadn’t given any examples of his own cities. So I couldn’t be certain if they were any better.

“Well we better head into the village then. See what we can find.” Sunstreak still looked kind of nervous about going into the village, but he probably wasn’t going to talk about it to me. So I didn’t ask.

Almost the instant we stepped into the village, I could tell that Sunstreak was on edge. His eyes were slightly bulging and he kept looking around quickly. Keeping an eye on everything. I stayed really close to him, if for no other reason than to make sure he didn’t lose me.

“So where are we headed?” I ask him, sort of to break the tension he was feeling.

“I…have no idea…” He said, not willing to relax for even a second. His eyes kept on whizzing around trying to keep everypony within his field of view.

“Well. Maybe we should try and…”

“Look out!”

The next few seconds happened really fast. First, Sunstreak’s head snapped towards the source of the voice, then he pushed me to the side. Second, I looked back to see Sunstreak get hit by a scooter pulling a red wagon behind it. Next, Sunstreak was on his back, lying on the ground while the scooter stopped and the orange Pegasus filly who was riding the scooter hopped off while a yellow earth Pony and White unicorn filly got out of the cart to check on him. Each of them was wearing a different colored helmet.

“Are ya alright, Mister?” The yellow Earth pony asked in a strange southern accent as she removed her blue helmet to show a red mane with a large bow.

“I think you were going a little fast there, Scoots.” Said the white unicorn filly, taking off her own blue helmet to show a curled up mane of purple and pink.

“Are you okay?” The orange Pegasus asked as she removed her purple helmet to show a purple mane with a windblown appearance to it.

Meanwhile Sunstreak’s eye’s seemed to be spinning. “Why yes I’d dance the moonlight in love…” he said not at all in the present situation. “I’ll just waffle the flip and we’ll scuttle towards the moonset.”

“Uh…Ah’m with Sweetie Belle on this one, Scoots.” The yellow Earth pony said looking over Sunstreak. “Ah think ya addled his brains a bit?”

“No…the biscuits in the tree log. Right next to the celestial prism.” Sunstreak kept saying.

“Uhh…Mister are you…?” The orange Pegasus began looking over Sunstreak with a confused expression.

“Oh I’m just fiddle as a Lute.” Sunstreak said as he turned over and attempted to stand up. “You smell about the moving picture show? That waffle heard delicious!”

I walked over to where Sunstreak was standing, his head still spinning.

“Oh, Plain Note. Did you get the truck of that license that hit me?” He then fell onto his stomach, his legs spread out. His eyes were still open and noticeably spinning. “Oh look! That sky in the cloud looks like a unicorn.”

“Sunstreak?” I said unsure of how to proceed.

“Oh hi, Gaia. Why are there three of you? And why are you all spinning. It is very distracting.” He shook his head quickly back and forth. Pushing himself off the ground with his front hooves and placing his right hoof on his forehead. “Ow…”

“Uh…Mister? Are ya alright?” The yellow Earth pony asked.

“Give me a second…” Sunstreak said, holding up his other hoof to silence the fillies. “I need to get my mind to stop spinning. What just hit me?”

“That would have been us…” The white unicorn, or Sweetie Belle had answered. “We’re sorry about that.”

“Are ya hurt, mister?” The yellow Earth pony asked. “We hit ya pretty hard.”

“Let me check really quick…” Sunstreak kept his hoof in front of his right eye, looking at his body; stretching his wings and folding them back up. “Well…if anything you made my leg not hurt by comparison anymore…” He dropped his right hoof from his eye and stood up. “Meadow?”

“I’m here.” I replied walking up to him. “I’m fine don’t worry about me.”

The orange Pegasus was staring at Sunstreak. “What’s with your eye?” She was quickly elbowed by the yellow filly. “ow…”

“No, no it’s alright. I always get asked that. I was born with it. It has uses…” Sunstreak replied, steadying himself on his legs.

“We’re sorry for running into you.” Sweetie Belle said. Looking right at Sunstreak’s eyes. “Oh I’ve got an idea!” She said with her voice jumping up an octave near the end. “You’re new to town right?”

Sunstreak nodded. “Yes. We are. Why do you ask?”

Sweetie Belle looked at him with her big green eyes and replied “Can we show you around town?”

Sunstreak was visibly shocked by the offer. And his right eye twitched slightly before he turned to me and gave a fake smile. “What do you think, Meadow?”

As the three fillies turned to look at me, Sunstreak mouthed ‘Help me…’ I gave a more confident smile and answered “Why not?”

“Well that settles it.” The yellow filly replied. “We’ll show yah ‘round town.” She gave a small gasp. “Maybe we’ll get our cutie marks in 'Town Greetin’!” The other two seemed to agree with her as almost immediately all three of them shouted. “CUTIE MARK CRUSADER TOWN GREETERS, YAY!“ Sunstreak’s left eye had just transformed back into its solid blue form. So I motioned at my own left eye with my hoof and he fixed it giving me a small nod.

“Well what are we waiting for?” The orange Pegasus said, grabbing her helmet and getting back on the scooter. “Hop in.”

Sunstreak eyed the red wagon with the two small fillies sitting in it expectantly. “Ummm…I’m not so sure that…”

The two of them gave him a puppy eyed look. But Sunstreak seemed to ignore it. “I’ll tell you what…I’ll fly alongside you. Meadow…” he turned to look at me. Before motioning to the wagon. It was my turn to make a fake smile this time.

“I’d be glad to.” I said as Sweetie Belle handed me a spare helmet they had. Looking over at Sunstreak I could see him mouthing ‘I’m so sorry.’

The tour took nearly the entire day…and I got very little from it. I only really got a basic idea of where everything was… I only really remembered where the Town Hall was. And even then it was pretty easy to find. By the time they finished, the sun was already hanging low in the sky. And we had stopped at a large number of places. Including some place called Sugar Cube corner, Golden Oaks Library and Carousal Boutique. I hadn’t really been paying attention I was more worried about any possible crashes we would get into. And Sunstreak seemed to be focusing more on the cart than anything else. Prepared to swoop in if anything went wrong.

“So what’da think?” The yellow filly or Apple Bloom asked after the tour had concluded.

“Very…Informative.” Sunstreak replied. Still eyeing the wagon. He was not about to let his guard down.

“You plan on staying?” The orange pegasus or Scootaloo asked.

“I’ll…think about it…” I could tell from his expression that the instant he could, he would be leaving the town and probably wouldn’t come back.

“Where’d yah say you were from again?” Apple Bloom asked for around the third time today.

“I’ll remind you later…” Sunstreak said. Eyeing the now descending sun wearily. “We should really get going. Want to make it back before night falls.”

“What do yah mean…’make it back’?” Apple Bloom had asked, eying Sunstreak. “Ah thought yah said that-“

Sunstreak just pointed towards the forest with his hoof “We are camping out in-” He didn’t even get a chance to finish before all three of them had simultaneously said “in the EVERFREE FOREST!”

“YES!” Sunstreak shouted back. “I explained it three times to you!” In all fairness he did, but the wind and the inattentive Pegasus had made it difficult to hear him.

“You did?” Scootaloo replied, she started trying to think about when Sunstreak had managed to tell them, while Sunstreak was dragging his hooves down his face in disbelief.

“Well yah shouldn’t have to stay in a place like Everfree. Don’tcha know what is in there?” Apple Bloom had asked waving her hoof at Sunstreak.

Well from what he had told me, he actually met one of those creatures, a Timber wolf. He had a problem when he tried to get back to me and told me all about it on the walk into town.

“No please…tell me.” Sunstreak said hovering down to be eye level with the three fillies.

“Well there’s timber wolves and hydras and cockatrices,” Sweetie Belle had started to say. Sunstreak just rolled his eyes. At least until they got to cockatrice. Then he looked at me.

“On second thought… maybe we could find a new place to stay for the night…” I knew the exact reason he had said this…were it up to him, he would gladly have chosen to stay in the forest…but I was with him, so he had to rethink. I might have saved his life.

“I know!” Apple Bloom began. “You can stay with us! We’ve got plenty a room. That is if you don’t mind sleeping in a barn…”

“Well…I guess it’s up to Meadow here.” Sunstreak landed next to the wagon.

“Sure…” I replied. Giving a little smile. “Sounds like fun.” Sunstreak was looking at me with an expression that hinted at him thinking I was crazy.

“Well then what are we waitin for? Let’s head over to Sweet Apple Acre’s, Scoot-“

“Hold up there!” Sunstreak said before Scootaloo could start dashing down the street. “Meadow, you want me to fly you there?”

I tried to make it seem like I was thinking about it, but I may have said “Yes” too fast. It isn’t that I don’t trust Scootaloo or any of them. I just trust Sunstreak more… Comparing the two; while Scootaloo managed to crash into somepony, Sunstreak only did it once, and even then, he managed to keep me safe from most if not all the damage I could have taken.

When I climbed on top of Sunstreak’s back, I wrapped my hooves around him and held on like I have so many times.

“All right,” Sunstreak said once I was clinging to his back, “Lead the way.”

Sweet Apple Acres looked really nice. When Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo had waved goodbye at the property line, there was still a large section of apple trees they had to walk through before reaching the house. Apple Bloom seemed to be ecstatic about having guests, given that she practically bounced all the way up the path; Sunstreak seemed to be doing better. He wasn’t flapping his wing to keep his right leg on the ground, but he was still limping slightly. But he didn’t really need the splint, which apparently fell off during the tour of Ponyville. I only noticed it then, but he seemed to be doing fine without it.

Once the three of us got to the rather large red house, which seemed to be something that came right out of a country story, there was an orange Earth pony carrying two buckets of apples on her side and wearing a tan cowboy hat.

Sunstreak hadn’t even noticed her for quite a while, but when he did, he stopped looking at her as if he remembered her from a traumatic event.

“What is it?” I asked him walking up to him and snapping him out of his strange trance.

“Umm…nothing…I’ll tell you later.”

When the orange Earth pony saw the three of them walking up the path. She placed the two barrels of apples on the ground and turned to look at us.

“Applejack!” Apple Bloom shouted. “We’ve got some guests!”

“Ah can see that, Apple Bloom.” She had the same country accent as Apple Bloom, so I thought they must have been sisters. “Where’d ya pick these two up?”

“Well…uh…we kind of…ran into them…” Apple Bloom said very hesitantly.

“You did what now?” Applejack said raising an eyebrow at her little sister.

Apple Bloom seemed to shrink. Just then Applejack saw Sunstreak’s limp.

“Apple Bloom, what did you and yer friends do?”

“Well…In short…” Sunstreak said walking up to Applejack, “Her and her friends knocked the wind out of me… Granted I probably moved myself into it. Don’t blame them for the limp, I’ve had it for quite a while now.”

Applejack leaned into her sister. “We’ll talk ‘bout this later Apple Bloom.” She looked up to the two of us. “Well Ah guess you might as well come inside. We were just ‘bout to settle down to eat. You two hungry?”

Sunstreak’s stomach made a rather loud rumbling noise. Making him press his ears against his head. “You could say that…”

I couldn’t help but giggle slightly at Sunstreak’s expression.

“Well, Ah think we got enough for two more. Usually do.”

Dinner was…a strange affair. Probably more so for Sunstreak, having an air of unease around him. Sunstreak wasn’t exactly... talking much. I think he was trying to avoid absorbing emotions. Given that there were now four ponies here and the Apples seemed to be a perfect family. I couldn’t believe a family could be that closely knit.

Sunstreak was having a tough time, anytime somepony talked to him, his eye twitched slightly, and he seemed to be causing himself pain, if I wasn’t sitting next to him, I wouldn’t have seen him purposefully applying pressure to his leg whenever he spoke. Probably to avoid any possible emotion absorption powers…but he wasn’t really open to talking, and really wanted to get out.

When everypony else was only halfway through their meal, Sunstreak had already cleared his plate, and given that Apple Bloom seemed to be eating rather fast as well, it was an accomplishment.

He seemed to be twitching a little more when he had nothing else to distract him from the emotions of the Apple family. He would later compare it to being at a candy store and not even thinking about buying anything and it showed. Anytime one of the Apples tried to talk to him, He kind of winced before responding.

“So Apple Bloom tells us you two were campin’ out in Everfree.” Applejack said. “What were ya doin all the way out there?”

At first Sunstreak seemed almost unsure of how to answer and I got a little worried that he would get caught. But quickly his expression changed.

“Well…I was traveling to the Castle of the Two Sisters, trying to find out something about Nightmare Moon.” I was surprised he knew about a lot of that. Maybe he found some stuff last night.

“Was little Meadow here with ya?” Applejack asked, raising her eyebrow.

Sunstreak moved his head in a way like he was trying to find a middle ground between what he was going to say. “Not at first.” He eventually replied. “I was just looking around the ruins when I saw some kind of…energy blast coming from Canterlot.”

He stopped for a second to look around at the Apples I think he was gauging their reaction.

“Where’d Meadow come from then?” Apple Bloom asked, looking towards me. “Is she a ghost?”

Sunstreak chuckled a little. “No. No… Nothing like that. Apparently she was being held by some kind of big black bug thing.”

Applejack had been eying her sister. But at the mention of the Bug Pony, she stared at Sunstreak. “She was fillynapped by a Changeling?”

“I suppose…” Sunstreak said, tapping his front hoof on his chin. “I didn’t really get a chance to ask it. The instant I saw it, it was about to hurt Meadow here…so I did the only thing I could think of. I tackled it.”

“Yah took on one a those Changelings? All by yerself?” Apple Bloom said, leaning into Sunstreak.

“Not before it gave me a big kick to my leg… And I returned the favor.” Motioned to the belt hanging on the wall. “You would not believe how long it took to clean after….” He stopped after seeing Applejack. “Well…anyway…I got Meadow back to the ruins… And gave myself a makeshift splint so my leg could relax. Then in the morning I brought her here, got hit by your sister and her friends. And then you can figure out the rest.” Sunstreak was looking directly at Applejack.

“Well that was mighty brave a yah ta save Meadow.”

Sunstreak seemed to relax, but he still had a small twitch. “Anybody would have done the same.” He said with a dismissive motion of his hoof.

“Where’d yah say you were from again?” Applejack asked suspiciously. “Yah talk a lot different from most ponyfolk Ah seen.”

Sunstreak seemed to be confident in this answer. “Well…I was born in a place outside Equestria called the Burning Fiords. Spent most of my childhood out there, but it was very…different. I haven’t gone back in years.” Sunstreak was sort of staring off into space.

“I moved to Cloudsdale a little after my schooling was done. Joined alongside a Pegasus named Tornado Dust. Then we just kind of…drifted apart. I went on to study magical artifacts. And last I heard he was a Weather pony.” It sounded genuine if I didn’t know he was a Bug Pony, I would have believed him.

“Well if yah managed to take out a Changeling, yah must be pretty strong for the brainy type?”

“Yeah…The Burning Fiords weren’t the most hospitable place. You learn what you have to. In my case, it was where to strike to make something stop.” Sunstreak was looking around at the faces of the Apples. So did I. Apple Bloom was looking at Sunstreak with wide eyes. Applejack was eying him suspiciously, but it was clear she found nothing wrong with his story. The large red Stallion who had been introduced as Big Macintosh was still eating. Granny Smith, the old green pony was sleeping in her chair.

Sunstreak let out a little yawn. “Sorry to ask this…but Where are we going to be spending the night? I’m a little beat.”

“Oh it’s no problem. Y’all just be spending the night in the barn. Ah’ll look and see if Ah can get yah a couple of spare pillows.”

Sunstreak gave an appreciative nod before getting out of the chair he was sitting in, walked over to the knife belt and slinging it over his back before letting out another yawn. “Now don’t stay up too late, Meadow,” He said through half a yawn. “We don’t need two tired Ponies on our hooves.” He turned towards Applejack and gave a small bow. “Miss Apple.”

“He’s a strange one ain’t he?” Apple Bloom said before being silenced by a look from Applejack. I couldn’t help but giggle.

As I walked into the barn, my head hanging low from exhaustion. Applejack walking behind me with a pair of pillows on her back. Both of us were looking for Sunstreak.

“Now where’d that Pegasus get to?” Applejack said, looking around.

“Up here.” Came the familiar voice of Sunstreak from above us. Looking up, I saw him laying on a rafter his head against one of beams supporting the roof; he let out a small yawn and turned his head to look down at us. “What?” he said noticing Applejacks expression of familiarity.

“It’s nothin’. Yah just remind me of another Pegasus Ah know.” Applejack shifted the two pillows onto my back. “Well yah can stay here as long as ya need, may need to make a bed for yerself outta some spare hay.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Sunstreak said with a dismissive wave of his hoof, he was leaning against the pole again. “For the past few nights, my bed has consisted of rocks and sticks. Compared to that, this is like a real bed.”

I giggled slightly as I saw Applejack roll her eyes. “Well I reckon that y’all can handle yerself. So goodnight y’all.”

As she left, I replied with a halfhearted good night and Sunstreak just waved down to her. Almost the instant the door closed, there was a wisp of green flame from above me, and Shade was lying where Sunstreak had been earlier. “That was the most stressful dinner I have ever had.” He said back to me as I found a large pile of hay and was busy arranging it into a makeshift bed.

“Why did it seem like you knew Applejack?” I asked through a yawn, I must have been more tired than I thought.

“I think that I saw her in Canterlot, she was running with a few others. I can never forget seeing a pony in a Stetson…it’s just…too different.” He replied, looking down at me building my makeshift bed.

“Was that story you told true?” I asked, I knew almost nothing about him, so it could have been.

“Not all of it, I was born in the Fiords, I’ve never been to Cloudsdale, I never met Tornado Dust, another Changeling showed me who he was. And I have never studied archeology. I found all of that history from a few books I found lying on the ground while I was looking for some good rocks to pile up.”

He flew down next to me and ruffled my green mane a little before helping with my bed. “I need to get a better control over these emotion sensing powers.” He said as he raised a hoof to tap on his horn. “I think I absorbed a bit of their family love. It tasted a little like mint.”

“What does my love taste like?” I asked, settling down in the hay bed. Shade seemed to tap his chin with his hoof for a minute.

“It may seem strange, but it tasted like cotton candy, granted I didn’t get enough of a bite to make any real judgment… And I don’t want to. It was only by bad luck that I tasted the Apple’s love.” He then shook his head in a dismissive manner. “Anyway, might as well hit the hay… no pun intended. Goodnight, Meadow.” He said as he flew up to a higher platform and nestled down in a pile of hay.

“Goodnight, Mr. Nymph.” I replied jokingly and from the pile of hay, I could hear a small pleased buzzing sound. With that, I began to nod off to sleep.

Chapter 7: Old Faces, New Fears

The ground was on fire.

No the ground wasn’t on fire, the water was.

Shade was back in the Burning Fiords. He recognized the location, it was a small hill overlooking the Flaming Valley, a dip in the mountains that had lava flows running freely through it. Casting a beautiful glow up in the night sky…

Normally beautiful.

It was less beautiful when three dragons were looking over you with intent to murder.

“You shouldn’t be here parasite!” Shade couldn’t make out their faces, but their eyes burned into him.

“I-I’m not a parasite” Shade heard in his own voice, he was trembling, his carapace chattering slightly.

“Lies!”

“I’m Not! I’m one of you!” Shade replied, fear taking over.

“We would never dirty ourselves with the likes of you insect.” One of the dragons grabbed him by his neck and was lifting him up.

“You are no longer one of us.” It said as it raised a clawed hand. Dropping it onto Shade’s right wing, he felt a sudden pain, then saw the glittering wing fall to the ground, and singed within seconds.

“We shall make an example of you insect.” The shadow said, releasing Shade’s throat and holding him up by his curved horn. Only now did Shade look and notice the third Shadow, it’s eyes were not like the other two, it was…sad? It even turned away when Shade heard a cracking sound as his horn was ripped off of his head.

“We have no judgment over your fate insect. But we need not concern ourselves with such affairs.” Shade was crying, from the stabbing pain in his skull, but more than that, he was crying because of what he was seeing. These dragons were…torturing him, for an event he tried to prevent. Failed to prevent.

“The Sun goddess will judge your sins…” it said. All of a sudden, the dragon threw him over the cliff, he was falling towards the lava flow. He closed his eyes, but before he hit the lava, the world changed.

He was now in an ivory hall, white stone making up the building, stain glass windows were placed around it. And at the end of the hall sat…oh god…

Two Alicorns sat at the end of the hall, staring down at him. He felt that dread of insignificance welling up inside of him. All around him, shadows formed, eyes red with hate, bodies blurred out. All of them shouting at him.

“Parasite! Monster! Demon!” They all kept repeating it, even when Shade covered his ears with his hooves, it didn’t shut out the sound.

“SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” Shade shouted, trying to be heard over the voices. “I’M NOT A PARASITE!”

“Lies!” He could hear it through the throng, and one final insult pierced into him and caused him to begin to tear up. “Murderer.” It was quiet, no more than a whisper. But it hit him hard. He couldn’t see through the tears, but the insults continued. “Murderer” became more and more used. As he began to try and stand, the shadows got closer to him, boxing him in. For every step, the voices got louder.

A single voice broke through the throng. Becoming louder and louder, the others quieting down. “Monster! Murderer!” Looking up, he saw the cream colored unicorn he knew to be Meadow’s mother. She was staring down at him, the other shadows moving back.

“I-I-I” Shade began quivering, he couldn’t stop, he was filled with both fear and sadness, overwhelming him. “I-I’m so-so-so-sorr-r-r-ry…” He sputtered out backing away from the angered unicorn. “I tried to protect her!”

“Lies!” Shouted the cream colored Unicorn. “You didn’t risk your life to save hers! You left her to die!”

“No!” Shade shouted. “That’s not true! I was too late!” His vision was clouding again. “I couldn’t! She was!”

“Lies! You are nothing more than a monster!” Shade was backing away, but found himself against a white stone wall, the Unicorn still walking forward, her army of shadows behind her, the two Alicorns watching on.

“No! It’s not true! I’m not a monster!” Shade was trying to make himself as small as possible. “I’m not…. I would never….. Please….” He was giving up hope, every inch closer the Unicorn got, was another beat in his chest that stopped.

The Unicorn’s horn glowed bright blue. Pointing right at Shade. “No….please…” He was backed into a corner, nowhere to run, he just placed his hooves over his head and began to cry.

He felt the world around him vanish, leaving just him and the unicorn. “I didn’t mean to….”

Shade jolted awake, tossing the hay covering him along the ground, he backed away in response, huddling up to the wall, still shaking. He was shivering, his carapace making a loud chinking sound. He reached up to his head and felt the curved horn attached to his head. It was the first time he was glad to see it. But it still felt foreign to him.

“It was just a dream…” He said through heavy breaths he was still crying, and he had broken out into a small sweat… “just…a dream…” He repeated. It didn’t help. It felt so real…The pain, the Emotions he felt….the Fear…. “Just….a dream…” He repeated.

He quickly walked over to where Meadow was sleeping, covered in a thin layer of hay acting as a blanket. She hadn’t been woken by his freak out. And she had a small light blue flame coming off of her. Content…She wasn’t having the same problems as Shade.

He let out a small sigh, glad she was alright. Glad she wasn’t awoken from his freak out. She was still off in her own dream.

Shade flew up to the rafter and looked out the small opening the barn had near the top. The moon still hung high in the sky, like a large brilliant orb casting a light blue shadow over the orchard, it’s many apples glinting in a small coat of dew.

Shade couldn’t go back to sleep, he didn’t want to… the nightmares have been getting worse, and he didn’t want to see the next one. So he made up his mind.

He flew down to where Meadow was sleeping, he placed his hole filled hoof on her head. As his horn glowed very faintly, the light blue flame dying down slightly.

He walked over to the barn door, grabbed the sheathe he had placed on a protruding nail, tightening it around his waist; he was covered in a flash of green fire, and dawned the appearance of Sunstreak. He then pushed the barn door open quietly and closed it, and he began to walk down the path leading to Ponyville.

His leg was still sore, but overall the major injury had repaired itself, courtesy of his Dragon blood, and probably a little of that love he absorbed, he didn’t like to say stole, from the Apples.

He didn’t really have a plan of where to go; he just wanted to take a walk, maybe clear his head. Forget about the nightmare. With those red eyed shadows and….NO! Not going to think about it. He was just lost in thought. So much so that he didn’t even notice himself entering into the village until he looked up from the ground and saw a building a few inches away from his face.

Correcting his path, and making sure he wasn’t going to crash into anything, he began thinking about what he had learned in the past few days. He went from being a Dragon to an insect horse by God knows what process. He had been involved in the attempted over throw of an almost all powerful entity that controlled the sun itself, got blasted out of that city with a small filly, and was now inside of hostile territory wandering around in the dead of night. Which according to the empty streets, was not normal. The heir of subtlety.

What was worse, he still had no idea how to control large portions of his power, such as limiting his emotion sense so that he could turn it on at will, instead of seeing every emotion through his left eye. Granted during his brief time with the Apples, he had managed to avoid absorbing too much love, but that also required him to be placing pressure on his near broken leg the whole time, so there was that.

He had made a few laps around the town, wandering down its various side streets and alleyways, even a few dead ends. He wasn’t really cataloging the locations more just trying to find back routes that he could use in case of emergency.

He had been so busy thinking about this that he didn’t notice the moon had set until a grey Pegasus flew over him, carrying two large bags of mail on her side. He then quickly looked up to the sky.

Crap. The sun was beginning to creep into the sky, causing a brilliant pink color; Sunstreak quickly pushed himself into the air with all four of his legs and began to quickly fly back towards Sweet Apple Acres.

When he got back to the orchard. He opened the door to the barn and flew up to where he had been sleeping last night. That makes three nights and a total of five hours of sleep. If I keep this up, I’ll be thrown into a jail cell in no time, Shade thought to himself as he began to bury himself in the hay again. More so because it hid the fact he was a Changeling for long enough that he could disguise, but also because it felt weirdly comfortable against his carapace. But since he was now disguised, all it did was stick to his coat. He figured it might be a good idea to at least try and sleep…so he closed his eyes and only a few minutes later the barn door swung open.

“Rise n’ Shine!” came Applejack’s voice from the door. She looked around the room, and only seeing Meadow get up rubbing her eye she said louder “Sunstreak? Where in Sam Hill are yah?”

At this Sunstreak bolted himself up, again scattering the hay that had covered him around the general area. “What? What? I’m up.” He then placed his hoof on his forehead, being careful not to touch where his horn was supposed to be. He was still kind of touchy about that strange nightmare.

“Sorry fer wakin’ yah.” Applejack replied. “But we need to use the barn. Farm life and all.”

Sunstreak made a motion that he hoped was that he understood but may have been rude. It was made no more apparent when Applejack responded with: “Well somepony’s got a bite like a rattler.”

“Sorry,” he replied, “bad dreams.” Hoping this would explain everything.

“Not a problem, we all have bad nights.” Applejack replied, Sunstreak was glad that worked. “Hey, Ah got an Idea.” Applejack said after. “Why not help me round the farm? We could always use an extra hoof.”

Sunstreak had to think about the idea of doing it. Granted he did it really quickly but he was thinking more about Meadow… Then he remembered that tour from yesterday.

“Well…that depends on something. Meadow?” Sunstreak looked down at the little brown filly, her mane had pieces of hay stuck in it. “Would you mind spending the day with, what was their name? The Cutie Mark Crusaders wasn’t it?” Applejack looked at him with either shock or maybe she just thought he was crazy…he couldn’t see the emotions as his right eye was facing her. But it seemed to work.

“Ah’m sure that they wouldn’t mind havin’ another member for their little club.”

“Can’t I stay with you?” Meadow asked, and thanks to his eye, he could tell she was slightly frightened from yesterday’s…interesting speeding event. So Sunstreak flew down next to her and leaned down to let her climb on while keeping what he was saying hidden.

“Don’t worry, Meadow,” He whispered. “I’m sure nothing bad will happen. And if it does, I’ll do anything within my powers as a Bug Pony to fix it. Alright?”

Meadow gave a small nod as she climbed onto Sunstreak’s back.

“That settles it then.” Sunstreak said as he stood up with the brown unicorn filly clinging to his back. “I’ll try to help you however I can. While Meadow Song here has fun with Apple Bloom and her friends.”

“Well…Ah don’t think Ah want to know how you managed that. But Ah’m glad you decided to help.”

So long as it doesn’t involve a large group of ponies or some kind of heavy emotional place. Sunstreak thought as long as he stayed away from huge groups of ponies until he managed to control his power. Or find someone that could teach him to control it.

“Well Ah guess we might as well head to the girls' clubhouse before we start.” On the way out she grabbed a few baskets and flung them onto her back.

After they dropped Meadow off at the red and yellow clubhouse, they said hello to the fillies and entered into a section of the orchard that had bright red apples hanging off of them. Sunstreak had to fly up and actually poke one just to be sure that they were real. He had never seen apples this…ripe. They were the most perfect example of apples you could see.

Applejack looked at him in suspicion. “Yah never seen an apple before, fly boy?”

“No it’s just that…” Sunstreak was trying to figure out the correct term to use. “I’ve never seen them this…perfect.” He landed next to Applejack, who had appreciatively tipped her hat.

“Well thank ya kindly. My family has been growin’ these trees since Ponyville was founded.” She said this with pride. And Sunstreak didn’t even need to use his eye to tell she was slightly pleased by his compliment.

“So how are we going to handle this?” Sunstreak asked, turning to look at the Orange pony. They had placed the baskets around the tree, and Applejack raised both her hind legs and kicked the tree. Causing all the apples in the tree to fall perfectly into the baskets.

Sunstreak was looking at the baskets with a look of both surprise and awe. “Whaaat?” He wasn’t surprised that Applejack could manage to knock the apples out, but he was surprised by the fact that only three apples fell onto the ground instead of in the baskets.

“Think ya can handle that fly boy?” She said mockingly.

Sunstreak walked up to another one of the trees and looked at it. It didn’t seem like a difficult task, kick tree, apples fall, zippidee doo da. But Sunstreak figured there was some method to it… Either that or he just had to kick the tree.

“Well…let’s find out.” Sunstreak said as he raised his hind legs and slammed them against the tree with all his might. Causing a few of the apples to fall from the tree, as well as causing Sunstreak to remember his leg isn’t fully healed. After repressing a cry of pain as he felt his leg sting yet again, he mumbled another curse that luckily was not picked up on by Applejack.

“Wow…I suppose yah weren’t cut out fer apple buckin.” Was all Applejack said in response to the mostly failed attempt as well as to Sunstreak now kicking his leg at nothing in an attempt to get feeling back. “Maybe we could find some other way yah could help ‘round the farm.” Applejack said as she tapped her chin with her hoof.

Sunstreak was just about to tell her some made up reason he couldn’t continue when a blue blur rammed into him. What is it with ponies and high speed collisions? On the plus side he was getting used to being knocked around, so his recovery time was improving, he could also tell exactly where he was this time.

He was lying on his stomach, apparently he had been spun around too, owing to the fact he was now staring at a tree, which had some very strange coloration. Instead of green leaves, it had strange multicolored ones…

“Rainbow!” He heard Applejack's country drawl say loudly as a rainbow colored tail flicked in front of his eyes.

“'Sup, AJ.” Sunstreak wasn’t sure who said that, but he had to guess it was whatever had just rammed into him and was now sitting on his back.

“Well I was tryin’ to find somethin’ fer our guest to do. Until you rammed into him.”

As Sunstreak was still lying on the ground, pretty much unable to move with the fact that his leg wasn’t quite ship shape, and the fact there was a hundred something pound pony sitting squarely on his back. He saw the tail move and be replaced with the magenta eyes of a cyan Pegasus, her mane was messy and, much like her tail, was rainbow colored. “Oh…sorry about that.” She took off, hovering just above head height.

“Two days…two collisions…” Sunstreak said as he stood up, being careful not to place too much pressure on his hind leg, if the crack reopens right here there are going to be questions. “Must be some kind of record.” Technically it was three collisions in three days, but adding when he rammed into Spine might blow his cover…so best to leave that out.

“Ha! That’s nothing.” The cyan Pegasus replied, apparently she wanted to trump him…for some reason…wasn’t getting hit a bad thing? Or was it akin to handshakes here? “I once crashed right into the side of mountain.”

Applejack placed a hoof on her face. “Rainbow, are ya really comparing which one of ya has crashed more?”

Rainbow looked like she was going to say yes but Sunstreak spoke first. “You win.” He didn’t want to get into a discussion on his crashes. Mostly because some of his worst ones involved falling into lava flows…and that could cause questions… But it was made worth it by Rainbow’s jaw dropping that he didn’t even try to argue with her.

“I’ve never seen you around town before.” She said, flying up to his face. And he knew exactly what the next question was going to be. “Changeling!”

Wait! What? Sunstreak opened his mouth to argue but he had already been tackled by the Pegasus, who was now holding him on the ground, pushing her hooves on his wings. “Get off of me.” Sunstreak managed to say as Rainbow was trying to hold him on the ground.

“No way, Changeling. I can see straight through that disguise of yours.” Rainbow said as Sunstreak looked up to stare at her face. “You got the eyes wrong.”

“Why does everypony keep saying that?” Sunstreak was getting annoyed by how many times attention was drawn to his eye. “Maybe I should just get an eye patch so ponies will stop bringing it up.”

“Ha you really want me to-“ Rainbow began.

“Get off of me now! I’m not a Changeling.” A Sort of lie…a true one… he wasn’t a pure Changeling.

“No!” Rainbow replied sticking out her tongue.

“Rainbow! Get off a him!” Applejack said, grabbing Rainbow’s tail and forcefully pulling her off of him. “He’s not a Changeling, Rainbow.”

“Then how do you explain his eye?” Rainbow replied.

Sunstreak just rolled his eyes, as he stood up. “I was born with it, Air head.” He turned to look at the two ponies, Applejack was holding Rainbow’s tail with her teeth, and Rainbow was trying to get away from her grip.

“Oh…then why didn’t you just say so?” Rainbow replied. Both Sunstreak and Applejack placed a hoof on their face.

“When did I have time to?” Sunstreak replied. Only now noticing the pain in his hind leg. Looking back at it, he found it was still fine, just really sore.

“Rainbow…yah can’t just tackle ponies like that. You need proof before yah can just do that.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.” Rainbow replied, flying over to Sunstreak. And holding out her hoof as if she hadn’t just tackled him. “Names Rainbow Dash, fastest flyer in Equestria.”

Sunstreak eyed her. “Sunstreak.” He shook her hoof. “You certainly seem to be a fast flyer. I’m not so sure you’re the fastest though.”

“Is that a challenge?” Rainbow said leaning in. She sounded excited.

“Not really… I’m not really the racing type…” He looked over at Applejack, wanting a bit of help. “And I’ve got to help AJ here with some jobs. Right?”

“Nah. There’s nothing we really need done… Besides Ah think ya should spend some time with Rainbow. Maybe you can get a temporary job on weather management.”

Sunstreak just let out a small sigh. “Well…I suppose we could…”

“Right, race you to the town hall.” Rainbow said quickly.

“Wait what?” Was all Sunstreak could manage to say before seeing rainbow colored blur where she used to be. “Hey! Get back here!” He opened his wings and pushed himself off the ground, chasing after the blue Pegasus.

He didn’t realize it until he was trying to catch up to the Pegasus, but she had been there in the invasion as well… Do all of them live in the same town? It wasn’t that it was unheard of in the Fiords; it was just rare to have a team that is openly willing to go outside in a swarm of Changelings to be in the same area. Usually they were split up to make it harder to lose them and quickly move them around. Once he managed to catch up to Rainbow, it was obvious she wasn’t trying her hardest.

“I wasn’t sure you were going to ever catch up to me.” She said, flying upside down.

“Hey I haven’t had to fly this fast in a while. At least not when my life isn’t in danger.” Sunstreak replied. “So why not show me what you can really do?”

“Think you can keep up?” Rainbow replied.

“Not a chance, but if you want to be the fastest in my eyes you’re gonna have to show me your top speed.”

“Alright, you asked for it.” She said as she turned herself right side up and sped off. All Sunstreak could see was a rainbow colored ribbon where she was traveling.

“You just had to push her, Shade…” He shook his head before dashing after her.

When he finally got to the town hall, Rainbow Dash was laying on a cloud. No sign of being tired. While Sunstreak by comparison, was breathing heavily. He was in no way used to flying that fast without adrenaline rushing through his body.

“Took you long enough.” Rainbow said upon seeing him. She started lounging in the cloud like it was a reclining chair “I’m pretty sure Fluttershy could get here before you.”

Fluttershy? Is that another of the ponies I saw? “I’m…Not…used…to flying…that…fast…” Sunstreak replied, laying on a nearby cloud to the left of Rainbow. For the first time, he had to admit, that clouds were actually rather comfortable. They were soft, fluffy, cool. He was glad he chose a Pegasus instead of a unicorn, mostly because he can’t use magic to save his life… but these clouds were a good trade off.

“So what is up with your eye anyway?” Rainbow asked as Sunstreak was lying face first in the cloud.

“My answer has not changed, Rainbow… I was born with it.” Looking over at Rainbow, he could see that she was ready to ask another question so he took a guess it was about his eye. “And before you ask…yes I can see better with it. It adjusts to light better, and I can make out more details with it.” Not to mention the fact that I have over a hundred years more experience with it.

“So what did you think?” Rainbow said, standing up on her cloud.

“About?” Sunstreak replied lifting his head from the cloud. He was pretty sure he knew exactly what it was about though.

“My flying.” She replied placing a hoof on her chest proudly.

“Well, you are certainly one of the fastest flyers I’ve seen.” Sunstreak replied. “But I’m not so sure you are the best flyer I’ve ever seen.” At this Rainbow looked as if he had just insulted her family.

“What!” Rainbow practically shouted at him, causing him to jolt to attention and look directly at her. “How could you have possibly seen anypony whose a better flyer than me?”

“I know some flyers who have never crashed into a mountain.” Sunstreak said looking at her with a raised eyebrow.

“I was distracted okay.” She said as if trying to prove she didn’t do something stupid. “Pinkie Pie was…”

“I honestly don’t care…” More ponies…great… he was placing his hoof over his face.

“Uhh….Rainbow?” came a male voice in front of them. “We need to clear these clouds.” Sunstreak could have sworn he heard that voice before.

“Yeah, no problem, Tornado Dust.” Wait. What was that name? “We’ll clear them in a few minutes and get outta your hair.”

Sunstreak moved his hoof away from his face to see a gray Pegasus with a scraggy black mane and a brown tornado for a cutie mark. Oh no.

“Alright, Rainbow…But no napping this time.” Tornado Dust replied flying to look at Rainbow Dash. “We need to get this done before noon. I can’t keep covering your napping.”

“Oh, come on…It’s your second day back from Cloudsdale.” Cloudsdale…sure… “You can cover for me for another day right?”

Tornado Dust shook his head. “Sorry, Rainbow. I don’t want to get on somepony’s bad side because you want to slack off.”

Rainbow sighed. “Alright, Dusty. We’ll get these cleared out in a few minutes.”

“You’ve got ten minutes, Rainbow.” Tornado Dust said as he flew off. Sunstreak kept watching him as he went.

“So who is the fastest flyer you’ve ever seen?” Rainbow asked standing up on her cloud again.

Sunstreak wasn’t listening, he was busy following Tornado Dust as he flew off down the street and didn’t pick up that Rainbow had spoken until she flew in front of his face, breaking his line of sight. “Hey! Did you hear me?”

“Uh…” Sunstreak said trying to keep his eye on Tornado Dust. “Sorry, Rainbow…I just remembered I have to…Oyster my water.” He said taking off from the cloud and flying off in the same direction as Tornado Dust.

Behind him Rainbow just shook her head. “He must have met Pinkie already.”

I am so glad that worked. Sunstreak thought as he followed after the grey Pegasus. He didn’t want to jump to any conclusions. If it turned out this was the real Tornado Dust and Sunstreak did call him a Changeling, there could be some very specific questions, questions that would lead to answers he didn’t want these ponies to know. So until he was sure, or in a place where they would be separated so he could ask about it, he was going to just follow him.

When he did manage to get at least within earshot of Tornado Dust, he could at least stop him from managing to get away from him, all he had to do now was follow him. Luckily he didn’t have to go very far before Tornado Dust flew into a small alleyway.

“Now what would be the best possible way to handle this?”

Sunstreak tackled Tornado Dust.

It wasn’t the most elegant plan…Tackle pony, talk to pony, if incorrect say sorry, hopefully he wasn’t wrong. But he wanted to be sure.

When they stopped rolling, Sunstreak made sure that the gray Pegasus was able to look right at him while keeping him on the ground. “Darkblaze,” Sunstreak said in a low voice, “what the hell are you doing here?”

“Who is this Darkblaze pony?” Tornado Dust said, looking at Sunstreak. “Come to think of it…Who are you?”

“Darkblaze…” Sunstreak had turned to look at him with his left eye, noticing only now that there were absolutely no emotions coming off of him, before turning his head so that Tornado Dust could see his slit eye. “Look at my eye.”

Tornado Dust looked up at Sunstreak, and his eyes widened in recognition. “Snake Eye?”

“Who else would try and tackle you?” Sunstreak said stepping off of the disguised Changeling.

“I don’t know.” Tornado Dust said standing up. “Royal guards, every other pony… probably Chrysalis.”

“Why would that cockroach be after you?” Sunstreak asked, “Aren’t you one of her best Infiltrators?”

Tornado Dust just rubbed the back of his head with his hoof. “Yeah…I’d rather not talk about that here…” motions to the end of the alleyway. “I’d prefer we talk about it in a more…private environment.”

Sunstreak rolled his eyes. “Alright then… Where would you prefer?”

When Tornado Dust had suggested they meet in private, the last thing Sunstreak thought he meant was a house. But sure enough when Tornado Dust stopped next, they were standing outside of one of the houses near the edge of town and Tornado Dust was unlocking the door and motioning for Sunstreak to go in.

It was a very….standard house. Not much was put in it; it had the basic essentials that one would need. Chairs, tables, a few pictures of Tornado Dust with some other ponies, Sunstreak figured they were either family or friends. Well…family and friends of the REAL Tornado Dust.

“Welcome to Casa de Changeling.” Tornado Dust said walking in and being careful to close the door.

“It’s very…homey?” Sunstreak said struggling to find a word to describe it. “So before I even begin to ask…What happened to the REAL Tornado Dust?”

“Is it really that important to you?”

“Well I just want to know how secure this cover of yours is.” And so I can figure out whether it would be a good idea to bring Meadow here or to just find a batch of Royal Guards and tell where to find him.

Tornado Dust seemed to sigh. “Can it wait…just a few minutes while I close all the blinds? I would prefer we talk as Changelings, not ponies.”

Sunstreak rolled his eyes, “Fine…but if for some reason we get caught, I will shove my horn in your throat myself.”

“Fair enough.” Tornado Dust said proceeding to close off the windows and ensure the door was locked, casting the entire house into a strange darkness.

“Alright,” Darkblaze replied as a wisp of green flame surrounded him and he turned back into a changeling. “What was your question?”

Shade did the same, still not comfortable with having a horn, or with the slight twang in his voice, but he could manage. “I asked what happened to the real Tornado Dust.”

“Oh right…” Darkblaze said. “Him…Well it is quite a long story.”

“Short version, please.” Shade replied not in the mood, or the environment to listen to a long story. If he got caught he didn’t want to know what would happen.

“Well, he’s dead…” Darkblaze said very bluntly. “Not by me mind you.” He added after seeing Shade’s disapproving face.

“So details,” Shade said, finding a nice patch of floor and lying down. “But keep it quick. I don’t want to spend too much time like this.”

“Well…He was kind of…” Darkblaze moved his hoof in a circle trying to think about the correct terms to describe it. “I suppose the term is dumb.”

“Go on.” Shade replied.

“He tried to stop an F5 Tornado by himself…you can see how that turned out for him no doubt.”

Shade just shivered slightly, having seen what a magical tornado of only F2 could do to a giant reptilian bird-ray, he could only imagine what an F5 could do to something that wasn’t prepared for it.

“So I decided to take his place. And I’ve been doing it for…right around fifteen years by now.”

“Been enjoying yourself?” Shade asked, still slightly on the fact that he was technically talking to a creature who openly admits to disguise as the dead.

“Well…It was actually rather easy to get into the role,” Darkblaze replied, tapping his chin, making a faint clink every time he did so. “Hiding the body was probably the hardest part, I had to dig the hole with my own hooves. Then I had to make it seem like I hit my head really hard on a rock.” Shade had to force his mind to stop lingering on F5 carcasses to keep himself focused on the rest of the story. “Then they just kind of accepted the change in attitude, a bit of the memory loss, and there was very little opposition. So all things considered? It’s been a good life.”

Shade was surprised by how quick he said this, almost as though it was normal.

“So why the hell is the Queen Bit- Chrysalis…after you? I mean, you have probably foraged a lot in those fifteen years right?”

“Well…it is more about the fact that I went to Canterlot against her orders, didn’t exactly help during the invasion, and was seen as a traitor by Spine…”

Shade was shocked. “He’s still alive?”

“Alive and pissed.” Darkblaze replied. “After you rammed into him, nice job by the way, most of us got blasted to Chrysalis knows where, mostly to the hive, but half way there I got shot back by the Queen. Guess she figured I was where I shouldn’t be.” At this he gave a little shrug and went into a side room. “So can I get you anything? You hungry at all?”

Shade was taken aback by the sudden change in topic. “You have anything edible in there? Or is it all just frozen emotions?”

Shade could hear a little chuckle from the Changeling. “Frozen Emotions. I keep forgetting you only woke up a few days ago. You still know nothing about being a changeling.” Darkblaze walked back in levitating a small clear crystal that held some kind of pink gas inside…at least it looked like gas. But Shade could see the pink fire surrounding it.

“Love crystals?” Shade said, he had to admit, that was a first.

“Yup, I got them all stored in my freezer. If I ever have anypony over I just tell them it’s ice. Only changelings can see the emotions inside them. And only we can taste them too. So it is kind of like ice, only more crystalline, and it doesn’t float.”

“So that’s what you’ve been feeding on.” Shade said, having to look away from the crystal as it started to hurt his eye. Which reminded him of something. “I need your help with something.”

“And what would that be?” Darkblaze asked, popping the small crystal into his mouth

“I’m staying with the Apples and…” He didn’t even get a chance to finish, as Darkblaze had quickly flown over and placed one of his hole-covered hooves over Shade’s mouth.

“Say no more, Snake Eye.” He said, having his hoof forcibly moved from Shade’s mouth. “I know exactly what you are going to ask me. Yes. I will teach you how to use your powers.” A smile crept across his face, and Shade had a bad idea he knew where this was going.

“You want something don’t you?” Shade said, lowering his head.

“Was it really that obvious?” Darkblaze replied. “Yes, I do want something.” He walked back into his kitchen, when he returned he was levitating a small piece of paper. “There is something that you may be able to help me with…an errand.” He began writing on it using his magic, and Shade was still very uncomfortable with his smile.

“That wouldn’t happen to be life-threatening would it?” Shade had an idea of what this would involve.

“You saw right through me.” He turned back to look at Shade, his smile was large enough to make his two fangs seem like they fit into his mouth. “It is going to sound weird…but I would like for you to get me a Timber Wolf’s heart.”

There was a silence through the room while Shade processed his request.

“You want me to what now?” Shade responded.

“I would like…for you…to go into Everfree…and bring me the heart of a Timber Wolf.” Shade just stared at him. Before placing a hoof on his face.

“I have…two questions. Why? And how?”

“Well…for seasoning.”

“For what?”

“Well…Timber wolves don’t exactly have…physical hearts…It is more like…” Darkblaze was twirling his hoof. “Condensed magic…if that helps.”

“It doesn’t. Now onto the next question of…How?”

Darkblaze pointed to the blade Shade had strapped to his side. There was no reason to have it with him, Shade just felt…more familiar while he had it. Like he had some way to defend himself. I should really leave that in the barn tomorrow.

“Just use that on it until you see it start to fall apart, then when it falls apart, just absorb its essence from the air like you would emotions. I can extract it later.”

Shade had…multiple questions, none of which were at all helpful to getting this stuff done, so he didn’t want to ask anything.

“So you’re staying with Applejack?” Darkblaze said, breaking Shade’s thoughts on how he was even going to find a Timber wolf without putting himself at risk.

“Uh….yeah.”

“What’s that like? I mean she did kind of help throw you out of Canterlot.” He had finished writing on the paper and was placing it into a nearby envelope.

“Her?” Shade said. “She doesn’t seem like the magical type.”

“She isn’t the one that actually cast the spell, but she helped. Besides she is one of the Elements of Harmony.”

Shade could have sworn he heard about those before. “Elements of Harmony?”

Darkblaze stared at him, jaw hanging open. “Chrysalis’ holes, Snake Eye. You are trying to hide as an archeologist, but you haven’t the slightest clue about Pony history.” Shade had to admit, he didn’t aside from what Darkblaze told him earlier, he knew very little. He found out about Nightmare Moon with the scrolls and tomes hidden around the ruins. And some more unhelpful facts.

“I really just took that because of my knowledge of the Fiords. I needed a reason to be in a ruin in the middle of Everfree all right? It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Darkblaze placed a hoof on his forehead. “You are so bad at being a Changeling. If I leave you alone, you’ll be caught soon enough. And then there will be a full on witch hunt for other Changelings.”

“You have no faith in me.” Indeed Shade had no faith in himself either, he knew he was going to be caught eventually, one of these days. Hopefully after he had returned Meadow Song.

“Whatever the reasoning. I can’t trust you out on your own.” He moved his hoof away from his face and was now walking over to Shade. “Maybe it would be better if you stayed with me.”

“Say what?” Shade was surprised by the offer, sure he didn’t mind sleeping in the barn, but something bugged him about this. “Wouldn’t it be kind of… Conspicuous if two Changelings are living in the same house?”

“Well you did tell them we were old friends. So they shouldn’t really question it.” Darkblaze replied, looking over the note he had just written before it suddenly burst into green flame. “You would be amazed how trusting these ponies can be… But just to be safe…you should probably stay away from Pinkie.”

“I don’t want to know.” Shade replied speaking both about the strange paper incineration, and of why to stay away from this pink pony.

“By the way…” Darkblaze said, looking towards the clock. “What ever happened to that filly you were carrying in Canterlot?”

Darkblaze noticed Shade pressing his ears against his head. “Umm…She came…with…me…” Shade could tell Darkblaze was worried about this, and Shade knew why, having a child who is probably being searched for under his only roof, that may lead to odd questions if royal guards came.

“Well…that complicates things…” Darkblaze replied. “But it is still a triple win situation. I get what I want, you learn to control your powers, and you won’t be living next to one of the few ponies who can…oh Chrysalis damn it.” Darkblaze quickly disguised himself as Tornado Dust. “I’ve got to head to town hall. Make sure that those skies are clear.” He ran over to the door, quickly Shade transformed as well, back to his red pegasi form.

Once Tornado Dust opened the door he looked back at Sunstreak, who was now walking over to the door. “Nice catching up with you, Snake Eye, but duty calls.” Sunstreak walked out before Tornado Dust closed the door behind them and took off. “See ya around, Sunstreak.”

Sunstreak gave a wave before Tornado Dust began to quickly fly towards town hall. “Might as well tell Meadow…” Sunstreak said to himself, taking off from the ground and flying back towards the orchard.

Chapter 8: Past Life

It was dark the next time Shade returned to the village, the moon luckily covered up by clouds, casting a long shadow, perfect for walking across the large plain between Everfree and Ponyville. Especially if you are a Changeling who can’t transform.

Shade had been in Everfree almost the entire night, trying to get a Timber wolf’s essence for Darkblaze. It wasn’t the most difficult task…just kind of annoying. Seeing as it took three tries before Shade could even gather it. Apparently it was not as easy as feeding off emotions, you actually needed to be focused on absorbing all of it. And for some reason, that made it so Shade couldn’t disguise himself. Would have been nice to know about before now.

While the actual subdual of the Timber Wolf wasn’t difficult, that didn’t make it easy. Shade’s carapace was covered in small scratches, wood dust, mud, and the holes in his legs each had sticks perfectly jammed into them…so that felt weird. Along with the fact he now smelt like a Timber Wolf… So that would only complicate things.

The only good thing about tonight in Shade’s opinion was the fact it was cloudy, preventing his black carapace from gleaming in the moonlight, so that was good. When he actually managed to get to Darkblaze’s door, which luckily wasn’t too far into the village, he knocked on it a few times before hissing. “Darkblaze, open the door. It’s Snake Eye.” Shade made a mental note to actually tell Darkblaze his real name. Because he hated that nickname, but the strange thing is that it worked for both Pony and Changeling form, so it didn’t make any strange questions from passersby.

The door opened to the familiar gray Pegasus, who quickly grabbed Shade and pulled him inside. “Are you crazy?” He hissed, “Why aren’t you disguised?”

“I couldn’t disguise.” Shade hissed back. “When I absorbed your stupid Timber Wolf essence it stopped me from transforming. Thanks for the warning by the way.” He said, managing to push Tornado Dust off of him. “If it wasn’t cloudy I might have been caught.” As Shade finished Tornado Dust was covered in a green flame and there stood Darkblaze, a look of shock in his solid blue eyes.

“You actually managed to get it this quick?”

“With difficulty.” Shade replied, beginning to try and pull the various sticks out of his legs, with mixed results. “It took me three tries before I got the hang of it.”

“Only three?” Darkblaze replied as Shade was busy pulling out a rather stubborn stick. “It took me a few days before I managed to pull that off.”

“Well maybe…” Shade said, fidgeting with the stick in one of his front legs. “It had something to do with me not being good at controlling my abilities. I can…” Managing to free the stick, and spitting it out before continuing, “I can see all the emotional energy at all times, so I just sort of picked up on the energy the first time. After that it became a bit easier to focus on the actual holding it down so I could drain it.” Shade shook his leg so that the remaining loose sticks fell out onto the floor.

“Well… I was expecting you to take much longer.” Darkblaze said, rubbing the back of his head. “I didn’t really plan anything for you to learn today... and I am nowhere near prepared enough to have you practice magic in my basement.” Shade figured using magic in a basement of a building made mostly out of hay and wood could go very badly, especially when the only spells you seem to be able to use involve fire.

Shade was still in the process of pulling sticks out of his front legs when a sudden question hit him…something he had been wondering for quite a while.

“Darkblaze.” He said, letting go of the stick he had placed between his two fangs and the rest of his teeth, “Is it…in any way possible…for a Changeling to transform into a dragon?”

Darkblaze stared at him for a second, surprised by the question, before he began to tap his chin. “Huh…” Was the first thing he said. “I suppose it is possible, but it would be incredibly difficult to pull off. We operate by nearly fully modifying ourselves to look and, by all cases, appear to be a creature. I’ve seen some really good Deceivers turn into rocks and griffons before, but a dragon…I don’t know.”

Shade wasn’t about to give up that easily. “Hypothetically speaking, if you were to have…an exact idea how they work…could you?”

Darkblaze was still tapping his chin. “Hypothetically…yes. It would take a ton of energy to keep going…but you should be able to… I mean. It would be really dangerous, using that much energy for a long time could kill you. The only Changeling who could manage it would have to be a Queen.”

Shade felt slightly disheartened by this answer. But still, he did say it was possible. But really dangerous. So there is no way Shade could hold it for too long. “Exactly…what would happen… just out of curiosity.”

“You disintegrate.” Darkblaze said seriously. Shade was only mildly aware that Darkblaze seemed to be talking from personal experience. “If you use energy too quickly, your magic will actually start to eat away at your body.” He held up one of his holed hooves. “I’m pretty sure that’s what these came from originally…A tradeoff for our magic.” He lowered the hoof and began to shake his head. “I sound like a philosopher.”

“Yeah but you aren’t quite as pompous.” Shade retorted, noticing a small glint of yellow flame coming from Darkblaze.

“Snake Eye, you know exactly my sense of humor.” Shade noticed the small blue flicker with his left eye.

“If you don’t mind me asking…” Shade said, he was curious, but not discourteous. “Who was it…that you saw…you know.” Shade didn’t know how to phrase it. But Darkblaze understood.

“My twin.” Darkblaze replied. “She…she was… forced into a transformation… too much energy…too quickly. She burnt herself up.” That blue flicker was getting slowly bigger. “She was always a trouble maker… In fact I think she’s the reason I wanted a life outside the hive.”

“What do you mean?” Shade replied, he got that Tornado Dust was kind of a cover, but he never would have guessed that there was a reason behind it other than to serve.

“My sister was always talking about getting out of the hive, seeing the world, meeting ponies on more than just a food basis. And she did… She even threatened our secrecy, showing us to one of her closer friends. Turns out that Chrysalis didn’t like that very much.” Darkblaze shifted slightly, he was clearly uncomfortable with the topic, but he kept going, this had clearly been on his mind a lot. “When Chrysalis found out, she had the pony captured, my sister drained of all her love, and then she forcefully transformed her,” He seemed to be wincing slightly, as if remembering a repressed memory.

“That…can’t have been easy for you…” Shade replied, he never had a sibling, at least…not one so directly linked… from what he remembered, siblings had a much stronger mental connection, almost so they could feel each….oh…

“That was a punishment for you…” Shade realized started to understand. “She didn’t want you to follow the same path as your sister…so to ensure you didn’t…she forced you to feel it with her… To ensure you wouldn’t…” Shade trailed off. Thinking about this. No wonder Darkblaze was so much different, he didn’t like the queen either, she had tortured him, killed his sister, for no good reason…well logically anyway… “Holy…Pardon my French but: Elle est une vraie salope. What kind of queen would torture a subject for no reason?”

“The same one who believes love can be harvested from fear.” Shade perked up at hearing this, halfway through pulling a particularly troublesome vine, he let it go and it slapped into his chitin with a painful THWAP!

Shade was shaking his leg to try and soothe the pain a little when he replied. “This wouldn’t happen to be the same plan she had when she was in the Burning Fiords would it?”

“No idea.” Darkblaze replied. “I wasn’t hatched until after that event. I don’t even know too much about it. Why?”

“Because,” Shade said, once again pulling on the vine. “If my little visions are a reference,” The vine snapped in half, “Then those things are not going to give into fear anytime soon. Especially after the most recent one I had where…” He stopped, staring out of the window. He could have sworn that he saw some kind of shadow there a minute ago… It looked…strangely familiar yet…

“Snake Eye?” Darkblaze said breaking Shade’s train of thought. “What is it?”

Shade shook his head. “Probably just me being sleep deprived.” Yeah that was it. “I haven’t slept well in days. Probably just seeing things.”

“How much sleep have you-?”

“Five hours in the past three days.” Shade replied quickly

“Yeah…no. You need to sleep.” Darkblaze got off his chair and walked over to Shade, “Touch your horn to mine. I’ll extract the Timber Wolf essence myself, you just head back to AJ’s and sleep.”

Shade was hesitant at first, but after touching Darkblaze’s horn, he suddenly felt a large relief as he found himself immediately transform back to Sunstreak. “Oh thank god. Thanks, Darkblaze.”

Darkblaze gave a slight nod before motioning to the door. Sunstreak quickly dashed through the door, closing it quietly before taking off and flying back towards the orchard.

Getting back to the barn, he flew in through the small window and landed in his makeshift bed of hay. Much less a bed more a cocoon with the fact that he buried himself in the stuff as well so he could sleep while looking like a Changeling. Once he finished pulling the remaining sticks and vines from his leg, he began to wade into sleep. So long as he wasn’t…say…body slammed by Rainbow Dash he should be fine.

Hopefully…

Author's Note

BACKSTORY!!!

Darkblaze seemed a bit lonely, so I wanted to give him something to explain why he would be actively trying to stay in Ponyville. But don't worry you fans of long chapters, there will be a return to the long stuff soon...

Chapter 9: Libraries, Dresses, and Parties Oh My!

Shade was awoken from his dreamless sleep by a rather large amount of weight being applied to his stomach. Quickly he transformed back into Sunstreak, hoping that the flames wouldn’t pierce through the hay, before he realized he was still covered in mud, and there were still sticks in his mane and tail. Quickly he bolted upright and saw Rainbow Dash flying above him.

“About time you got up.” Rainbow said, sounding a bit impatient. “You make a weird sound when you’re sleeping. Kind of like a…” Rainbow began rapidly snapping her jaw together, making a clicking sound. Please don’t figure it out. “You’ve been sleeping almost all day.”

“Really?” Sunstreak replied, looking through the small barn window and looking up at the sun. Sure enough, it was half way through the sky already. “How long was I asleep?”

At that moment, Applejack walked into the barn. “There ya are. Ah’ve been lookin everywhere for ya.”

Sunstreak rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry…must have been more tired than I thought.” He let out a little yawn. “Didn’t have any nightmares last night…or…this morning…? What did I miss?”

“Ah sent Meadow off to school with the others. She may be from Canterlot, but she still needs to learn.” Applejack suddenly realized where Sunstreak had been sleeping. “Why are ya sleepin’ in a pile of hay?”

“Oh this is nothing.” Shade said…trying to think about a reason… “When I was a foal I used to sleep in the weirdest ways. I remember this one time I slept hanging between two trees with two lengths of rope and a rock.” He added a small smile in the hopes that it would push in that it was normal for him.

“Well alrighty then.” Applejack replied, completely oblivious to it.

“Why the hay are you covered in dirt?” Oh right…

“Umm…” Sunstreak looked down at himself, hopefully making it look like he was confused. “I have no idea…Maybe there was some dirt in the hay…I don’t know.”

“Alright…then. You ever sleepwalk?”

“Rainbow!” Applejack shouted from below. “What have Ah told yah about personal questions?” Sunstreak was actually happy about this change of pace. Gave him time to fly over to the window and take a look out of it. It was a nice view… getting to see the apple orchard, some of the red apples glistening in the sunlight. The mountains in the background. The clear blue sky. Huge change of pace from black hive walls and smog covered valleys.

“Hey, fly boy.” Sunstreak looked down towards Applejack. “Ya wanna help me with somethin’?”

“Sure.” Sunstreak flew down and landed next to AJ. “What is it?”

“Ah borrowed a book from the library. Ah can’t find any time to return it. Maybe ya can help me and bring it back.”

“No problem, Applejack. Assuming nothing magical happens this should be easy.” He moved to take the sheath but stopped before grabbing it. Don’t need that right now. Oh yeah! I never told Applejack about…

“AJ, you and your family have been really kind to us. But I found an old friend, Tornado Dust, I’m planning on staying with him for a while.” After Sunstreak finished, Applejack had a pair of light green saddlebags, it had a decently sized book in it.

“Well Ah can’t blame ya fer wantin’ to catch up with him.” AJ said after she placed the saddlebags on the ground. “Just return the saddlebags when yer done, with that.”

“No problem, Applejack.” Sunstreak shouted back before taking off from the ground and flying back towards Ponyville. Until he realized he had no idea where the library was.

Crap. Maybe I should have paid more attention during my tour… If only that cart didn’t wobble after every stupid bump in the road it would be easier. When Sunstreak got to the edge of the town, he decided to land and walk around, trying to remember what the Library looked like.

The closest thing he manage to think of was that Candy store place he found, which he only remembered because it looked like a Gingerbread house. So he wanted to find someo-pony stupid terminology. That he could recognize or had at least been told about his eye to avoid the whole “Ah it’s a Changeling! get it!” moment. He did notice something rather strange though while he was looking around.

There was a bear… a full sized, five-hundred pound, meat eating bear just walking along the street and not a single one of these ponies was freaking out about it.

Sunstreak rubbed his eyes with his hooves for a minute just to be sure he wasn’t still half asleep, sure enough, the bear was still there. Just when I think I have a handle on the situation. The world throws some other BS at me.

Sunstreak shrugged and decided it was as good a place as any to start. So he walked over to where the bear was and saw a yellow Pegasus, with a long pink mane and tail, her Mark was of three pink butterflies. And she was…talking? To the bear? If Sunstreak hadn’t given up his suspension of disbelief days ago, his brain might be flashing red warning signs.

“Now just try not to make those bees angry again.” She spoke in a voice that just bled compassion, it was light, and he didn’t think that there was any possible way to make her angry…But looks and voices deceive…as he had learned well in the past few days.

“Um…excuse me?” Sunstreak said walking up to the yellow Pegasus, who gave a small surprised ‘eep’ and ducked behind the bear. “…ummm… Sorry to startle you…” Sunstreak said keeping his eye on the bear. I don’t care if these ponies domesticated everything. I am not letting that thing out of my sight. “But I was wondering if you could direct me towards the library.”

Sunstreak was shifting between the bear and the pink tail jutting out from behind the large brown bear. “I was hoping you could point me in the direction of the library. I’m new in town and I’m trying to help out the Apple family.”

From behind the bear, Sunstreak heard that soft voice, and the black wisps that followed. “You know Applejack?”

“Yeah, I’ve been staying with her for the past few days…figured I might as well help in some way.” He saw the shy Pegasus was peeking out from behind the bear.

“It’s just…over there.” The yellow Pegasus pointed down the road to a large tree. Which seemed to be made into a house, with windows and a balcony made completely out of wood. Almost as though the house was carved into the tree.

Sunstreak could tell that this yellow Pegasus was a bit uncomfortable in the situation, so he gave a small smile and replied with an appreciative “Thank you.” Before he walked away from the Pegasus, only mildly aware that he had absorbed a bit of her shyness…still need to get that under control. He walked up to the tree and took a look at it.

It seemed to be an oak tree, a strange reddish brown shade to its bark. There appeared to be window mounted flowerbeds, which were kind of weird, because the tree would…magic sun Shade…this land has a magic sun… Up on the top of the tree, there was a balcony with a telescope, the purpose for this was probably stargazing, but usually you would bring it out during the night, not just leave it there. Near the door, there was a sign saying the Golden Oak Library. Strange for all that paper to be inside a tree…But he needed to deliver that book, so he didn’t dwell on it.

He walked up to the front door and knocked on it with his hoof…still feels weird...

“It’s open!” came a male voice from inside the tree. Oh right…public library…

Sunstreak opened the door to the inside of the library, he was surprised by the amount of books, bookshelves lined the circular room, each one stuffed to the brim with books, in the center of the room, there was a wood craving that may be some important horse guy, but looked like the knight piece in chess. When he looked towards the source of the voice he was pleasantly surprised.

It was a small purple dragon, he had green scales coming from the top of his head like a ridge line, his ears looked like fins…for some reason…and he had no wings. Strange as usually only dragons hatched prematurely via magic lost their wings, and Shade doubted there were any magic users that powerful around here.

“Twilight! We have a visitor!” The baby dragon said towards a stairwell. He was currently placing books on the top shelf. He was using a ladder propped up against the bookshelf to get to that height.

“Twilight! Did you hear me?” He said turning around to look up the stairs. “I said we-” The ladder began to wobble from the rapid shifting of weight. Sunstreak dashed over to steady the ladder, but forgot to limit his strength, so when the ladder did collide back with the bookshelf, it knocked a majority of the books off the shelf.

“Son of a-” Was all he managed to get out before he was buried in a pile of books.

Luckily thanks to his numerous run in’s with heavy objects crashing into him, it didn’t render him unconscious, just very disoriented. Well at least it’s cool in here… A few seconds later he was made aware that his right eye was closed fully in an attempt to not get any books in the precious organ. But he also noticed a female voice coming from outside the pile. And then he noticed the books all lifting off of him and floating a few feet above him, suspended in some purple magic.

“Are you alright?”

“I’ve been better.” Sunstreak said, only now aware that he was slightly curled up with his back against a wall. He still had his eye closed though, just to be safe…for two reasons…in case he still had something in his eye, and to avoid a unicorn thinking he was a changeling.

“I’m sorry.” The female voice replied. “This almost never happens.”

“I have a hard time believing you…” Sunstreak said as he fell to the floor, picking himself up. He noticed who was now levitating the books, she was a purple unicorn, dark purple mane with a pink and purple stripe down her mane and tail. Her mark was of a six pointed star surrounded by a few other stars, and her horn was glowing with a faint purple glow. “Given how quickly you came down here.”

“Well…I just heard the crash and figured it had something to do with Spike.” Sunstreak figured this was Twilight. But he was focusing on the color of her magic, where had he seen it before…

“Is something wrong with your eye?” He heard Twilight ask, he still had his eye closed. “Did you hurt it when the books fell on you?”

“No. No. Nothing like that.” Sunstreak replied, giving a dismissive wave. “It’s just…most ponies freak out when they see it because of the attack a few days ago.” If by most you mean 50% of the adult ponies he had met, then that number was quite correct. “I’m just trying to avoid that for now.”

Twilight chuckled slightly. “Well I’m sure there is nothing you need to worry about. I’m not going to just throw you in a dungeon for looking strange.”

Sunstreak sighed and opened his eye, which may have been a good idea, if not for the dragon standing right next to him.

“Ah!” Spike shouted. “Change-“ Sunstreak placed a hoof in his mouth before he could finish.

“No.” Sunstreak said moving his head to look at Spike. “I was born with it. And you have no room to talk about genetics, wingless.” Sunstreak moved his hoof away. It looked like Spike wanted to retort but couldn’t find anything to say.

“That wasn’t very nice of you.” Twilight responded, glaring at Sunstreak.

Sunstreak sighed. “You’re right…I’m sorry Spike. I’m above that. It’s just I’ve been getting a lot of ponies freaking out because of my eye. Especially ever since that attack.” Then he realized where the magic color was from. He quickly looked up at the pile of floating books to be sure. “Were you there?”

Twilight moved the pile of books to the side before plopping them down in a neat pile. “Yes I was. Why do you ask?”

Because I saw you alongside Celestia. “I saw the energy shield thing that blasted the Changelings back, I was in Everfree at the time.”

“Uh huh…” Twilight responded looking over Sunstreak. “Why not tell me about it over tea?”

“Ehh sure why not.” Sunstreak wasn’t exactly a ‘tea’ drinker. Owing mostly to the fact that it was difficult to get plants to grow in the Fiords…and even more difficult to keep it from bursting into flame.

But he had to admit…it did help with the headache he didn’t realize he had, probably from the book-alanche he was just in. Not to mention that the tea really helped with him calm down his mind a bit.

“So what were you doing in Everfree?” Twilight asked as Sunstreak took another sip of tea…it was nice to actually have a decent conversation that didn’t revolve primarily around him for a change.

“I was doing a bit of field work on Nightmare Moon.” Sunstreak said between sips of tea. “I study magical phenomena and artifacts, so I figured I would try and see if there was something more I could learn about Nightmare Moon. Turned out… almost everything I could find was destroyed.”

“So how did you know I was in Canterlot?”

“The Changeling repulsion thingy, it’s the same color as your magic. I just sort of figured that was you.”

“Well it was actually my brother, Shining Armor.” Twilight was visibly blushing. “But I guess you could say I indirectly helped.”

“How so?”

“Well I found out that Princess Cadence was a Changeling, then I found the real Cadence, we got out and then we revealed her.” Twilight said this as though it was a normal occurrence.

“That normal in this part of Equestria?” Sunstreak asked, taking another sip of tea.

“Well…not normal per se…but it happens rather frequently.”

Sunstreak gave a small chuckle. “And I thought my home was weird.”

“Where are you from exactly?” Twilight replied. “I mean pegasi don’t normally want to learn about magic.”

“You should really not stereotype like that. Just because I’m a Pegasus doesn’t mean I want to be a Weather pony. But since you asked.” Sunstreak gave Twilight the same story he told Applejack’s family before.

“I’ve never heard of the Burning Fiords before…” Twilight said a slight glint of curiosity in her eyes. “What is it like?”

“Very inhospitable…” Sunstreak replied. “We needed a special spell before we could leave any of the cities, and you couldn’t fly to high up or the Phoenix Rays would get you.”

“You learned to use magic?” Twilight said and Sunstreak couldn’t tell if it was doubt or curiosity that kept her asking.

“Well…not exactly…It’s a very basic enchantment…I had a special helmet enchanted with it. It acted like a filter, taking all the bad toxic fumes out and replacing it with fresh air. Without it you would be dead in minutes.” Then a question came into his head. And seeing how Twilight seemed to technically be royalty now, or at least her brother was, it seemed like the best place to ask. “What is Equestria doing about the Changeling problem?” Being one myself this greatly interests me.

“Well…We have found a few stragglers around Equestria. But since we really have no idea how to handle them, so far the verdict is to just lock them up.”

Sunstreak found himself pausing in the middle of a drink, thinking this through… “Don’t they feed off emotions? So if you lock them up they would eventually just starve wouldn’t they?”

“Eventually no doubt, but most of them seem pretty fine after feeding off of some ponies. There is even reason to believe that a few have foalnapped a few foals.” Sunstreak, who was halfway through another drink, found himself coughing on the hot liquid.

“They what!?” He replied after managing to compose himself, hopefully it sounded genuine.

“Oh yes…a few Changelings were found attempting to drain fillies, they were given much worse punishment than the others.”

Sunstreak was glad he didn’t try and take another drink, instead, he was trying to make himself sound angry or in disbelief while hiding his own fear. “Well I would hope so. I mean…I found a Changeling trying to do that…but I figured there would only be one.” He quickly took another drink, hoping to calm his nerves.

“Doesn’t seem that way…in fact shortly after the invasion, one of the Changelings was beaten to near death by the townsponies.”

Sunstreak spat out his tea; rather impressively as it landed about three feet past the edge of the table. “What did it do?”

“Well…I’m not exactly sure…apparently it was found just inside Canterlot, apparently the repulsion spell didn’t launch it all the way out of the city.”

This is bad… This is very bad…

Desperate to change the conversation, he remembered something he wanted to read up on. “Not that all this talk of Changelings and…foalnapping isn’t thrilling. You wouldn’t happen to have a book in here about the Elements of Harmony?”

“Yes we do… Why do you ask?” Twilight said eyeing him suspiciously.

Make it convincing, it’s only your life on the line. “I was hoping to prove a theory of mine involving the effect of the Elements on certain phenomena. Like say…how it would affect…oh I don’t know…” Think of something you hatchling! “Celestia for instance.”

Twilight looked at him for a moment, so Sunstreak added a small smile that he hoped was convincing but probably came out as dreadfully forced. “Where did you say you studied magical theory?”

“A Changeling Queen out in the…” He quickly clasped a hoof over his mouth. What did I just say?

“You learned magical theory from a Changeling Queen?”

“Uh…” Sunstreak was racking his brain. He was trying to figure out what he was about to say. Did I really learn from a Changeling Queen? He was thinking quickly, trying to figure out if he had any visions about that…any possible thing that would make him say that. “What did I just say?”

“You just said you learned magic theory from a Changeling Queen.”

“Twilight you have to believe me.” Sunstreak was looking at Twilight with a worried expression. “I have no idea where that came from.” Sunstreak was actually very afraid right now. Why the hell did I say that…I don’t know any Changeling Queens… “Please Twilight…”

She just seemed to giggle slightly, “Oh believe me you are in no trouble here.” She seemed to be smiling.

“Why are you laughing?” Sunstreak was frightened, he had just said something extremely stupid and he had no idea where it came from.

Twilight just tapped her hoof on her horn, which appeared to be glowing. “Lie spell. Forces you to tell a lie that I determine. I just wanted to see how you would react.”

Sunstreak let out a deep sigh. “That was a very dirty trick, Twilight. You had me scared for a minute there.” He just became aware of the drum that had replaced his heart. “Why did you do that?”

“It’s a very simple spell, any magic user can negate its effects. Even Changelings. I just had to be sure.” For once Sunstreak was glad he was not a magic user.

“So…about that book?”

The rest of the visit was pleasant enough. After that first scare, Sunstreak loosened up, he was no longer in the firing range. So it was much better, they discussed the events of Nightmare Moon, or rather Sunstreak learned what happened, and even found out about the fate of that one Draconoquis that he heard about. Then he had said good-bye and transferred the two books, so he now had Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide. Now he just had to return Applejack’s saddlebag and head to pick up Meadow from school to bring her to Tornado Dust. As soon as he figured out where the school was…

He was trying to think about where the school was, and he was pretty sure that the fillies never told them about it. So hopefully he could figure it out. And he was hoping he could…until he found a single building that stood out among the natural looking village.

This was the one point that Sunstreak had actually taken a break from being paranoid since the road was slightly less bumpy; if he remembered correctly it was called the Carousal Boutique. And if he also remembered correctly, Sweetie Belle had said she was staying here. And he was pleasantly surprised when he heard the four fillies walking up behind him.

“Sunstreak?” He heard the familiar voice of Meadow Song from behind him. “What are you doing here?”

“Well…I was just helping Applejack out by returning a book to Twilight. Plus I got myself some reading material.” He opened up the saddlebag with his wing and pulled out the book.

“Shouldn’t you already know all that?” Sweetie Belle replied after reading the title.

“Yeah…” He replied putting the book back into the saddlebag. “But it has been too long since I brushed up on my Elemental knowledge. Might as well while I’m here. What are you four doing here?”

“We were going to ask Rarity if she would be okay with us sleeping over tomorrow.” Scootaloo said, her tiny wings flapping extremely fast and only managing to lift her a few inches off the ground.

“That seems really…soon…shouldn’t you get that okayed like a week in advance?”

“Nah we never plan out that far.” Apple Bloom replied. “We just wanted to see if she will let us on such short notice.”

“Well…I suppose it is worth a shot…” Sunstreak replied rubbing the back of his neck and finding that his mane was stuck together with dried mud. I really need to get this stuff out. Suddenly Sunstreak felt a pain in his head, similar to that of a headache, but he realized what was happening. A Changeling was mentally talking to him.

“Snake Eye, when you get home, keep your disguise on. I can’t tell you why. Just do it.”

Sunstreak hadn’t realized just how inexperienced he was with the mental connection, until the four fillies, especially Meadow were looking at him with concern.

“Are you alright?” Meadow asked, placing her hoof on Sunstreak’s leg.

“I’m fine, Meadow…just a headache.” Yeah lie some more today. Maybe I can tell her I never plan to return her next. Sunstreak had to shake these ideas away. He fully intended to return Meadow to her mother; he just needed to wait for the security to die down a little…or a lot, so that he could enter safely. He was willing to get Meadow there as quickly as possible, but he didn’t want to risk his own life in the process, and thinking about what Twilight said…

Sunstreak shivered a little bit. But was relieved when he saw Meadow’s green eyes looking back at him, full of trust.

“So were you four going to ask Rarity something?” Sunstreak said composing himself.

“Oh yeah.” Sweetie Belle replied quickly the Crusaders went up to the door, while Meadow stayed with Sunstreak.

“Was it really nothing?”

“I’ll tell you later.” Then leaning in he whispered into Meadow’s ear “It’s a Bug Pony thing.” He motioned his head towards the three fillies and Meadow seemed to understand and the two of them walked up to the door.

“Why are you joinin’ us?” Apple Bloom said, looking up at Sunstreak.

“Well I haven’t met Rarity yet, figured I might as well while I’m here.”

Sweetie Belle seemed to whisper something to her friends who giggled while Sunstreak couldn’t make out the exact words, he was pretty sure it was ‘Not while you look like that’ Sunstreak was pretty sure she was talking about all the dirt, which he now realized was mostly gone from his coat, except for his hooves, wings and some in his mane and tail. Oh well…must look worse on my Carapace.

When the door opened, Shade got a look at one of the fanciest unicorns he had seen since he got a look at that Fancy Pants guy. Pure white coat, purple mane and tail that were curled and looked as if they took three hours to do, eyeliner, curled lashes, essentially she was all that he hated about female appearances in a nutshell.

The instant she got a look at Sunstreak, she almost immediately gasped. “Oh dear, where have you been?”

“What?” Sunstreak replied, confused by the question.

“Where have you been to get all of this icky dirt in your mane?”

“Excuse me?” Sunstreak was completely taken aback by the fact that he was quickly grabbed by his hooves and pulled into the boutique. He was soon followed by three very confused fillies and one that seemed to be slightly bored with the outburst.

“I have to say that it has been quite a while since I’ve seen a Pegasus here.” She had begun taking his measurements, using her blue magic and a plethora of measuring tapes as she went. “Ever since the whole…possible overthrow of Canterlot not many ponies have been coming to me and I can’t imagine why.”

Sunstreak only just now got a chance to look around, the entire place was just as fancy on the inside as the outside. All ribbons and ivory stone. The stairway was strangely a spiral staircase…for some reason… The whole place just bled high society…and Sunstreak wasn’t very comfortable with it. Around the area he was in, he was standing on a raised platform in the middle of a semi-circle of mirrors. What Shade could see was all of the mannequins. Some having dresses placed on them. Apparently Rarity was still talking but Shade wasn’t listening. Up until she said “So what brings a stallion like you in here?”

“Well…I came here to actually meet you, because I’ve been in town a few days and decided why not. But their reason seems more important.” He pointed towards the four fillies. Almost instantly his wing felt like it was being forced open and Sunstreak slapped the tape measure around his wing. “Stop that!”

The rest of the tape measures stalled for a moment. “Sorry dear, I just got caught up in my calling in life.” She levitated the tape measures back to the drawer they originally came from and turned her attention to the fillies. Only now did Sunstreak realize her Mark was three blue diamonds. Apparently she was destined to be a high fashion pony… Sunstreak shouldn’t hold it against her… Just her job.

“What is it you thr- four…wanted to ask me?” Rarity asked, looking towards the fillies.

“Well, Rarity we wanted to ask if we could have a slumber party here tomorrow?” Sweetie Belle said, flashing a puppy dog look with her light green eyes. While Sunstreak couldn’t see her face, he was sure that Rarity had twitched.

“Sweetie how many times have I told you that I have an important order to fulfill and I will need to stay up all night focusing on these dresses?”

“Umm…once?” Sweetie Belle replied.

“Sweetie, I tried to tell you the last fifteen times that you asked me. My answer has not changed since earlier today.”

Sunstreak could tell that the fillies were slightly disheartened but the original Crusaders weren’t too surprised by it. “I simply cannot risk not getting these dresses finished.” Dresses…not exactly Sunstreak’s specialty. Or favorite topic…so he decided this conversation was boring and instead opted to fly above the two arguing unicorns.

After around the five minute mark, Sunstreak decided to fly down between the two sisters. “Can you just kiss and make up already…”

“Beg your pardon?” Rarity said, surprised by the pegasi’s input.

“Come on… You two have been arguing for the past five minutes. I’ll tell you what… I’ll talk to Tornado Dust about maybe letting you girls stay over the night. I’m not sure how he will react to it...but I’ll try.” Anything to get me out of here as soon as possible.

The three Crusaders looked at him happily. “Really?” All three of them chimed at once. Meadow was giving him a look of ‘are you sure?’

“Why that would be simply marvelous dear.” Rarity replied. “I simply must do something to repay you.”

“No, you don’t have to.” Please don’t….

“But I insist.” Rarity replied, holding her head high in that pompous ‘I’m not taking “no” for an answer’ sort of way.

Sunstreak sighed. Looking towards Sweetie Belle. “There’s no point in arguing is there…”

All three of the Crusaders shook their heads slowly.

Sunstreak sighed. “Fine…let’s get this over with…”

Only a mind numbing THREE HOURS later, Sunstreak was finally allowed to leave the boutique, he had been standing on that pedestal for fifteen minutes while Rarity had cleaned all the dirt and gunk out of his mane, tail and wings, so that was good. But the remaining two hours and forty-five minutes had been Rarity retaking all the measurements, grabbing a large variety of fabrics and gemstones to compare against Sunstreak’s eyes, mane, coat, his mark, everything over and over again. All that Sunstreak wanted to do was stretch, but he was forbidden to by Rarity, who used her magic to ensure he couldn’t move too much.

His legs were stiff, wings didn’t feel up to flying, and he was pretty sure his mane smelt like lilac. Which wouldn’t be bad, if Rarity hadn’t felt like putting a comb and brush through it…over twenty times…Made him feel like a female…

When he was allowed to leave, he quickly grabbed Meadow and AJ’s saddlebag before making a mad dash for the door. Once he was outside, and fully certain that Rarity couldn’t call him back, he slowed down. Allowing himself time to breathe. “That was the biggest waste of three hours in my life.” Sunstreak said, stopping and lowering himself down to let the filly climb onto his back.

“Was it really that bad?” Meadow asked, sitting on Sunstreak’s back.

“Well being given a full look over by a fashonista with an eye for detail, and being slightly paranoid that she will catch onto me being…yah know.” He looked back at the filly. “Along with being unable to move while she took measurements of everything… I was sure I got something wrong.”

“Don’t worry.” Meadow replied, Sunstreak could feel the compassion in her voice, and tried not to absorb all of it. “You look perfect.”

Sunstreak let out a sigh, turning to look at the brown filly. “You know exactly what to say to make me feel better.” He told Meadow. “Maybe you should become a therapist?” At this Meadow giggled slightly.

“So what did happen earlier?” Meadow asked, “With your headache?”

Sunstreak looked up and down the street, making sure that no ponies were within earshot. “Remember when I told you about Tornado Dust?”

“You mean the other Bug Pony?”

“Yes…well all Bug Ponies have a small mental connection…I’m not used to it, but he told me to keep my disguise on.” Sunstreak was looking around the streets then looked up. The sun was in no way still hanging above, but there was still enough light for business to continue. “Where is everypony?” HA! Got it for once!

Meadow shrugged, “Maybe they all decided to close up early? In Canterlot they did that a lot for fancy events.”

“Maybe…” Sunstreak said, thinking back to his visit with Twilight. Lie spell? I’ve never heard of that before…What did she really do?

A few minutes of walking down the empty streets brought the two of them to Tornado Dust’s door. Meadow hopped down off of Sunstreak’s back. Sunstreak was still thinking about the oddly empty streets, true he hadn’t been in the town for that long, but the streets were never this empty. So either everyone had decided to have an early dinner, or there was something planned…

When Sunstreak opened the door, even his good eye couldn’t see through the darkness, once Meadow stepped inside he closed the door behind them. “Tornado. We’re here.” He said through the house. “Why is it so dark in here?”

“SURPRISE!”

The lights all turned on, Sunstreak quickly took off in shock, slamming his head into one of the low rafters. “Ow…” He mumbled lowering himself back down to the ground. When he got a chance to look around the room, he saw what must have been the entirety of Ponyville was inside of the house. Streamers and balloons were everywhere. Through the throng of ponies, he managed to pick out a few that he recognized. Twilight, Applejack and Rainbow Dash were near the back of the room, just talking to each other.

“Are you alright?” Meadow asked, looking at Sunstreak rubbing his head.

“I’m fine…just going to be a little sore…” Sunstreak looked up to find himself face to face with a smiling pink pony. “Uh…Hello?”

“Hi!” The pink pony replied bouncing up and down with a small ‘Sproing’ every time she hopped. “My name is Pinkie Pie.” Really creative. “This is your Welcome-to-Ponyville-Surprise-Party! This is the first time I’ve ever done a party for two new arrivals on the same day.” She talked with an energy that could probably only be matched by hooking someone up to a generator, even then…they wouldn’t stand a chance. “So…What do you think?”

Sunstreak hadn’t actually processed that she had finished speaking for a few seconds before responding with, “When did you plan all this?” Sunstreak had never met Pinkie before now…and come to think of it…a party like this would have certainly been picked up on if it wasn’t kept a secret.

“Ever since you got into Ponyville, silly.” Pinkie was now bouncing above the two of them, Meadow seeming pretty used to the ponies energy already while Sunstreak was still confused as ever. “I knew you were staying with Applejack but I’m not allowed to throw any surprise parties in the barn because of what happened last time. So I just started planning for when you moved in with somepony else to throw it.”

“Well… It was rather unexpected…” Sunstreak rubbed his head again then looked up at the rafter which thankfully was still intact.

“It should be silly. What kind of surprise party would it be if you knew about it? It wouldn’t be. It would just be a Party-Party. While those are fun I still think a surprise party is so much better.”

Sunstreak was looking around, trying to find Tornado Dust, he luckily managed to find him before noticing just how much…happiness Pinkie had, the flame from her was practically blinding.

“Yes well…It has been a pleasure meeting you Pinkie, but I need to talk with Tornado Dust about something…” Before Sunstreak had even managed to finish the sentence, Pinkie was bouncing again.

“Okie doki loki.” She had started to bounce off to the corner of the room for God knows what reason.

“Meadow…go enjoy yourself…I need to talk to Tornado Dust.” At this the small brown filly ran off into the crowd of ponies and out of sight. Sunstreak flew over the crowd of ponies and landed next to Tornado Dust, who was currently sitting at a table with a few other pegasi around.

“Hey, Snake Eye!” Tornado said as Sunstreak landed. “Enjoying yourself?”

“If by enjoying myself you mean smashing my head into the ceiling then yes.”

“Ha! My first Pinkie Party was the same way. Trust me it gets a lot easier.” Tornado Dust looked over at Sunstreak who was twitching his left eye rather frequently. “Something wrong?”

“Yeah…can I talk to you…In private?”

“Uhh…sure.” Tornado replied. “Just follow me.” The two of them walked into a side door leading to the basement, where luckily there were no other ponies. “What’s up?”

When Sunstreak was sure he wouldn’t be overheard, he grabbed Tornado. “Help me!” He was shaking him vigorously, “I can’t control my left eye…it just sees every emotion…HELP!”

After Tornado Dust had stopped shaking he looked towards the Pegasus in front of him. “Alright, hold on…” He flew up to the basement door and made sure that it was locked. Before flying back down and revealing his Changeling form. “Damn Snake Eye…anymore and I wouldn’t have been able to hold onto that form.”

“Sorry, but it’s just...” Sunstreak took a deep breath. “I’m not used to these powers yet! At least not in huge crowds, a few ponies is fine but not the entire town! Someone is going to notice! It’s only a matter of…” Darkblaze slapped Sunstreak. “Thanks…I needed that.”

“Just calm down…I had the same problem. If you aren’t expecting it this amount of energy can freak you out. Just calm down… Turn back to normal really quick.”

Shade obliged, and shortly after Darkblaze’s horn was glowing a faint green, before he pointed it at Shade.

“There…” Darkblaze replied when he had finished. “A small spell I learned. Blocks out your emotion senses. It should stay up for the rest of the night.”

Shade looked up at his own horn, which was now coated in a faint green light. “You sure this’ll work?” Shade replied transforming back.

“It worked for me the first few times.” Darkblaze replied, turning back into Tornado Dust. “Just try not to act too out of place. I’ll try and teach you to control it tomorrow.” He noticed the saddlebags Sunstreak had. “Are those Applejack’s?”

“Yeah…She wanted me to return a book for her, and I got something to read for myself. Then when I tried to bring it back I met Rarity and…”

“Say no more…Rarity can be…”

“Overly obsessive?”

“I was going to say a perfectionist but yeah…I guess that explains why you smell like flowers.” Tornado said somewhat chuckling. “We should get back to the party before anypony suspects anything.”

With his emotional senses nullified, the party wasn’t all that bad. He was no longer blinded by every pony he talked to and was fully able to take small nibbles of energy from them without feeling like an asshole…mostly because the energy seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.

He played some of the party games Pinkie had brought and still wondered how the pony had set everything up so quickly… but was more confused when she pulled a pink cannon out of nowhere and fired a large ball of confetti at the ceiling. He learned a very important lesson about life in Ponyville though. ‘Never question Pinkie Pie…’

He did see a familiar yellow Pegasus staying away from most of the other ponies…so he decided it would be a good time to actually talk to her…without the fear of a giant bear eating him.

When he landed next to the Pegasus she seemed at least slightly more open, still a bit scared though. “Hello?” She said in her soft voice, which was almost drowned out by the sounds of the party.

“Hi… So are you enjoying yourself?” Sunstreak asked trying to figure someway to break the ice without a sledge hammer.

“Oh yes. Pinkie really out did herself with this one.” She sounded so unsure, but confident at the same time. Sunstreak had a hard time getting a nail on how she was feeling but it was luckily better than earlier. “I haven’t seen a crowd this big since Twilight’s welcome party.”

“How’d that go?” Sunstreak asked. Knowing Twilight from that little ‘joke’ she played it must not have gone too well. She seemed obsessed with organization.

“It went…well. She spent most of it up in her room.” The Pegasus stopped after this. She must be very shy.

“So…I think we met earlier today…” Sunstreak said. “I asked you where the library was but I didn’t get your name.”

“Oh…I’m Fluttershy…”

“Nice name…” It describes you perfectly. “I’m Sunstreak.”

“If you don’t mind me asking…What happened to your eye?” She almost immediately backed down from the question. “That is…if you want to…”

In all honesty Sunstreak didn’t want to, but seeing the mare all by herself back here made him kind of want to tell her. “I don’t mind. I was born with it… there’s no real big story behind it. Just a slight birth defect.”

“Oh okay…” Fluttershy started to hide behind her long mane, so Sunstreak decided it would be a good idea to leave.

“Well Fluttershy,” He said, hovering slightly above the ground, “it’s been nice meeting you. But right now there is a plate of Rainbow Cookies that desperately need my attention.” One of the best parts of being a Dragon/Changeling hybrid, resistance to spicy foods, and according to every other pony at this party, the Rainbow Cookies were super spicy.

The rest of the night was pretty uneventful, Sunstreak managed to out eat Pinkie when it came to the Rainbow Cookies, which according to Twilight was impressive that he could eat two of them before needing to drink anything, let alone twenty-four. He gave Applejack her saddlebag back, talked with Twilight about the Fiords a bit. By the time they were done talking the party was already winding down.

“…And that’s why we can’t go out during the summer.” Sunstreak said talking about the large bird rays he now recognized as Phoenix Rays.

“Interesting…” Twilight replied. “I would love to see the place myself. It sounds like a great place to observe rare creatures.”

“Well when half the population is Dragons and the other half is giant bird rays trying to kill you, you learn not to question it.” The party had already died down to just Pinkie, the Crusaders, Applejack, and Twilight, but Pinkie seemed determined to make it last through the night. “Then there’s the Flaming Valley, simply beautiful, casting the red glow of the lava flows right into the clouds. Sometimes if you’re really lucky, you can even see the moonlight colliding with the red. It creates this beautiful mixture of reds and blue…almost like staring at an Aurora. It is by far one of the most beautiful sights in the Fiords.” Sunstreak’s eyes were wide while he remembered this. It was a long time ago…he saw it in one of his visions…which startled him at first because the first time he saw the Valley he had his wing and horn ripped off…

“I’ll have to look into that, it sounds simply amazing.” Twilight said, raising a hoof to her mouth as she yawned. “But not right now… Now I need to get some sleep.”

“And Ah gotta get these girls home.” Applejack replied looking towards the three fillies. Who all let out a disappointed ‘Aww’. “You girls still got school tomorrow and Rarity put me in charge a makin’ sure you got to sleep. Now let’s go.”

“Bye, Sunstreak.” The three fillies said as they left the house. Shortly followed by Applejack and Twilight. Leaving only Pinkie who was still beaming with energy.

“Are you girls CRAZY! There’s still so much party to go around!”

Sunstreak couldn’t help but chuckle at this. Pinkie may be the craziest creature he had ever met…but she was hilarious…he gave her that, crazy…but hilarious.

“Pinkie…I’ll tell you what.” At this the pink pony looked over at him. “I’ll let you throw me another party later this week alright?”

Without even missing a beat, Pinkie Pie quickly said “Okie doki Loki.” Before bouncing out the door, clearly satisfied with this alternative. Leaving Sunstreak and Meadow in the middle of the room.

“Tornado!” Sunstreak shouted towards the kitchen. “You can come out now. They left.”

From the direction of the kitchen, Tornado Dust walked in, looking a mixture of stuffed and tired as hell. “Finally…” he said shedding his Pony disguise and collapsing onto the ground. “I thought they would never leave.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Sunstreak asked keeping his disguise on as he closed the blinds and windows. “It wasn’t that bad of a party.”

“No it was up to Pinkie Pie’s normal standards.” He said pushing himself up. “I just think it went a little too well…” He walked over to a cabinet and used his magic to pull out a small green tray that looked to be made out of crystal, he touched his horn to the bottom of the tray and slowly Sunstreak watched as the tray was filled with clear crystals, much like those Darkblaze showed Sunstreak when he first entered his house…

“How many of those things can you make?” Sunstreak asked, transforming back to his Changeling form, looking up at his horn, he saw the green energy still surrounding it.

“From one of Pinkie’s parties?” He said, placing the crystals in the freezer and creating more, “I can usually make enough for a little over a week’s worth. But now we’ve got two Changelings, a foal, not to mention how you have almost no experience in being a Changeling.” He was making another batch of the crystals. “So if we plan to not starve, I need to teach you how to be a Changeling.” After placing the last batch of crystals in the freezer, he placed the tray back in the cabinet looking almost infinitely more comfortable. “And that starts with helping you control your feeding.”

Shade nodded, looking towards the small brown filly sleeping on the couch. It was nice to not see exactly how she was feeling for once, but not seeing the small orange flame that he figured was trust, made him feel…different. “So we start tomorrow.” Darkblaze replied. Letting out a yawn. “We’ll start shortly after you send Meadow off to school. Don’t want her seeing what we’ll be doing.”

“So…beds?” Shade said, walking over and rolling Meadow onto his back.

“Oh right… Up the stairs, to the right. There’s only one spare bed.”

“I’ll sleep on the couch…I’m not picky.” Shade said, fluttering his wings to float up the stairs, the sleeping filly staying on his back.

He carried the filly up into the room, looking around. He noticed how the bed was in pristine condition, it looked like it had never been slept on at all. Which given how Darkblaze felt about other Changelings, it wasn’t surprising. Once he placed the small brown filly on the bed, he placed the blanket onto of her. Giving her mane a little ruffle.

“Sleep tight, Meadow.” He whispered. “May your dreams be pleasant…” He walked out of the door, closing it silently, before he walked down the stairs to see Darkblaze smiling at him. “What?”

“You care about her.” Darkblaze said, the smile slightly expanding.

“What? I don’t…”

“Yes you do… Don’t lie.” Darkblaze said. “That spell of mine stops you from seeing emotions, not me.”

Shade sighed. “Alright so I feel responsible for the kid. Shoot me if that’s wrong.”

Darkblaze rolled his eyes. “You would have made such a bad Changeling.”

“What makes you say that?” Shade replied.

“Well, let’s see.” He sat down and began counting on his hoof. “You can’t use magic, you don’t want to drain anypony, you know nothing about ponies, and the only reason you haven’t been found out is because you know nothing about Changelings either. Plus…you are protecting a pony without even wanting to use them as food.”

“Is that a threat?” Shade asked, completely willing to fight another Changeling if it meant he could protect Meadow.

“No. No. No.” Darkblaze said, waving his hooves in a time out movement. “I’m not with the Hive anymore, so I’m trying to get into the swing of having friends… I’m just saying that you are a terrible Changeling by Hive standards. By Pony standards… you are probably one of the best Changelings they’ve ever seen.”

Shade let his aggressive stance go, much to Darkblaze’s relief. “Sorry, Darkblaze.” Shade said. “I just don’t want to let her down… I promised to her that I would protect her.”

“And you will.” Darkblaze said placing a helpful hoof on Shade’s shoulder. “She trusts you…that’s the most important thing. So long as you don’t lose that, you will have no problems. Now you should get some sleep. We have a busy day ahead of us.”

A few minutes later, Darkblaze had left to go upstairs, Shade was lying on the couch, getting used to the semi comfortable couch, it was soft, but very firm. Shade wasn’t feeling exactly tired…then he saw the golden trimmed book. Might as well.

Shade got up and grabbed the book, walking back over to the couch and laying down, opening the book.

Over one thousand years ago…

Author's Note

I have no idea how to write Rarity. Hopefully did it well enough. :twilightsheepish:

Chapter 10: Four Fillies, Two Changelings, Unstable Magic

“Are you sure this is safe?” Shade asked, looking at the armored Changing standing near the corner of the room.

“Sure…” Darkblaze replied. “I’m just taking precautions. Magic can be dangerous…”

“Is that why you are standing all the way over there, when I’m trying to use telekinesis?”

“Just taking precautions…” Darkblaze said, taking another step back.

Shade rolled his eyes looking at the small ball that Darkblaze had placed in the middle of the room. He had managed to levitate a single piece of paper without it bursting into flame, so he moved onto a small ball, which he had yet to attempt. So before he even tried, Darkblaze had to make sure he was wearing an old set of Changeling General Armor; that Shade questioned where it came from but didn’t ask.

“So…exactly what side effects could this cause?” Shade said, taking his eyes off the small ball. “So I know what I’m getting myself into.”

“Well…if this goes wrong, it could explode.”

“Gee….thanks…” Shade replied, turning his focus back to the ball. He closed his eyes, and focused. Within about ten seconds, the ball exploded in a green blast of light, throwing Shade into a nearby wall.

“Ow…” Shade said, rubbing his insect wings, having landed right on them. “Well at least you weren’t lying…”

Darkblaze took off his helmet, looking towards Shade. “I’m running out of things for you to burn. You already went through an entire pile of paper…and you just blew up a ball. I don’t want to have to buy fifty more of these things and try to explain why I need fifty balls, maybe if I was Pinkie…but I’m not.”

“But you could…”

“No! I don’t trust Pinkie, she’s too…spastic…” Darkblaze walked over to Shade putting out a helpful hoof. Then looked him up and down. “Luckily you look fine…” Then he looked at Shade’s horn. “Except that…you seem to have a crack in your horn.”

“I what!?” Shade replied surprised.

“Your horn is cracked,” Darkblaze replied. “See for yourself” He levitated a mirror over so Shade could look at his horn, it was the first time in quite a while he looked at himself, He still wasn’t used to looking at himself…at least not like this. His one orange eye looked strangely out of place, given the other Changelings he had met, the two fangs he had were still strange, but since he was used to having sharp teeth, so it wasn’t really anything different. But his black curved horn, did have a noticeable crack through it, not enough to go straight through, but just enough to be noticeable without damaging its integrity.

“Isn’t this a bad thing?” Shade asked, slightly worried.

“Well…I’ve never experienced it, but a Unicorn who was captured by the Hive once had a broken horn. He tried using magic and ended up blowing a sizable chunk of the hive to Oblivion… Including himself…”

Shade’s eyes widened, and his right eye turned to a slit. “That isn’t going to happen to me is it?”

“Well…like I said I’ve never seen a changeling with a cracked horn. Usually they are placed in a healing chrysalis until it is repaired…”

“But neither one of us can do that…” Shade said looking up as his horn began to create small green sparks. “Umm…What’s going…” Shade’s horn fired a green beam from it, scorching the opposite wall. “Uh…” Shade said after seeing the scorch mark. “I didn’t do that…”

Darkblaze was covering his head, shielding it from any remaining magical blasts. “Well, this can’t be good.” Darkblaze said, grabbing his helmet with his magic and put it back on. “Try turning back into Sunstreak.”

Shade did, and was happy to see that he was indeed back to his pony form. Only... it was a little bit different… “Where are my wings?” Sunstreak asked, looking onto his back to see that his wings had vanished.

“Uhh…Snake Eye…” Darkblaze said, motioning to his own curved horn. Sunstreak reached up with a hoof to find that it collided with a bone-like protrusion on his head.

“Why do I have a horn?” Not-Quite Sunstreak asked, tapping it lightly. “I’m not supposed to have a horn. Darkblaze! What is going on?”

“Alright calm down, Snake Eye.” Darkblaze said, noticing how Sunstreak was beginning to freak out. “We can figure this out.”

“Really?” Sunstreak said, as his horn began to spark again. “How are we going to-?” Sunstreak found himself very briefly covered in a green fire before he found himself inside of a tree house, surrounded by books. “Fix…this.” Sunstreak said, noticing where he was.

“Spike?” The familiar purple Unicorn shouted down the stairs. “Are you back already?”

Sunstreak tapped his horn repeatedly Come on. Work you waste of Chitin. It began to spark again before Sunstreak heard Twilight come down the stairs. But before he got to see the unicorn, the green flames had surrounded him again and he was on the couch in Darkblaze’s house.

“Snake Eye?” Darkblaze said, walking up from the basement. “How the Hive did you get up here?”

“I may or may not have just been in Twilight’s house…” Shade said, returning back to his Changeling form, hoping that would stop him from teleporting around.

“How did you manage that? Teleportation spells aren’t exactly the easiest things to do.”

“I don’t know... I only just managed to get away before she saw me.” His eye’s widened. And he was covering his head with his hooves. “What if she did see me? She’ll know I’m a Changeling for sure.” His horn began to spark again. “Then I’ll get turned into the Equestrian authorities and be judged for not only being a Changeling but also for kidnapping Meadow! I’ll be executed.”

“Uh…Snake Eye…”

“Or maybe they’ll just let me slowly starve in a jail cell. Or they’ll send me back to the Fiords.” His eye’s widened. “I can’t go back to the Fiords! Not when I look like this! They’ll roast me over one of the lava flows! Or just make me choke on the poison gas! I can’t go back when I look like a giant black Cockroach!” He was panicking now.

“Snake Eye!”

“Or they’ll just use me for information! Information I don’t have! They’ll torture me! I’ll never survive! I’ll be-!” A sudden pain in his side made him jolt upright, slamming his head onto the ceiling. Looking towards the source of the pain, he saw Darkblaze pointing his horn at Shade while being held upside down in a green aura.

“Snake Eye! Calm down!” Shade had just now realized that the furniture in the room was floating with the same green aura that was holding Darkblaze upside down.

“Sorry…” He reached up and lightly flicked his horn, making the furniture fall back to their normal positions. “It’s just…”

Darkblaze had picked himself up and was looking towards the panicking changeling. “I get it… You aren’t used to having magic and now that it is being sent into flux, it is even harder for you to control. And with the Crusaders coming over…”

“Oh crap!” Shade said, quickly transforming back to a unicorn version of Sunstreak. “I promised Meadow that I would pick her up from school today. I was planning on going in a few minutes but now I need to…” Before Sunstreak reached the door, he was held back by Darkblaze’s own green magic.

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Darkblaze said, holding Sunstreak away from the door, “You can’t go out there looking like that. You’ll get yourself caught.”

“Well what do you suggest I do?” Sunstreak said, trying to keep an eye on his horn just in case it began to spark again. “I can’t just create a new persona in a few seconds.”

Darkblaze rolled his eyes, levitating the unicorn over to one of the pictures on the wall. “See the yellow Unicorn.” Sunstreak looked at the picture; there was indeed a yellow unicorn, red eyes, his blue mane dropping over his right eye. “His name is Comet Trail. He lived in Ponyville for a few years before moving off to Canterlot. Nopony here will realize he’s come back. He was kind of a… Extreme introvert. I think he is the only pony Pinkie couldn’t throw a party for.”

“So you want me to turn into him?” Sunstreak asked looking closely at the picture. “Isn’t that kind of risky…I mean if Pinkie finds out…Won’t she be…” Sunstreak tried to think of the proper term without sounding mean… “A liability?”

“At this time of day she is usually working at Sugar Cube Corner. She won’t be too much of a risk. Now transform.”

“Fine…Give me a minute.” Sunstreak stared at the picture for about ten seconds, getting every detail in his head, the fact that he held his head a little lower than the other few ponies in the picture, the fact that he didn’t exactly seem comfortable in the outside, the way that his tail almost covered up his cutie mark, which seemed to be a telescope. He focused on all of those small details, putting them into his mind about the pony. He found himself engulfed in flames, and found that his right eye was covered by a blue screen. “There I’m…oh” Shade was surprised at his new voice. “Wow…this…this is weird.” Shade or now Comet was lowered to the ground. “This is going to take a little getting used to.”

“You don’t have to hold onto it for very long…” Darkblaze replied, looking over the disguised changeling in front of him. “Very accurate. If I didn’t know he moved to Canterlot I would have sworn he was back.”

“Thanks, I guess…” Comet said, moving the blue hair from his eye.

“Some things never change do they?” Darkblaze replied. “You still have that eye trouble. Luckily Comet’s mane should cover that up.” Darkblaze transformed back into Tornado Dust. “For the time being, we’ll say that you were just visiting and Sunstreak…What would you do?”

Comet tapped his hoof on his chin. “I guess you could say that I went to Cloudsdale for a while…Maybe to visit my family.”

“That’ll work.” Tornado Dust replied. “These ponies always understand familial obligations. They won’t think twice about it.” He opened the door and both of the ponies stepped out into the daylight. “Now I’ve got to get to work, there’s supposed to be a thunderstorm tonight, so I’ve got to make sure Rainbow Dash doesn’t sleep through her work again.”

With that the gray Pegasus flew off into the slowly graying sky, it was definitely going to be a bad storm tonight. Comet began slowly walking down the streets. His head slightly lowered, a posture that almost said ‘I’m not in the mood’ and luckily a lot of ponies got the hint. A few looked at him with surprised looks or expressions of familiarity. But for the most part they left him alone. Which Comet was happy about, in case his magic began to explode again, it would be better if other ponies stayed as far away as possible, especially if it ended up revealing him as a Changeling.

After around fifteen minutes of walking, Comet managed to get to the schoolyard, the small red building had an enormous green field behind it, the dirt road that went up to it was nicely patted down, with a small fence going up. The building had a bell tower at the top with the bronze bell being exposed. It looked like a fairly decent school, especially for a town as small as Ponyville.

While he waited for school to get out, Comet leaned up against a nearby tree, keeping his left eye facing the school, while being sure that his mane covered his right.

After a few minutes, the school’s bell rang out, signaling the end of the day. As Comet watched, the doors flung open and somewhere around twenty five foals began to run outside, free for the day, among them Comet quickly picked out the Crusaders, with Apple Bloom’s large red bow sticking above some of the other foals heads, but he didn’t see Meadow.

When the rest of the foals had left, only three remained in the courtyard, a gray unicorn wearing silver glasses, a pink earth pony with a tiara for some reason, both of which were facing away from Comet, and a filly that Comet couldn’t make out from too far away.

He quickly turned to be sure that no other ponies could see him. Ensuring that no one would see him doing so, he lifted the blue mane in front of his right eye so he could get a better look at the filly. It was definitely Meadow, and she seemed a bit…nervous about the two foals in front of her.

Comet continued to watch as the Crusaders took notice of situation. The three of them huddled up and after a short period of time, they walked in between the gray and pink ponies, taking a formation in front of Meadow Song. Clearly they knew what they were doing to handle the two other fillies. Within a minute or so, the two fillies backed down and began to walk down the street, Comet could hear them shouting “Blank Flanks” But had absolutely no idea what that meant.

After the two fillies had left, Comet lowered his mane and started to walk towards the four of them. Meadow doesn’t recognize me like this… How am I going to explain it…

“Excuse me,” Comet said when he got close enough to the four fillies. “Are you Meadow Song?” He asked towards Meadow.

“Uh-huh.” She said nodding her head. “Who are you?”

“I’m a good friend of Tornado Dust, I was just visiting from Canterlot when he asked me to come pick you up.”

“What about Sunstreak?” The filly asked, Comet could hear the disappointment in her voice.

“He had to head to Cloudsdale, something about Family obligations.” Why must I keep making up lies to tell directly to this filly?

“Oh…okay…” Meadow replied, clearly hurt.

“Aw. Cheer up Meadow.” Apple Bloom said, looking towards the little brown filly. “Ah’m sure he had a good reason to go… He’ll make it up to ya.”

You have no idea Apple Bloom. “If it’s any consolation, Tornado Dust did make me tell you that Sunstreak would make it up to you.” Comet replied, he hated lying to Meadow, but with the other three here, telling her the truth would cause questions.

“Does this mean the sleepover is cancelled?” Scootaloo asked earning her a quick elbow from Apple Bloom.

“Scootaloo, I’m sure that it is still going to happen, but we should be cheering up Meadow here.” Sweetie Belle replied, looking at the small Pegasus.

Comet looked up at his horn to notice it was sparking slightly. Not now… “Listen…Meadow. We should really get going. Tornado Dust wants to get the house ready for when these three come over, so he wants us to get there soon.”

Meadow nodded in understanding before walking along with Comet, who managed to hide the fact that his eyes had just changed to a rather bright shade of yellow before turning back to their normal red color.

When they had walked a decent distance away from the Crusaders and there weren’t any ponies close enough to overhear them, Comet looked down towards the slightly disappointed unicorn. “Meadow…I’m really sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” Meadow began, “you aren’t the reason Sunstreak had to leave.”

“Well…what if I told you he didn’t leave?” Comet said, stopping in the middle of the street.

“What do you mean?” Meadow said, looking slightly more heartbroken. “He promised he would pick me up… What was so important that he would break a promise?”

Comet sighed. Before lifting his blue mane away from his eye. “Meadow…It’s me.”

“Shade?” Meadow asked.

“Yeah…sorry I couldn’t come as Sunstreak…my name is Comet Trail for now.”

“Why did you have to change?” Meadow asked, looking towards the yellow Unicorn. “Did somepony find out?” She whispered.

“No. Nothing like that.” Comet replied. “I’ll show you when we get back to the house. Alright?”

Meadow nodded appreciatively before she noticed Comet’s horn sparking. “What’s going on with your-?”

Comet was suddenly electrocuted by his own magic. Causing his eye’s to return to their normal look. “Ow!” Comet said, pushing against his horn. “Stupid waste of good Chitin…”

Meadow was giggling slightly, while Comet got his eyes to cooperate. “You’re funny.”

Comet cracked a small smile. “I’m glad you think so.” His horn was still giving him small shocks, though it was better than teleporting or levitating everything. “Though we should probably speed up…I don’t want anyone to think I’m a Changeling.” He bent down to let Meadow climb on his back.

“Alright, Mr. Comet.” Meadow said as she climbed on.

After a few minutes of running down back alleys to try and hide the fact that his cutie mark kept magically disappearing, which as Meadow stated would cause a large amount of problems, they managed to get to the door to Tornado Dust’s house and get inside. The furniture was still knocked over from the earlier telekinesis incident. Once both of them were inside and Comet made sure that all the window blinds were closed, he turned back into a Changeling.

“Bleh. It feels good to have my old voice back.” Shade said as Meadow climbed off of his back.

“So, why couldn’t you pick me up as Sunstreak?” Meadow asked, laying down on the couch.

Shade lowered his curved horn so that Meadow could see it. “I have a crack in my horn. It keeps sending my magic into flux. I can’t even transform into a Pegasus.” He demonstrated by turning into his Unicorn version of Sunstreak. “See. I still have a horn.”

“Can’t you just turn into an Earth Pony?” Meadow asked. “Then your magic couldn’t be all wonky because you have no magic.”

Sunstreak rubbed his chin, “I never really thought of that before… It’s worth a try…”

Sunstreak walked over to one of the pictures on the wall taking a look at the ponies, he didn’t need a perfect look at any of them, like what he did with Comet Trail, he just needed a basic idea for a shape. He wanted to at least get used to transforming when he sees them instead of thinking about it. He managed to find a picture of a dark green earth pony, purple mane, and yellow eyes. It wasn’t much, but it would work.

“Alright…let’s try this.” He said turning to look at Meadow. He closed his eyes and focused on the pony he saw, within five seconds, he had been engulfed in a green flame and was looking at the same green pony he saw in the picture. “Well…that was easy.”

He looked over at Meadow, who was looking towards his mouth. “What?”

“Umm…your teeth.”

Shade reached up and found his hoof connect with two long fangs. “Hmm…I could make this work. They aren’t too noticeable right?”

Meadow let out a little giggle. “It’s like they aren’t even there.” She replied.

A wisp of green flame and Shade was back to his Changeling appearance. “I think it would be less obvious if I just strolled down the street looking like this, at least I could get that small amount of shock value.”

The door behind them was suddenly getting knocked at very hard. Surprised, Shade quickly donned his Comet disguise, raising a hoof to his mouth in a motion of silence.

He walked over to the door and opened it with his hoof. “Hello?” was all he got out before Tornado Dust burst into the room.

“Sorry, Comet.” Tornado Dust said, after barreling into the room. “But this is urgent!”

“Where’s the fire?” Comet said, lifting himself up off the ground.

“Your horn!” Tornado said, lifting the unicorn into the air. “Has it exploded yet?”

“Has it what?” Comet replied, closing the door with his hind leg while he was being held in the air.

“Exploded. You know KABOOM!”

“No!” Comet replied, falling through the Pegasi’s hooves and turning back into a Changeling before he could slam onto the ground and hovering up to his height. “Why would you ask?”

“Because it is going to!” Tornado Dust replied.

“What?” Shade shouted back. “Why did you not tell me this earlier!”

“Because I didn’t remember it.”

“How could you forget something that important!” Shade retorted.

“I forgot okay.”

“No! You are going to tell me exactly what is going to happen to me or I swear…”

“Whoa! There are foals present.” Tornado said motioning to Meadow.

“Don’t change the topic!” Shade shouted raising himself above Tornado Dust so that his right eye was staring right at him. “What the hell is going to happen!” Shade’s horn was flaming.

“Calm down…You’re going to burn down the-”

“Tell me what the hell is going on! Then maybe I’ll think about it!”

“Snake Eye, you’re going to burn the house down if you don’t calm down.”

A knock on the door distracted both of them from their shouting match. Tornado Dust quickly grabbed Shade, covering his mouth with a hoof.

“Meadow…” Tornado Dust said calmly. “Can you please get the door…” Tornado Dust flew up higher into the ceiling so that Shade wouldn’t be seen as a Changeling.

“Hello?” Meadow said as she opened the door.

From the other side, a mare’s voice could be heard, over the sounds of Shade still trying to get free from Tornado Dust, making small buzzing sounds. “Hello sweetie. Are your parents here?”

“No.” Meadow replied.

“Then can you let me in?” The mare replied. “I could have sworn I heard shouting going on in here.”

“No. It wasn’t here. Mr. Tornado Dust and Sunstreak aren’t here right now. They said they needed to get ready for the storm tonight.”

“OW!” Shade had just bit down on Tornado Dust’s hoof, forcing him to let go, and Shade shot him a death glare before sticking to the ceiling.

“What was that?” The Mare replied.

“That was probably just a Pegasus... They keep shocking themselves recently.”

“Oh…well sweetie…when they come back. Please let me know.”

“Alright… bye.” She closed the door, after a few seconds she looked up at the two Changelings. “You can come down now.”

Shade and Tornado Dust flew down to the ground, Tornado Dust shaking his hoof. “That really hurt.”

“Well then you shouldn’t have tried to restrain me against my will.” Shade said, his fangs had a small red spot on them. “What do you expect me to do?”

Tornado was sucking of his hoof. “Well I didn’t expect you to draw blood.” He turned back into a Changeling.

“Well then…before anything else happens.” His horn was glowing and it formed around Darkblaze pulling him closer. “Tell me about my horn. Before I lose my temper and bite you again.”

“How are you doing that?”

“Anger…now tell me.”

Darkblaze sighed. “Your horn is going to release all of your stored emotional energy at once.”

“Meaning?” Shade asked, looking at the Changeling with death in his eyes.

“You will essentially become that ball from earlier… You will release all the energy you have, essentially knocking you out cold. You will be found by the ponies…”

“Is there anyway to avoid this?” Shade said grinding his teeth.

“I’m not sure…” Darkblaze replied. “But there is a thunderstorm tonight… maybe you could use that to cover up the blast…”

“Then what?” Shade said, his horn losing its glow. “I just get caught… Thrown in jail…die?”

Darkblaze just looked at Shade. “No. We won’t let that happen. Isn’t that right, Meadow?”

Shade looked over to the small brown filly, she was starting to tear up, she nodded. Shade dropped his magic, letting Darkblaze go. “Sorry… I just…Everything is changing in my life really quickly… I’m still trying to make sense of everything.”

“I will promise you…we will make sure that nothing bad happens to you.”

Shade was looking down at his hole filled hooves. “Thanks….both of you…” His attitude did nearly a full 180 as he was back to his usual self. “Well…no use worrying about it now. You’ve got to get those clouds ready, and we’ve got to get ready for the Crusaders.”

“Aye aye, captain.” Darkblaze said mockingly before transforming back into Tornado Dust and flying out the door.

Shade closed the door and looked back towards Meadow. “So…How was your day?”

The remainder of the day went much better, Shade and Meadow had discussed what Meadow had done in school that day, how things had been going with the Crusaders, Shade’s horn did a bit of furniture levitating again, he quickly corrected the problems, and got the place ready for any possible schemes the Crusaders came up with. An hour or so later, Tornado Dust returned, his mane and tail were on end; standing up from the static electricity he had gained moving thunderclouds.

“Not a word…” Tornado said as he shook out all the lightning in his mane.

“I wasn’t going to say anything…” Shade said, containing a laugh. “Thunder Duster.” Earning him a small shock from Tornado.

After both of them went over a plan for later tonight, mostly how to manage to get the Crusaders to stay away while Shade had his “Power Surge” as they began calling it. Mostly just involving either locking the door or Shade staying a Changeling just because… Eventually they settled on Shade retaining his Comet disguise until he really needs to get out. Which apparently would be when Shade began to feel a bit weak, and when his horn began to spark a lot.

About an hour later, Comet was reading through Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide. When a knock on the door announced the arrival of Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo.

“I’m coming…” He said, still not used to Comet’s voice. “Hold on.” He made sure that his mane covered his right eye before opening the door, being greeted by three confused fillies. “Meadow!” He shouted back. “Your friends are here.”

From up the stairs, Meadow rushed down the stairs, to greet the three fillies. While Comet sat back down and continued to read. He was actually interested in the full extent of these magical artifacts, being used to save the nation over four times…Which really begs the question…How did he not know about them before? Granted the Fiords were very isolated from Equestria, but they should have at least known about them.

He decided to put this topic in the back of his mind and deal with it later, as Apple Bloom walked up to him. “What happened to Sunny?”

Comet looked up from the book and looked towards the small filly, “If by Sunny you mean Sunstreak, he had to head to Cloudsdale for family obligations. I think he said his cousin was getting married…” Not exactly false, Shade did remember having a cousin, though if he, or she for that matter, was married Shade had no idea. “I thought I told you all this earlier?”

“Yeah but who are ya?” Apple Bloom asked.

Comet let out a bored sigh and closed the book, looking down at the filly. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you it is rude to ask personal questions?” He raised his eyebrow. When Apple Bloom failed to respond he continued. “You must be Apple Bloom. Sunstreak warned me about you. And since you asked, My name is Comet Trail. I’m spending a few days visiting Tornado Dust while my house is being repaired from a rather large amount of holes in the roof. Courtesy of our mutual Insect friends.” He added an emphasis on Insect, hoping to make it seem like he was disgusted.

“Oh…yeah…umm,” Apple Bloom tried to say. Take that you nosey little-

“Yes?” Comet replied seeing how Apple Bloom looked like she wanted to say something. Right…heavy Introvert…Remember that.

“Umm…sorry fer…getting in yer way…I’ll just…Go…” Apple Bloom walked out backwards, Shade let out a small sigh of relief before reopening the book and continuing to read.

Discovering the Elements:

The Elements of Harmony were discovered long before Celestia and Luna, however, they were scattered around Equestria and the surrounding nations. The exact locations of the elements were never recorded, however many believe that the various pieces were possessed by these races: Ponies, Dragons, Griffons, Changelings, Breezies, and the Minotaurs. When the tyrant Discord ruled over Equestria, the Princesses had to travel to the foreign lands to find the Elements…

However, Many ancient scrolls make reference to a tree, fueled by the power of the elements, this could be a possibility, or the pieces were scattered across the nations and brought together before the time of Discord. Whatever the case, these magical artifacts were used to seal away the Tyrant…

“Elements of Harmony…” Comet mumbled closing the book, “I could have sworn I knew something about them…” A crack of lightning sounded outside, signaling the beginning of the thunderstorm. Looking out of the window, he noticed the clouds, breaking with each crack of electricity, and near the top of the cloud layer, a single Pegasus was rushing for cover.

While it sounded strange, the clouds made Comet feel at home, he was used to seeing the large black clouds above him, blocking out the moon’s glow, if only he didn’t have to worry about possible death that night. He let out a sigh and began thinking back to an earlier passage he read.

Dragons were designated the Protectors of Loyalty, for their honor bound code of justice. Changelings, the Protectors of Kindness, For their Old Tomes...

“Protectors of Kindness…” Comet said, looking down at his hoof, “Yeah… Sure.”

He was looking towards the ceiling, looking for the emotions of the fillies above him, he could see the familiar orange flame of Trust, and a few smaller flames of turquoise. He hadn’t mastered Emotional detection yet, so he had no idea what those three fillies were feeling, but at that very moment, something much worse was happening.

Comet suddenly felt very weak, and his horn was sparking rapidly. “No. Not now!” It was happening much faster than he had hoped it would. The original plan was to warn Meadow and Darkblaze, but he didn’t have time, his horn was beginning to glow a bright green. To make matters worse, one of the fillies wandered downstairs. Only to see the yellow unicorn’s horn glowing brightly.

“Hey are you alright?” It sounded like Sweetie Belle, but Comet didn’t have time to check.

“I’m fine…just need to get some fresh air…” He was having trouble moving at all.

“What you need to do is relax.” The filly placed a hoof on his leg, almost trying to soothe him, but he had no time to explain.

“I’m sorry about this.” Comet said before knocking the filly away and rushing through the door, quickly returning to his Changeling form, he took off from the ground. His horn was glowing brightly, the crack in it clearly visible in the night sky. Hopefully everypony was asleep, or if they weren’t, they were about to be in for a sight.

Darkblaze heard the filly slamming into a wall and rushed down. “What just happened?”

“Comet was a Changeling!” Sweetie Belle shouted. “He bucked me! Then he flew off into the sky!”

Tornado’s eye’s widened. “MEADOW! WE HAVE A PROBLEM!”

Shade had just managed to break into the cloud layer, his horn glowing far too bright for him to look at it, and his head was hurting like a thousand needles were placed into it. He couldn’t see anything, he couldn’t hear anything over the thunder, and his horn felt like it was going to explode.

“I’m sorry…” He said, just as his horn released a large green explosion, sending a giant ball of green light expanding out from him, breaking through the cloud layer, it looked like a thousand spears of lightning were shooting towards the ground, landing in-between the buildings, only a few of the spears managing to hit buildings, and the shockwave blew the clouds back. Unable to keep his wings flapping, Shade began to fall.

“There he is!” Meadow shouted looking towards the small black shape of Shade falling, She had been keeping an eye out, with Tornado Dust trying to keep up with her, but he had problems dodging the spears of lightning that seemed to be avoiding Meadow, making him much slower.

“He’s going to land near Everfree!” Tornado Dust shouted back, only now noticing the large amount of lights turning on in the buildings around them, “Slow down Meadow! I can’t keep up!”

“Then fly faster!” Meadow said rushing out of sight.

“Meadow!”

Shade landed with a loud crash, skidding across the ground a fair distance, when he came to a stop, he just barely managed to open his eyes, looking up as a group of three insect like ponies…oh no…

“He’s one of them…” One of the new Changelings said. “He helped with the invasion.”

“Then he must be punished for his actions.” Another of the Changelings replied. Shade had just managed to see their colors, their eyes were pink, and their wings were a light red. Right at that moment he heard a familiar voice.

“Meadow…” He managed to say weakly.

“Get away from him!” The Little filly shouted, stepping between Shade and the three Changelings.

At this, the Changelings looked between each other. “She has been altered.”

“Yes…she must be cleansed.”

Shade was having trouble seeing straight, but he saw one of the larger changelings walk up and hold Meadow in a pink magic preventing her from moving, she struggled for a few seconds before going limp.

“I swear…” Shade tried to say through deep breaths. “If you hurt her…I will kill every…one of you… myself…”

“Like you have hurt her?” The first Changeling replied looking Shade right in his eyes. “You will be punished for your actions.” Her horn gained a pink glow, and she lowered it to touch with Shade’s horn, almost instantly, Shade’s eyes shot with a white light. All he could feel was his mind being assaulted by thousands of voices, incomprehensible through the throng of pain and sound.

“MAKE THEM STOP!!” Shade yelled, before the Changeling held him on the ground with her hoof and touched his horn again. Her eyes flashed white. And Shade's vision went black…

Chapter 11: Shattered Minds

Six Races, Six artifacts. Each given as a protector. The Loyal Dragons, willing to die for their honor. The Honest Griffons, fair and just. The Kind Changelings, caring for their own, no matter the cost. The Generous Breezies, giving their lives to assist the others. The Serious Minotaur, balancing the good nature of others. The Magical Ponies, controllers of the very land they live on. One cannot survive without the others, once the races were united. However, the Discord Wars tore into the lands of many. The Changelings' land was destroyed, the Dragons' land became inhospitable to the other races, the Griffons, forced from their mountain homes. The Breezies' land was sealed away, inaccessible by the others.

The final blows came when the Centaurs were forced into a joining with the Draconoquis, The Dragons were left to fight the Centaurs inside of the Burning Fiords, until the creature was sealed away by the Celestial sisters. The Dragons used the residual energy from the Tyrant to seal away the Centaurs. Keeping them in a separate realm to ensure they could not continue their rampage.

The Elements, guarding the land of Equestria, the other races have long since abandoned the powers, preferring to keep their own devices. We know little about their races since the separation. Traces have been found of their existence…but nothing since the power of the Elements was first used.

“The Dream walker…”

Later…The Elements were used to seal the moon tyrant, but not before her power stretched to the Dragon domain, the new threat emerged, nightmares, forcing the Dragons to adapt to Dream Walking. Allowing them to combat within their own dreams, allowing them to battle back the powers of the Night Mare. Until it was defeated.

“The Dream walker approaches… You must awaken!”

The sudden jolt made Sunstreak straighten up.

Where am I? He thought, his mind clouded. Oh right…I was flying through the storm. I must have been hit by something.

At that moment, the door shot open and Tornado Dust ran in. “Oh thank Chrysalis, you’re awake!” Tornado Dust said running over to where Sunstreak was laying. Chrysalis? “Meadow has gone missing!”

“Who went missing?” Sunstreak asked.

Tornado Dust stared at him in shock. “Meadow. The little filly you saved in Canterlot." Tornado looked at the blank stare Sunstreak gave him before saying, "Anything?”

“Did you hit your head on something? Why are you acting so weird? I’ve never been to Canterlot.” Sunstreak replied, climbing out of the bed and looking at his wings. One of which had a rather large singe mark on it. “So that’s where the lightning hit…”

“Lightning?” Tornado Dust replied completely confused. “But your horn exploded! That’s what caused the…” He stopped after seeing Sunstreak’s confused expression.

“You must have hit your head, because I’ve never had a horn. I was born a Pegasus through and through. You should know this by now.”

Tornado Dust just looked dumbfounded. ”Can you…wait here for a minute…” He quickly dashed out the door closing it behind him.

“That Pegasus…” Sunstreak said rolling his eyes, “always up to something…”

“No. No. No. No. No. No. No.” Tornado Dust said while he propped a chair against the door to stop Sunstreak from getting out while he figured something out. “What in Tartarus happened? Why can he remember me but not that I’m a Changeling? Why does he not remember Meadow? What the Hive is going on?”

A knock on the front door made him jolt up, almost hitting the roof. When he adjusted his mane to make it seem he wasn’t just freaking out, he flew down to the door “Who is it?”

“It’s the Muffin Mare now open up, Dusty.” That is definitely Rainbow Dash.

“Sorry, Rainbow… I’m…having a personal problem here.”

“Is this the same problem you’ve been having for three days now?” Rainbow replied. “Come on, Dusty… You haven’t come out in days, ever since the thunderstorm. What’s going on?”

She is never going to believe me. “What if I told you that Meadow was missing, Sunstreak is a Changeling, and I’ve been protecting him from all of you and your friends?”

There was a pause. Hopefully Rainbow Dash was not planning on bashing down the door. “Then I would say that you should let me in there before I bust down your door!”

Of course

“Hey, Rainbow. What are you doing outside?” Sunstreak said from the other side of the door. NO! No! No!

“Tornado Dust thinks you’re a Changeling.” Rainbow said.

“Are you serious? Dusty open the door. I didn’t climb out the window for nothing.”

Not what I needed… “Fine…” Tornado Dust opened the door, and both Rainbow Dash and Sunstreak flew in.

“So where have you been, Sunny?” Rainbow asked. “You were supposed to help me practice yesterday.”

“I think I was unconscious, I got hit by a lightning bolt during the thunderstorm and woke up today.”

“Well, whatever happened it fixed your eye.” WAIT! WHAT?

Tornado Dust flew up to be eye level with Sunstreak. Sure enough, his right eye was…normal, a rounded pupil, not even a little slit. Okay…this may be worse than I thought.

“Umm…Rainbow…could you do me a…huge favor?”

“Only if Sunny here promises to race me.”

“Oh, you are so on.” Sunstreak relied. The two of them looked like they were going to race right now... That is the last thing I need right now.

“Later you two.” Tornado Dust said flying up to their height. “I need you to get Twilight and bring her here.”

“Why would you need Twilight?” Rainbow asked she was clearly confused. “I could help just as much as Egghead.”

“Well we need an egghead, Rainbow…” Tornado said placing his hoof in his face. “So please just get Twilight…”

“Why?”

“Because…I just…need to talk to her about something…and I would prefer it to be here…”

“You’re acting really strange, Dusty…” Rainbow said giving him a suspicious look. “Are you sure that you aren’t the Changeling?” You have no idea, Rainbow…

“Please…just get Twilight…I’ll cover for you for the next week.” Tornado replied.

“Fine…but only because you owe me for me having to pull your weight around here.” Rainbow flew out to get Twilight and Tornado pinned Sunstreak to a wall.

“What did you do with Snake Eye?” He hissed.

“What are you talking about, Dusty?” Sunstreak replied. “I’ve known you for years…”

“No, you haven’t.” Tornado replied. “You’ve only known me for a week or so. Ever since the invasion.”

“What invasion?” Sunstreak asked blinking. “Oh you mean Canterlot. Wish I could have been there. Crack some Changeling chitin.”

“Listen to me you shape shifting Nymph.” Tornado Dust said, reverting to his Changeling form and slamming the door closed with his magic, “You have twelve seconds to tell me what you did with Snake Eye before I show the Elements of Harmony what you really are. Then they’ll handle this.”

Sunstreak looked at him surprised. “Tornado…You’re a Changeling?” He looked genuinely surprised, but Darkblaze wasn’t going to back down. “How long has this been going on?”

“I’ve been a Changeling this whole time you backwards laid egg!” Darkblaze was losing his patience. “Show me what you really are!”

“Tornado…I…You were a Changeling this whole time…”

“You stupid shape shifter. Yes! Ever since you got to Ponyville. I took you in because you wanted to learn to control that magic of yours and…” Darkblaze stopped. Wait…his memories… “Where are you from?”

“Tornado…I think the real question is…”

“Just answer the question!” Darkblaze said slamming his hoof into the wall.

“The Burning Fiords!” Sunstreak replied.

“When did we meet?”

“We met in the academy, I went on to study magical artifacts, and you became a weather pony.” Sunstreak replied.

What is the one thing that Snake Eye never told anypony… “What does your Cutie Mark mean?”

Sunstreak opened his mouth as if to reply, but paused as he looked back at his flank, his mouth hung open as he looked for an answer. “I…I don’t…” he looked down at the mark, as if it was foreign to him. “I…don’t know… Why don’t I know?”

Darkblaze sighed. “For once…your lack of knowledge on ponies actually saved you.” Darkblaze let the confused Pegasus go, turning back into Tornado Dust.

“Why can’t I remember…?” Sunstreak said landing on the ground and putting his hooves on his head, trying to remember. “Why can’t I remember!”

“It’s alright, Snake Eye…” Tornado Dust said, landing next to the Pegasus. “Here let me put you back in your room… You can think about it there.”

Sunstreak put up little resistance, mostly because he was dumbfounded by the realization he had no idea what his Cutie Mark meant, it was their identifying mark, and he didn’t know what it meant.

After Tornado Dust placed Sunstreak in the room, and made sure all the windows were locked with his magic, he closed the door and replaced the chair, before going through all the possible reasons this would happen.

“He could have been hit by lightning on the way down…but then that doesn’t explain Meadow’s disappearance… Maybe he knocked himself out on the ground… but again…Meadow was nowhere around when I found him…So what could have possibly…” A knock on the door broke him out of his trance, he was going over every detail of the scene where he found Shade earlier, he had skid across the ground, he had a burn mark on his wing. Nothing else was out of the ordinary.

When he opened the door, he found not only Twilight and Rainbow Dash, but also Pinkie Pie. “Pinkie? What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to throw Sunny’s “Welcome Back” Party. He did say that I could throw him another party later this week. And it is later.”

“Uhh… he’s having a…nervous breakdown right now…” Tornado Dust replied. As if on cue, there was a smashing sound from upstairs, which sounded a lot like a pony ramming into a wall, very hard.

“Well…why did you want me here?” Twilight asked, standing in the door way and looking rather confused. “Rainbow Dash said you had ‘an Egghead problem.’” She raised her eyebrows. “I hope that isn’t a direct quote.”

Tornado Dust sighed. “Come in…” He moved out of the doorway to allow all three mares into the house. Pinkie was bouncing around everywhere, as if looking for something, Rainbow Dash was flying a little off the ground, and Twilight was also looking around the room.

“So what was the big emergency you needed me for?” Twilight asked, looking at Tornado Dust.

Tornado Dust sighed. “It is more like…a rather large collection of problems…” Tornado Dust rubbed the back of his neck.

“Okay…then what would be the most prominent of these problems?” Twilight asked.

“Meadow is missing…”

“What!” Twilight shouted looking directly at him. “What do you mean she is missing?”

“I can’t find her…ever since the storm…she just sort of…vanished.”

“How do two…fully grown Pegasi lose one Unicorn filly?”

“There was a lot happening on that day okay!” Tornado Dust was finding it very difficult to explain this without revealing that either of them were changelings. “Not to mention the fact that now Sunstreak is having memory problems and the fact that I’ve been stressed out to my breaking point for nearly two days.”

“So what do you need my help with?” Twilight asked. “I mean…not to sound rude but I can’t really help unless you have some kind of clue.”

“I was hoping you had some kind of…memory spell. Nothing powerful…I just need to know if Sunstreak saw anything that could help me find out where Meadow is.”

“What makes you even think Sunstreak saw anything?”

“Yeah. Maybe he was just flying in the clouds. And got hit by that storm we had.”

Tornado Dust sighed. “Listen…I am trying to find Meadow…I don’t care how I do it…Sunstreak has been the closest thing to a friend I’ve had in quite a while. I’m trying to help him. If you won’t at least try…then I’ll find somepony who will.” He was being serious. Meadow put her faith in Shade, and he didn’t want to be the one who ruins it. “So are you going to help me or not?”

“Well…I’m just saying that I’m not sure how much help we can be…” Twilight replied. “I’m just trying to-“

“If you can help in anyway, that would be great…because as it stands right now, I have nothing to go on.” Tornado Dust dropped down onto the floor, looking towards the three mares.

“Oh cheer up, Dusty.” Came Pinkie’s high-pitched voice. “If there is anyway to find Meadow We’ll find it. Then we can throw a party!” One-track mind that one…

“Pinkie, plan the party later. We need to try and help. Everything else can wait.” Twilight said, calming down the bouncing pink pony “So where is Sunstreak right now?”

Another rather loud crash occurred upstairs. “Up there…”

After Tornado Dust managed to calm Sunstreak down, involving about five minutes of death threats and another three of actually talking, the three mares came into the room. It was a mess, some of the furniture was overturned, there were scratch marks on the walls, and two rather prominent dents in the walls. Aside from that the room looked fine.

“Hi, Sunstreak…” Twilight said looking towards the pegasi. “How are you feeling?”

“I can’t remember my family…” Sunstreak replied. “Why can’t I remember them?” Sunstreak was beginning to freak out again, before Tornado Dust slapped him.

“Just hurry up before he freaks out again. I don’t think slapping him is going to work for much longer.”

Twilight nodded, her horn began to glow with a purple light, as she got closer, Sunstreak’s eyes began to widen. When she tapped her horn to Sunstreak’s head. His eyes snapped open.

But instead of what was expected, Twilight’s horn began to slowly glow green, Rainbow and Pinkie didn’t notice it, but Tornado did. As soon as it began, he took off and rushed over to Twilight, quickly flicking her horn before it fully engulfed her normal purple magic.

“I’m sorry about that…” He said looking at the Unicorn who was currently glaring at him. “But I may have just saved your sanity…”

“By interrupting me?” Twilight said looking at him with a bit of annoyance.

“Well…let’s see if that spell of yours worked.” Tornado Dust replied, looking towards Sunstreak, whose eyes were currently closed. “Snake Eye? Can you hear me?”

Sunstreak waved his hoof in a dismissive manner. “Ugh…I feel like that bug you run into when flying…” He managed to raise his hoof up to his head, covering his eye. “Where am I?”

“In the house…” Tornado replied, “You took quite a fall, and you lost some of your memory.”

Sunstreak moved his hoof; his eye was back to a slit. “I didn’t lose my memory.”

“What?” Tornado Dust replied.

“It was taken from me.” Sunstreak replied.

“What pony would want to take your memories?” Twilight asked, looking over at him.

“They weren’t ponies… They were Changelings. But they weren’t…normal.”

“How so?” Tornado asked, flying above Sunstreak, looking right at him. “Snake Eye… How were they different?”

“I can’t remember…” Sunstreak replied. “They…made sure I wouldn’t…” He looked around the room. “Where’s Meadow?”

Tornado Dust rubbed the back of his neck. “I…have to tell you something…”

Sunstreak burst out of the door. Flying off towards Everfree.

Tornado Dust and Rainbow Dash quickly flew off after him, trying to catch up with him.

“Remind me not to get him mad before a race.” Rainbow said to Tornado Dust, looking ahead to see the red Pegasus ahead of them.

“Just don’t get him mad at all and you’ll be fine.” They had just managed to catch up to him, as he was not quite used to flying quickly and had just woken up an hour or so ago.

“Hey, Sunny! What are you planning on finding?” Rainbow said over the wind.

“Anything, Maybe something I can track… I don’t know exactly what. Anything.”

“Don’t you think you should rest a little…?” Tornado began before looking at Sunstreak and getting a death glare.

“You just told me I was asleep for three days. The last thing I need is more rest.”

“But…” Tornado tried to talk to him, however Sunstreak had already begun to descend.

The three of them landed by a large skid mark ground into the dirt, where Shade had crashed earlier that week. The ground itself seemed upturned, up until the crater where Shade had stopped.

“So this is where you landed, huh?” Rainbow Dash said, looking at the small trench dug into the ground. “Must have been a pretty bad crash.”

“I’m surprised he was alright after that. The only real damage he got was a singe on his wing. Probably from the electrical spears.”

“That was you?” Rainbow said shocked, looking at Sunstreak, who was currently looking around the crash site.

“Sadly…” Sunstreak replied. “I may or may not have been involved in it.” He was looking around the crater, hovering above the ground, trying not to mess with the scene. “How many ponies have come out here?”

“Aside from a few Guards…not many.” Rainbow replied. “I kept my eye on it.”

Sunstreak looked over at her, raising an eyebrow. “Kept an eye on it?”

“Alright. So maybe I was curious about that crash that happened. So I staked it out.”

Sunstreak continued to hover around the crater, looking it over again and again. He was having trouble finding any sort of clue as to where those Changelings went… Unless….

Sunstreak turned to look at it with his left eye. There was something he didn’t see before. “Tornado Dust, get over here.” When the gray Pegasus flew over being just as careful not to touch anything. “Take a look at this… From a…special…point of view.”

Tornado Dust looked at the ground beside the crater. At first he saw nothing, but he did notice a small flicker of emotional energy remaining. If he weren’t told by Sunstreak to look closer, he would have missed it.

“What is it?” Sunstreak asked.

“Looks like residue from a highly powerful spell…” Tornado Dust whispered. “I’ve never seen it like this before… It seems to be…” His eyes widened. “Made out of love…”

“Made out of love? How is that even possible?” Sunstreak asked. “I mean…we got blown out of Canterlot by it…but I didn’t think that Changelings could use it in their spells.”

“We normally can’t…” Tornado Dust replied. “We normally just use it for energy…this must be some pretty special Changeling…”

“So what should we do about this?” Sunstreak asked, careful to keep his voice down.

“Well…if you really want results…we should let them handle it…” Motioning to Rainbow Dash. “I’ve seen them do some pretty impressive stuff in the time I’ve been here.”

“Fine…” Sunstreak replied. “Hey, Rainbow! Can you get the rest of your friends here.” Then remembering something. “And tell AJ to grab that knife belt of mine. I keep forgetting to pick that up.”

“No problem, Sunny.” Rainbow replied flying off into the sky.

“You sure this is a good idea?” Sunstreak asked Tornado Dust.

“It might not be, but it is all we have.”

Chapter 12: Benched

A few hours had passed since the Elements of Harmony had gone into the Everfree forest. They had gone out to try and find Meadow on their own, hoping to find some evidence of where she is.

Meanwhile, Sunstreak and Tornado Dust promised them they would look after things while they were gone. Mostly Fluttershy, Pinkie and Twilight, the only thing that the two of them had to agree on with Rarity was that they would watch out for Sweetie Belle while she was away… Which involved many bad feelings for an… earlier incident.

The two of them agreed to take turns with Fluttershy’s animals, mostly because both of them agreed that the rabbit she named Angel, was a little devil. In the few hours Shade had with him, he had to try very hard not to bite down on his throat. Needless to say, Darkblaze took over control for Fluttershy’s animals, while Shade kept his eye on the Library and Sugar Cube Corner. Mostly because Darkblaze already had a job with the weather control, so they split the responsibilities.

The first day of working was pretty standard; the Library basically took control of itself, having Spike watch over it mostly, but Shade still promised to check up on him. Sugar Cube Corner was much more interesting, with the fact that Shade had no idea what he was doing… Up until Mr. Cake actually told him he did a bit better than Pinkie does normally.

The first day, Shade returned to the house with a small box of rainbow cookies and a rather pained ear from the one time he messed up an order. So that didn’t feel to good when he flew up, grabbed the annoying stallion, and bucked him out the door. It was rather cathartic, but Shade doubted that it was acceptable.

He pulled the blinds and screens down, before returning to his changeling form. He decided it wasn’t too bad to lay down on the couch and just think about everything he could remember/found out. According to what he remembered, Meadow Song was kidnapped by a group of Changelings that can use love in their magic and erase sections of a creature’s memory… And he discovered from his freak-outs from earlier that he needed to work on his back-story a little, or rather…work on his family’s names. So that if he was asked, he wouldn’t need to come up with something stupid.

When the door opened, Tornado Dust walked in and looked towards Shade. “What are you doing with that knife?”

“Huh?” Shade replied.

“What are you doing with that knife?” Tornado Dust asked. Motioning at his front leg.

Shade looked down at his leg to notice that he was unconsciously tapping the side of his leg with the flat edge of the knife, making a small chink as he tapped it. But the weird thing is that Shade was holding it in a green aura. “Uh…” Shade replied. “Just something to distract me…” Shade was looking at the green aura. “Well, clearly my horn is fixed now…” Honestly Shade never even tried to use his magic up until now…given the disaster that caused.

“Well, at least your Unicorn disguise is a little more viable now…” Tornado said. “Or at least it would be if Sweetie Belle hadn’t seen you transform.”

“I needed to get away! Any longer and I may have blown a few holes in some ponies’ roofs” Shade wasn’t going to argue about the very problem that got them in this situation in the first place. “What time is it?”

“It’s about…2:45 why?” Tornado Dust replied.

“We promised to take care of Sweetie Belle while Rarity was away. remember?”

Tornado Dust clearly didn’t but luckily Shade did… “It may be better if I put it in her own words…” He changed his voice to sound almost exactly like Rarity “Oh, I simply cannot allow Sweetie to be on her own for such a long period. I simply insist that you take care of her while we traverse the…” Tornado Dust placed a hoof in Shade’s mouth.

“I get it… You can stop…” Tornado moved his hoof from Shade’s mouth. “Fluttershy’s animals were little devils today…I’m not in the mood.”

“I’ll get her.” Shade said turning into Sunstreak. “Maybe I can…subtly apologize for kicking her in the stomach…”

“Keep on dreaming.” Tornado Dust replied. “Unless Comet himself comes here, there is no possible way you are going to apologize.” Sunstreak shot him a glance before flying off into towards the school.

At least I’m getting used to the village. Pretty soon I won’t need to judge everything by the town hall.

Since this was the first time he was flying around the school, he decided to stand on top of the building and wait. A few minutes later, the bell rung and the foals ran out of the building. Now where are you three?

He was looking over the crowd of foals taking in how each of them looked, a few of the more strange ones stuck out in his mind. He noticed the two fillies he saw harassing Meadow before. He followed them for a few seconds before seeing them walking towards Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, and Scootaloo. He was just out of ear shot, so he flew up to a nearby cloud to listen in.

“I didn’t see your loser friend again today.”

“Maybe she left because she couldn’t stand to be in your loser club.”

Wow…I haven’t heard an insult that bad since I was called lizard eye.

“She’s just not here right now Diamond Tiara.” He guessed that was Sweetie Belle. Given the small squeak he heard near the end.

“Yeah. She’s probably sick or something.” Scootaloo replied.

“Or maybe she just didn’t want to put up with you and your crazy schemes.”

Okay…I agree with that…

“Or maybe she was just embarrassed to be around you three weirdoes.”

Okay…this is getting out of hand. He looked up into the sky, looking for someway to interrupt them… Ooo…this could be fun

The two little fillies continued to antagonize the Crusaders, and Sunstreak was silently moving a small black cloud up behind them. When he was close enough to be seen by the Crusaders, he popped up above the cloud and waved to them, placing his hoof in front of his mouth in a ‘stay silent’ motion.

Scootaloo winked at him before whispering something to Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle.

Sunstreak floated next to the cloud and gave a nice strong kick with his hind leg, causing a large crack behind the two fillies, making them to scream and rush off down the street.

Sunstreak landed back on the cloud, laughing a little on his back. He could hear the three fillies below him laughing along with him. When he looked over the cloud, Apple Bloom was looking up at him.

“Mr. Sunstreak?” She asked.

“What’s up?” He replied.

“Ah thought yah were Rainbow Dash at first.” The filly replied.

Sweetie Belle looked up. “How was Cloudsdale?”

Oh yeah…that was my cover wasn’t it.... A wedding right?

“Eh…It wasn’t bad.” He said, kicking the cloud away, luckily avoiding any more thunder blasts. “Though it was kind of boring. I almost wished that a Changeling would show up to break up the monotony.” He landed down on the ground. “Though what happened with you? I heard you had a changeling encounter.”

“Who told ya that?” Apple Bloom asked. “Didn’t ya just get back?”

“No I got back a few hours ago. Tornado Dust filled me in on what happened while I was gone.” He tried to put a disappointed tone in his voice. “Leave it to Ponyville to have the Changeling in it while I’m off at a wedding.”

“Who got married?” Sweetie Belle asked, she seemed really happy. “Did they look nice? Did Rarity make the dress?”

“My cousin, Blade Carver. Don’t ask…you don’t want to know. They looked fine. And I have no idea…I’m pretty sure that it was an heirloom.”

“What does your cousin do?” Scootaloo asked.

“You three are really curious about this wedding aren’t you? Weren’t you three at a Princess' wedding and the site of a Changeling attack?” Sunstreak asked. “There is no possible way my cousin’s wedding was in any way better than a Princess' …well I guess there were less Changelings… And more clouds…so maybe if that’s your thing.”

“If yah don’t mind me askin’, what are ya doin here?” Apple Bloom asked.

“Oh right…Well…you have no doubt realized that Meadow isn’t here…” The fillies nodded. “Well…apparently she vanished…”

“Vanished?” all three fillies replied.

“Well Fluttershy, Rainbow, Applejack, Twilight, Pinkie, and Rarity all went into Everfree in the hopes of finding her.”

“Well, Ah kind of figured yah would wanna go out with em.”

“Yeah…” Sunstreak replied. “I really want to…But…They can handle it.”

“Uh…” Scootaloo responded. “That still doesn’t explain what you're doing here.”

“Ah yes…” Sunstreak said looking at Sweetie Belle. “While Rarity is away in Everfree, she insisted that Tornado Dust and me take you in and take care of you. So I’m here to pick you up…or rather to tell you all this as the Boutique is currently locked…” Sunstreak rubbed the back of his neck with his hoof. “Come to think of it…If I didn’t return today you wouldn’t have been aware that Rarity had left…huh…”

“Well…I guess we had better get going then.” Sweetie Belle replied. “We’ve got Homework to do…”

“We do?” Both Scootaloo and Apple Bloom replied. Bringing a face…hoof That’s what they call it right? From Sweetie Belle

“Don’t worry…” Sunstreak whispered to Sweetie Belle. “Their inattentiveness will bite them in the flank later.”

“You have no idea…” Sweetie Belle replied.

A few minutes later, the two of them were just talking about the week, or rather, Sunstreak was trying to think about what would pass as a ‘normal’ wedding for ponies while Sweetie Belle talked about their newest attempts at getting Cutie marks. And if Sunstreak heard correctly…three of those attempts involved catapults.

“And as we flew over the pond our hang gliders hit a cloud and fell into it.”

“So you got stopped by a cloud?” Sunstreak asked pointing out that this was the third of their plans foiled by inanimate objects that could easily be avoided given that one of them was a Pegasus…even if she can’t fly continuously, she can at least change altitude when in motion.

“Yeah…well… I never said our plans were perfect.” Sweetie Belle replied, blushing slightly…

“Just promise me that you won’t try anything at Dusty’s place. He’ll kill me if the place is trashed.” He probably would. That was the scary part. “Speaking of which… Here we…are…” The door looked like something had bashed in. Given from the fact it hung on one set of hinges. Sunstreak turned back to Sweetie Belle. “Wait here for a minute…”

Sweetie Belle gave a little nod as her jaw was hanging open, Sunstreak flew into the house and looked around.

“Dusty?” Sunstreak shouted. “Where are you?” He flew around the house quickly, trying to find any sign of the Changeling, and from the looks of it, the place was searched.
After he looked around the house for the fifth time, Sunstreak had figured he wasn’t going to find any thing new and tried to think about where Darkblaze was. How am I going to find-Oh! I’m stupid!

Sunstreak flew into the basement and turned back into a Changeling “I hope this works…”

He began to try and send his thoughts to Darkblaze…which felt extremely weird.

“Darkblaze! Can you hear me?”

“Chrysalis damn it, Snake Eye, not so loud!”

“Sorry…I’m new to this…. anyway where are you?”

“Fluttershy’s. Why?”

“I’m coming.”

Shade broke off the connection, and now had a terrible headache. He quickly transformed back into Sunstreak and flew off out of the house, stopping in front of Sweetie Belle. “I need to head to Fluttershy’s. Make yourself at home, just…don’t go into the basement.”

“Why?”

“Because that is where I keep all the artifacts I’m studying right now. Just promise me you won’t go down there.”

“I promise…”

“Great thanks gotta go bye!” Sunstreak zoomed off towards the cabin, leaving a small trail of fire behind him. Artifacts my right eye…Stupid intruders, breaking everything. Why was there crystallized goo down there in the first place?

Another question he would have to ask Darkblaze when he got the chance, but right now he had to figure out why someone wanted to search their house…there was no one that knew about them being Changelings, Darkblaze ensured him that there was no magical or physical way to tell their house apart… So either they knew they were changelings, or it was just a random theft…but given how it didn’t look like anything was taken…he doubted that.

When he managed to get to Fluttershy’s cottage out by the edge of Everfree, which constantly questioned in his mind why the shy mare would do that, he flew down and came to a stop outside the door. “Tornado it’s me. Open up.”

“Alright Angel. I’m giving you one last chance to apologize before I use that Stare on you.” Ah yes…Another thing Shade had learned from Darkblaze was Fluttershy’s secret weapon…“The Stare” a look that quite literally asserts her dominance over others. Seemed like a neat trick…Too bad it didn’t really work on him. The Stare was nothing compared to looking right up to a Phoenix Ray as it tries to pry your wings off your back with a razor sharp beak. Well…almost nothing. “Why you dirty little…”

Sunstreak knocked on the door again. “Yo, Darkblaze!”

The door opened and Darkblaze was holding the small white rabbit with his magic. “What?” Quickly Sunstreak shoved him inside the cottage.

“The house was…” Sunstreak began before he heard Angel fall to the ground and saw Darkblaze’s jaw hanging open.

“What happened to my house!” he said with surprise. “I was just there five minutes ago!”

“Apparently that was long enough for someone to sack the place.” Sunstreak replied. “Everything was thrown around, the door was bashed in, and the basement was trashed.”

“Did they take anything?” Darkblaze said, grabbing the Pegasus in front of him. “Snake Eye…Did they take anything!”

“Not that I saw.” Sunstreak replied changing back to a changeling form, much to the dismay of a few squirrels. “But I haven’t lived there long enough to make a mental map of everything yet. So it is possible.”

“Did you pick up anything?” Darkblaze replied. Still not letting go of Shade’s carapace. “Any ambient emotions, pheromones, ANYTHING!” He vigorously shook Shade, which was impressive as Darkblaze had nothing to hold onto.

“No…” Shade replied, as his left eye was still shaking slightly. “I’m still new to the whole tracking using emotions thing too, remember?” Then a thought came into his head. “Why did you come back here? I thought we were done with it for the day?”

“I had to get Angel to eat something.” Darkblaze said levitating a carrot up. “But the little devil just threw it at my eye!”

“Can I try something?” Shade said, looking towards the rabbit who was now sticking out his small pink tongue.

“Knock yourself out.” Darkblaze said letting go of Shade and pacing around the room nervously.

“Angel…I am going to try something I learned years ago in the Fiords…an old trick of mine. Very similar to Fluttershy’s Stare…so if you could just turn this way. That would be great.”

The Rabbit turned his head and stuck out his tongue, but didn’t open his eyes.

“Very well… Then I’ll just leave you up on the roof of the house. See how long it takes for a hawk to find you.”

The rabbit turned with a look of ‘you wouldn’t dare’ on his face, he just managed to open one of his small blue eyes…but it was all Shade needed.

He turned his head so Angel could see his right eye, and he snapped it open, causing it to recede to a slit as it glowed orange for a split second, Angel was forced to stare towards it, not wanting to look away. And Shade could smell a very strong liquorices scent. He wasn’t good at telling emotions via smell yet, but he knew it was fear. He couldn’t keep it up for long, only about five seconds before he had to stop because of a mixture of headache and dried out eye. Looking towards the rabbit, he saw the small white ball was trying to stay as far from Shade as possible.

“Now then…" Shade said, pushing the carrot closer to the rabbit. "Eat the God damn carrot, or it gets much worse…”

After they made sure that Angel actually ate the carrot and didn’t spit it out, the two of them flew back to the house so that Darkblaze could get a good look at the damages.

“What did you do to that rabbit?” Tornado Dust asked as they flew.

“Well…I’m not exactly sure…” Sunstreak replied. “I was reading about the Elements of Harmony, or more specifically Loyalty, because I think the Fiord Dragons were the protectors of it originally.”

“So?”

“In what I read, there was an account from a unicorn warrior, the best in Canterlot. He said that he saw those dragons turn some of the most fearless men into cowering foals with a look. They called it ‘Dragon Fear’.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Well, you wouldn’t.” Sunstreak replied. “It’s a very difficult thing to learn. But some Fiord Dragons could sense and use fear to their advantage. Much like Changelings…except they don’t feed on it. They just kind of… utilize it.”

“And you can do that?” Tornado Dust replied.

“Not…really.” Sunstreak replied, slowing down as they neared the edge of town. “It is an unconscious thing…sort of like…instilling that primal fear into them. I can’t do it for very long…that was actually the first time I attempted it in a while.”

“How did you know you could do that?”

“I had no idea… Just decided to try it. Think of it like Fluttershy’s stare…only instead of a dominance thing…it is just filling them with straight fear.”

“Weird…”

“I know right…I’m still learning things about the Fiords.” Sunstreak said as they landed. “These visions can be helpful…but also some of the scariest things ever.”

Tornado Dust was looking at the door, “Ugh…that won’t be easy to fix.”

“The inside is only slightly better.” Sunstreak replied as the two of them walked in. Sweetie Belle was sitting at the table, holding a pencil in her mouth while she wrote onto a piece of paper. She looked like she didn’t mind everything strewn around, likely she was just used to this kind of thing.

“No no no no!” Tornado Dust rushed off upstairs. Leaving Sunstreak and Sweetie Belle confused.

“What’s wrong with him?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“No idea…” Sunstreak replied. “Maybe he’s worried about something being taken.” He flew over to where Sweetie Belle was sitting, looking at the sheet of paper. “What are you working on?”

“Math…” Was all Sweetie replied with, looking very bored.

“Need any help?” Sunstreak asked, looking over the sheet at the various scribbles placed around the paper in frustration.

“Well this is advanced stuff for my grade. You sure you’ll remember this?”

Sunstreak looked over the sheet, while he was never the ‘best’ student, he was good. At least in math and Science, writing was never his shtick. “Well let’s take a look.”

A few minutes later, Sunstreak was left very confused. He remembered why he hated those years of learning, the really stupid problems. The most recent one was measuring an orb of magic based on the light projection. Which Sunstreak found kind of stupid…why would you measure the distance the light travels instead of the orb itself…

“So the problem isn’t exactly logical in anyway…” Sunstreak said looking at the problem again. “Then why would you ever need to use this? When I was in school they used actual useful problems that made sense. What ever happened to just figuring out the volume of a sphere?”

Sweetie Belle shrugged. “No idea.”

“These questions are weird….” Sunstreak said as Tornado Dust walked down the stairs. “Well find what you were looking for?”

Tornado shook his head. “They took it…” He seemed sad.

“Whoa…Tornado…what did they take?” Sunstreak said flying over to him.

“They took it!” He reached over and grabbed Sunstreak and began crying into the Pegasi’s coat. “Those bastards took it!”

Sunstreak was kind of uncomfortable with this very uncharacteristic sadness coming from Darkblaze, and the random crying hug…that was uncomfortable. “Slow down…what did they take?”

Through the sobs and Sunstreak’s coat he could hear him saying. “Her horn…they took her horn…”

Sunstreak had a bad feeling he knew where this was going… “Whose horn…what did they take?”

Tornado raised his head to look at Sunstreak, his eyes were solid blue, “They took my sister’s horn!” he planted his face back into Sunstreak’s coat making way for the sobbing to continue. All Sunstreak could do was give him helpful pats on his back.

“Shh…Shh…It’s alright, Dusty… just get it all out.” Sunstreak said patting the sobbing Changeling. Looking back Sweetie Belle, he could tell she was very confused, whether that was from the math or from the fact that a Pegasus just said their sister had a horn, Sunstreak wasn’t sure.

A few minutes later, Sunstreak had managed to calm down Tornado enough to get him to stop crying, Sweetie had made tea using some of the packets scattered on the floor. Sunstreak had managed to get Sweetie to head upstairs and stay there, it took a lot of persuasion, but she did agree to stay there until they were done.

“So what happened?” Shade said, sipping the tea he had poured. Darkblaze was hanging his head, not even bothering to hide his emotions. The blue flame coming from him was overpowering everything else. But there were some other emotions mixed in, Shade could pick out desperation, fear, a little anger, and finally he saw the small flame of hope he normally had was reduced to a spark.

“I went upstairs… Looked through my room…” Darkblaze stopped. Then took a deep sigh. “I couldn’t find it…It wasn’t there…” He was sobbing slightly. “Why would they take it?”

“It being your sister’s horn?” Shade asked, taking another sip of tea.

Darkblaze just nodded.

“This wouldn’t be the same sister you said was completely disintegrated would it?”

Darkblaze nodded again. Shade didn’t want to over step his boundaries, but he needed to figure this out. According to Darkblaze, his sister had been caught trying to befriend a pony, Chrysalis didn’t like that idea, and so she drained her and forced her to take the appearance of a princess, causing her to burn herself out of energy and disintegrate. So how did the horn survive?

Darkblaze clearly knew what Shade was going to ask. “She broke it off.”

“Huh?” Shade replied, he wasn’t expecting a response.

“Queen Chrysalis broke her horn off, it cut the mental connection between the other Changelings… However…it didn’t work for me…” He was staring at the now cold tea. “We had…a much stronger connection. Being my twin, we could hear each other’s thoughts even if the main connection went down. That’s what made us great Infiltrators. However, the Queen broke my sister’s horn so she couldn’t use magic or impact the minds of the other Changelings…except me…”

Shade understood, there was no worse fate than being forced to feel a death, the pain itself would drive most mad…but watching…that is even worse.

“Do you…still remember?” Shade asked. Looking seriously at the Changeling.

“Yes…I…Why?” Darkblaze asked.

“I know this is a touchy subject…but the mental connection…could you send memories through it?”

Darkblaze stopped and stared at Shade, a confused look of both concern and contemplation. “Perhaps… Do you think it would help?”

“It may help me get a look into where it is… if I knew the powerful emotion you feel towards it…than maybe they are imbedded into it?”

Darkblaze’s eyes widened. Looking quickly along the ground. “I…You’re right…I never felt it…but maybe you could… It can still store energy, but I couldn’t feel it.”

“So are you willing to relive the memory?”

“I do almost every night…” Darkblaze replied. “Look right into my eyes… This is the only way it will work.”

Shade complied…looking directly at Darkblaze, within a few seconds, Darkblaze’s horn began to glow with a strong green aura, and Shade fell to the ground.

‘Darkblaze! Help!’ came a mental connection. There was a single Changeling in the middle of the room, a Changeling was restrained by a strange looking pod, holding her up to her head,

He noticed Queen Chrysalis looking over him. “If you interfere. You will suffer the same fate.”

“What did she do?” Darkblaze’s voice came from his own mouth.

“She betrayed our ancient methods. She revealed herself to a city. This nearly doomed our Hive. If I did not send Infiltrators to follow her, she may have doomed us.”

Through the mental connection Shade heard another voice. ‘She’s lying! Don’t believe her!’

“SILENCE!” Chrysalis hissed. Walking over to the pod. “This is what happens when you betray our hive.” She placed the Changeling’s horn within one of the holes on her hoof, quickly snapping the curved horn off, leaving a small nub.

Shade felt a pain in his skull, a little like the dream he had before but without the lingering effect.

“You know what must happen don’t you?” Chrysalis said to the Changeling. “For betraying your family, your hive, and most importantly, your Queen.”

‘NO! DARKBLAZE! DON’T BELIEVE HER! I’M YOUR SISTER!’

“The penalty is death.” Chrysalis tapped her horn to the head of the Changeling. Creating a flash of green fire, and a nearly exact copy of Celestia was where the Changeling was before.

‘HELP ME!’

Shade was forced to close his eyes, the screams of pain coming from not only the Celestia clone, but from himself. He was clutching his head, screaming at the same pain the two of them felt. All he heard through it was the laughs from Chrysalis. “You should have thought about that before you tried to reveal us to the world.”

“At least…let…Darkblaze…free.”

“I suppose that is fair… No point in losing another useful Infiltrator.”

A second later Shade stopped feeling the pain, when he opened his eyes; he saw a green bubble around him, cancelling out the Mental connection fully. As he stood up, he saw the Celestia clone was beginning to fade green. Her wings were already burning. And she looked in pain.

“Thank…you…”

“Those ponies rubbed off on you far too much my dear. A true Changeling would accept their punishment. No matter what happens to those linked.”

“I think…you’re right…” The Celestia clone said as her horn began to burn, the holes throughout her body were growing in size. “You could do with a little help from them…”

“I’ll think about that dear…” Chrysalis said leaning in to look at the Celestia clone. “However…I believe your time is nearing an end. So this is where we bid adieu.”

The memory began to blur, unable to hold it together. There was a single scream of pain.

Shade found himself on the floor, fangs stabbing into the wood; apparently he had fallen unconscious when he was in the memory. Darkblaze seemed to be doing better, managing to stay in his chair and getting a headache.

“I don’t know how that would help.” Darkblaze said, not noticing Shade was currently stuck in the floor boards. “But if you really think it will…”

“Uhh…ihtle elp…” Shade said as he tried to pry his fangs out of the ground. He could hear Darkblaze laugh slightly before using his magic to pull Shade out.

Shade had to lick his fangs to make sure there wasn’t any saw dust or cracks in them. Finding none he looked back over at Darkblaze. “Alright…so now that I know what the emotional connection is.” Very depressing, mixed with anger, and pain… “We just need to find a reason for taking it…”

“There isn’t any…” Darkblaze replied. “Ponies can’t use it, It is worthless to others. And it can’t do anything.”

“So it isn’t worth anything…” Shade replied. “So what could have happened with it?”

The very next day, Shade decided it would be a good idea to take on Darkblaze’s responsibilities. Darkblaze needed a break while he figures out what happened at his own home. Shade regretted it immensely.

“Sorry, Mr. Cake.” Sunstreak replied, having been forced to leave early from Pinkie’s job. “I’ve got to go and create a storm over Sweet Apple Acres. I’m sorry.”

“Isn’t that Tornado Dust’s job?” Mr. Cake asked before Sunstreak could get out.

“He’s…going through a tough patch.” He leaned into Mr. Cake. “Somepony stole something very personal to him yesterday, so he’s…having trouble… I’m trying to cover for him while he calms down…but it is rather difficult.” Sunstreak looked up at the clock. “Can’t talk. Gotta Fly!”

Sunstreak took off before Mr. Cake could try and hold him back. He had already ditched the Library that day in favor of getting a few pegasi to move some clouds over to the orchard, while he handled Fluttershy’s animals. Again…he found no better pleasure than ‘accidently’ pushing Angel into a mud puddle after the rabbit had thrown a radish at Sunstreak’s head.

“Ugh…I hope I can find something out about this soon…I’m not going to be able to keep this up without someone noticing I’m draining someone.” He flew over the city, looking down at all the ponies walking, hoping to find some kind of clue. Like a pony was just going to be wearing the horn of a changeling. That would make it about twenty times easier.

As he flew over Sweet Apple Acres, he saw the clouds that he had requested…Courtesy of Rainbow Dash being out of town… There weren’t many, but they were something. Before he began to move the clouds around, his ears caught something.

“Can you believe what she is doing with that horn?”

“No. She turned it into a necklace? That must look horrible.”

“You would be surprised, it’s held by magic, making it just stay there.”

“But still…wouldn’t the guards question her?”

“They did at first. But they just figured it was from the storm and nopony saw it before.”

Sunstreak decided it would be a good idea to get closer…less to be rude…more because he was curious. “Um excuse me, ladies…”

The two mares in question turned to look. They were both pegasi. One was purple with a pink straight mane, while the other was green with a curly yellow mane. Both of them looked surprised. “I’m sorry,” Sunstreak apologized when they looked. “But I couldn’t help but overhear, did you say somepony was wearing a horn?”

“Yes, we did.” The purple Pegasus replied. “There was a filly walking around with a Changeling horn floating in front of her.”

“I still think you’re lying.”

“What was the filly’s name?” Sunstreak asked. He was fairly certain he knew who it was.

“I think her name was Diamond Tiara…” The purple Pegasus said.

“You mean Filthy Rich’s daughter?” The green Pegasus replied.

“Yes I think it was… It was either her or Silver Spoon….”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Sunstreak replied. “What if the Changelings come back for it?”

“You don’t think they will. Do you?”

“That would be just horrible…They would probably kill her.”

“Nah…” Sunstreak replied. “If anything they would just capture her and feed off the love her family feels.” Wow…that got dark real fast…

“You don’t think they would do that to a filly.”

“I’m certain they would.” Given my experience. “Only if she resisted it… They don’t seem like the type to take no for an answer.”

As the two pegasi in front of him began to talk about Changelings again, Sunstreak went to work, hop on a cloud, kick it, and move onto next cloud, repeat until rain. After about twenty clouds, the entire orchard seemed to be covered with the raining clouds. Looking up, he saw the Sun was starting to descend, which signaled he was needed at the school.

In order to make sure that the orchard didn’t get flooded while he was gone he flew back over to the two mares from earlier. “Hey!” he shouted, trying to be heard over the rain. “I’ve got to go do a thing. Can you two keep an eye on the rain?”

“No problem!” the Purple mare replied, Sunstreak gave a small salute before flying off towards the school.

So…Diamond Tiara…That little brat…Where did she get the horn, why was she flaunting it, and how should I deal with it… Well… because of the gravity of this situation…Might as well have some fun…

As the school bell rang out over the plain, the foals all ran out of their classrooms and into the bright day. A few fillies remained at the schoolyard. Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo were talking about their latest schemes to get their Cutie Marks when the two local bullies, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon walked up.

“What do you two want?” Sweetie Belle asked completely bored. This had been an almost daily ritual lately, ever since Sweetie Belle had said she found a Changeling, Diamond Tiara had kept on telling her she lied about it. And with the discovery of that Changeling horn Diamond Tiara had been wearing on some kind of magical necklace, the claims that she found one were spreading around fast.

“I just wanted to make sure you losers saw what happens when you actually have a cutie mark.”

“Yah become a pain in the-“ Apple Bloom had started.

“Good things happen to you.” Diamond Tiara butted in. “I bet none of you Blank Flanks would ever have a Changeling try and take you.”

“Yeah because they realize it would be a terrible idea to take a filly.” Sweetie Belle replied.

“Nopony would ever see any difference. You already act weird.” Diamond Tiara responded.

From behind the two of them, the sound of hooves on dirt was heard. Sweetie Belle could see a dark green stallion walking up behind them with a purple mane. “What’s going on over here?” The stallion asked.

“Nothing mister.” Diamond Tiara replied turning to look. And finding herself staring into two bright yellow eyes both of which were focusing on the black curved horn around her neck.

“Nice necklace.” The Stallion replied. “Mind if I take a closer look at it?”

“Get your own Mister. I’m the one who got this.” Diamond Tiara replied. Looking away to antagonize the Crusaders.

“That wasn’t a request…” Diamond Tiara found herself whirled around to look at the same dark green stallion, but with two fangs jutting from his upper lip. “Hand it over.”

“No way!” Get your own horn!” a flash of green fire and the green stallion had a curved black horn jutting from his head. It hissed at Diamond Tiara before grabbing the horn around her neck and pulling it off.

“Changeling!” Sweetie Belle shouted as the dark green stallion ran across the field. When it was halfway across the field, a green flame enveloped him and where it stood, there was an exact copy of Rainbow Dash.

“Hey! You can’t turn into her!” Scootaloo shouted as the Changeling took off and started to quickly fly towards the Everfree Forest.

“Well…” Apple Bloom said as the fake Rainbow Dash flew out of sight. “At least we can say we all met a Changeling now.”

This has got to be the single stupidest plan I’ve ever come up with! The false Rainbow Dash thought as she flew towards Everfree. The illusion spell she cast on her eye had long since worn off, giving her a single slit eye. What the hell was I thinking? She thought as she began to lower herself into Everfree.

When she finally came to a stop, she was in a patch of blue bell shaped flowers. She spat the curved horn out into her hoof. “How the hell does Rainbow Dash fly like this?” A green flash surrounded her and Shade was standing there instead.

“What the hell was I thinking? Turning into a mare?” Shade shivered. “Never doing that again.” He took a look at the horn in his hoof. Noticing the small pink fire coming from it. Well at least it wasn’t a total waste.

Shade turned his attention to the blue flowers, at the instant he tried to move his hoof, it made a very strange sound. He was sure he saw them before…maybe it was on a book he was reading at the Library… What was it called? Why can’t I remember it…? Eh it probably wasn’t important. he decided, walking towards the edge of the forest.

Now how do I explain this….

An hour or two later Sunstreak opened the door to the house. “Hey, Tornado Dust! I’m home and you will not believe what I found!”

He looked towards the table to see Sweetie Belle looking at him. “Where were you all day?”

“I’m sorry, Sweetie…I know that I was supposed to bring you home. But I had too much stuff to do.”

“Like what…”

“I took over Tornado’s jobs, so I was busy at Sweet Apple Acres making sure the rain fell, then I had to check up on Fluttershy’s animals for a bit.”

“We got attacked by a Changeling.”

“You were what?” Sunstreak replied surprised. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah…it just grabbed a horn that Diamond Tiara found and flew off.” Sweetie Belle was clearly annoyed with Sunstreak.

Sunstreak sighed. “I’m sorry I didn’t come to help…Angel was being… difficult.”

“Whatever…” Sweetie Belle replied, going back to her work.

“I’ll try and make it up to you later.”

“Well…” Sweetie Belle said, tapping her chin. “There is something you can help me with.” She said this with a slightly malicious smile.

“Why do I feel like this involves physical pain…?” Sunstreak said lowering his head.

“Me and Bloom are planning a special Cutie Mark Crusader attempt.” She explained. “And we need a Pegasus.”

“To do what exactly?” Sunstreak asked.

“I can’t tell you…” Sweetie Belle said smiling. “It’s a secret.” She said in a sing song voice.

Sunstreak facehoofed. “Where’s Tornado Dust…?”

“He’s still upstairs…I haven’t seen him leave his room since I got back.”

Sunstreak looked at the makeshift bag he had made from a rather small tree he found. “Promise me you will stay down here.”

“Alright…I’ve got enough homework to do.”

Sunstreak nodded appreciatively to Sweetie Belle before climbing up the stairs and walking over to Darkblaze’s door and knocked. “Dusty? You okay?”

There was a faint clopping of hooves as Darkblaze walked up to the door. When he opened it, Sunstreak saw that he had been crying quite a bit. His normally blue eyes had been turned to a shade of purple, his carapace had a slight sheen to it as if it had been watered briefly and he hung his head a little. “I’m fine…” Darkblaze replied as he wiped a tear from his face.

“Have you been in here all day?” Sunstreak asked walking in and closing the door.

“More or less.” Darkblaze sniffled. “So what’s up?”

“Well…You will not believe what I found out by Everfree.” Sunstreak said as he pulled the bag off of his back and placed it in front of Darkblaze. “Open it.”

“Snake Eye, I’m not in the mood for-”

“Just open it…” Sunstreak said rolling his eyes. “I went through a lot of trouble to get this for you. The least you could do is open it.”

Darkblaze rolled his eyes briefly before using his magic to open up the bag. “I still don’t see how…” When he opened the bag, he looked down at the contents for a few seconds before jumping onto Sunstreak causing him to drop his disguise. “Thank you!” He said as he pulled Shade into a hug, which considering that he had been crying all day was very strong. “How did you find this!?”

“Can’t…Breathe…” Shade said through the Changeling’s iron grip. “Crushing…Wings…”

“Sorry…” Darkblaze said, letting go of Shade, who immediately began gasping. “But how did you find this?”

“Like…I said.” Shade said calming himself down, looking at his wings to make sure they weren’t broken when he was satisfied, he turned back. “I found it by Everfree.”

“Don’t lie to me, Snake Eye.” Darkblaze said elbowing him “I know when I’m being lied to.”

“I’ll tell you when Sweetie Belle isn’t arou…” Shade stopped for a moment… “Actually…why not let her tell you…?” He turned into Sunstreak. “Come on.”

Darkblaze quickly closed the bag and pushed it underneath the bed in the room, he then turned back into Tornado Dust and followed Sunstreak down the stairs.

“Hey, Sweetie Belle.” Sunstreak announced down the stairs. “Look who finally left his room.” Tornado Dust elbowed Sunstreak.

“Does this mean you two are free tomorrow?” Sweetie Belle said happily.

“Not quite…” Tornado replied. “I still have to do Weather patrol and Sunstreak still needs to help the Cakes.”

“I kind of told her I would help the Crusaders tomorrow…with another one of their.” Sunstreak coughed. “Attempts.”

“Well, have fun with that…” Tornado replied. “So Sweetie, Sunstreak tells me you had an interesting day.”

With that Sweetie Belle began to tell them about the Changeling incident. Tornado Dust looking towards Sunstreak with a raised eyebrow. When she finished Sunstreak looked back.

“Did you say it flew near Everfree?” Sunstreak asked.

“Yeah…why?”

“Weird…I think I saw it…it was disguised as Rainbow Dash… I figured it was hit by something when it went down… I went in after it but didn’t find anything.” Sunstreak explained. “I was wondering what it was doing.”

A knock on the door made all three of them turn to it.

“I’ll get it.” Sunstreak replied walking over to the door. He was surprised when he opened it to the small purple dragon. “Oh hey, Spike. What are you doing here?”

“I need your help with something.” Spike said, walking into the room, he waved at Sweetie Belle. “Princess Celestia sent Twilight a large shipment of books from the Royal Library. And…I need your help to sort through them all…”

“Well how many books are we talking here?” Sunstreak asked grabbing the reference guide.

“Um…so far it’s about fifteen boxes of around ten to twenty books each.”

Sunstreak whistled at the sheer number. “That’s quite a lot of books… What does Celestia hope she’ll find?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Spike replied with a shrug. “She’s actually sending more tomorrow as well.”

“Alright, hold on a second…” Sunstreak turned to Tornado Dust. “I’m going to spend the night there, and possibly tomorrow, if I’m not back by noon, tell the Cakes I’m busy.”

“Will do.” Tornado replied as Sunstreak walked out the door with the baby dragon.

Chapter 13: Bad Jokes at Bad Times

Sunstreak had spent a majority of the night helping Spike arrange the new books along the shelves, the walls, and moving a few boxes into the basement. He continued to do so long after the dragon had went to sleep and there were still a rather large amount of books that needed to be moved.

When Sunstreak woke up, he was lying on the floor with his back against a wall with a pounding headache.

The sun was just beginning to poke its head above the horizon when Sunstreak woke up, both confused and feeling very strange. It felt as though half of his body was strangely stiff, but he just chalked it up to weird sleeping position.

He sleepily walked over to a mirror to check and make sure nothing was sticking up weird, but when he raised his head to look at himself, he screamed from surprise, waking up Spike.

“What happened?” said Spike as he briskly walked down the stairs to look into the room. “Uh…Sunstreak…?” The red Pegasus wasn’t in the room. “Where’d you go?”

“In here…” Sunstreak replied from the basement door. Spike walked over to it.

“What are you doing in there?” The little dragon asked as he reached for the brass handle, but as he began to pull it open the door slammed back shut.

“NO! Don’t come in here!” Sunstreak replied a strange distortion was in his voice.

“What’s going on?” Spike asked as he tried to listen through the door.

“Just…do me a favor and get Tornado Dust…” Sunstreak said through the door. “And tell him to bring a cloak…”

“Why would he need a-?”

“Please, Spike.” Sunstreak replied before the dragon could finish. “Just get Tornado Dust…”

“Okay…” Spike replied clearly still confused. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Please hurry…” Sunstreak said as Spike ran out of the door.

Darkblaze had just woken up when a very rapid knocking came from his front door. “Who could it be at this hour?” He asked himself as he donned his Pegasus disguise and walked downstairs. The knocking continuing at the same rapid pace. “I’m coming!” He said loudly as he let out a little yawn.

When he opened the door he didn’t even get a chance to ask who it was before Spike started to speak through heavy breaths, apparently he had run from the library. “Sun…streak…Basement…Cloak…”

“Spike…are you alright?” Tornado Dust asked looking at the small dragon. “Do you need something? A glass of water maybe?”

“That…would be nice…” He said placing his claws on his knees.

“Alright, just…give me a second.” Tornado Dust walked into the kitchen and returned with a glass of water held in one of his wings. “Now what happened?”

“Thanks…” The dragon said as he downed the water in one go. “Sunstreak locked himself in the basement of the Library and he said he wanted you to come see him.”

“Why was he in the basement?” Tornado asked, confused.

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Spike said shrugging.

“What’s with all the knocking…?” Sweetie Belle had woken up and was walking down the stairs. “Spike? What are you doing here?”

“Sunstreak is apparently having a problem at the Library.” Tornado Dust explained. “He locked himself in the basement and is refusing to come out.” He turned back to Spike. “Did he say anything that would give us an idea as to what’s wrong?”

“No…” The Dragon replied. “I just heard him scream and then he was locked in the basement. He really didn’t want to come out. He sounded kind of sick too.”

“Did he say anything else?” Tornado Dust asked.

Spike shook his head. “Oh wait. He did tell me to bring a cloak for him.”

“Well, I’ve got that.” Tornado Dust said, flying up to the top of a coat rack and grabbing a cloak. “Sweetie Belle, make sure you get to school on time.”

Sweetie Belle rubbed her eye lightly before nodding her head.

“Spike, let’s go.” Tornado Dust said, throwing the cloak over his back and walking out the door.

“Just no more running, okay.” Spike said before quickly following behind.

“No promises!” Tornado called back.

When the two of them got back to the library, Spike was already breathing heavy despite only having run a short distance. “You really need to do some exercise, Spike.” Tornado said as he pushed the door open. “Maybe all that book keeping is ruining your endurance.”

“I’m…Fine…Just…tired…” Spike said walking over to a chair and sitting down in it.

“Suit yourself…” Tornado Dust replied before walking over to the brown door leading to the basement. “Snake Eye?”

“Tornado!” Sunstreak’s voice came from the other side of the door, but it sounded strange, it definitely wasn’t as bad as if he was a Changeling, but it was still noticeable. “Oh, thank God you’re here.”

“Snake Eye, what’s going on?” Tornado Dust asked getting closer to the door. “Why are you hiding in there?”

Tornado Dust could hear a sigh coming from the other side of the door. “You remember how I told you everyone in town thought that I was a changeling because of my eye?”

“Yeah…” Tornado Dust replied. It was true that Sunstreak had told him about his first few days, and about how a lot of ponies jumped to conclusions because of his eye. Granted they were right but they still jumped to conclusions.

Another sigh. “Well…” The door opened slowly, as Sunstreak stepped out of it. Tornado Dust had to prevent himself from laughing.

In front of him stood a half-Changeling version of Sunstreak, his right eye was still the same, but his left looked Changeling along with the left side of his face, he had a single fang jutting from his mouth, his left wing had turned into a Changeling wing, and on his forehead was a small curved horn, only about a fourth the size of a normal Changeling horn. His mane and tail were still there but had holes through them, and his two front legs looked Changeling. Around his body in seemingly random places, Chitin was showing instead of his normal coat.

“You look…” Tornado had said trying to stop himself from laughing. “great…”

“Yeah? And you’re a unicorn.” Sunstreak replied. Looking over at Spike, the little dragon was holding his claws up to his mouth trying not to laugh. Sunstreak sighed. “Go ahead…”

Both of them began to laugh due to the sheer ridiculousness of the appearance. The two of them continued to laugh for around two minutes straight before Sunstreak had walked back into the basement.

“Oh come on, Snake Eye” Tornado said, holding back a tear. “It’s not that bad…”

“What are you talking about?” Spike said, still rolling on the ground. “It’s hilarious!”

“Thanks for your support, guys…” Sunstreak said through the door. “That is exactly what I wanted…”

“So what are you planning on doing?” Tornado Dust asked composing himself. “Are you planning on staying in there forever?”

“Forever or until this wears off whichever comes first.” Sunstreak replied.

“Alright we can figure this out, Snake Eye.” Tornado Dust said, looking towards the still laughing dragon. “Spike! Knock it off!”

The Dragon laughed for a few seconds before getting to his feet. “I’m good…I’m good.”

“Now what happened?”

“I woke up…and I found myself looking like this.” Sunstreak replied.

“You said you went into Everfree yesterday right?” Tornado Dust asked.

“What was he doing in Everfree?” Spike asked.

“Later.” Tornado Dust said to the dragon.

“Yes...” Sunstreak replied. “I was…I don’t see why that explains why I look like a science experiment gone wrong.”

“Did you touch any blue flowers?” Tornado Dust asked. “Look kind of like a bell?”

Sunstreak thought about this for a second. “I think so… I ran through them when I was looking for that Changeling.”

“What Changeling?” Spike asked looking towards Tornado Dust.

“Later.” Tornado replied. “I think I know what’s wrong with you, Poison Joke.”

“Poison what?” Sunstreak asked, completely confused.

“It’s a flower that plays a nasty prank on you if you get the spores on you.” Tornado explained. “Usually it isn’t anything like what you have.”

“Is there a cure?” Sunstreak asked, opening the door a little.

“Yeah we just have to head down to the Spa and get the special treatment they have.” Tornado explained. “It’s just an herb bath.”

Sunstreak opened the door again. “Fine… If it fixes whatever this is I’m fine with it.”

Tornado Dust handed the cloak to Sunstreak who quickly put it on, making sure it covered all the abnormalities. “Wouldn’t want you to cause a riot.”

“What do you mean you’re out of the cure?” Tornado shouted to the pink spa pony. She had a light blue mane with a small white hairband and a lotus flower for a cutie mark. Sunstreak stayed in the corner while Tornado Dust handled everything else.

“We are sorry.” Aloe replied in a slightly French accent. “But we had a large crowd of ponies who were affected by Poison Joke. We had to use the rest of both ours and Zecora’s supplies.”

“Well,” Tornado Dust said. “When is the next shipment due?”

“In four days…” Aloe replied.

“Four days!” Tornado was shouting now. “Where in Equestria are these plants coming from where it takes over four days to get them here?”

“Tornado calm down…” Sunstreak had walked up. “It’ll be fine. It’s not like I can’t explain myself. I just have to get used to ponies looking at me funny for a while.”

“Do you at least know what caused the outbreak?” Tornado asked Aloe.

“No, but we do think it had something to do with a catapult, a cloud, and a Hand glider.” Aloe had replied. Her voice never once changing from that slightly soothing tone.

“Thanks, let us know when the first shipment comes in…” Sunstreak said as he half pulled, half carried Tornado Dust away from Aloe. “I’m sorry for his behavior…usually he’s not like this…”

When both of them were outside the Spa, Sunstreak took the time to fix the cloak that was hiding most of his Changeling appearance. “Four days my left wing.” Tornado Dust said.

“Yeah well…there’s nothing we can do about it.” Sunstreak said, using the small horn he had to hold the hood in place so it wouldn’t fall. “Why are you being the aggressive one? I’m the one who can’t look at anypony without them freaking out.”

“Yeah but this could be bad if they tell the Royal Guard about you.” Tornado Dust said, luckily the streets were still mostly empty so very few ponies could hear them. “They might throw both of us in there.”

“Well…for the meantime, I guess I’ll just hang out at Twilight’s house. Maybe try and find a way to reverse it without the cure.”

“Can’t you just transform?” Tornado Dust asked.

“Tried that already…” Sunstreak replied. “It made a horn pop out of my head, and holes to form in my hooves.” He lifted his front right leg for emphasis. “So pardon me if I don’t really want to try it again.”

“It was just a suggestion…” Tornado Dust replied. “So…this may be slightly more important…what are you going to tell the Cakes?”

“I’ll figure something out…” Sunstreak replied. “Hopefully it won’t involve me showing them…”

“Well…I’ve got to get to Fluttershy’s and check on the animals before dealing with the weather.” Tornado said opening his wings. “I’ll stop by the Library later. Help you figure something out.” He took off from the ground and began to fly towards Everfree.

“Yeah…” Sunstreak said, lowering his head. “Unless I get thrown in jail before then…”

Simply walking to Sugar Cube Corner was a difficult task. He had to make sure that not very many ponies saw him walking or noticed anything was wrong with him. Especially when the Cakes appeared to have opened early and he needed to get to inside… Even when he was. a lot of the ponies gave him curious looks.

“Umm…Mr. Cake…” Sunstreak said as he found the tall yellow earth pony. “I have something I need to tell you…”

“Well what is it, Sunstreak?” Mr. Cake asked, looking at how Sunstreak was holding his head slightly lower.

“Can I tell you in private… If not then can I tell you somewhere less crowded?” He motioned to the large number of ponies inside.

“Oh sure. Come into the kitchen.” Mr. Cake led Sunstreak into the kitchen where his wife, a short blue earth pony with a pink mane was busy making sweets. “Well what is it?”

Sunstreak sighed. “Remember how when I first came here a lot of ponies thought I must have been a Changeling because my eye was weird?”

“Yes, but I don’t see why that would…”

“Well… While I was tending to some of Fluttershy’s animals I accidently touched a piece of Poison Joke.”

“Oh my, are you alright?”

“I’m fine it’s just… The Spa ran out of the herbs it needs…and I have to wait a few days…”

“Well what happened to you?” Mr. Cake asked.

Sunstreak sighed. “Promise me you won’t scream…”

“Why would we scream?” Mrs. Cake had overheard and walked over.

Sunstreak sighed and lowered his hood.

Mr. Cake fainted, while Mrs. Cake looked in shock.

“Well, at least he didn’t scream…” Sunstreak said as he covered his head with the hood again. “So…I don’t think I’ll be able to help until this is sorted out…”

“Oh, it’s no problem…” Mrs. Cake said through a loud gulp. “You just come back when you’re good and ready…” Sunstreak could tell that this could have been handled so much better, but this was the best way Sunstreak felt it should have been handled…straight to the point. Hopefully they wouldn’t call the guard…

Sunstreak decided that after that…horrible attempt to explain his situation, the best possible course of action would be to head back to the library. Not only because he needed to find a way to fix this, but also because he knew there was still plenty to do there to keep him occupied with very little chance of him actually getting seen.

Trying to avoid the looks of the various ponies that were out now was not the easiest thing to do, he had to go down various alleyways and passages he knew about from his various flyovers of Ponyville in an attempt to be completely unseen. When he managed to get back to the library, he let out a long sigh after closing the door.

“Hey, Sunstreak.” Spike called after noticing the Pegasus enter the room. “How was the Spa?”

“Terrible…” Sunstreak said, removing the cloak and hanging it up. “They didn’t have the herbs they needed. So I’m stuck like this for a few days.”

“Well that stinks.” Spike said, walking down the stairs. “So do you mind if I call you Sunshift?”

“Why?” Sunstreak asked.

“Well because you’re half changeling now. So I think you should be called Sunshift.”

“Well, I think that is a stupid idea.” Sunstreak said walking up to the baby dragon. “And if you call me that to my face you will see how much I dislike it.” The small horn began to glow. “Capiche?”

“You can’t use magic with that thing can you?” Spike said looking at the horn.

“I’ve got no idea…” Sunstreak said. “I don’t think either of us want to find out.”

“Got it…” Spike said. “So…why’d you come back?”

“Figured I would help with the rest of these books.” Sunstreak said, motioning the large piles they still had to sort. “Along with the fact that this place is more safe for me personally. As Sweetie Belle has already had two run-ins with Changelings I doubt she would be pleased with another.”

“Makes sense…” Spike looked at the mismatched wings on Sunstreak’s back. “Can you still fly with those?”

Sunstreak looked back at them himself. “I…have no idea…” Before he remembered something he had told Sweetie Belle. “Ugh…Why is stuff like this always getting in the way of me being a good friend?”

“What stuff?” Spike asked looking at Sunstreak.

“I told Sweetie Belle I would help her with another one of her harebrained schemes to get a Cutie Mark.”

“You actually agreed to do that?” Spike said looking at the half Changeling.

“I didn’t think this was going to happen.” Motions to his entire body. “I thought I could go one day here without some kind of incident taking place.”

“Good luck with that…” Spike said. He clearly had an idea of what normal was here.

“We might as well get to work…” Sunstreak replied looking towards the large piles.

The next few hours had simply been a test of Sunstreak’s wings trying to keep himself in the air for longer than two seconds. However almost every attempt at increasing altitude at ended with him flipping over to his left side as his right wing overpowered it. Eventually he figured out how to hover, keeping himself at one set altitude so long as he kept his wings moving. However any attempt to change altitude and he was sent careening to the ground.

“Hey, Spike!” Sunstreak said looking at the title of a book he had never heard of. “Where does ‘Tales of a Triple Tailed Trilobite’ go?”

“What’s it labeled under?” Spike shouted back.

“Hold on…” He turned it on its side. “There’s nothing here!”

There was a knock on the door. “Spike! Door!” Sunstreak shouted towards the little dragon. While he hovered off the stairs looking at the top shelf, trying to find the ‘T’ section.

“Hello?” Spike said. Sunstreak didn’t hear the second participant in the conversation, he was busy focusing on finding a place where he could put Trilobite “Oh hey! What are you doing here?”

Tricycles…no…Tri-linear…No…Tips…No…Trillion…no…

“Well, come in. I thought you would still be in Canterlot.”

Trilobite…there it is.

“Hey, Sunstreak!”

“Yeah?” he said, focusing on keeping himself steady while he placed the book on the shelf between ‘The Trilobite Extinction’ and ‘Twenty Year Trilobite’.

“We have a visitor.” Spike said as a strong looking unicorn Stallion walked into the room, his mane had shades of both light and dark blue in it and his cutie mark appeared to be a purple shield. “This is Twilight’s brother.”

Sunstreak turned in the air so that he could actually see the unicorn. “Hi, I’m…” He stopped when he noticed the expression on the unicorn’s face. It looked like a mixture of hate and confusion. What a day for my emotion senses to not work...

He noticed that his horn was glowing purple. Sunstreak looked down at his hooves before looking back up at the unicorn. “I can explain…”

He didn’t get a chance, as a second later the unicorn had fired a purple beam from his horn, throwing Sunstreak into a wall and causing some of the books to fall off the shelves. When he could finally see straight, he felt a heavy hoof placed on his chest holding him against the wall. “Where is my sister?”

Having slammed head first into a wall, Sunstreak was confused at first. “What?”

“Where. Is. My. Sister.” He placed pressure on Sunstreak’s chest.

“I’m sorry…who’s your sister?” Sunstreak said as he looked up into the angry looking Unicorn’s face. His horn was glowing purple.

“Where is Twilight?” The Unicorn placed more pressure on Sunstreak’s chest.

Sunstreak was confused by the question for a second, but the small cracking sound quickly brought him to his senses. “She’s in Everfree.”

“What did you do to my sister?” Whoever this pony was, was holding him in a purple aura and lifting him up to eye level.

“Nothing!” Sunstreak said quickly. Not wanting to make the unicorn angrier than he already was.

The Unicorn slammed him into the opposite wall, causing more books to fall. “I don’t believe you, Changeling.”

“I’m not a Changeling!” Sunstreak said quickly.

“Lies!” The unicorn slammed him into the wall again.

“Spike!” Sunstreak said looking at the small purple dragon that was currently standing gawk eyed at the two of them. “HELP!”

“Shining, stop it.” Spike said running over to the two of them. “He’s not a Changeling.”

“Not a Changeling!” The unicorn said, looking at Spike as though he was crazy. “Then how do you explain that?” he gestured to Sunstreak’s left side.

“POSION JOKE!” Sunstreak shouted before he was injured anymore. “It made me look like this!”

“Of course it did!”

“Uh…what is…” Tornado Dust had just walked into the Library. “Snake Eye, what are you…?”

Sunstreak mouthed ‘Help me’ to the Pegasus in the doorway.

“Hey!” Tornado Dust shouted. “Put my roommate down!”

“You can vouch for him?” Shining Armor said. “Can you confirm his story?”

“Yes!” Tornado Dust replied. “He touched some Poison Joke near Everfree. He stayed the night here to help Spike sort through all these books, and when he woke up he looked like that. He dashed into the basement and hid himself.”

“Then what the buck is he doing here?”

“The buck?” Sunstreak repeated confused. “Oh…got it.”

“He wanted me to bring him a cloak so he could go out in public like that. I did, we went to the Spa, and they already ran out of the herbs they needed to make the cure. So he’s stuck like that for a few days.”

Sunstreak nodded in agreement.

“Then how do you know it is really him?” Shining Armor said to Tornado Dust. “And not just a Changeling who took his place.”

Tornado Dust rolled his eyes. “If you insist…” He flew up to be eye level with Sunstreak. “Where were you earlier this week, during the big thunderstorm we had here?”

“I was in Cloudsdale for my cousin Blade Carver’s wedding.” Sunstreak said quickly… he didn’t like the look on Shining Armor’s face. “I returned like two or three days ago.”

“What is Blade Carver doing now?” Tornado Dust asked.

“He’s one of the Blacksmiths for a Special Forces division in the Burning Fiords called the Flaming Specters.”

“That’s him.” Tornado Dust replied. “He only told me that after we were friends for a few years.”

“You sure?”

“Well there is always one way to tell…” Tornado Dust flew up to Sunstreak. “Rainbow Cookies.”

Shining Armor looked confused. But Tornado Dust pulled a small bag of rainbow colored cookies out of his saddle bag and put one into Sunstreak’s mouth.

“These are so good…” Sunstreak said after he swallowed it. Tornado Dust stared at him for a good ten seconds.

“That’s definitely him.” Tornado Dust replied. “Only him and Pinkie Pie can eat these things. And I’m pretty sure Pinkie Pie isn’t a Changeling.”

“How does that prove anything?”

“You ever drink Rainbow Water?” Tornado Dust said. “That stuff could burn the taste buds off a dragon. Here try one if you don’t believe me.”

Skeptically, Shining Armor levitated one of the Rainbow Cookies up to his mouth and took a bite, almost immediately his face scrunched up from the spice. He opened his mouth and a small flame came out of his mouth. “Alright…I believe you.”

Sunstreak gave a relaxing sigh. Before landing with a chink on the wooden floor. “Aww man…” He looked at the library. “This is gonna take me forever to fix up.” The books he had placed on some of the higher shelves were scattered around the library.

“You figure out how to fly yet?” Tornado Dust asked Sunstreak.

“No…just how to hover…” Sunstreak said, flapping both of his wings at different rates and lifting his legs off the ground, leaving him hovering at his normal height.

“Well…it’s a start.” Tornado Dust replied.

“Something is still bothering me though.” Shining Armor said. “What is Twilight doing in the forest?”

Sunstreak and Tornado Dust both rubbed the back of their heads. “They’re looking for a foal…”

The next hour or so was just the three of them explaining to Shining Armor the last few days. With Sunstreak trying to stay as far away as possible from the White Unicorn, mostly because he didn’t want to be another punching bag.

“So you are saying they went to find a foalnapped filly, who was saved by the hybrid over here, then foalnapped again by different Changelings. And they’ve been gone for two days.”

“Pretty much…” Tornado Dust replied. Sunstreak was busy placing books back on the higher shelves, hoping to get a height difference from Shining Armor.

“I resent that hybrid comment.” Sunstreak said placing another book on the shelf. “I’m not an actual hybrid…ponies just got freaked out because of my eye.”

“I meant to ask about that.” Shining Armor said.

“I was born with it…” Sunstreak replied placing a book about Zebras on the top shelf. “I honestly was considering putting an eye patch on so that ponies would stop doing the ‘AH it’s a changeling’ routine.”

“Yeah…sorry about that…” Shining Armor said sheepishly to Sunstreak.

“Buy me a few drinks…Then I’ll think about it.” Sunstreak replied. While his chitin had taken most of the damage, there was still the fact that a crack had formed on his chest, and the fact that about three hours of hard work was now down the drain. “Either that or help me put some of these books back.”

Just then there was another knock on the door.

“Who could that be?” Tornado Dust said, walking over to the door. When he opened it, a rather disgruntled Sweetie Belle was standing there with mud and sticks in her mane. “Hello, Sweetie Belle…what are you doing here?”

“You seem to be asking that a lot.” Spike said to the Pegasus.

“Sunstreak!” Sweetie Belle whined while walking into the room. After hearing the filly, his left wing slowed its flapping just enough for him to fly into the nearest bookcase and fall to the ground with a small pile of books following him.

“ow…”

“You said you would help us today!” The little filly said to the pile of books. “Why didn’t you come and help. We had to do it without help, and we ran into a thundercloud!”

“Ow…” Sunstreak said under the pile of books. “Tornado Dust…”

The gray Pegasus flew over to where Sweetie Belle was scowling at the pile of books. “Sweetie Belle, Sunstreak is having a bit of trouble right now. He touched some Poison Joke and now he looks like a hybrid between a Changeling and a pony.”

Sweetie Belle looked at Tornado Dust with a raised eyebrow. “Do you expect me to believe-“

Sunstreak just pushed his front hoof through the pile, his black hole filled leg startled the filly at first. “I have been buried in books three times since coming here…” Sunstreak said. “I’m starting to think this place hates me.”

Sunstreak managed to crawl out of the pile, quickly checking on his insect wing for signs of damage, finding none he sighed. “And now I have to put these books up…again.”

“Why…why do you look like that?” Sweetie Belle stuttered watching as Sunstreak placed a few books on his back and hovered over to the stairs.

“I touched some Poison Joke, and since the town was all freaked out at first that I was a changeling, clearly it thought it would be funny to make me into one.” Sunstreak replied walking up the stairs and hovering over to the top shelf above the small pile of books.

“Then why don’t you just-“

“Tornado Dust, please explain.” Sunstreak replied, placing the books on the shelf while Spike was helping by handing him more of the books.

“The Spa doesn’t have any of the herbs they need to cure him, so he is stuck like that.”

“Don’t forget that I can’t fly.” Sunstreak replied, placing another few books on the top shelf before closing his wings and landing. “And before you ask, I can hover at a constant height…nothing more, nothing less.” He started walking back over to the stairs, but he felt something moving around inside his leg. Instinctively he pulled up on his leg, carrying with it Sweetie Belle.

“How did you do that?” Sweetie Belle said looking at the leg.

“Please…” Sunstreak said, he was not comfortable with anything living inside his leg. “Let go…That is very uncomfortable.”

Sweetie Belle pulled her hoof out of Sunstreak’s leg, who shivered from the strange feeling. “Never do that again…”

“This is so cool!” Sweetie Belle said with a small squeak at the end. “This is the first time I’ve been able to look at a Changeling without it trying to hurt me in some way. Scootaloo and Apple Bloom are going to-“

“NO!” Sunstreak said interrupting Sweetie Belle. “Promise me you will not tell anyone about this.” The last thing I need is pitchforks and torches when I can’t fly. “Not your friends. Not Rarity. Don’t even tell Celestia about this.”

“Don’t you think you are freaking out a bit about this?” Tornado Dust asked rolling his eyes.

Sunstreak took a deep breath. “Okay, yes I may be freaking out a little with Celestia and Rarity. But you have to promise me you won’t tell any of your friends. I don’t want a mob of foals or adults trying to get my attention. I just want to be left alone for a few days.” Sunstreak sighed, “Or at least until I can fix this…” His stomach rumbled…

Tornado Dust rolled his eyes “You’ve been in here all day, haven’t you?” Before Sunstreak could respond, Tornado Dust had grabbed the cloak by the door and threw it over to Sunstreak. “Come on you two.” He said looking towards Sweetie Belle. “Let’s get something to eat, my treat.”

After making sure his cloak covered up a majority of his Changeling body parts, Sunstreak followed after the two of them, leaving Shining Armor and Spike alone in the Library.

“I’ve never seen the effects of Poison Joke.” Shining Armor said to Spike. “Have you?” He asked Spike, who turned back to him with a smile.

“Oh, yes I have.”

About half an hour later, Sunstreak, Tornado Dust, and Sweetie Belle were sitting outside eating off of a table that looked like a large purple mushroom. Sunstreak had ordered a Daisy and Daffodil Sandwich. Which given that he never really thought eating grass was a smart idea, or very good for you, was pleasantly surprised at actually enjoying it.

“…So when we launched off the cloud it caused us to tumble down into a tree…” Sweetie Belle was busy telling them about the most recent attempt at getting their Cutie Marks. While Sunstreak was busily trying to keep the Changeling half of his face covered. “We fell into a mud puddle and the Hand glider broke.”

“Well knowing you three, that won’t stop you…” Tornado Dust replied. “How are you holding up, Snake Eye?”

“I still have no idea how Changelings can eat physical food with these things…” He said gesturing to the single fang he had jutting from his mouth. “It keeps getting in the way…”

“They probably got used to it…” Tornado Dust replied. “Most of them probably only eat when disguised anyway.”

“Hey, Sweetie Belle!”

Sunstreak looked over towards the source of the call to see Apple Bloom walking up to them. He quickly tried to move the hood to cover up his left side.

“Hey, Apple Bloom. What’s up?”

Please don’t come over here…

The little yellow filly came up to the three of them and sat down across from Sweetie Belle. “Ah just wanted to tell ya that the Pegasi don’t want us usin’ the catapult for a few days, somethin’ bout a safety hazard.”

“I warned you three about using that thing too many times.” Tornado Dust replied looking at the yellow filly. “And look what happens.”

“Well how were we supposed to know that cloud had lightning in it?” Apple Bloom retorted. “None of us are Weather Ponies.”

“You don’t need to be a weather pony to tell the difference between a storm cloud and a normal one.” Tornado Dust said, this appeared to be an older attempt. “Why were you even trying to get a ‘Cloud busting’ Cutie Mark if none of you can tell the difference?”

“We were tryin’ new things.” Apple Bloom replied, “It was Scoot’s idea.”

“Well I’m still feeling the backlash from that attempt. That’s why Derpy had to help Rainbow during AJ’s Rodeo sendoff.”

“Well Ah didn’t put that into…” She was looking toward Sunstreak. “Well howdy, mister.”

Sunstreak just waved at her, being careful the cloak didn’t fall off his hoof.

“Apple Bloom, that’s Sunstreak…he’s having a bad day.” Tornado Dust said, hoping it explained everything.

“How so?” Apple Bloom asked.

Sweetie Belle leaned in to Apple Bloom, “Poison Joke.”

“Well Ah don’t see why that’s a problem.” The filly continued, oblivious to the fact that Sunstreak didn’t want to talk. “The Spa has the remedy for it and Zecora would be more than-“

“They ran out of supplies.” Sunstreak said, trying hard to stop the distortion effect in his voice from being noticeable. “Neither of them have any.”

“Well Ah’m sure it can’t be that bad.” Apple Bloom continued. “Why when my big Sis got hit with it she shrunk down to the size of a chickadee.”

“His is a bit more…” Tornado Dust rolled his hoof around. “Serious… Specifically with a certain recent event in Canterlot.”

“It can’t be worse than Rarity.” Apple Bloom continued to press on the subject. “She looked like one of those fancy…”

“You aren’t going to let this go are you?” Sunstreak replied, not even caring about the distortion.

“Nope.” Apple Bloom replied. “Ah mean Ah’m just curious how bad it could be that yah would need a-“ Sunstreak looked towards her.

“It’s pretty bad…” He said as the light from the lowering sun caught on his fang. Sighing, he slightly lowered his hood so that Apple Bloom could see his face.

“Whoa…ya’ll weren’t kiddin bout it bein bad…” Apple Bloom replied as she looked at the half Changeling face. “But if it’s just yer face than-“ She caught a glimpse at Sunstreak’s legs. “Oh…”

“And I’m stuck like this for the next four days.” Sunstreak explained. “And over the course of today alone, I’ve been attacked by the Captain of the Royal Guard, had to restart a total of around four hours of work, and have only left the Library twice.” He placed his face in his hooves. “I’m starting to think this town just hates me…”

“Aww, don’t be so hard on yerself.” Apple Bloom said, attempting to comfort him. “It’s not like ya helped in the invasion or anythin’.”

Sunstreak just slammed his head into the table. While Tornado Dust rubbed the back of his neck. “But be honest…” Sunstreak said, trying to recover from the obvious ‘guilty’ move he had just done. “If Tornado Dust hadn’t come to the Library when he did, I doubt Shining Armor would have stopped his ‘Interrogation’.” He then looked at Apple Bloom. “And how could this day get any worse?”

Sunstreak very quickly noticed the words he just said and slapped himself in the forehead, “I just jinxed it didn’t I?”

All three of the others nodded in agreement. As a wisp of green flame surrounded Sunstreak.

“What just changed?” Sunstreak said, not wanting to look up. “I know something just changed. So what was it?”

“You um…” Tornado Dust said. “You…look like Twilight.”

“I WHAT?” He said, looking up, only now noticing that his voice had changed as well. He looked down at himself, sure enough, he looked a lot like Twilight, his coat had changed to lavender, his mane had changed styles, and the small horn on his head had changed shape to look like a small unicorn horn. His fang was still there as were the holes in his mane and hooves, and going from the fact he could still feel them, his wings were still there, so at least there was something familiar. But he looked like Twilight in almost every other way.

“No. no. no no no no nononononononono!” Sunstreak said quickly, looking around at the confused looks around him.

Tornado Dust looked at him. “Well…Run.” Sunstreak didn’t need to be told twice; he quickly bolted from the seat and ran as fast as he could back to the large library. Not stopping once to look at any of the confused ponies around him. Once he got to the door, he quickly pushed it open before slamming it closed.

“Spike!” He said with Twilight’s voice. “We have a problem!”

The little dragon ran down the stairs. “Twilight?”

“No! It’s me, Sunstreak.” He said locking the door and backing away from it.

“Sunstreak?” Spike repeated. “But you look-“

“I know how I look! And how I sound! But I don’t know why!” He was pacing around the center of the room, only slightly aware that the cloak had fallen off when he entered the door. “This is bad….this is very bad…”

“Sunstreak, what happened?” Spike asked, trying to calm him down.

“I was talking with Apple Bloom, then there was this wisp of green fire and now I look and sound like Twilight!” His heart was beating loudly. “Then I ran all the way here and I’m certain more than a few ponies saw me.” He ran over and grabbed Spike. “What am I going to do?”

“Are you sure you aren’t Twilight?” Spike said. “Because this is what she is like when she’s nervous.”

“Spike!” Sunstreak said shaking him “This is serious! I don’t want to look like this! There’s no telling when the real Twilight will come back and I don’t even want to think about what she will do when she sees two of herself!”

Shining Armor was walking down the stairs. “What’s all the commotion?”

“Sunstreak’s symptoms got worse.” Spike explained while both of Sunstreak’s purple insect wings began beating. Lifting him into the air. “And…he can fly…”

“I can what?” Sunstreak replied, looking back at his wings, both of which were flapping on their own accord. They only stopped after Sunstreak had hit the ceiling. “I am so dead…so very dead…!”

“Hey! No pony is going to die here.” Shining Armor said.

“Are you kidding me?” Sunstreak said looking at the Unicorn. “Look at me! I look like a changeling version of Twilight!” He did, the wings on his back were both the same shade of lavender as the rest of him, his eyes had both turned purple, and his left eye actually looked like a pony eye.

“Calm down.” Shining Armor said. “Nopony is going to kill anypony.”

“Really?” Sunstreak began to shout. “Because this is going to be pretty fucking hard to explain!” Opening his wings for emphasis. “For all they know, Twilight is being held captive by a Changeling hive and I’m just one of their drones sent in to scrape up what love I can find. So please. Do tell. HOW ARE WE GOING TO EXPLAIN THIS!?”

Shining Armor clearly didn’t expect to be asked this, and given it was coming from his sister’s voice didn’t help. He was confused on how to go about this. He knew that this wasn’t a Changeling, but the evidence against him was too high. “How many ponies do you know saw you as a Changeling?”

Sunstreak thought about this for a moment. It was getting dark, so likely many ponies were off the street, and the cloak had managed to stay on for most of the time…at most a few of them saw him and they could just chalk it up to a spell if they were really desperate…that would work right? “I don’t know if any of them really saw me… At most it had to be twelve that got a good look at the transformation…or whatever happened to me.”

“Alright, so it isn’t too bad.” Shining Armor replied. “So long as they don’t start spreading the rumor around we should be fine.”

There was a knock on the door. Sunstreak immediately dashed for the basement, closing the door behind him and locking it. “I’m not here!” He said from behind the door.

“Wow…” Shining Armor said when Sunstreak was behind the door. “He’s fast…”

“Well, he was a Pegasus.” Spike said.

“AM a Pegasus!” Sunstreak corrected.

There was another knock. “Snake Eye? Spike? Let me in.” It was Tornado Dust. “There’s nopony with me I swear to Celestia.”

“Should I let him in?” Spike asked towards Shining Armor.

“Spike! Let me in or I’ll fly in through the window!” Tornado Dust said impatiently.

“Alright…” Spike walked over and opened the door; Tornado Dust flew in and slammed the door closed with his hind leg as he passed it. “Snake Eye?”

“Here…” Came Twilight’s voice from the basement.

“Really, Snake Eye?” Tornado Dust said walking over to the door, “I thought we got you to come out of the basement already?”

“Well…now that I am one: A mare, Two: a Unicorn, and Three: scared shitless, those times have changed.”

Tornado Dust rolled his eyes again. “I followed you after you ran down the busiest street in town, Good job by the way…you emulated what Twilight would have done in that situation. And a lot of them just figured it was some kind of Celestia problem. Only about three of them genuinely thought you were a Changeling.”

There was a green flash from behind the door. And instead of Twilight’s voice, Fluttershy’s came from behind the door. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I checked myself besides now you aren’t even Twi-“

There was a small shrieking sound as Sunstreak realized he was now Fluttershy. “Why does this keep happening to me?”

Spike walked up. “Hey it could be wor-“ Tornado Dust jammed his hoof into the dragon’s mouth before he could finish and shook his head.

“I don’t know…” Fluttershy’s voice came from the door.

“Hey, you do Fluttershy really well.” Spike said, “What do you look like?”

The door slowly squeaked open. And all three of them looked in to see what Sunstreak looked like now.

He looked much closer to Fluttershy than Twilight, owing to the fact that his now pink mane covered the small curved horn on his head. His insect wings were replaced by yellow Pegasus wings and most of his body had the same yellow coat as Fluttershy, his right eye was still a slit. However, his left eye was solid blue, and his mouth had two fangs jutting out of his mouth. Where Fluttershy’s usual Cutie Mark was, there was an image of green fire. His front legs still had a few holes in them, but it was a lot less than he had before.

“You actually don’t look too bad.” Tornado Dust replied, “You actually look like Fluttershy…except with fangs, a bad eye and holes in your legs.”

“Really?” Sunstreak said.

“Yeah, you even have the shyness down.” Tornado Dust said as Sunstreak slowly walked out of the basement.

“This may be worse than I originally thought…” Shining Armor commented rubbing the back of his neck.

“How so?” Spike asked.

“Well… Since the invasion… Any possible Changeling threat needs to be eliminated…” Sunstreak squeaked before backing into the basement. “But the problem is…we are considering a Changeling any pony that shows shape shifting properties.” Sunstreak had already closed the door. “At first it didn’t seem like I would have to convict him, since he showed no ability to change shape, but now…”

“Hold up!” Tornado Dust flew in front of Shining Armor. “You can’t just throw him in jail because of this! He’s done nothing wrong!”

“That may be true…” Shining armor replied. “But what is to say he won’t do something?”

“I won’t…I promise…” Came from the door.

“What if we watch over him?” Tornado Dust replied. “What’s to say this isn’t like having custody of him?”

“Yeah” Spike chimed in. “There’s no other way to get into the basement except the main door. If he never leaves…it would be kind of like police custody.”

Shining Armor rubbed his chin. “I suppose that could work… Alright.” Shining Armor said. “So long as he stays in the Library, I suppose it could work.”

Sunstreak had opened the door a little to peak out. “Really?”

“I suppose… but if I hear even a whisper about any Changeling attack, I won’t be so hospitable.”

“Got it…” Sunstreak said before pulling himself back into the basement.

“Only three more days….” Tornado Dust said.

Chapter 14: Unexpected Visitors

The next day was an interesting affair. The first hour was spent just trying to get Sunstreak to come out of the basement; he only really agreed to leave once Shining Armor had agreed to stay in a completely separate room. He was still stuck in his Fluttershy form, which suited him fine. As he was able to fly normally, but he still had to get used to how long his mane was now and the fact that every time someone spoke he had to fight an urge to dash back to the basement door and hide. He only did it three times.

Another thing they learned was that every so often, Sunstreak would turn into a random pony. Which became rather interesting when he turned into Chrysalis with Celestia’s wings and Luna’s horn. Until Shining Armor came down and Sunstreak quickly dashed into the basement until he turned into a version of Pinkie Pie with Fluttershy’s wings.

For most of the morning, Sunstreak had continued to help sort the books brought over from Canterlot and very briefly scared a foal and their mother when they walked into the Library without knocking and seeing the Chrysalis creature.

“Spike!” Sunstreak replied with Rarity’s voice while he had butterfly wings for some reason. “Where does the Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide go?”

“Bottom shelf. Furthest to the left.” Spike replied from upstairs, where he was handling the books up there.

As soon as Sunstreak placed the book in the shelf, he was again covered by a green flash and was looking at an almost pure Changeling, except for the purple Unicorn horn and the lack of wings. Making him look like a very Changeling version of Twilight.

“Typical…” Sunstreak mumbled. Looking at his wingless back. He had learned to use levitation like this, but nothing else, at least he could say that it was an illusion spell when he was like this.

He was caught off guard when the door opened and two mares walked in, one was a cream colored earth pony he learned to call BonBon, and the other was a mint Green unicorn he learned to call Lyra. He recognized the name from his first time near Ponyville, and understood that Lyra had an understandable hatred of Changelings.

“Twilight?” BonBon said towards Sunstreak.

“Yes?” He said in Twilight’s voice, glad he was like this right now. “What can I do for you?” Please don’t let it be magic related…

“Why do you look like a Changeling?” Lyra asked confused.

“Oh…I was just testing out a new spell I found. Makes you look like any other pony. I was just testing its limitations.” Sunstreak said twirling his hoof. Please don’t question it…

“Alright then, Twilight.”

Phew…

“But why do you still look like a changeling?” Lyra asked skeptically.

“Oh the spell has this weird time limit on it, I’m going to look like this for the next…thirty minutes.” That’s believable right?

“You know more about magic than I do, Twilight.” Lyra replied satisfied. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“So what’s up?” Sunstreak asked.

“We were hoping that you had a book on Detection spells.” BonBon explained.

“Well, I think we do…” Sunstreak replied unsure. “Princess Celestia sent us a whole plethora of books from the Royal Library. I haven’t had a chance to catalogue all of them yet. Give me a minute.”

Sunstreak walked up the stairs. “Hey, Spike?”

“Yeah, Sunny?” Spike said.

“Do we have any books on detection spells? BonBon and Lyra want to know.”

“If we do they should be in the basement. Twilight moved them there after the Invasion to try and get a Changeling detection spell working. She never got around to it.”

“Thanks, Spike.”

Sunstreak walked back down the stairs to see BonBon and Lyra looking over one of the bookshelves. “We moved them down into the basement, I wanted to try and make a Changeling Detection Spell… But I got caught up with this Illusion spell I found.”

“That’s our Twilight.” BonBon said rolling her eyes.

“It’s just down here.” Sunstreak said opening the door to the basement. “I’ve been spending the last few nights down here trying to work on this spell…I might have been a bit too thorough on it.”

“Like you always do, Twilight.” BonBon replied. “Spending all night studying.”

“What can I say?” Sunstreak said. “I’m studious.” He looked back to see Lyra lagging behind. “You coming, Lyra?”

“Just…Keeping my distance…” Lyra replied. “I’m still a little shaken…”

“Well I can understand that.” Sunstreak said. Giant bugs mind controlling you and trying to take over your home will do that to you.

“It should be just over here.” Sunstreak said as the three of them reached the bottom. He learned rather quickly to not try and understand what all the gadgets were for down here, he mostly just chalked it up to her just being a scientific type which is rather confusing given that she is also the magic user of the group…which kind of counteracts each other. “We’ve been using all the space down here for storage while we sort through the books.”

“Well, you sure do have a lot of room down here.” BonBon replied, looking around the room. “What are all these…”

“You wouldn’t want me to bore you with the details I’m sure…” Please don’t pick up on how non-Twilight that sounds.

“Well…I suppose you’re right.” BonBon replied. “What do you think, Lyra?”

“It’s…nice.” Lyra replied very uncomfortable.

“Don’t worry, Lyra.” Sunstreak replied. “I’m not going to wrap you in a cocoon and brainwash you. I’m not really a Changeling. I just look like one.”

“I’m still going to keep my distance if it’s all the same to you.”

“No worries. I understand.” Sunstreak was looking over a bookshelf trying to find a book on Detection Spells. “I mean if I was you I would definitely be a little suspicious of anypony that showed signs of being a changeling.”

He was so busy focusing on finding the book he didn’t realize the two pink wisps of flame until he grabbed the book and turned around to stare at two pairs of pink eyes.

He immediately dropped the book and stared. “Um…Hi?”

“Betrayer.” The Changeling that used to be BonBon hissed at him.

“Excuse me?” Sunstreak replied. Trying with all his might not to try and fight these two.

“You are a member of Chrysalis’ Hive.” The Changeling that used to be Lyra replied.

“uhhh….no.” Sunstreak replied. Before BonBon jumped on him, slamming him to the ground.

“Do not attempt to deceive us, Traitor.” It hissed at him. “You know what you’ve done.”

“Well…No point in hiding it then…” Sunstreak replied looking up at the Changeling. “Yes I am a changeling. Problem?”

BonBon hissed at him.

“Haze!” Lyra said to the Changeling. “We are not here to antagonize him. We are here to talk.”

“Yes, Blackout.” Haze stepped off of Sunstreak, backing up to be in line with Blackout.

“Our Queen wishes to make a deal with you.” Blackout explained.

“What makes you think you have anything I want?” Sunstreak said standing up.

“We have the filly you foalnapped.” Blackout explained, as her horn glowed a bright pink color and a foggy image of Meadow inside of a pink chrysalis, sleeping.

“What did you do to her?” Sunstreak said, worried.

“She is unharmed.” Blackout replied. “We have attempted to remove her memories of you. But she is stubborn.”

“If you hurt her…”

“We would not hurt a foal. It goes against our Hive.”

“Then what do you want?”

“The deal is simple.” Blackout explained. “We will allow her to retain her memories of you, given what your hive has done, secrecy is no longer on our side. We have the cure for your ailment, Aloe has been hiding it from you on the orders of our Queen. We will give you the cure, and allow her to retain her memories, all you must do in return is reveal yourself.”

“That’s all?” Sunstreak replied.

“That is all we require.”

“What if I refuse?”

“If you refuse,” Blackout began the image in front of Sunstreak changing as she spoke. “Not only will we forcibly reveal you. We will also reveal your accomplice, and we will forcefully remove the foal’s memories of you. You will be stuck without any connection to your Hive, no powers, and the ponies will judge you themselves.”

Sunstreak looked around the room, contemplating his options. But the problem was…there weren’t any options. He could either doom his friends, or doom himself. He sighed, “I’ll do it.”

“You have made the correct choice.”

“Hold up!” Sunstreak said, “What did you do with the real ponies?”

“They are safe.” Blackout replied. “You will go to Aloe, she will allow you to have the cure, once you do that, the bearers will return. You will reveal yourself, and then you will be told the location of the foal. You will tell the Royal Guard where she is, and you will inform the guard. Whether you allow your accomplice to be free is your decision.”

“He is not my accomplice. He is my friend.”

“He is from your Hive.”

“We have no Hive.”

“Blackout!” Haze commented. “The others are coming, we should go.”

“Understood.” Blackout replied. “You are not to tell them of this meeting.”

“Got it…” Sunstreak replied. As the two of them donned their disguises.

Lyra picked up the book with her magic. “Thanks, Twilight.”

“You’re welcome, Lyra.” Sunstreak replied as the three of them exited the basement, to Spike’s confusion.

“Best of luck on that illusion spell of yours.” BonBon said back.

“I’m going to need it.” Sunstreak replied as the two of them left.

The instant they left, Sunstreak transformed back into his first appearance, his half Changeling look with his Sunstreak form as well.

“What were you three talking about?” Spike asked. “You were down there for a while.”

Sunstreak sighed. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Author's Note

What is it with me and Cliffhanger endings on my updates? I'm not really sure.... :twilightsheepish:

Chapter 15: Revealed

When Twilight and her friends left the Everfree forest, they were disheartened that they couldn’t find anything to help Sunstreak.

“Maybe she just got lost and made it back?” Rainbow Dash said.

“Rainbow…Ah don’t think that’s really an option.” Applejack retorted.

“Maybe she’s planning a party for us?” Pinkie Pie replied hopping up and down.

“Pinkie, I don’t think Meadow is-“ Twilight began but was cut off by Spike running up to them.

“Twilight!”

“Spike, What are you doing here?” Twilight asked.

“Sunstreak…Shining Armor…Library…whew…” The little dragon said through heavy breaths.

“Whoa, slow down, little guy.” Rainbow Dash said flying above him.

Spike took a deep breath. “Shining Armor is here, Sunstreak really needs to talk to you in the Library.”

“Why is Sunstreak at the Library?” Rainbow asked. “Shouldn’t he be at Sugar Cube Corner by now?”

“He had a bit of a….” Spike began to explain before shaking his head. “He really needs to talk to you. He said it was urgent.”

“Alright…just let us...” Twilight began. Before Tornado Dust landed.

“Hey, you six find anything?” Tornado asked.

“Sadly we couldn’t find anything.” Twilight explained.

“Twilight! Sunstreak needs to see you!” Spike interrupted.

“Alright, Spike. Let’s see what he wants.”

Under the Library, Sunstreak was pacing around the circular basement room, trying to figure out what the best way to handle the current situation was; he kept trying to find someway to ease it in. But every possible situation ended with him either getting kicked, shot by magic, or killed…granted a very small amount of them ended in death…but it was still a possibility.

He had been careful not to let Spike see him as a Changeling, especially with the Captain of the Royal Guard just upstairs. Which could end with a rather large splatter on the wall…

By the time Twilight and her friends had entered the Library, Sunstreak was no closer to figuring out how to tell them, he would just have to go with it, and hope they don’t find Darkblaze.

“Sunstreak?” Twilight said as she opened the basement door. “What are you doing down here?”

Sunstreak sighed. “Pacing…trying to figure out something.”

“Spike said you had to tell us something.” Rainbow Dash said as she hovered a few feet from the ground.

“Yes… I do…” Sunstreak replied.

“Well, what is it, darling?” Rarity asked.

Sunstreak sighed. “I have absolutely no idea how to say this…”

“What is it, Sunny?” Pinkie Pie said jumping around. “Did you find Meadow? Did your parents come over? Are you planning a party?”

“Pinkie! Let the stallion talk.” Applejack said to the bouncing pink pony, making her stop mid hop and hover in the air.

“Sunstreak, what did you want to tell us?” Fluttershy asked, “Is it something bad?”

Sunstreak sighed. “I’m a changeling.”

There was a long pause after he said this. It seemed like the entire room just became a vacuum, even Rainbow’s wings weren’t breaking the silence.

“That was a good one, Sunny.” Rainbow Dash replied. “Now what did you really want to tell us?”

Sunstreak sighed. “That was what I wanted to tell you.” He said as a green flame surrounded him, his Pegasus disguise gone. All that stood was a black Changeling with a slit eye.

The silence that held the room was shattered in an instant, Applejack quickly kicked him in his chest, sending him spinning into the far wall with his horn jammed into it.

“Wonderful…” Shade sighed. “That only took two seconds…” He managed to pull his horn from the wall and turned to see three of the mares glaring at him aggressively.

Twilight’s horn was glowing and she looked like she was fully willing to hit him with a magical blast. Applejack had raised her Stetson and was looking Shade right in the eyes. Rainbow Dash was flying next to Applejack, slamming her front hooves together.

Looking past those three, he saw that Rarity had fainted; Fluttershy was hiding behind Pinkie who was…unfazed? Did she already know?

“Yah’ve got ten seconds ‘fore I buck yer head off.” Applejack said.

“Don’t even try to run.” Rainbow Dash threatened.

“Never planned on it.” Shade replied sitting down and raising his front hooves in surrender. Which seemed to take the two mares by surprise. “What?”

“What are you doing?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Surrendering. What does it look like?” Shade replied.

“Yah mean yah aren’t gonna try-?”

“Nope.” Shade replied “And be honest with me? What plan could I possibly have?”

“Uh…” Rainbow Dash replied. “Try and take over Equestria?”

“Now why in all that is holy, would I do that?”

“Because you’re a Changeling!” Rainbow Dash said.

“Yes. I told you that a minute ago. Please keep up.” Shade replied. Shade looked towards the others with his left eye. He could see that they were confused, Twilight seemed curious, while Pinkie was still… What is she feeling?

“Why would you surrender?” Twilight asked her horn no longer glowing.

“Well…There appears to be a six-on-one situation going on here. So I don’t see any other options.”

“But why would you show yourself?” Twilight asked walking up to him. “Especially when you have all six of us brought here.”

“Why do you care?” Shade replied. “You were told to capture any Changeling you find.”

“But…” Twilight tried to reply. “I still don’t understand…”

“What is there to understand?” Shade asked. “I’m a Changeling, you’re a unicorn. So why don’t you do your job?”

“Yeah, Twilight.” Rainbow Dash replied. “Why don’t we just lock him up?”

“Ah’m not really one to agree with Rainbow, but we should turn ‘im in.”

“But I don’t understand.” Twilight replied. “Why would he want to do any of this?”

Shade sighed. Listening to these three argue about reasoning. If he could tell them, he would. But he couldn’t. Not if he wanted to free Meadow.

“Um…Sunstreak…” Fluttershy asked, walking past the three other mares. “Why do you look so worried?”

Shade sighed. “There’s really no point in hiding it…” He said. “I’m doing this to save Meadow.”

Immediately all three mares stopped. “You’re what?”

“Might as well come completely clean with all of you…” Shade said. “My name is Shade. I was at the invasion in Canterlot, so was Meadow. I rescued her from another group of Changelings and we got blasted all the way into Everfree. I’ve been trying to protect her to bring her back to Canterlot, I had every intention of bringing her back…I just needed to wait for the security to die down a little.”

“But then you used her for your own feeding!” Rainbow Dash said pointing a hoof at him.

“What? No!...okay, I may have at first…but she was the only living thing that I could feed off of at the time. But I didn’t take enough to cause any problems.”

“But you still fed off of her!” Rainbow Dash said flying up to his face. “Maybe you were never going to…”

“Rainbow Dash, you have four seconds to get out of my face.” Shade replied. Rainbow Dash was quickly pulled back by a pink aura around her tail.

“Rainbow, let him finish.” Twilight said.

“Thank you, Twilight.” Shade said before continuing. “Before the thunderstorm, my horn got cracked, and it was going to release all of my emotional energy. So I flew up into the clouds and released all of it up there…”

“That was you?” Twilight replied astonished. “I saw your horn glowing from the Library. I thought it was some kind of destruction spell.”

“Well, it must have been, because I blacked out, and when I came to there were three changelings, but they were different. Their eyes were pink… and Meadow tried to stop them…but they took her.” Shade was having trouble remembering this. “They wiped my memories… And… Then everything else.”

“Why are you trying to protect Meadow?” Twilight asked.

“Is she a-“

“No, Rainbow. She is not a Changeling.” Shade replied. “Anyway back to the reason why I’m doing this, The Hive contacted me yesterday…”

This was met by a collective gasp. “Chrysalis contacted you?”

“No…that insectoid cunt doesn’t care about me.” Shade replied. “They were from that pink hive… They said that I could turn myself in, and they would leave Meadow alone, or they would forcibly turn me in and remove her memories of me.”

“And so you’re…”

“I’m doing this to save her.” Shade replied. “I promised her I would protect her. No matter what.”

“And what a promise that was.” Said a voice from the top of the stairs.

“Shining!” Twilight said when she looked up at the door.

“Oh god….” Shade mumbled before looking up the stairs. He saw Shining Armor at the top of the stairway, but the weird thing was…he didn’t seem angry at all…almost…content.

“I must say… You certainly were devoted to your cover.” Shining said as he walked down to the floor. “I’ve never seen a changeling that would continue to hold onto their cover even after a guard fully threatened them.”

Never seen? He’s seen other Changelings like me?

“Chrysalis would be proud.” Shining said as he reached the bottom. “Too bad she will never know.”

“Shining, please don’t hurt him.” Twilight said, standing between the two of them. “There is so much we can learn from them.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Twilight.” Shining Armor replied. Bringing confused looks from both Shade and Twilight. “I have just as many questions as you.”

“Then why didn’t you ask them in the two days you had the chance to?” Shade asked, he was completely confused; Shining Armor seemed to know he was a Changeling, but he seemed so unsure about it before… And he clearly wasn’t very happy with Changelings before. So why wouldn’t he assert his Royal orders and throw him in a dungeon?

“Well I had to keep my own cover as well.” Cover? “I wanted to see this Changeling the scouts kept talking about, the one who befriended a filly.”

“You mean you knew this whole time?” Shade asked, surprised.

“I’ve known since the first night you spent in Everfree. My scouts found Meadow Song sleeping in the ruins, surrounded by that ring of fire you put down.” Shining Armor looked towards Shade. “Ever since then my scouts have been shadowing you.”

“Wait…” Twilight said looking towards Shade. “If you’ve been a Changeling this whole time, does that mean you faked the Burning Fiords?” She seemed to be slightly sad about that. She must have really wanted to see the Fiords.

“No, all of that was genuine.” Shade replied. “Since I… ‘Hatched’ I suppose is the correct term, from that pod, I’ve been having these weird visions… I see the Fiords… it’s almost like a past life. But the one thing that always sticks out is Chrysalis’ eyes.”

“What about Tornado Dust?” Rainbow Dash asked flying up to Shade. “Where does he fit in to all this?”

Shade sighed. “He knew nothing about me being a Changeling… For all he knew, I was just an old friend.”

Pinkie Pie somehow found a lamp and was shining it in his face. “Then what’s up with your eye, buster?” This pony… “And why would you try and become friends with us? And what did you do with my cookies?”

“What cookies?” Shade replied his eye unable to adjust to the bright light in his face.

“Don’t act dumb with me.” Pinkie said poking Shade. “I’ve been dumb long before you were. Now answer the question!”

Shade stared at her for a moment. “What is up with you?”

“Answer the question!” Pinkie replied.

“Fine… Ever since I broke out of that pod, my right eye has been like this, I can get rid of it when disguised by a spell I learned, but only for a few minutes. I tried to get to know you so that I could learn more about ponies.”

“That you would later bring back to Chrysalis!” Rainbow shouted.

“No! So that I could live. My knowledge of Equestria is limited because I’ve never been here. I wanted to learn as much as I could. And maybe stay here after I got Meadow back home. Seeing as I can’t go back to the Fiords…”

“Why can’t you go back?” Fluttershy asked.

“The clearest vision I had, shows a city in the Fiords being attacked by Changelings,” Shade explained. “I doubt they would be open to me looking like this.” He raised his hoof, looking through one of the holes. “I’ve seen what will happen… And I’m not ready to face that yet…” He sighed. “Now please move that light…It’s starting to hurt.”

Twilight took the lamp away from Pinkie and put it in the corner of the room. Leaving Shade to blink for a few seconds so his eyes could adjust.

“Something I still don’t understand…” Twilight replied. “Why did you save Meadow in the first place?”

“Because I couldn’t let them hurt her.”

There was a pause, before Rainbow Dash broke the silence. “What do you mean?”

Shade looked up at the Pegasus. “What would you do in that situation? Let them drain her?” Rainbow Dash looked surprised by the question. “That’s what I thought… I may be an Insect pony thing. But I’m not a monster. I’m not about to let a defenseless child get hurt while I have the ability to prevent it.”

“Interesting…” Shining Armor replied. “Now I see why Meadow trusts you.”

Shade turned to look towards Shining Armor, before noticing that his normally blue eyes had changed to pink. “Who are you?”

There was a wisp of pink flame that surrounded Shining Armor, taking everyone by surprise, when the fire receded, a Changeling Queen stood before them. She looked similar to Chrysalis, in height and body type, but instead of a long free flowing mane, this queen had her dark pink mane pinned up in a bun. Her wings were a light shade of red and the back plate shared the same pink color as her eyes, with three darker pink stripes down her stomach.

“I am Queen Acari, Ruler of the Just Hive.” Her presence activated an instinct in Shade to bow to her.

“Shining…” Twilight said before her horn was alight with purple magic. “What did you do to my brother!”

Shade stepped between the two of them, not from an order, but because she was his only chance to get to Meadow. “Twilight…don’t…”

“He is fine, Miss Sparkle.” Acari replied. “He is still in Canterlot, on patrol for any remaining Changelings.”

Twilight wasn’t backing down.

“Twilight…” Shade said, he didn’t want to attack her, but he would if it came to it. “Let’s hear her out. I won’t allow you to harm her beforehand.”

“But she…” Twilight tried to argue.

“Why would she show herself if she was planning on attacking?” Shade retorted.

Twilight’s academic brain tried to piece together a reason, but she couldn’t find one that would explain why she had dropped her disguise. No one was onto her, her hive is nearby, and there is no reason to believe this Queen was aggressive. Her horn stopped glowing, and both of them relaxed.

“If I had expected that type of reaction I would have just kept the disguise on.” Acari said from behind Shade. “Now I am sure you have questions.”

“Yes…one, how did you know about me?”

“When Blackout removed your memory, she brought it back to me; I looked it over and found some very…interesting memories.”

“Wait… You can look into somepony’s memories?” Twilight queried, she was back in her curiosity state of wanting to find out as much as she could.

“Yes… It is how we remain secret.” Acari explained. “Or rather…how we used to remain secret. We would remove the memories of those who saw us, fabricating memories to fit into the blank spaces. All Hives have their own methods, ours is memories.”

“What do you mean… ‘Interesting memories’?” Shade asked turning to look at the queen.

“Well… some of your memories appeared to be from the point of view of a dragon.” Acari looked for any kind of reaction from Shade. “Which I thought was very strange. How could a changeling have a dragon’s memory? I asked myself. And then I found it…Chrysalis.”

“I don’t follow…” Shade replied. “What does Chrysalis have to do with my visions?”

“Well, allow me to explain.” Acari replied. “Some changeling hives have a very special ability, it is seen as a total last resort for many, but some see it as a common use of magic. Some Queens believe in conversion, transforming a sentient creature into a changeling. Chrysalis is one such Queen.” Acari’s horn glowed pink as a wall of smoke appeared in front of them, casting an image of Shade’s last memory. “I knew that Chrysalis was a powerful Queen, but I never thought it possible for her to convert a dragon. The process alone would have taken decades to complete.”

Shade was watching the projection. “So…those visions were real? All of them?”

“It is possible that the Conversion suppressed many of your memories, and this was your brain’s way of teaching you.” The image changed to show the Canterlot invasion. “I was skeptical of you at first, I believed you had the filly under some kind of mental control, but then I came to this.”

Acari was showing the first time Shade had met Meadow. Exactly how it happened, even down to Spine and the group of Changelings. When they flew off, and then when Shade had crashed through the building, covering Meadow.

“You risked your own safety to protect that foal,” Acari said, the fog vanishing. “Even though it went against your hive, you believed in your own morals more than anything Chrysalis programmed into you. However…” Acari was looking Shade in the eyes. “That was not enough to influence my decision. I required proof of your dedication to allies.”

Shade could tell where this was going… “It was you… You took…”

Acari nodded. “Yes, under my orders, my scouts took what Tornado Dust prized most, and we left it where it would be found. I needed to see the lengths you would go to. And according to my scouts… You went pretty far.”

Shade rubbed the back of his neck. “You could say that…”

Twilight was watching on, waiting for an opportunity to speak. “But then why would you come here?” Acari turned to look at the unicorn.

“Ah yes, Twilight.” Acari said holding out her hoof. “I’ve heard so much about you from Celestia.”

“You know the Princess?” Twilight said surprised.

“Oh yes. Celestia and I have met before. We came to an agreement. We help enforce Equestrian law, and we are left alone; which worked out given that we feed primarily off of Guilt and Gratification.” Acari explained. “Many of my changelings help to enforce the laws, and keep the Hives’ locations hidden.”

“Well…not that this doesn’t shatter my reality… but why would you come here?” Twilight asked still stunned that she never knew this about her teacher before.

“Ah yes…I didn’t want to rely on the word of drones, while they would never lie to me, I prefer to see these things with my own eyes.” Acari turned into Shining Armor again but kept her normal voice. “I took the guise of your brother to see how Shade here would react, and see what he would do in response to my deal.”

“So…How did I do?” Shade asked.

“Well…I can tell that the drones were not lying about you.” Acari replied. “You protect your friends regardless of self-harm and are willing to do what you must to keep promises. I must also apologize personally for removing your memory. At the time I believed you followed Chrysalis. I now see how wrong I truly was.”

“So what does that mean?” Shade asked hopefully.

“It means that I don’t believe you or your accomplice should be held responsible for the attack.” Acari replied. “And…I believe your intentions are pure.”

Shade’s eyes widened. “Does that mean that...?”

Acari nodded. “I believe you should be allowed to bring her home.” She looked up to the top of the stairs, where BonBon and Lyra had entered with Meadow in between them.

The small light brown filly looked into the room, and seeing Shade, ran down the stairway.

“Mr. Shade!” She said as she gave him a hug.

“Hey, Meadow…” Shade replied, returning the hug. “I was worried about you.”

“I was worried about you too.” Meadow replied. “When they knocked me out I was so worried I would never see you again. I thought you were going to get caught out there. Then they told me you were just using me. But I didn’t listen to them. I knew you would come get me.”

Shade had to fight back a tear. “I’m so glad to see you again. I thought I lost you. Then what was I supposed to tell your mother.” Shade couldn’t have been happier to see that orange flame of trust coming off of Meadow, that single flame was what kept him hoping he would find her. He didn’t want to let her down.

Shade looked around the room, Twilight was watching the two of them smiling, Rainbow Dash was looking away from them, Applejack had lowered her Stetson, Fluttershy was currently trying to fan Rarity awake, and Pinkie was crying large streams of tears.

“If you want my opinion,” Acari said to Shade. “The security in Canterlot has dropped enough for you to safely enter the city. They aren’t checking everyone that leaves the trains anymore.”

“You hear that, Meadow?” Shade said to the small brown filly. “Looks like we’re heading back.”

Shade could feel the little filly’s happiness, warming the room around him. “Does that mean I get to see mom again?”

“Yes, Meadow…” Shade replied. “You’re going home.”

“Hey you know what this calls for?” Pinkie Pie replied, quickly stemming her streaming tears. “A PARTY!”

The next day, Sunstreak and Meadow stood at the train station, saying goodbye to everyone.

“You still owe me that race.” Rainbow Dash said. “I don’t care if you are a changeling, I still wanna race you.”

“Yer always welcome down at Sweet Apple Acres. Just let me know ahead a time.” Applejack said.

“I would love a chance to study you when you get back, Sunny.” Twilight replied. “And if you see Shining Armor, tell him I said hi.”

“I’ll never forget you!” Pinkie Pie cried, pulling Sunstreak into a near bone crushing hug.

“Pinkie…Air…” Sunstreak said through gasps of air. “Can’t…feel…lungs…!”

“Write soon! I want to know everything that happens.” Pinkie Pie said letting go of Sunstreak.

“I’ll try to.” Sunstreak said rubbing his chest.

“Looks like the train is coming in.” Tornado Dust said as the metal train became visible. “Take care of yourself, Snake Eye. If you need any help. Don’t be afraid to tell me.”

“Will do!” Sunstreak said as he stepped onto the train, his knife belt secured with both the blade and a bag of Rainbow Cookies. “I’ll see you all in a few days.”

The inside of the train was a greenish brown color, with green benches instead of seats. There weren’t very many ponies on the train, which was understandable given that the city was still mostly on guard for Changelings. Which just meant less ponies to notice him, so he was fine with it.

“You excited, Meadow?” Sunstreak asked the little brown filly across from him.

“Yeah.” She replied squirming with excitement. “This is my first time riding a train. And I can’t wait to see mom again.”

“Well…it’s my first time doing this too. At least like this.” Sunstreak replied. “I just hope it isn’t too different.”

As the train began to pull away from the station, Sunstreak began to feel a slight tingle up his spine.

It’s probably nothing…

Author's Note

Well... It looks like we are nearing the end. Shade is on his way to Canterlot, all seems right, and absolutely nothing could go wrong...

Chapter 16: Return to Canterlot

When the train pulled into the ivory and gold city. Sunstreak could definitely tell security was still a big issue, there were spear-wielding guards at the station, probably there in case any trouble was started. But no unicorn was checking every one that walked in, so that was good.

From what Sunstreak could see, many of the buildings were still being repaired, especially the castle, it didn’t even look like it was being repaired…Celestia must be caring for her subjects first. I can respect that.

When they got off at the station, Meadow began looking around for any sign of her mother.

“Here, kiddo.” Sunstreak said bending down to let Meadow climb on his back. “This may help.” Meadow climbed up and began looking around.

“I can’t see her.” Meadow said.

“Well… it is a big city.” Sunstreak replied. “Maybe she’s just somewhere else.”

“Where should we start?” Meadow asked.

“Well…Twilight wrote me a list of possible locations…” He reached into the sheathe belt he had to pull out a scroll. “Here…you handle this. Just tell me where to go.”

They spent a few hours wandering around the city, getting their bearings. They walked to around half the spots Twilight suggested, and were still no closer to finding Candlelight. Sunstreak wasn’t too stressed out over getting captured here as he was in Ponyville and Meadow noticed.

“Why aren’t you worried at all?”

“Well I wouldn’t say ‘at all’ but I’m definitely more certain with who I am.” It was true, the first time he entered Ponyville he had no idea what he was doing, but he had gotten used to his back-story. He was sure that he wouldn’t have to explain himself too much besides “I came from Ponyville where this filly was found,” but he still had Meadow. She was from around here. So these ponies should know her.

“All I’m saying is that as long as I don’t do anything stupid, I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?” Meadow asked she leaned in so that she was close to Sunstreak’s ear. “What if they use that disillusion spell on you?”

“Well then…I suppose I simply tell them the truth.” Sunstreak replied. “They either believe me or they don’t… that’s all there is.” This is what he was worried about. But if he gave them no reason to think he was a changeling, they would have no reason to check. That was all there was to it.

“Where is the next location, Meadow?” Sunstreak asked turning to look at the filly.

“Ummm…the…Al…chum…i…cull…”

“Alchemical.”

“Yeah that…um…L-Lap-or-i-tories…Laboratory?”

“Alchemical Laboratory?” Sunstreak repeated. “Why would Twilight tell us to go there?”

“I didn’t even know we had an… alchemical place.”

“Laboratory… Okay just cross that one off the list.” For two reasons: One, Sunstreak wasn’t good at making alchemy that didn’t explode and Two, that wasn’t at all what Meadow described her mother’s job was.

“Then next is… ‘Donut Joe’s.’ Hey, I know this place.” Meadow said excitedly.

“Well…I guess we could pick something up, I’m glad I got Tornado to give me some bits for this.”

Sunstreak wasn’t too pleased about going into any crowded places, but the chance to get something he was familiar with and actually considered ‘food’ wasn’t a bad thing. Sure the flower sandwich had been alright…nothing beat what he was used to.

“Hi, Mr. Donut.” Meadow said as the two of them entered the store, it was a small store, but had chairs around so you could sit and eat inside. The stallion that Meadow was talking to was tall, average build, brown and had a short messy mane.

“Well if it isn’t little, Meadow. Where’s your mom?”

“We’re trying to find her. Have you seen her?” Meadow asked.

“Not recently. Come to think of it, last time I saw her was the day after the invasion… Whose your friend?”

“My name is Sunstreak.” Sunstreak replied walking up to the counter. “I’m not from around here. I found Meadow out in Everfree. She was apparently taken by a Changeling.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Not at all. I’m glad that I found her. I’d hate to think what that insect would have done to her if I hadn’t.”

“Well I’m sure that Candlelight will be happy to see her.” Joe replied. “So you wanna buy something?”

“Sure. Meadow?”

When the two of them left the store, Sunstreak had a new idea of where to go next, he had managed to get a street address for Meadow’s house. So he decided the best possible action would be to take her there. After a few hours of getting lost and asking directions, he managed to find the right address.

It was a standard house, the building looked undamaged, so the white stone and golden rooftop looked pristine. The door was light blue and looked to be made out of wood, there were about four windows on the building facing the street.

“Well, Meadow…” Sunstreak said. “Here we are.”

Meadow climbed off his back. She was clearly happy to be back. “What if my mom isn’t there?”

“Then we wait.” Sunstreak said, walking up to the door.

When he knocked, he was surprised to find the door open on it’s own.

“Hello?” He said into the empty house. There didn’t seem to be anyone here. Meadow had walked up to his side. And the two of them walked into the house.

“Mom?” Meadow called into the empty house.

Sunstreak could feel that tingle on his back again. “Something isn’t right…”

“What is it?” Meadow asked.

“I don’t know… I just…feel something…”

The door closed behind them.

“So glad you could finally join us.” Came a voice from the darkness. I know that voice.

“Who are you?” Sunstreak said stepping in front of Meadow.

“You don’t remember us… Then maybe this will help.” A green ball flew out of the darkness into Sunstreak’s chest, launching him back.

“Sunstreak!” Meadow called.

Sunstreak’s eye adjusted to the light, and through it he could see multiple solid blue eyes. “Meadow! Get back!”

A changeling jumped out of the darkness and grabbed Meadow in its hooves. Pulling her back into the shadows.

“Let her g-AH!” Another blast had hit him in his hind leg, knocking him to the ground.

“Hello, Nymph.” Came the same voice.

“Oh god…” Sunstreak lifted his head to look at who had just shot him. It was Spine…he had a crack in his chest, his general armor was dented slightly, and he was indeed pissed.

“You thought you got away didn’t you?” He said walking up and slamming his hoof on Sunstreak’s back leg. “Traitor.”

“You did that to yourself, Spine.” Sunstreak replied. “When the Royal Guard catch you-AH!” Spine had applied all his weight onto Sunstreak’s hind leg.

“I think you mean IF they catch us. We have been here since the invasion failed.” He turned to look over at Meadow. “And it turned out to work perfectly. We didn’t even need to look to find both you and the foal.”

“I swear if you-“ Sunstreak heard a snap.

“I’m sorry…was that your leg? I suppose I can pay you back for what you did to me.”

“Go…Fuck…Yourself.” Sunstreak replied, holding back the pain that had erupted in his leg.

“Hmmm…the other leg it is then.” Shade felt the knife get pulled out of the sheathe, he didn’t need to turn to look at what was going on. He felt the knife plunge into his other hind leg, spilling the crimson blood all over the floor.

Sunstreak screamed from the pain. The combined pain of both his now broken leg and the large knife wound made it very difficult to form any rational thought.

“I don’t think that is enough… What about you?” Sunstreak managed to look towards Meadow, who was crying. “Yes…I think you are quite right. Why not stop him from flying as well?”

He felt the knife remove itself from his leg, the heat now spreading even quicker, he felt his wing being lifted up by some kind of magic, before he heard the unmistakable crack of wings, followed by two more cracks closer to his body. He couldn’t feel either of them, everything was in pain; all he could make out for certain was the blood still flowing from his wound.

“Don’t worry, Nymph.” Spine hissed. “We won’t let you die here. We’ll let the Royal Guard find you. Then they will deal with you.” He leaned in to Sunstreak’s ear. “Thanks for bringing us the foal. She will be wonderful for the hive.”

Sunstreak managed to raise his head to look Spine right in the eye. “I’m…Going…to kill you….”

“If you ever manage to find us.” Spine said, before raising his hoof and slamming onto Sunstreak’s head.

Author's Note

:twilightoops: Well... That was... Wow.
The gore tag is there for a reason... Not this mind you... It gets worse later.
Anyway this marks the end of Part 1 of Converted. When will part Two come out? When I finish editing it. I am NOT leaving it on another cliffhanger God Damn it! :trollestia:

Chapter 17: Captured

“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” Shade repeated as he slammed his head into the stone wall of his cell, each time making a clink sound. “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”

He had let his guard down; he figured that there was no way he would get caught that he forgot about the fact that Changelings were likely still in Canterlot. He was so sure of that fact that he didn’t even try and look into the darkness for two seconds.

“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”

Spine had fulfilled his threat, he did send an anonymous tip that a Changeling was in that building, when the Guards found him, he wasn’t disguised anymore, his leg jutted out at a strange angle, the other one held a knife stabbed through it, and his wing was crumpled like tissue paper.

“Stupid! Stupid! Stu-ow…” He said as he stopped slamming into the wall, his chitin had blocked out most of the damage, leaving nothing but a few scratch marks, the wall had no such luck, there was clearly a working crack in the wall, formed from the nearly half hour session of slamming his head into it.

In Shade’s mind, he deserved it, not only had he managed to fail to get Meadow home safely, but he also got himself caught, her trapped by the swarm, and himself physically disabled. Oh…and he may have gotten Meadow’s mom captured as well. Wonderful…

When he woke up, he was inside of this cell, a single, cold, dark room, deep underground in a dungeon, not only was it unbearably boring down here, but no one had even shown up yet to check up on him. Granted he was currently one of the lowest ranking criminal scumbags at this point in time. So his life was turned around in about three minutes.

After quickly checking to make sure his horn wasn’t damaged, he looked back over to the wall; it was beginning to form a dent in it that didn’t used to be there.

He managed to hobble back over to the bed, which was little more than a slab of stone with a mattress that could only be classified as being slightly more comfortable rock.

Finding the wall there didn’t look to have enough of a dent in it, he began to hit it with the side of his face.

“Just. One. Fucking. Day. Is. That. Too. Much. To. Ask.” He said with each slam noticing a growing stinging pain that he ignored. “One. Fucking. Day. Without. This. Shit.”

Eventually he stopped, mostly because the pain was beginning to seep through his chitin and he was worried he would be bleeding more than he already was. But also because he heard a voice from behind him say. “Why are you doing that?”

He turned to see a Royal Guard, light brown, Earth pony, gold armor, he looked slightly concerned but Shade was in full on ‘leave me alone’ mode so he wasn’t too happy to answer literally.

“I’m hoping if I do this enough maybe I’ll break my neck.” Shade replied, slamming his head into the wall again as if to illustrate his point.

“Don’t go killing yourself yet Changeling.” The guard replied. “The captain still wants to question you himself.”

“Well tell him that I won’t talk to him unless he brings me a form that says “World’s Biggest Idiot” to sign. I’m so Stupid!” he said slamming his head against the wall again, before rubbing the side of his face with his hoof. “Ow…”

“I’ve been sent to inform you that medical aid will be coming to check on you.”

“Well woopdie Fuckin’ Doo. All aboard the party Train.” He mimed pulling on a steam whistle while saying “Woo Woo.”

“I have also been told to inform you that any attempt to harm the medical staff will be treated with forced knockout spells.”

“Listen to me…whatever your name was…” Shade honestly didn’t care. “I have no intention of harming any medical staff, I have every intention of finding a bug, taking my hoof, and ramming so far up his ass that it comes out the other end. And then killing him.”

“You are not going to be leaving this cell for quite a long time.”

“Blah, blah, blah.” Shade responded. “What part of…I don’t care… is confusing to you?”

Apparently the guard gave up trying to talk to Shade after that, because he rolled his eyes and walked back down the hall. Leaving Shade alone in his small cell yet again, left to think about his failure, and even more about the ‘Security’ these ponies placed on the capital in the first place. If a small squad of Changelings managed to get back in with no one noticing, than security must be the worst here.

His concentration was interrupted when a few new clopping sounds entered his ears, looking up he saw a new guard, Unicorn, white, same gold armor…and… something new. Looked like a cross between a bat and a pony, bat like wings, small fangs, cat like eyes, darker armor, with a gem in the shape of a cat’s eye on his chest.

“And what are you?” Shade said to the new Guard, not registering the third pony. “You look more messed up than I do.”

“I am a Lunar Guard. Part of the Princess' Night Guard.”

“Well you look weird and that’s all I’m gonna say.” Shade replied focusing on the third pony. She also had a white coat, red mane, lab coat, bag… Oh…wonderful.

“So am I correct in assuming you’re the Medical staff I was told about?” Shade said, turning himself over so he was looking upside down at the pony.

“Yes…I am here to…”

“I can tell you exactly what is wrong, Stab wound in my right hind leg, complete Femoral fracture in my left, snapped wing membrane, concussion.”

“Even so I must check on you.”

“Prisoner, stand, face the back wall…”

“Are you kidding?”

“Stand and face the…”

“Okay…what am I going to do here?”

“Stand and face the back wall. Do not attempt any sudden moves unless directed to do so.”

“Oh my God…” Shade placed his head in his hoof before complying, with difficulty, as his left leg was not willing to cooperate at all. “Happy?”

Shade could hear the metal door open, and the clopping of hooves met his ears as the two unicorns entered the cell with him.

“You will comply with Dr. Rose. Any…”

“Any resistance will be met with knockout spells. I know. Just get this over with.”

The procedure was relatively quick, Dr. Rose looked at the three most prominent injuries, took a measurement of the wound on his hind right leg. Before the door slid open and closed again, prompting him to turn around. The Unicorns had left leaving only the Lunar Guard.

“So what were you doing during the attack?” Shade asked, smiling at the Lunar Guard, who just glared at him.

“You’re absolutely sure about this?” Silver Shield asked Rose. They had just looked at the prisoner’s injuries. And while he had no liking for the changeling, he couldn’t deny that the injuries were severe, but to move him from the Dungeons.

“Yes.” Rose replied. “You saw that leg wound, it went right through his chitin, there is no telling what kind of interior damage he sustained.”

“Isn’t there some way you could-“

“No.” Rose said bluntly. “If he doesn’t get some higher grade medical attention soon, I’m not sure he will survive. That wound could be heavily infected, and I can’t tell using the field equipment I have. I need medical tools.”

Silver Shield had to admit, that wound was pretty bad, that knife was a pretty nasty weapon, and the serrated edge cut through his chitin without any resistance, so it may have made some nasty damage. But even then, there is no way in Tartarus that the Captain would okay this without seeing the changeling.

“Alright…I’ll try and see if I can get some kind of release form for it.”

“Well then, there is nothing I can do until then.” Rose grabbed her bag in her magic and walked out. “Make sure it is quick, I have no idea how long he will live with that open wound.”

“There’s no way Shining Armor is going to okay this….”

That night, Shade couldn’t get much more than a few minutes to an hour of sleep, every time he attempted to close his eyes and nod off, he would be jolted awake by a nightmare, usually consisting of Meadow being fed off by Changelings or her mother, or a Changeling disguised as her mother… There was even one where he was the one to do it.

“Meadow!” He shouted as he jolted up from his most recent nightmare. Continuing to maintain the headache he had all day. “It’s no use…” He said buzzing his wing to take pressure off his left leg while he got up.

The entire night had gone like this. Rest his eyes, Nightmare, try to sleep, Nightmare, nap, Nightmare. He gave up on the idea of sleep after the most recent dream, he physically had drained Meadow… all of her emotions…her face…she…

“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” He was lightly tapping his head against the wall making sure not to increase the amount of pain he felt in his head but enough to make a chink sound. Why is this happening to me? He asked himself. All I’m trying to do is help one child. And instead I get her captured, I get myself captured, and now I can’t even walk properly.

The night was long, owing more to the fact that he had no visible light source inside his cell, the only lights came from the candles or lamps outside the cell that were currently extinguished, plunging the cells into darkness. Even though it was pitch black, Shade could still barely see with his good eye, outlines were all he could reasonably see, and given that he couldn’t pick up on any emotions around him, he was the only sentient creature down here.

When he stopped tapping his head to the wall, he stared around the cell that was now his home; the guards had informed him that his magic was suppressed so that he wouldn’t try anything. If he had grown to rely on his magic, that could have been a problem, but as it stands, he couldn’t care less.

The cell was barren, nothing was there but the bed and the small dents he placed in the wall using his skull. The entire room was solid stone, carved into the mountain; clearly it had been used, but not in many years. The cell gave a sterile look, making the illusion of a bug caught in a cage more prevalent.

In the long hours of darkness he had left, he began thinking about what he would have done in the same situation, a member of the group that attacked his home, captured his leader and could be a gold mine of information, but was also very badly injured. His training had told him to attempt to extract information from the target, but not kill them, and that seemed to be a similar look on Equestrian laws. If they really wanted revenge, they could have killed him when he was down, unable to fight back, broken. Instead they had brought him to a dark underground cell and had brought him a medic. Granted there was likely little she could do with field equipment.

As his mind began to float towards these topics, he began to think about what he had heard from Darkblaze; it was back when he was first learning to be a Changeling, what was it he said…

He tried to focus on the memory, pull it to the surface trying to block out everything else. Just enough so that he could hear what Darkblaze had said. He couldn’t manage to pull it up, something felt like it was stopping him from looking, blocking the memory. Why?

Seeing how that memory wasn’t working, he decided to draw his attention to something else, what he managed to find, was something he himself hoped he wouldn’t need to see.

He was delving into the memories of the first guard he had met, during the invasion, he had fully drained a guard, hoping to merely slow him down, and it had been so easy…to leave him drained. Shade had saved him… using the energy he gained from the guard to cast that one healing spell. Apparently memories don’t work the same.

While he didn’t want to delve into these memories, he found himself sucked into them, and what he saw, was just two images. His own face staring back at him, then a white unicorn foal, crying. He quickly severed this memory. He didn’t notice he was panting.

“Sun…glider…” He said under his breath. It was the name of the guard, the one he had fought against. Shade felt an obligation to ask how he was doing. He wanted to know if he was fine. “Please… let him be fine.”

Shade had eventually nodded off into a dreamless sleep, brought on by a mixture of exhaustion, and pain.

Shade awoke with a start when he felt an emotional trace and heard the clopping of hooves on the stone floor. His headache was still present and his legs were still akin to mush, but at least the dreams stopped.

“You’re up early.” Came a female voice from the cell’s doorway, Shade couldn’t make anything out as his eyes were fogged over from him somehow sleeping with his head hanging off the bed.

“Am I?” Shade replied. Trying to find some way to judge what time it was before the tiredness shrugged off and he remembered where he was. His eyes refused to clear even as he rubbed them. “I can’t exactly tell time down here.” He had managed to tell the new entrant’s colors at least, she was pink… but his eyes were still too fogged to make out any details, so she just looked like a pink fluff ball.

“When the guards told me they found a Changeling within the city. My mind went right to the worst.”

“How so?” Shade asked, blinking rapidly, trying to get his vision cleared.

“I thought she was planning something again,” No idea who “She” is “But then they told me how they found you.” She seemed slightly concerned.

“And so you came here why?” Shade asked, he didn’t mind, anything to get his mind off of the nightmares and throbbing pain was good enough for him, even if his vision was still blurry.

“Well I wanted to see exactly how bad it was.” She said this with a slight tone of care. “And see if there was something I could do.”

Shade’s vision had cleared enough for him to see some basic shapes, the pony in front of him was taller than most mares he had seen even if it wasn’t very noticeable. She seemed to be a unicorn, going from the pointy thing that rose above her head. But Shade could have sworn he saw a bit of movement by her sides.

“I’m sorry but who are you?” Shade asked. He could have sworn he knew her from somewhere…

“I thought you would remember me, after all I was what your Queen looked like for-” At the mention of Chrysalis, Shade rushed towards the bars, completely ignoring the pain that shot through his leg. He slammed his head into the bars, trying to raise the curved horn within reach of the pink blur. But before he had managed to get to the bars, she had jumped back, out of his reach.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Shade hissed. “Where did you take her?” He tried to reach up and get a grip on the blur, but he couldn’t manage to find it. “Tell me!”

While his eyes were still clouded, he could see that whoever it is was surprised by the attack. “Who?”

“You know who!” Shade hissed. “Now tell me what you did to her!”

From down the corridor he could hear the stomping of hooves running up to the cell, but by the time they had managed to get to the cell, Shade had already lost the original steam of his first attack and fell from the pain his leg was feeling.

“Princess! Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine…”

“Did he hurt you?” Shade had blocked out the conversation and instead focused his vision. The mare he had just attempted to gouge with his horn was indeed a Princess. Wings and horn were both present, along with a small crown. She still looked surprised from the attack, refusing to take her purple eyes off of him.

“Listen to me Changeling.” One of the guards said, breaking his line of sight. “You have just attempted assault on a Princess. You will be lucky to get out even by pony standards.”

Shade managed to lift himself up off the ground, before he hissed at the guard and began to hobble into the far corner of the cell. He turned to look back at the group, allowing himself to calm down; he tried to focus on the Princess. As he looked towards her with his left eye, he could tell there was fear, which not only proved that she wasn’t a Changeling, but may have just doomed Shade.

When they had left Shade alone, he buzzed his wing to keep weight off his leg before slamming his head into the cracked wall a bit more. “What. Is. Wrong. With. Me.” He continued slamming his head into the wall for a few minutes, before he stopped and looked towards the wall.

He began to feel like this wall was going to be his only friend, given that now he had managed to cause the cracks to deepen making small chips of stone fall off.

“There is no way I’m going to get out of here…” Shade said to himself. “What was I thinking?” Oh right…I wasn’t. He was so angered by even the possibility that Princess was Chrysalis; he had openly tried to attack. Tried to get some kind of information, anything that would tell him where Meadow was. Instead…he managed to doom himself.

“Why can’t I do anything right…” He said to himself as he looked out the bars to his cell. He let out a sigh… and gave up on any chance of freedom.

As Cadence was led out of the dungeon, she could hear a slight ‘clink’ noise coming from deeper in the dungeon.

“Why did I let you talk me into this?” Silver Shield asked looking towards Cadence. “I knew something like this would happen.”

“I’m fine Silver.” Cadence told the guard, the clinking diminishing as they exited through the wooden door. “He just startled me that’s all.”

“Well that isn’t all.” Silver said to the princess. “He probably just doomed himself. The Captain is never going to okay his medical release forms when he hears about this.”

Cadence had to agree with him on that. Her husband had been rather…on edge since the attack, and with the knowledge that she was almost attacked by a prisoner, they would be lucky to get any kind friendly response from him.

“Can you let me try again?” Cadence asked.

“No. I’m sorry Princess, but I can’t let you go down there again.” Silver replied as he closed the wooden door to the dungeon. “It was bad enough that you talked me into letting you go down there alone once. But he openly tried to attack you.”

“But he didn’t seem aggressive until I mentioned his Queen. Maybe if I just…”

“I said ‘No’ Cadence.” Silver said. “If you could get the permission of Shining Armor, then I would change my mind. But as it stands, I’m not letting you go near him.”

“There has to be something I can do…” Cadence replied. “He didn’t seem like the others.”

“He’s desperate. He knows that there is no way he is going to get out. And with the newest crime, he’s going to be lucky to get off with an execution.”

Cadence looked shocked. “Celestia wouldn’t just execute him. He’s a living creature.”

“Who just attempted to assault a Princess.” Silver replied.

“Listen Silver…please just keep that a secret.”

“I can’t… Shining Armor wanted to know anything that happened with him.”

“Silver… Please. Just… at the very least let me tell him.”

Silver sighed. “I suppose that’s fair.” He looked up at the princess. “But I was being serious; I’m not letting you back down there without The Captain’s permission.”

“I understand…” Cadence replied. “I’ll leave you to your work.”

Cadence left the unicorn guard alone to go out through the double doors. This part of the castle hadn’t been used in some time; it was mostly just a historical exhibit now. The last time it was used was nearly two hundred years ago, and the inhabitants then were rather fire happy unicorns.

She needed to find Shining Armor, maybe talk to him about getting those Medical forms for the Changeling. While she herself had just as much experience as the next pony, she could tell that the Changeling they had wasn’t pure evil. It was looking for something, or someone. She needed to talk to the Changeling, find out something.

She walked out of the dungeon wing and began heading towards the barracks, Shining Armor was usually there around this time of day, helping the Guards with training or patrols. She was greeted by some of the guards or nobles waiting for Day court to begin, but she was met with silence upon entering the barrack.

It was moderately sized, a place for the Guards who station around the castle to rest, while the rest of the guard had houses around the city, and the barracks were reserved for those who practically lived in the castle. So it was strange to see them completely barren.

While the Lunar guards were given their own separate barracks, it was not uncommon to find them in either one, as the lunar guards are much more situational, but she usually saw at least a few guards remaining inside of the barracks. So where did they all go?

She didn’t dwell on it too much as she needed to find Shining Armor, which didn’t take too long, as he was inside of the War room, looking over a map of the city alongside the Captain of the Lunar Guard.

“Cadence?” Shining Armor said, surprised by the sudden entrance. “What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you about something.” Cadence replied. “It has to do with the changeling…”

“Of course…” Shining Armor said looking towards the Lunar Guard Captain, “Could you give me a minute?”

The Lunar Guard captain nodded and walked past Cadence, leaving the two of them in the room. “So what is it?”

“Well…” Cadence replied unsure of how to say this. “He tried to attack me.”

“What?” Shining Armor replied, surprised. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” She replied, looking at how Shining Armor had walked over to her. “I don’t think he knew it was me.”

“How couldn’t he know?” Shining Armor replied. “He must have seen you.”

“Well…yes but he didn’t seem aggressive until I mentioned that Chrysalis used my shape.”

“And then he tried to attack you?” Shining Armor asked, trying to figure out why the Changeling would attack.

“Yes. He seemed angry about something. He kept asking where she was…”

“Where who was?” Shining Armor asked. “Chrysalis?”

“No…I don’t think it was.” Cadence replied. “If he thought I was Chrysalis, it must have been somepony else.”

“But why would he try to attack if he needed information?” Shining Armor asked. More a question to himself than to Cadence. “It doesn’t seem like a good idea to try and kill the one you need information from.”

Cadence shook her head. “I don’t know. But I do want to try and find out.”

“So you want to interrogate him?” Shining Armor asked, a disapproving tone in his voice.

“Well… I want to try and find out something about him. Maybe we could learn about them, find out some way to help him.”

Shining Armor shook his head. “I understand what you’re trying to do; the fact is that he tried to attack you. There is no telling what he will do the next time he sees you.”

“Please…Just let me try.” Cadence replied. “This may be the one chance we have to find out if there are any other Changelings inside Canterlot. If he really is against Chrysalis, then this could be the best way to defend ourselves.”

Shining Armor didn’t like the idea, given what Changelings had done to the both of them, however he had to admit that learning more about them would prove invaluable in case of future attack. “Alright… But I’m coming with you.”

Shade was doing his daily “Head on Wall” exercises when he heard two sets of hooves connecting with the stone floor. He had given up hope of getting out about an hour ago, and he wasn’t in a very good mood.

By the time the two sets of hooves had stopped outside his cell, Shade was still lightly tapping his head against the wall. He only stopped when he recognized the voice of the Princess he tried to stab earlier.

“Are you alright?” She asked with some concern, after all it wasn’t normal to find a prisoner hitting their head against a wall.

“What are you doing here?” He asked with little energy.

“I came to try and talk to you.”

“Why?”

“Because I was worried about you.”

Shade raised his left eye to look at the Princess, she didn’t seem angry; her face looked like she was concerned at least. “Even after I tried to kill you?”

“Would you have?”

The question was so unexpected, but Shade only really had one answer. “Before? I would have.”

“And now?” She asked with a concerned look, Shade only now noticed the Guard next to her; he wore a purple variant of the Royal Guard armor and he looked as if he was waiting for a reason to restrain Shade.

“No.” Shade replied, resting his head on the wall. “I attacked you because I thought you were Chrysalis, I’m sorry for that. I was just angry.”

“I forgive you.” The Princess replied. “So what is your name?”

Shade shifted his gaze to look at the princess. “I have two. Which would you prefer?”

“What do you mean by ‘two’ names?” The Guard asked.

“Well I suppose that I have two names, a changeling name, and a pony name. So which would you prefer?”

Clearly the idea of a changeling having two different names baffled the Princess as she was scanning the ground trying to think of a response.

Shade sighed. “My changeling name is Shade. My pony name and identity is Sunstreak.” He had grown to like his identity, even though most of it was faked, he enjoyed having his own persona that wouldn’t get him immediately run out of town.

“You created your own identity?” The Princess asked.

“Yes… I created Sunstreak to help me fit in. Maybe save a filly’s life. Now all that is gone.” He slammed his head into the wall. Making both of the guests jump slightly. “I never caught your name…I was kind of busy last time we met with the whole…you know.”

“My name is Princess Mi Amore Cadenza. But you can just call me Cadence.”

“Nice name.” Shade replied. “Am I correct in assuming you are the Princess of love?”

“You’ve heard of me then?”

Shade shrugged. “Lucky guess. And you forgot what you were talking to.” He turned his eye to look directly at Cadence’s, “I can see the love coming off of you, which I first considered strange given this cell blocks my ability to see emotions. And judging from how it has only gotten brighter since last time…” He shifted his gaze to the guard. “Should I assume you two are a couple?”

Only silence met this question, and Shade could understand why. From what he had picked up on in the sparse conversations about the invasion, the Princess in question had married a member of the Royal Guard. However he never got enough details on just who she married.

He looked up to see the face of the guard, and when he did, he instantly crawled to the back wall of his cell. Standing next to the Princess, was Shining Armor, and given how badly Queen Acari had hurt him, the last thing he wanted was the REAL Shining Armor to attack him. And what was worse…he had openly attempted to stab his wife.

The pain in his leg was back, but he ignored it on account of making sure that Shining Armor wasn’t going to try and repay him for the earlier incident. After all Shade had no idea how he would react to this kind of thing.

“Sh-sh-sh-sh-Shining Armor…” He stuttered fearfully. He could hear his Carapace shaking. He tried to say something else, but the words only came out as small moans.

They attempted to talk to him, but he wasn’t picking it up, his mind was busy flittering through the various possible outcomes of this conversation, none of them good. Then he thought back to Meadow… “You have to help me!” He said as he rushed towards the bars, stopping just short of them so it wouldn’t look like he was doing another charge. “Please!”

Cadence, who had jumped back a little when she saw him rush towards the bars, was looking at the panicked changeling curiously. “Help?”

“Yes!” Shade shouted. His mind was racing, his heart was pounding, and he was pretty sure his leg wound had opened up again. “There’s a filly named Meadow Song! Her mother is Candlelight! Please! Tell me if they are around! I need to speak with Candlelight! It’s urgent!” Shade had been ignoring his protesting legs for as long as he could manage, his body slammed onto the hard stone as both his legs gave out. “Please…”

Shining Armor looked at the black Changeling lying on the ground, a mixture of shock and suspicion. “Who is Candlelight?”

“She’s Meadow Song’s Mother. Please. I need to talk to her!” Shade needed for them to listen, he knew they had no reason to trust him. He had been there during the attack; he saw how the guards reacted to him when he was carrying Meadow out of that building, even when Candlelight had called out to Meadow.

“Please…” His right eye began to tear up, this was his one chance to try and make things up to the two of them, he had no idea where Spine took Meadow, and the only way he could try and figure it out was to get out of this cell.

Cadence looked at the Changeling, concern on her face, but not enough to hide her surprise. “Who is Meadow?”

Shade couldn’t manage to get out much more than just managing to say, “She’s a friend…” He closed his eyes, unable to see through the fog that had formed in front of him. “She’s my friend…”

Author's Note

Edit: 4/26/2016. That moment you realize you missed an entire line of dialogue when you first posted the story :twilightoops:

Chapter 18: Forgiveness and Loathing

“He told you what?” Silver Shield replied shocked, closing the wooden door to the dungeon. Shining Armor had just told him about the conversation with the Changeling. “You can’t really be trusting him on this.”

Cadence had turned to look at the stallion. “What reason would he have to lie to us?”

“What reason does he have not to?” Silver asked. While he was willing to believe that a Changeling would go against Chrysalis, he wasn’t willing to believe they had openly made friends with a pony that they foalnapped.

“He looked sincere about it.” Cadence replied. “He has nothing to gain by lying to us.”

“Your Majesty, I don’t want to overstep my bounds, but he has yet to show us any sign that he was being genuine. He tried to attack you for Celestia’s sake!”

“He apologized for it.” Cadence retorted. “We can’t just judge them all by what a few of them did.”

“A few of them!” Silver kicked the wall. “A couple hundred of them is a few! They captured Celestia, they harmed you sir," He pointed to Shining Armor, then to Cadence," and they left you to rot in the Crystal Caverns! How can you-!”

“Sergeant Silver Shield!” Shining Armor shouted getting Silver to stand at attention. “We are going to look into this lead. And you are going to remain at your post! Is that clear?”

Silver was clearly against this idea of following a lead given by a Changeling that openly claims he was a part of the invasion. There was no telling what this could lead to, an ambush, an attack, anything. But it was a direct order from his CO. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Shining Armor said as both him and Cadence walked out of the room, leaving Silver alone.

“I have no idea what has gotten into him lately.” Shining Armor said to Cadence. “He is usually so level headed.”

“He must still be shaken up by the invasion. His brother was almost killed in it after all.”

“I still have no idea how he survived that fall…” Shining Armor mumbled. “If what he told us is true, than he was launched into the ground by a Changeling, the doctors are still trying to figure it out.”

“So do you really trust him?” Cadence asked.

Shining Armor sighed. “Like you said, there is no way to be sure. But he seemed genuine about it. It’s also the only lead we have to try and get some answers from him.”

“It’s not like he is going anywhere. You could probably ask him anything you needed yourself.”

Shining Armor shook his head. “You saw how he reacted, I’m not sure we could ask him anything even if we wanted to.”

Cadence had to agree, the Changeling had completely backed away from Shining Armor upon seeing him, then almost immediately asked, no begged, them for help. It even told them that he didn’t want to hurt either of them. Along with the fact he seemed torn up about it, it was very unlikely he would be able to answer any questions until he calmed down. So maybe finding Candlelight would help him.

“Cadence, I need to get back to the Barracks.” Shining Armor said, stopping as the two of them left the castle. “We think we found a Changeling outpost near Ponyville, we are going to check.”

“You do what you need to,” Cadence replied “I’ll start looking for that Candlelight mare that the changeling told us about.” With that, the two of them split up, Shining Armor walking over to the Barracks, and Cadence walking towards the city.

Unknown to either of them, a pink-eyed Pegasus watched the two of them split up from a cloud. “The Queen will want to hear about this.”

For Darkblaze, the days had only gotten longer since Shade left for Canterlot, and there had been no news of him since then, much to Pinkie Pie’s dismay. She had been checking her mailbox around fifteen times every hour, hoping there would be news. Darkblaze had been less concerned than the others at first, but after the second day, he was getting a bit worried.

Not only for Shade’s sake, but also for his own. If they had found out where Shade had come from, they could easily suspect there was some kind of outpost and send guards to check. While the Element bearers knew about Shade, they didn’t know about him, he had lived among them going on five years now. Surely they wouldn’t be as open to him as with Shade, mostly because he did see them as little more than prey for a majority of that time.

So when he woke up one day and found a rather angry Twilight inside of his room, his first reaction was to flail his limbs for a moment. “Uh…” He said trying not to seem as scared as he was. “Hi Twilight…”

“It’s Blackout.” Twilight replied. Blackout? That changeling from Acari’s Hive?

“What are you doing here?” Darkblaze asked, confused and worried. “And how did you get in here?”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Teleportation spell you Nymph.” She replied with a wisp of pink flame, and Blackout was standing were Twilight had been. “The Queen wishes to speak with you.”

“Why?” Darkblaze replied. “She already told me I wasn’t going to be Judged. So what is this-“

“Sunstreak has been captured.” Blackout replied. Immediately shutting Darkblaze up.

“He what?” Darkblaze was surprised, his eyes were wide when he first heard the news. “Is he okay? What happened?”

“I was not told the details.” Blackout replied. “The Queen requested you come as soon as possible. She also permitted me to tell you the Guard are coming.”

“WHAT?” Darkblaze said, falling off his bed. “They’re coming here?”

Blackout nodded. “Our informant in Canterlot warned us, the Guard took notice of all the Changeling activity here. They are looking for an outpost.”

“No no no no. This is bad…”

“The Queen has permitted you to stay in the Hive if you feel uncomfortable coming back.”

“Well what are we waiting for?” Darkblaze nearly shouted. “I don’t want to be around here when they show up.”

Shade had little to do in his small cell, he barely managed to pace the cell without pain, he couldn’t use magic to entertain himself, and banging his head against the wall was really just a way to punish himself, and the cracks were starting to spread much further than he wanted. So his mind began to turn to strategizing.

While he was never really one to plan out long-term engagements, he was one who enjoyed picking apart patterns and mindsets. While he was a bit rusty with it, he began questioning the reasoning behind Spine’s return. While he thought, he moved his horn along the wall, less to make any markings, more for his own comfort of feeling like he was writing something down.

From his knowledge of the Hive, it seemed like they preferred an Intel gathering strategy, sabotage, and then surprise attack. But Spine’s attack was anything but that. It seemed personal, even if Chrysalis Okayed it, she didn’t seem the type to allow a squad of Changelings to go on a pointless mission to hunt down one traitor. The risk was too great.

Then perhaps Spine was acting on his own; after all, he had the authority to lead a squadron. But why would the other Changelings agree, wouldn’t they need some kind of proof…unless they were the surviving squadron inside Canterlot. Perhaps they got cut off from the Hive-link, so they latched onto the highest-ranking officer.

But that doesn’t add up… How did they avoid capture for this long? How did they avoid any pony disappearances? How did they avoid Acari’s eyes? She said she had scouts in every city, so how did they not notice Spine?

Shade slammed his hoof into the wall in frustration. He regretted not finding out more about their tactics or even their feeding habits. If he at least knew that, he could judge the total distance they had to travel to sustain themselves.

“Ugh… It’s no use.” He said to himself in frustration as he dragged his horn along the wall in a slant, leaving a small green line. “What?” He looked back at the wall, then at his horn, which was sparking slightly. Suddenly the line on the wall exploded with fire.

“Holy!” he shouted in surprise as he scrambled away from the green fire. But the weird thing was, even though it caught him off guard, he didn’t feel any heat coming from them.

Slowly, he raised one of his hooves and inched it towards the green fire. But he felt absolutely no change in temperature as he moved closer. Unlike the other fires he had managed to create, this one wasn’t made to keep something back or out, it didn’t seem to be created for any purpose, other than to relieve his own frustration, so it didn’t do anything.

Well not anything, it did startle the Guard who walked up to the cell at the time. “What are you doing!”

“I uh…” Shade honestly had no answer for what just happened. “I was just…” The flames vanished. “Thinking and then it…”

“How did you summon those flames?” Shade recognized the unicorn as the one who was present when he was looked at by the medic. “Answer me!”

“I got frustrated!” Shade replied, there was no point in lying. “And I just dragged my horn across the wall and then suddenly. FWOOSH!” Shade was trying to piece together what happened, the cell blocked all forms of magic, so why did him getting frustrated cause the seal to break?

“Celestia damned bugs…” The guard said, looking towards the right side of the cell. “Breaking the seal…” He placed his horn on the wall as it glowed a strange red color, which was odd given his eyes were blue…

Even though Shade registered the color difference, he didn’t mention it, he did however have a Pegasus he needed to find out about. “Um…excuse me.”

“What in Tartarus do you want?” The unicorn said to him, he was clearly not happy with Shade.

“Listen this is going to sound weird…” Shade sighed. “Do you know of a Pegasus called Sunglider?”

The instant Shade mentioned the Pegasus, the guard stopped for a moment before looking towards him. Shade could tell he did something wrong. “How do you know about him?” The Guard asked in a low voice almost like he was trying to restrain himself.

Shade was unsure how to go about this… while he couldn’t use his magic, the Unicorn still could, and that could end badly for him if he didn’t watch his words.

“I…heard about what happened to him.” Because I was the one who did it! “I wanted to know if he was alright.”

The guard stopped for a second, Shade couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but he was pretty sure that the guard doubted him.

“He’s my brother…” The guard said in the same restrained tone. “He’s still in the Hospital.”

Shade couldn’t hide the look of guilt that spread over his face, “I’m sorry…”

“They aren’t sure whether he will ever walk again.” Shade felt so much worse, he tried to help that guard, but it seems he didn’t do anything but stop him from bleeding to death.

“VARASH KAL JOT!” Shade shouted slapping his hoof over his mouth. While there was very little chance that the guard understood the curse, it wasn’t a thing he said lightly.

“Have something you want to say?” the Guard asked, looking at him questioningly.

Shade sighed, moving the hoof from his face. “I…” He said very lightly, he didn’t want to make the unicorn angry. “May have…been…involved…”

“You were what?”

“I…was…involved” Shade mumbled

“How involved?”

Shade could tell that the Guard was angry; he didn’t need to rely on his emotional senses, the tone and glare the guard was showing him was all he needed. “I was…” Shade sighed. “The…only one…involved…”

Shade had no idea what would happen, but the explosion that erupted from the next cell over told him that the Guard was angry. When he looked up he saw the guard’s horn was glowing bright red, and there was the light of a fire coming from the cell next to his. “You!” The Guard practically growled at him. “You almost killed him!”

Shade ducked back into the farthest corner. “I-I….”

“YOU NEARLY KILLED HIM!” the guard’s horn began to spark wildly. “DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH YOU DID TO HIM?”

Shade was shaking from fear, he was trapped in a box, he couldn’t escape, and all that this unicorn had to do was think about it, and Shade would burn to a crisp.

“I-I-I tried to help…”

“HELP!” the Guard was getting louder. “HOW DOES NEARLY KILLING HIM HELP!”

“I…” Shade couldn’t answer, his carapace was chattering loudly, and he couldn’t take his eyes off the unicorn. “I…

“ANSWER ME!” there was another explosion, and Shade nearly jumped out of his carapace.

“I tried to stop the bleeding!” Shade screamed. “I didn’t want him to die!”

The two of them stared at each other, before the unicorn turned away and walk back towards the entrance, followed by another explosion.

Shade stayed in the corner, continuing to shake until his heightened ears heard another door slam shut. Even then, his muscles stayed tensed for a few minutes until he walked up to the cell’s bars and looked towards the cells next to him, both currently had a red glow coming from them. Shade released a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“How much more can I screw up in this cell?” Shade said to himself. “I’ve attempted to stab a princess, got startled by Shining Armor, and now I pissed off the pony in charge of letting others in here.” He hit his head against the wall. “And I can’t get anything right.”

“Snake Eye!”

“Darkblaze?” He had gotten so much better at the Hive-link, that didn’t make it comfortable. “Where are you?”
“I’m in Queen Acari’s hive, the Royal Guard are being sent to look through Ponyville for any possible Changelings.”

“I had no idea…”

“Don’t beat yourself up…What happened?”

“Spine was in Canterlot.”

“WHAT? Sorry Blackout…”

“He was waiting for me….”

“Listen Snake Eye I’ve got to go.”

“No! WAIT!” Shade clutched his head, while he was getting used to that link, the pain that came after was still annoying. Not to mention the fact that he can’t get it to work with anyone but Darkblaze. Not that he was complaining.

“Meadow is missing…” he whispered to himself.

Outside the dungeon, Silver Shield had just slammed the wooden door closed, his horn still alight with anger. He walked over to the wooden chair and desk he had before sitting down in them and placing his face in his hooves.

“Rough day?” Came from above him.

He looked up to his other brother Night Glider, wearing his Lunar Guard armor, he landed in front of Silver. “You could say that.”

“Well it must have been pretty bad,” Night replied. “I heard those explosions from outside. I came to check and make sure you didn’t blow up our guest.”

“I nearly did…” Silver said, looking up at his horn, it had died down, but was still sparking slightly. “He just told me what he did during the invasion.”

“Is that what’s got you all wound up?” Night Glider asked, removing his helmet, causing his pupils to return to their normal rounded shape and his two small fangs recede. “Well don’t keep me in the dark. That’s my job after all.”

Silver had managed to calm his magic down. “You’re not going to like it…”

“I could tell given how your horn there was sparking like a thundercloud.” He looked expectantly at Silver. “So go on… What did he tell you?”

Silver sighed. “He was the one who nearly killed Sunglider.”

He had expected anger, shock, and not at all what he was given.

“Him?” Night said surprised. “Not to sound rude towards Sunny but from what I saw, that changeling didn’t look to be the physical type. So how did he beat Sunny?”

“You never saw what those bugs could do. He could have done any number of things to Sunglider.”

“Come on Silver.” Night Glider said. “How could he, by himself, take out Sunny when they were in the air. He had the best air combat scores in the academy for Celestia’s sake!”

“I’m not sure… I didn’t really get a chance to ask before I…”

“Blew up the cells again?” Night Glider asked. It was common for Silver to accidently blow up a cell when he was under stress. But usually it was controllable, a little bit of fire that usually died down on its own when the beds eventually burned out, but it was still a pain to have to deal with the paperwork.

“Yes… That.”

“I keep telling you to use that nullifying spell on the entire dungeon.”

“Then I couldn’t use magic in case I needed it.” He never expected his brothers to understand magic, which was his problem for being born into a nearly all Pegasus family. The only one he could honestly talk to about magic was his grandfather, and even then it was usually about ‘old magic’. “Just leave the magic to me. You stick to flying.”

“Alright Wingless.” Night replied placing his helmet back on. “Shining Armor just wanted to know what caused the whole city to rumble. I’ll just tell him you had a little outburst.”

“What was he doing outside?” Silver figured he would be planning for the scouting mission to Ponyville, given that his sister was living there.

“He said something about looking for a unicorn named Candlelight.” He waved his hoof in a dismissive manor.

“He isn’t…” Silver replied. “He is actually looking into the changeling’s request.”

“The Changeling actually wanted something?” Night Glider asked. “What did he want?”

“He wanted to meet a mare called Candlelight. I don’t remember why. Maybe she was just another spy.”

“I doubt it. He wouldn’t just call them out.” Night looked at the clock placed behind Silver. “Whoa! Look at the time. I’ve gotta go. Nightwing is expecting a full scan of Everfree tonight. See you around Silver.”

Night Glider took off and flew towards the door, pushing it open with his front hooves, while Silver closed it with his magic. “Typical…” is all he said in response.

A few days ago, if you told Candlelight that she would be asked by Princess Cadence to come to the castle, she would have called you crazy. Which is why it came as a shock to her when she got off the train from Manehatten to see the young princess waiting for her.

“Are you Candlelight?” Cadence asked as she walked up her.

“Yes Princess.” Candlelight replied with a bow.

“If it isn’t too much to ask.” Cadence said, “Could you accompany me to the castle.”

Candlelight looked up at the pink alicorn “You want me to come to the castle?” Candlelight was surprised by the offer, she had never really been anyone important, and so the offer was strange to her.

“So long as you don’t mind.”

“No it’s nothing like that.” Candlelight replied. “I just… Why do you need me?”

Cadence didn’t know how much she could get away with saying in such a heavily crowded area, so she looked at Candlelight and replied, “We have a…very special guest at the castle that wants to speak with you.”

“Alright… I’ll follow.” She was hoping to check and see if there was any news on Meadow. She had to leave to go to Manehatten the day after the invasion. So she had quickly gotten the word out that Meadow was missing. She never heard anything from the ponies she asked to help, so she wanted to look around. But the Princess did say it was important.

“What does he want to talk to me about?” Candlelight asked as the two of them began to walk down the street.

“Well… He didn’t really tell us.” Cadence said still not sure how to explain it fully. “I believe he said something about your daughter.”

Candlelight perked up, ears focused. “He knows where Meadow is?”

“I’m not sure.” Cadence replied. “He did mention Meadow Song and you by name.”

Candlelight’s eyes widened. “Did he say anything about her? Is she all right? Is she in the city?” She stopped after seeing Cadence’s unsure face.

“He couldn’t tell us anymore, he said he really needed to talk to you, it was urgent.”

Candlelight had to repress the urge to question any further while they walked towards the castle; she was busily trying to figure out what to ask whoever it was that knew about Meadow. The next time she actually focused on the walk, she noticed they were heading towards the dungeon.

“Princess?” Candlelight said confused. “Why are we heading to the dungeon?”

She looked up at Cadence and could tell she was trying to come up with a reason. “He says it’s a personal matter.” Candlelight could tell she was lying but didn’t push it any further.

The Guard placed in front of the dungeon looked up when the two mares drew close. “Evening Cadence,” He said to the two of them. “Should I assume you are here to see our ‘esteemed guest’.” He said it with a slight bit of venom in his voice.

“Yes we are.” She said as the guard hopped down from his chair and walked around the wooden desk. “This is Candlelight.”

The guard looked at Candlelight almost like trying to figure out whether there was something she was hiding. “You sure this is a good idea your Majesty.” He said looking away from Candlelight. “Have you even checked her to be sure that she isn’t…”

“She is a guest Silver.” Cadence replied. “And she will be treated as such.”

Silver sighed. “Of course Princess. But I’m still not letting you go down there alone again, especially after the first time.” He said this while taking a set of keys from the wall and placing them on the side of his armor.

“That’s understandable,” Cadence replied, “Your job as a royal Guard does demand it.”

As they stepped into the dark dungeon, Candlelight started to look around the cells, there was nothing of any real note with them; they were stone, a single cot, and nothing else. What kind of guest would want to live down here?

The next time they stopped, Candlelight was looking into a cell that was charred black, the mattress was burned, and it didn’t seem like the second cell further down fared much better. However the Princess had stopped at the cell between the two charred ones and was talking to the occupant.

“Shade…I have somepony I would like for you meet.” She motioned for Candlelight to come near, as she approached, she slowly got a look at the occupant. “This, is Candlelight.”

Candlelight saw the prisoner, and stopped where she stood. It was a Changeling. Lying with its front hooves crossed in front of it, looking towards Candlelight. She could see the two fangs that jutted out of its mouth, easily able to pierce through a pony’s flesh, and the curved horn placed on its forehead, sharpened to a point. Candlelight had to fight the urge to run.

Then she looked closely, it was just as shocked to see her. Its right wing was crumpled, looking the closest to broken it probably could. His hind legs didn’t look much better either, his right leg had a rather large hole in it, which seemed to be…bleeding. While its left had a rather large crack running across the carapace, along with the small angle the leg was placed at. But its eye was the biggest difference; its right eye wasn’t like the other Changelings. It was orange, and had a lizard-like slit running through it.

“What did you do with her?” Candlelight asked, all fear gone, there was nothing the changeling could do. “What did you do with little Meadow?”

It looked at Candlelight. “I saved her.”

Candlelight was shocked by the answer. “Saved her?”

The Changeling nodded.

“How did you save her?” Candlelight asked looking at the changeling hopefully. “Shade… What happened?”

Shade began to tell her his story from the time after he had met Meadow, he told about getting launched into Everfree, how he and Meadow entered Ponyville, The time he and Meadow spent together, but he left out any details that would lead them to believe Tornado Dust was a Changeling or any details about Queen Acari’s hive. Didn’t want them to attack his friends after all. However he didn’t leave out the details about Spine.

“-When we entered the house, I got hit by a magic blast while they grabbed Meadow. Then Spine held me down and did this to me.” Shade pointed at his wing and legs. “Then for good measure, he knocked me out. And now…” Shade placed his head on his crossed hooves. “I have no idea where she is.”

Candlelight looked into the cell. “What would you do if you knew?”

Shade looked towards her. “I wouldn’t stop until I was sure she was safe. Then I would pay Spine back for everything he did to her.” He looked back towards the ground. “But that would mean I need to find them first…and who knows what they’re doing to her.”

Candlelight looked at the Changeling, the one who had risked his own life to protect a foal he didn’t even know, one who did everything he could to protect her, and was now sadly lying on the ground at not being able to protect her.

“I promised her I would protect her.” Shade mumbled. “And I failed…” Candlelight could see a small tear on his black carapace.

She turned to look at the guard who led them down here. “Can you open the door.”

Silver looked at her and whispered to her. “Open the door? Are you kidding me?”

Cadence looked at him. “Silver. Please open it.”

Silver wanted to argue, but a Princess gave him a command. So he had to follow it, he opened the gate using the key ring, and Candlelight walked inside.

Candlelight lay down beside the Changeling and placed her hoof around him. Bringing him into a small hug. “It’s alright… You tried.”

“But I failed… You must hate me.” He said, looking away from Candlelight.

“Why would I hate you?” Candlelight whispered. “You saved my daughter, protected her, and tried to bring her back to me. I can’t hate you for trying.”

“You mean you aren’t mad?” Shade asked, looking up towards her.

“If anything I’m grateful. You risked your life to save Meadow. I can’t be angry.”

Shade’s right eye was tearing up; he raised his hoof and leaned in to hug Candlelight.

“Give me a break…” Silver mumbled, getting an angry glance from Cadence.

“Thank you…” Shade said to Candlelight. “That helps. So much.”

“So long as you answer me one thing.” Candlelight replied. “If you were given the choice to save Meadow, or save yourself. Which would you choose?”

“Meadow… I’ve already died once.”

“Then I forgive you…” Candlelight replied. “I know you will help her.”

Shade could feel the small flame of trust coming from Candlelight, and seeing that again, caused Shade to tear up again. “I’ll find her.” Shade said. “No matter what I takes…”

Author's Note

UGH!!! Late night editing! Never doing this again... Anyway, this chapter is probably not the best edited, I really just transcribed it from the main document... Hope you guys enjoy it
I'm gonna sleep.

Chapter 19: Medical Check

“Do I really have to wear this thing?” Shade said touching the metal band placed on his curved horn. It apparently blocked his magic, but he felt no different than he usually did, if anything it just stuck out on his black carapace.

“While you are being brought to the hospital, you are still a prisoner and the Princess doesn’t want you using any magic.” Silver replied.

“I can understand that, but…” He looked back at his wings, which were currently held against his side with straps attached to his hooves. “This just seems a bit… excessive.”

“Maybe it is.” Silver replied. “But the citizens of Canterlot are still a bit jumpy, and seeing a Changeling won’t help that.”

“I understand…but…” He looked back at his hind leg, currently being held up by some kind of wheel contraption.

“Would you prefer a knockout spell?” Silver asked. “Because I would be happy to do that.”

“And let you tell them I tried to escape? No thanks.”

“Then don’t complain.” Silver Shield replied. Leading the small group of Guards surrounding him. Shade hadn’t exactly been happy with the fact they didn’t just let him transform back into Sunstreak, but there was the pointless questioning of ‘Where is the real Sunstreak.’

The guards around him were both Pegasi and Unicorns, probably in case he did anything… Which was highly unlikely, given he would be disabled pretty quick by his leg, the only time he could really ignore the pressure of running was when he was focusing on something else, like rage or fear. And he doubted that even if he was in full physical form, he would be able to take out these guards.

He didn’t have to walk very far before they exited the building and he was led to some kind of carriage. Shade didn’t really get a good look at it, owing to the fact that the suppression ring did not block out his emotion senses, so all the feeling of fear, suspicion, curiosity, anger, and resentment began to cloud everywhere he looked, so he had to eventually just block out everything, and just allow himself to be led by the guards.

When the carriage stopped, Shade was looking at the closest thing to a familiar sight he had seen; the hospital was a large, white building. The universal Red Cross sign symbolizing the hospital. It looked like it had a large number of rooms, as the entire hospital seemed to have windows running up and down it, but what caught Shade’s eye was the familiar White unicorn he saw who had done the original field examination on his leg, was now leading a group of three other doctors with a gurney out towards the carriage.

“Are you sure this is a good-“

“Yes!” Dr. Rose said to the other doctor, Shade couldn’t pick out details he was still focusing most of his strength on avoiding absorbing emotions. “He needs help, and think of the scientific applications of what we learn from him.”

Shade tuned out the conversation in favor of searching through his own mind to see if he had any idea what and what wasn’t different about him from ‘normal’ changelings. His mind for one, but aside from his eye, he honestly had no idea how much different he truly was from a normal changeling.

He was distracted when he was suddenly lifted into the air by a couple unicorns and felt his wings become free from the straps that were placed there as he was laid down on the gurney, which immediately clasped steel rings around all four of his hooves to hold him in place.
This was either rehearsed prior, or they have insane ponies here. Then he thought of Pinkie Pie, take away the friendly bit, add a bit of anger in there, Okay now I can see it.

He was quickly wheeled down the halls, allowing him to get glances into the hospital rooms. There were mostly Guards, and even a few civilians, some of which looked like they were just puppets, staring off into space. He almost immediately realized these were ponies sucked dry of their love…he could only feel a pang of guilt when he realized that. I almost caused that…

When they went up an elevator and past a few more rooms, Shade looked towards one of them and felt the world freeze around him.

He noticed Sunglider, laying in one of the hospital beds, his wing was turned completely around, his front hooves still looked broken, and he too had that blank expressionless stare. Shade wanted to go in there and apologize personally, try and find someway to help, but he was quickly whisked off down the hall.

When they finally came to a stop, Shade was jolted out of his focus on Sunglider. He looked around; it seemed like a standard hospital room, an IV, Vital monitor, does that even work through the carapace? In fact the only difference was the fact that the windows all had the blinds pulled down to stop other ponies from seeing him.

The next thing he saw was Dr. Rose looking at him. “So… do you have a name?”

Shade looked at her curiously. “Of course I have a name. What kind of sentient creature would I be without a name?”

“Well what is it? We need it on record for the medical reports.”

“It’s Shade. My pony form is named Sunstreak. Whichever one you put down won’t really affect me.”

Dr. Rose scribbled on her clipboard, which was being held in a light red glow, the same color as her eyes. “So do all changelings have names? Or only a few of them?”

“Uh….” Shade replied. How do I respond to that? In his experience, all Changelings had a name, but he had only known six others. Was that enough to judge the entire race by? “I’ll… get back to you on that…”

“Okay.” Rose replied, scribbling on her pad, “Now this question is rather important. What is your standard diet?”

I have no clue… Darkblaze did mention a hunt at some point, so they may be carnivorous and emotion eaters… “Meat and emotions.”

He could tell that this surprised Rose, given that she was now staring at him. “We are omnivores. So if you can’t get meat don’t worry about it.”

“Right….” Rose replied clearing her throat. “Now then any…history of family based symptoms such as Stroke-“

“I know what the symptoms are and the answer is no. I have no history of those symptoms.”

Rose wrote down on the clipboard. “Alright so this is the last question, does your carapace interfere with X-ray scans?”

Shade opened his mouth, but quickly closed it. “I... have no idea...”

“Would you like to find out?”

Shade hadn’t had an X-Ray scan in quite a long time, he remembered the basic point behind it, but he didn’t quite remember it requiring him to be fully restrained from moving by metal clamps.

“Uh… won’t these interfere with the scan?” Shade said as one of the unicorn guards removed the suppression ring from his horn, but not before warning that if he tried to use magic, he would be punished.

“We need to get a full body scan,” Rose said to him. “After all, this is the first time a Changeling has ever been placed through an X-Ray.”

“Yes but the…”

“The guards insisted that you be restrained during the procedure, in case anything happens.” Rose replied as she walked into a side room. “Are you ready?”

“I…guess so…”

“Great. Now you will feel a little tingle…” She said as she nodded to the Unicorn Guard in the room, his horn glowed a light purple.

She hadn’t been lying, all he did feel was a small tingle as the knockout spell hit him, the next thing he felt was a strange mixture of emotions as his head slammed into the back of the table.

When he woke up, he had a pounding headache, but nothing new appeared wrong with him, he kind of wished he wasn’t currently restrained to a bed, he would have liked to rub the back of his head. At least I was warned about it this time…

At that moment, the door to the room opened and Dr. Rose walked in, hovering a few pieces of black X-Ray printings. She looked over to Shade. “Oh. You’re awake.”

Shade’s vision was spinning for a second. “So I am…”

“Well I just got the X-Ray images, and I hope you don’t mind, I sent some of your blood down to the lab to test it.”

“For?” Shade asked, really wishing he could move something, and then remembering his wing was no longer restrained, buzzed it softly.

“Well…I wanted to see what the closest known insect relative to you we have on record is. Wouldn’t want to accidently poison you or something.”

“That would be good…” Don’t want to die when I have a vendetta that needs to be finished.

“Well you will be happy to hear that the carapace didn’t interfere with the scans.” She said placing the images on a backlight. “But it did make it slightly more difficult.” She turned on the backlight and Shade was surprised by the skeletal design.

More specifically the legs, there was certainly a massive difference in the bones, they curved around the holes that had been placed in his legs, giving a strangely sturdy support despite the integrity damage caused by the holes.

“The bone structure was fascinating I would love to see it when there is not a giant crack through it…”

She was right, in the middle of his hind left leg, the bone had a large crack straight through it, but the bone had smaller cracks etched throughout it, even one reaching towards one of the holes in his leg. Throughout the carapace on his right leg, there were slightly lighter cracks, which Shade realized were on the inside of his leg.

“Well…that doesn’t look good.” Shade said, looking at the fractures in his right leg, along with the clear blue light coming through the direct center of it.

“Yes…but strangely enough, the wound has actually closed quite a bit since I looked at it in the cell.”

“How?” Shade said surprised. As far as he knew, his leg shouldn’t have healed too fast. “How much?”

“Well…maybe the answer will be in your blood, but as far as I can tell, it has healed about a third of the way already…but it has a pretty bad infection, we have to wait for your blood test before we can prescribe any kind of antibiotics.”

Shade nodded, looking back at the X-Ray, he noticed that his wings weren’t showing up on it. Dr. Rose noticed it as well.

“Shame we couldn’t get your wing on there.” Rose said, with a slight hint of sorrow towards him. “I really wanted to see if we could fix your wing… But it’s not like a Pegasus wing, it is made out of a membrane, not bone…”

“Why don’t we make it a bone?” Shade asked, while he was in no hurry to get knocked out again, he did kind of want to know how quickly it would be fixed.”

Rose had raised her hoof to her chin pondering. “How so?”

“Well… I am a Changeling. And from how I understand my own transformations, any injuries I take are transferred into their equivalent no matter the form I’m in.”

Rose rubbed her chin. “Perhaps…but the problem is that I’m not in charge of that suppression ring.” Shade looked up at the silver ring. “You would need to get the Guards to okay you using magic. And I don’t see them allowing it.”

“Well… I’m not sure if this information will help at all,” Shade tried to remember where on his wing he heard the snapping when Spine broke it. “I heard a crack near the center and two further down before I blacked out, I don’t know how much it helps though.”

“I’m not sure if we can help…” Rose said looking at Shade. “The membrane looks too complex… I’ve never seen anything like it before. You may have to wait for it to heal gradually on it’s own.”

Shade lowered his head slightly. “Oh…okay.”

Rose took notice and walked over to him. “Listen…I don’t know much about Changeling medicine.” Neither do I. “But if we are lucky, we can use the healing potions we have to speed up your recovery, and maybe it will heal your wing.”

Shade wasn’t so sure, his wings were not like a pegasi’s, and he didn’t like the idea of never flying again. So he was hoping there was some kind of secret Changeling healing magic or something, next time Darkblaze connected with him, he would need to ask. But he had something else he wanted to ask.

“What’s wrong with Sunglider?” Shade asked.

“Sunglider… He’s not exactly one of my patients.” Rose replied. “And medical law has a thing know as Doctor Patient confidentiality, I couldn’t tell you even if I knew.”

Shade’s spirits dropped a little. “Well…if you ever need help with any of those ones drained by…” Shade had to force the next few words out. “My fellow changelings… just let me know.”

Rose smiled slightly. “I’m sure they would appreciate any help you could give them.” With that she left the room, leaving Shade alone to think about what he helped to do.

It made him feel like a monster…

Rose entered into the lab where she sent a few samples of Shade’s blood and chitin, hoping to find something useful about the Changeling race. “Bloodclot?”

The unicorn in question was busily looking at a small vial of crimson blood through a microscope. His coat was a dark red while his mane was a frosty white. His Cutie mark was of that of a microscope “Fascinating…” he was mumbling to himself.

“Bloodclot?” Rose said. Trying to get his attention.

“The white blood cells just-“

Rose loudly cleared her throat to get Bloodclot’s attention. She hated when he got like this, he gets far to invested into his work sometimes and it feels like the only way to get him out is to slap him.

“Oh. Rose. I didn’t hear you come in.” He said as he whirled around in his chair. “I was just looking at the blood samples you sent me.”

“Yeah…about those…” She said, she had no idea whether he actually did the job she asked him to or not. “Did you run it through our records like I asked?”

“Yes I did actually.” Bloodclot replied. Hopping off the chair. “But the strange thing is that I couldn’t find even a relative match between them and any of the insect variants we had on record.”

“Then what was he closest to?” Rose asked. “If the Changeling isn’t close to insects, then what is he close to?”

“You see, that is the strange thing.” Bloodclot said, levitating a file over to Rose. “I could only find one blood test that we had that was even close to being a match.”

“And?” Rose said looking into the file before her eyes widened. “That can’t be right…”

“I’ve checked it myself. Twelve times to be exact.” Bloodclot replied. “That is the closest thing on file we have.”

“Well this is great!” Rose said. “It means that the healing potions will work on him… but… How could this happen?”

Bloodclot shrugged. “I’m not a Changeling expert. So why not ask him yourself. I’m sure he has the answer.”

“Thanks Bloodclot.” Rose said, closing the file and holding it up with her magic. “I’ll get back to you on this.”

“There’s no rush. I’ll just be here.” Bloodclot replied turning back to his microscope. “Crazy mare…”

Shade was just sitting in his room, not that he could do anything else, when he heard the rapid clopping of running hooves outside the door. He perked up, listening to the voices outside, while it wasn’t perfectly clear, he could understand what they were saying.

“I…Need to…talk…with…my patient.” Rose panted through heavy breaths.

“Are you okay Doctor?” The guard outside asked. “You look like you’ve just ran a marathon.”

“That’s…because…I just…ran…from…the lab…Now…I…need…to talk… with him…”

Shade could tell the two Guards were trying to figure out whether or not there was something wrong with the situation. But finding none, they opened the door. To which Rose quickly ran in.

Shade looked at how tired she looked. “Do you need something? Like a glass of water… or something?”

“No…I…Just…need a minute…” Rose said, sitting in a chair near the door.

“So…what’s got you so wound up?” Shade asked, turning his head to look at Rose. She had a manila folder being held by her magic. “I thought you said you couldn’t show me anything about other patients.”

“Hm?” Rose replied. “Oh no…this is actually related to you.”

“Oookaay?” Shade replied. “What is it?”

Rose had apparently calmed down enough to be walking again. “It’s your blood test results.”

“Wow… That was fast.” Shade was used to it taking at least a few hours to do a blood test… “How long was I unconscious for?”

“About two hours. But Bloodclot works pretty fast.”

“So…what does it say?” Shade asked. “I don’t have any kind of carapace-eating disease do I?” I pray that is not a thing.

“No… but it’s just…” Rose was never good at these kinds of things. She always got flustered when she tried to lightly push something important like this. “Look for yourself.” She placed the file on top of Shade.

“Umm… I can’t.” Shade said, moving his gaze between the clamps on his hooves and the ring on his horn. “So you are either going to have to unclip my hooves or lift the file so that I can read it.”

“Oh…right…” Rose blushed in embarrassment, and Shade barely got a taste of it… it tasted a little like buttercups. She began levitating the folder in front of Shade.

“Blood test results: Inconclusive.” Shade said as he read. “No match for any form of insect in any known family. No known match for ponies.

One conclusive result: Closest match…” Shade had to re-read it a few times. “Spike?” The closest blood match they had for him was the baby dragon that Twilight had hatched from an egg. “Um…What?”

“Bloodclot ran your blood against every insect and pony we have on record here.” Rose began to explain. “The closest match he could find was Spike. Now why is that?”

Shade was fairly sure he knew the exact reason behind the blood test, but the real question was, how was he supposed to explain what took him nearly a week of thinking about, and then a Changeling Queen to explain it to him. After a few moments, he sighed. “Alright…but one condition. Can I get it so that at least one of my hooves isn’t strapped to the bed?”

“I’ll ask the guards… But I’m not sure that they’ll-”

“If they honestly think I’m going to do anything with one hoof, two broken legs, a broken wing, and no magic, then I would like to hear what they think. It would make for an interesting story.” Shade replied sarcastically. “Besides they could use some kind of leather strap or something to stop me from moving it too much if they are really worried about it.”

“I’ll just ask…” Rose opened the door and began talking with the guards outside.

Shade didn’t even need to listen in to tell how the conversation was going, the Guards looked at her like she as crazy, then she explained, they doubted, she explained more, probably the same pattern for a bit, then eventually she won them over or something. Shade blocked out all of their conversation and was trying to think about how to explain his life.

After about five minutes, one of the guards walked in and released Shade’s right hoof from the clamp. “Merci Beucoup” he said as he managed to roll his wrist so that he could feel it again, before he rubbed the back of his head. “That has been bothering me for hours…”

The Guard clearly wasn’t happy with releasing even one of the clamps, so Shade was lucky he only needed one for emotive purposes…and for scratching. When the guard left, Rose locked the door behind him and looked expectantly at Shade.

“So…how did you get Dragon blood?” Rose asked pulling the chair closer to Shade.

“Well… in short. I used to be a dragon.” Shade said, before looking over to Rose, who was looking at him like he told a very bad pun.

“Come on.” She said. “If you aren’t going to take this seriously, I’m just going to tell the Guards to clamp your hoof back to the bed.”

“I’m being serious.” Shade replied. “I used to be dragon, born in the Burning Fiords, you’ve probably never heard of it but it exists, I was there during an attack by Queen Chrysalis and her Changelings. They…uh…kind of beat us. But not for long, from what I’ve heard they got pushed back pretty far.”

“That doesn’t explain why you are a Changeling.” Rose said.

“I was getting to that. So apparently, Queen Chrysalis is one of a large number of Changeling Queens, each running their hives separate to each other. And she is one of the few Queens who has the ability to…” Shade twirled his hoof around. “Convert other creatures into Changelings.”

“Give me one reason to believe that anything you are currently telling me is true.” Rose said a look of pure disbelief on her face.

“Hmm…” Shade replied tapping his chin with his hoof. “How about I point out that my blood results, taken while I was unconscious, prove that I have Dragon blood, and that my eye is still a dragon’s.”

“I meant to ask about that…” Rose admitted. “But I figured you were just next in line for the throne or something.”

Shade dry heaved. “No! I’m not a female. Only females can become Queens. And I don’t even know if converted changelings can even technically rise to the level of Queen.”

“Well I’m not an expert on Changelings. And neither are you.” Shade was going to retort but didn’t…she was completely right.

“Anyway… I woke up before the invasion took place and got dragged into it. Yadda. Yadda. Yadda. Love blast make bug things fly away.”

“So how does this tie into your dragon blood?” Rose asked.

“Ah yes…” Shade remembered something he found remarkable himself. “Well…when I got shot out of Canterlot, I picked up a…passenger…”

“Who?”

“A filly.” He looked and saw the shock on Rose’s face. “She’s fine…I hope. I’ll tell you that story later. Or ask Candlelight. Whichever comes first.”

“Tell me anyway….”

“Well… during the attack I fell through a building and cracked my carapace on a wall. Yes it was painful. And within a few days it was fine.”

“So you are saying that because you have dragon blood, you recover from injuries faster?”

“I think so…it still takes a long time, but compared to a normal pony, I suppose I heal rather quickly.”

“Fascinating…” Rose made a mental note to research the usage of Dragon’s blood. Seemed like it could be useful.

“And before you even think about trying to harvest other dragons… remember two things. One: Most dragons will not hesitate to eat you, and two: the healing properties only last for about an hour when outside of the body. After that, it is just normal blood.” Shade knew that was a lie because Dragon blood turns into a deadly Molotov when left to sit for too long. He had seen some really stupid changelings melted by blood that covered them as they tried to tear through a dragon.

“Well…that’s good…I guess.” Rose replied.

“So…I’ve told you my secret.” Shade said. “Now then… What’s wrong with Sunglider?”

“Are you still on that?”

“I was the one who did it to him so yes.”

Rose stared at him. “You?”

Shade slapped himself with his hoof. “I did it again didn’t I…”

“That’s…all by yourself?” Rose asked. Shocked.

“Yes… I’ve regretted it every chance I get. I thought I could help him, using an old spell I learned from-“

“I think you can tell us what happened to him better than any of us can…”

Managing to get the Guards to allow Shade to actually leave the room was by far the most trouble they had come across, the next biggest problem was how the others would react to a Changeling wandering around near wounded Guards. But after Rose vouched that she would be fully responsible for his actions, and she would allow herself to be thrown in the dungeon alongside Shade, the Guards loosened up slightly.

For the first time in about three days, Shade was finally able to take his persona of Sunstreak again. Which would have been infinitely better if his wing was not jutting out strangely, so he opted to change into Comet Trail instead, mostly to get rid of the strange crumpling noise every time he took a step, but also so he could still use his magic in case that was the problem.

But the Guards had insisted he keep the suppression ring on his horn as Comet Trail so that was quickly dashed.

Now that he wasn’t being quickly pushed down the halls, he actually got a look at the Guards and civilians in the hospital, and he was kind of glad his mane covered half his view. He saw Pegasus without a wing, unicorns with shattered horns, civilians lying empty on the beds. He had to stop himself from looking at a large room where he knew children were being held. He ducked his head down so he couldn’t see any of them.

When they finally got to where Sunglider was placed, Comet saw he wasn’t faring much better than when he first saw him. His wings were still badly bent, his legs were at odd angles, and he just stared towards the ceiling… Comet felt more guilt hit him when he actually walked inside.

But that wasn’t all he felt…

The instant he walked in, his mind began to race, images flashed before his eyes, hundreds of sounds all played in his ears at once.

“No!” He shouted, trying to stop the images, he could tell that Dr. Rose was worried, he saw her lips move, but couldn’t pick up the sounds. “Get out of my head!” Shade shouted, Rose walked up close to him, but he tried to get away from her. “Stay! Back!” He shouted, as his body began to move on its own. Taking a stance as if to pounce.

His body refused to listen to his commands, he jumped, felt something hard connect with his hooves, and could hear shouting, screaming, and then a brief stinging sensation in his side, and he hit the floor with a loud thud.

Chapter 20: Mental Problems

Sunglider woke up, strapped to a bed, his head pounding, with a muzzle over his snout. What in Tartarus? The last thing he remembered was being launched to the ground by a Changeling, after that he could have sworn a Unicorn stopped his bleeding and ran off. So why did he have a muzzle on?

A second later two Royal Guards burst into the room, one of them he recognized as Silver Shield, his brother, but he didn’t recognize the other.

“Alright Insect.” Silver growled at him. “What did you do to Dr. Rose?”

“Dr. Rose?” Sunglider replied there was a strange distortion in his voice which he chalked up to the muzzle. “Who is that?”

“Don’t play dumb with me.” Silver said. “You know damn well who it is.”

“Wingless what’s going on?” Sunglider asked. He knew his brother was always a bit weird, but this was taking it a little far.

“Don’t call me that changeling.”

“Changeling?” Sunglider responded. “What in Celestia’s name is going on? I’m not a changeling.”

“Really now?” Silver replied. Levitating a mirror up to Sunglider. “Then explain this.”

Sunglider rolled his eyes and looked into the mirror, and he couldn’t believe what he saw.

He was looking at a Changeling, the sleek black carapace startled him, but having a horn was what really got him. His left eye was solid blue, while his right was a normally rounded blue “Okay wingless…” He said with a nervous laugh. “You got me. That was a good trick. Now tell me what’s going-“

Silver Shield stared daggers at Sunglider. “You think this is a joke? If we didn’t hit you with that spell you would have bitten Dr. Rose’s neck off.”

“What!” Sunglider said. “I would never do that!”

“You would, and you did.” Silver said. “Luckily she got off with only minor injuries. But you just attacked a civilian.”

“Listen to me. Wingless.” Sunglider said. “You’ve known me practically your whole life, when would I ever attack a civilian?”

“I have only known you for a few days Changeling. And you have no room to talk to me like my brother.”

“You Celestia damned magic user!” Sunglider shouted. “I am your brother!”

“Prove it!” Silver replied, staring Sunglider directly in the face.

Sunglider lost his angry look and sighed. “When you were a foal, you used to have night terrors, and the only way we could get you to shut up was to take you flying.” Silver didn’t show any sign of letting up. “When you were three, I flew you to the top of the waterfall. When we were up there you nearly fell off the cliff but were busy using that horn on your head to float yourself in place, gave me a heart attack.”

Silver’s eyes widened in shock. “Sunny?”

“Wingless.”

“What in Tartarus happened to you?” Silver asked, looking at the Changeling that was apparently his brother. “How are you here?”

“Last thing I remember is being kicked down to the ground by a Changeling. After that everything is a blur.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense...” Silver replied. “How are you in the body of a changeling?”

“If I knew I would tell you.” Sunglider replied. “I just woke up.” Then he realized something. “How long have I been out?”

“A little over a week.” Silver replied, still shocked at what was happening.

“Damn… How are the others holding up?”

“Not too good…” Silver replied. “We have suffered a total of twenty-five known deaths. We were afraid you were next up.”

“I’m not going to let a little fall kill me.” Sunglider replied. “It’ll take a lot more bugs than that to take me out.”

Silver smiled. “Well now I know it is you.”

“So…where’s Bat brain?” Sunglider asked.

“He’s busy helping Shining Armor look for Changelings in Ponyville.” Silver replied. “They should be back tomorrow if you want to talk to him about getting-”

At that moment, Sunglider felt a voice in his head.

“Snake Eye!”

“OW!” Sunglider said as the voice spoke to him.

“Sunny?” Silver replied. “You alright?”

“Snake Eye?”

“Who are you?”

“Sunny?”

“Identify yourself…” Sunglider managed to say to the voice. “This is Lieutenant Sunglider of Celestia’s Royal Guard. Identify yourself immediately.”
“Snake... Oh…you’re not…”

Sunglider could feel the connection between him and the voice get cut abruptly. “Aw…How do Changelings deal with this?” He said as his head began to pound.

“Sunny, what just happened?” Silver was looking at Sunglider with concern…no Sunglider could see the concern.

“There was something trying to talk to me.” Sunglider said. “Through my mind…” just as he finished, he heard another voice, but it sounded more like it was coming from himself.

“Get out of MY HEAD!”

The horn on top of Sunglider’s head began to glow dimly, Silver backed away in response. “Sunny? What’s going on?”

Silver watched as Sunglider’s right eye changed from blue to orange, and as the pupil exchanged itself to a slit.

“The hell?” Shade said as his eye returned to normal. “Why am I wearing a muzzle?”

Silver looked at the guard on the other side of Shade, who was equally confused. “Sunny?”

“No.” Shade replied. “My name is Shade. I asked a question. Why is there a muzzle on my face?”

“The Doctors are going to have a field day with this…” Silver said to himself, looking at the Changeling in front of him.

Deep underneath the Everfree Forest, unknown to the residents of Ponyville, a Changeling Hive busily works on preparing for the patrols of Royal Guards who may find their hidden nest. The green walls decorated with purple crystals, creating a variety of images on the walls of the hive.

Deep near the Queen chambers, a single outsider falls to the ground, breathing heavy from the energy required to contact Shade.

“That…Hurt…a…lot.” Darkblaze said to Blackout, who was rubbing her horn.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have cut the connection before warning me.” Blackout replied. “It isn’t easy to be used as a transmitter.”

Blackout seemed scared by the offer, but Darkblaze hadn’t been fully connected to his hive for more than a week, so he had gotten used to having an empty mind. Though he had to admit, at times he did miss the chatter of his family. But Infiltrators usually weren’t connected to the hive unless it was an emergency; usually they required their own mind to be able to focus on the task at hand.

“Love sucking moth…” Blackout replied in Changeling, hissing while vibrating her wings.

“Scout 256!” Acari shouted.

“At least I don’t need another Changeling for my cover.” Darkblaze hissed.

“SILENCE!” Acari said through both of their minds. “I will not have such behavior in my hive.”

Darkblaze bowed. “My apologies your Highness. My emotions got the better of me.”

Acari looked at Blackout. “You should know better Blackout. If I recall, this is not the first negative relation you have made with another hive.” Blackout seemed to be embarrassed by this. “Pupa still refuses to allow passage through her Hive.”

“My deepest regrets my Queen.” Blackout replied, bowing. “I only did what I thought was necessary.”

“Next time run it by me before you act.” Acari said as Blackout rose. “One rival Hive is quite enough for us.”

Darkblaze stifled a laugh before remembering that he himself was part of a hive now hated by almost every other hive. “How are the negotiations with Chrysalis going?”

“We haven’t found her…” Acari replied. “She just vanished from every Queens’ notice. Even her Hive was abandoned.”

Acari looked at the worried expression on Darkblaze’s face. “Do not worry Darkblaze.” She said calmly. “I have informed the Queens that individual Changelings are not to be harmed; we only wish to learn why Chrysalis decided to attack. It is so unlike her. However I feel your worry is not aimed at yourself.”

Darkblaze nodded. “Snake Eye… Somehow there was a Royal Guard in his mind.”

“A Royal Guard?” Acari repeated. “Are you sure?”

“Positive, Lieutenant Sunglider of Celestia’s Royal Guard. I was forced to sever the link before he found out.”

“That explains why Blackout is so testy at the moment.” Acari said, looking between the two of them. “Severing a mental link is not easy to do, especially between hives.”

“I did what I had to…” Darkblaze replied. “But Queen Acari. How is this possible?”

“Hmm…” Acari replied in deep contemplation. “There are three possibilities. Either somepony on the Royal Guard is so adept at magic that they breached the neurological gap residing within his mind. They somehow got him to believe that he is a Royal Guard… or…” Acari’s eyes widened. “I need to look back at his memories…”

“My Queen?” Blackout asked, slightly frightened. “What is it?”

“The Canterlot invasion. Did Shade drain anypony?”

Darkblaze rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not sure… We never really talked about the Invasion…”

“My Queen…you are not really suggesting that…”

“I’m afraid so Blackout.” Acari replied. “I just hope I’m wrong.”

Acari flew out of the chamber, while Blackout looked slightly scared, and Darkblaze just looked confused.

“Did I miss something here?” Darkblaze asked Blackout. “What was up with her?”

Blackout scowled at him. “I wouldn’t expect a Love feeder like you to understand.”

“Hey! I just wanted to know what’s wrong with my friend you filthy little-” Darkblaze had to stop himself from finishing that statement. “Listen…I know that we got off on the wrong hoof. But I just want to know what’s happening to Snake Eye. If you won’t tell me, I’ll find someone who will.”

Blackout moaned. “Very well.” She replied in Changeling. “The Queen believes that your ‘friend’ absorbed not only the emotions, but the traces of emotions inside of his target. Thereby fully absorbing not only energy, but the personality of the pony.”

“Totally lost.” Darkblaze replied.

“Typical love moth.” Blackout replied. “It means your accomplice has the mind of that Guard attached to him.”

“Well you could have just said that.” Then he realized what that meant. “What?”

“Acari damn it…” Blackout said facehoofing. “The Guard…Is currently a split personality of Shade.”

“You’re kidding.” Darkblaze said. He had been told stories about the dangers of full emotional drains, but never thought there was any truth behind them. “That’s only a story.”

“It is not.” Blackout replied. “We are all trained to limit ourselves, your accomplice” Snake Eye hates being called that. “Never got that training, he didn’t know when to stop!”

“Hey!” Darkblaze said. “It’s not like we were perfect on our first attempts. Don’t blame him!”

“What did I tell you two?” Acari said through the mental link. “I can still hear you through Blackout.”

“Sorry my queen.” Blackout replied.

“I…I want to see him.” Darkblaze said.

“No!” Blackout replied. “Canterlot is under enough of a security lockup already. We don’t need them thinking there is another changeling there! We already have the threshold too high!”

“What are you talking about?” Darkblaze asked. “What haven’t you been telling me?”

Blackout was trying to find a way to tell Darkblaze without releasing the information she didn’t trust him. Not yet anyway.

“Tell him Blackout.” Acari said to her.

“But my queen…”

“That means now. Or do I need to demote you again?”

“No my queen…” Blackout shivered, she hated dealing with the Nymphs, all the slime and acid puke.

“Well?” Darkblaze said, tapping his hoof. “Your Queen gave you an order.”

Blackout sighed. “Half of the ponies in the hospital are Changelings.”

“WHAT!” Darkblaze shouted, causing a few nearby drones to look into the cave entrance. “Are you telling me, that we have over one hundred and twenty five changelings in Canterlot? Right now.”

Blackout nodded. “They are under the surveillance of Queen Cytes. She insured that the doctors looking over Changeling patients were replaced.”

“Replaced meaning?”

“They are contained… We must retain full secrecy of hives that were not involved in your Queen’s little power trip.”

“Don’t you dare talk about my queen like that!” While Darkblaze wasn’t exactly a fan of his queen’s plan, she was still his queen.

“Oh please.” Blackout said rolling her eyes. “Your queen nearly doomed all of us! If we hadn’t used emergency plan thirty-five, one hundred and fifty nine changelings would be dead! All because of your queen.”

A sizeable crowd of the Changelings had stopped what they were doing to watch the two of them.

“That’s it!” Darkblaze shouted as he tackled Blackout, the two of them rolled across the cold stone chamber before coming to a stop a few feet away, some of the larger Changelings had already flown down to stop the two of them.

“Let me go!” Darkblaze shouted as two of the large Changelings were pulling him off Blackout. “I’m going to tear that Nymph a new ovipositor!”

“You filthy little love sucker.” Blackout replied as another two Changelings held her back.

“ENOUGH!” All of the Changelings in the room stopped dead, looking towards the source of the shout. Acari was hovering above them, her normally peaceful eyes alight, her mane had come apart and was floating, small blue fire was at it’s tips. Every time she spoke, the words echoed throughout the entire hive. “I expected better of both of you!”

Blackout was squirming away from her Queen, while Darkblaze stood at attention. He was used to Chrysalis’ outbursts, and he understood trying to hide was only prolonging it.

“Both of you know full well that I do not condone that type of behavior!” She looked up to the drones that had stopped. “This matter does not concern you!” All at once the drones flew off, leaving only Blackout, Darkblaze, Acari, and four rather large Changelings.

“Now then.” Acari said looking at Blackout. “Scout 256, what is rule forty-five?”

“Do not make judgments until the full story is known.”

“And Darkblaze. I know that Chrysalis taught you not to attack unless provoked.”

Darkblaze saluted on instinct. “Your Majesty, she directly antagonized my Queen, I was merely-“

“Not in my Hive.” Acari cut him off. “I know Chrysalis endorses violence among drones. But I do not. Is that clear?”

“Crystal.” Darkblaze replied, lowering his hoof. “With permission, I would like to attempt another Mental-link with my Hivemate.”

“For what purpose?” Acari’s mane had stopped flaming, and was now simply lying flat against her neck.

“I believe we may be able to determine whether he is truly suffering from the ailment you wish to determine.”

Blackout was looking at Darkblaze in surprise. He stared down a Queen, her Queen; it made her think about what Chrysalis must have been like for this to be standard for him.

Acari looked Darkblaze up and down. “Very well…however. I wish to contact the Infiltrator I placed to monitor him to ensure he has returned to normal before you attempt it.”

“Of course Ma’am.” Darkblaze replied. “I will await your decision.”

“At ease.”

Darkblaze slouched slightly, but still remained in a military position.

“I thought you were an Infiltrator?” Acari asked. “Why are you acting like a soldier?”

“We must be prepared to do what is necessary to protect the Hive at all times. Every Changeling from Medical to Caretakers know at least basic combat in case of attack.”

“Well…that’s good to know about her hive…” Acari made a mental note to bring more soldiers when they found Chrysalis. “I will get back to you when it is alright for you to contact Shade. In the meantime.” She looked at both Blackout and Darkblaze. “No trying to kill each other.”

“Cross my heart and Hope to fly, Stick a cupcake in my eye.” Darkblaze replied doing the required hoof movements.

“I still don’t understand that…” Acari sighed. “You four make sure they don’t try anything.” The four large changelings saluted as Acari flew out of the room.

Darkblaze walked over and held out his hoof to Blackout.

“Were you telling the truth about your hive?”

“Sadly, yes. We are militarized. It only happened around forty years ago, at least, that’s what my father had always said.”

“Forty years?” Blackout replied accepting the hoof. “What made her change?”

Darkblaze shrugged. “No idea. She just changed one day, she was her normal self, and then she was angry and distant. She has been that way my whole life.”

“That must have been horrible, being forced to fight.”

“Nah… I was an Infiltrator, I only fought a few others, and you don’t usually have any reason to if you are a good Infiltrator.”

“Maybe I underestimated you Love bug.” Darkblaze knew they had a long way to go, but it was a start.

“So is there a way to fix Snake-Eye?”

“If I’ve told you once. I’ve told you twenty seven times, I. Don’t. Know!” Shade had been conscious for around ten minutes and was already being asked stupid questions.

“Why was my brother talking to me?” Silver asked for the fifth time. He was determined to get an answer out of the changeling.

“I! Don’t! Know!” Shade replied. “Take! A! Hint!” Shade really wished he didn’t have a muzzle over his mouth, if he didn’t then maybe this horse could tell his teeth were bared and he was willing to bite down on this pony's neck to get him to stop asking questions, or at the very least the same question.

A second later the door opened and a different doctor walked in. It wasn’t Rose; instead it was a light brown Earth pony stallion with a short messy brown mane. “Alright all of you soldiers out. I need to be alone with my patient.”

“But Doc-“

“Out!” the Stallion demanded. “I will allow you back in when I am certain he can handle it.”

Begrudgingly Silver and his fellow guard walked out of the room.

“Hello…” He looked down at the clipboard. “Shade/Sunstreak. My name is Dr. Hooves.”

“What happened to Rose?” Shade asked.

“She has minor wounds. A near bite mark on her neck.” Shade lowered his head, his ears against the side of his head. “But she will survive.“

“Oh…” Shade sighed. “I guess I really am a monster.”

“Now, now.” Dr. Hooves replied. “Don’t you worry about a thing, I’ve seen much worse than that in this hospital.” He walked up and placed the clipboard on he end of the bed. He got close to Shade before his blue eyes became tinted pink. “Do not be alarmed.”

Shade couldn’t help being alarmed. You don’t just do that.

“Acari sends you a message.” Dr. Hooves said. “Your accomplice will be contacting you.”

“Darkblaze?” Shade said surprised. “Why is-“

“Be silent.” Dr. Hooves hissed. “Are you attempting to blow my cover?” Shade lowered as he loosened up. “Are you the real Shade?”

“Who else would I be?”

“Your accomplice will explain. I am here to ensure that the connection stays constant.”

Shade nodded. While he wanted to correct this Changeling, that might cause them to realize something, so he was just silent.
“Snake Eye?”

“What’s up Darkblaze?”

“We have a problem.”

“I know…Meadow is missing…”

“What?...How?” Shade could hear hissing coming through his mind. “Right not important. Listen Snake-Eye, did you drain anypony during the attack?”

“Yes…why?”

Shade heard more hissing through his mind. “Yes I remembered Blackout. Was it a Royal Guard?”

“Yes…”

“Well…In short, you now have a split personality of the Guard.”

“WHAT!” He shouted out loud, getting a dirty look from the pink-eyed stallion. “Sorry…”

“Ow…Snake Eye listen, I’ve got to go. I’ll try to find some way to fix this…and maybe find out where Meadow is.” Shade felt the connection between the two of them break.

“Am I okay?” Shade asked Hooves. “Like…am I going to suddenly turn into a pony now?”

“My knowledge on this ailment is not the best.” Hooves replied. “But that is unlikely. A Changeling cannot simply, become a pony, at least not fully.”

“But what will happen?” Shade asked.

“From what I understand, every so often you will switch between being Sunglider and Shade. We will monitor your brain waves and check for any changes…” He grabbed the clipboard with one of his front hooves and walked towards the door. “I will also see about removing that muzzle of yours.”

“I’m sorry Acari.”

“But he needs more help.” Acari was speaking into a blue crystal, inside which was the image of a blue unicorn mare, her long gray mane was lying flat behind her. Her purple eyes contrasted the sapphire blue glow in her horn.

“Acari you know the dangers.” The unicorn replied. “We simply cannot risk spreading ourselves out any further. The ponies already know about his hive, but we need to protect the others.”

“But Cytes,” Acari said to the unicorn. “You understand the condition he is in.”

Cytes sighed. “Acari, you know full well that I hate to do this… But I must assist the others. Many of them are in worse conditions. Ovi is on her deathbed right now!”

“I suppose you are right…” Acari replied.

“You are going to have to trust Rose Petal on this.” Cytes replied. “She is a smart mare; she will treat him with respect.” Cytes lowered her red rimmed glasses. “But that requires that you remove your Scout from the Hospital.”

Acari was about to say something, but Cytes raised her hoof. “I know that you don’t want to hear this… but you have my word as a Queen that I will inform you of his condition. Goodbye Acari.” The image of the unicorn vanished from the crystal, which Acari placed inside of its blue box.

At that moment, one of her guards walked into the chamber. “My Queen.” He said bowing, “The Infiltrator has news.”

“Very well, I will hear him out.” The guard bowed again before walking out of the chamber.

“Are you satisfied my Queen?” One of the caretaker drones flew up to her.

“I am fine Biome.” Acari said to her Drone. The caretakers looked after their Queen, the Hatchlings, and eggs. But Acari did admit they were annoying at times. “You do not need to worry about me.”

Darkblaze walked into the room. “Queen Acari.” He bowed. “I’m afraid you were correct.”

Acari waved at the caretaker, a signal that they should go. “How so Darkblaze?”

“Snake Eye did indeed drain a royal Guard during the invasion.”

“This is distressing news…” Acari replied. “I was just speaking with Queen Cytes, I am sorry to inform you that she cannot risk placing a Changeling as his doctor.”

“What does that mean your majesty?”

“It means that both of us must trust the pony doctor, Cytes has made clear that she will inform me of any changes to his condition. But aside from that, we can only hope. However I feel that is not all you wished to tell me.”

Darkblaze nodded. “Snake Eye has informed me that Meadow Song is missing.”

Acari’s eyes widened. “How is that possible?”

Darkblaze looked towards Acari. “He did not have a chance to tell me, however I believe it has to do with Commander Spine.”

“And who is Spine?”

“He is- was my commanding officer, Snake Eye’s too. But he has a grudge against Snake Eye since he saved Meadow.”

“What makes you believe this Commander is who has Meadow?” Acari asked, her judge mind taking control, she wanted to know the reasoning.

“Snake Eye mentioned that Spine was in Canterlot last time we connected. That is why he was captured. I believe that Spine is the one who captured Meadow.”

Acari was thinking through protocols of Chrysalis’ Hive, while the times have changed since they last had contact, she normally didn’t sanction revenge missions. “Do you know if the Queen gave him her approval?”

“I have not had contact with my Queen since Canterlot, but I doubt she would allow a mission on such flimsy reasoning. The only time she allows revenge missions, are if your direct family was killed or betrayed.”

“So he is acting on his own…” Acari said out loud. “That makes locating him much more difficult… I am sorry Darkblaze, but we cannot search for them now. The medical situation takes precedent.”

Darkblaze had to agree, while he would like to help Shade personally, but from what Blackout told him about the Medical situation, over one hundred and twenty changelings wounded, including a Queen. Until he heard of the Lust Queen’s condition, he didn’t see any reason why he wouldn’t be allowed into the city.

“Queen Acari,” Darkblaze replied. “Permission to leave the Hive?”

“For what purpose?” Acari had told Darkblaze he could leave the hive, granted that he inform her of the reasoning. This was the first time he asked to leave the hive since he entered it.

“My job.” Darkblaze replied. “The Element Bearers have yet to suspect me of being a Changeling; I wish to ensure they do not suspect me by continuing my duties for the weather patrol.”

Acari thought about the offer, while personally she would feel safer if one of her Changelings handled this mission, she didn’t want to reveal that Darkblaze had been taken. “Very well… But I expect you to return before sunset.”

“Very well Acari.”

Shade was glad that the guards eventually decided he wasn’t a big enough threat to warrant keeping the muzzle on over his face, mostly because his fangs were beginning to dig into it and were very uncomfortable. However it took a little more persuasion to get them to allow his hoof to be free from the clamp.

Though he did wish that his headache would go away, it had been growing steadily since he got into the hospital, starting as a small nuisance, and then slowly turning into a feeling of sunburn inside his head. It couldn’t have been merely from him thinking too much, as he had periods of complete blackouts in which his headache seemed to get worse.

After what Shade believed to be about six hours since Darkblaze had communicated with him, he heard the sounds of an argument going on outside his room.

“You can’t be serious about this?”

“I am. I would like to see him.”

“Listen, we are not letting you in here unless you are a Doctor, or a guard. Since you look like neither, we aren’t letting you in.”

“He knows who I am. At the very least let him know I came.”

“Listen mare, I don’t know how you found out its room number, but just saying you know it doesn’t mean we are going to let you in.”

Shade listened as best he could to the argument, owing to the fact that the machines next to him kept beeping and blocking out parts of their speech. He did want to know who exactly was trying to see him.

“Princess Cadence told me this is where he was. I want to talk with him.”

“Really? Princess Cadence?”

Shade was trying to piece together what was going on, but instead decided to look at the door with his left eye, hoping it would shed some light on who was out there.

He saw the two small flames of the guards, one of which was full of annoyance, a strange deep blue color, while the other was very bored, his flame was a dull grey. But the third flame was…orange.

“Candlelight?” he called out, hoping to get a reply. “Is that you?”

The arguments outside stopped. “Yes. It is.”

“Hey boys! Last time I checked I still had visitor rights.” Shade said to the guards, “And since I know her, she isn’t going to try and kill me...” hopefully.

It took a moment, but the Guards eventually decided she was alright and let her walk into the room; she was carrying a small package with her blue magic. “Hello Shade.”

“Hi…” Shade replied looking at the package. “What’s in the box?”

“I’m not sure…” Candlelight replied, floating the package over to Shade. “I don’t make a habit of looking through other ponies’ mail.” She placed the package down on his chest. “It came for you this morning, but I couldn’t get it to you earlier because Silver Shield refused to tell me where they moved you.”

Shade looked at the package while trying not to knock it off his chest due to only having one hoof. “Did you happen to see who it was from?”

“Yes I did.” Candlelight replied, lifting the package and turning it so Shade could see the sender.

On the bottom of the package was a bright pink sticker with three balloons on it. ‘Pinkimena Diane Pie’ was written onto it with crayon.

“Friend of yours?” Candlelight asked placing the package back down.

“Pinkie Pie?” Shade replied. “I just thought she was friends with everybody. Hey do you think she could manage to befriend Chrysalis?” Shade began picturing Pinkie Pie throwing Chrysalis a surprise party at her Hive.

Candlelight giggled a bit “knowing that mare, she will find a way.”

Shade began looking at the package, trying to find some way to open it without damaging anything inside of it. Eventually he decided to use his fangs to pull the brown paper off of it, once he did, he saw a pink box underneath.

Opening it with his hoof, which involved him stabbing through the tape holding it together, he found the inside had a cupcake, a sealed envelope with three balloons stamped on it, a second envelope with paper inside, a quill, and a book entitled Daring Do: Quest for the Sapphire Stone. Shade reached in and grabbed the envelope, using his fang to open it again, pulling out the letter he began to read it, which was difficult as Pinkie wrote it using twelve different colored crayons and a glue stick from the looks of it.
Dear Sunny or Shady (I don’t know which one to send it to),

This is Pinkie Pie. I haven’t seen any letters from you yet. Did you find Meadow’s Mom? Are you coming back soon? Why haven’t you been writing? That’s not important. I sent you a care package! I got the idea from when Rainbow went to the Wonderbolt’s academy for a bit. But THIS time I won’t be going to give it to you because Mister and Mrs. Cake have me busy at Sugar Cube Corner.

And I thought that since you haven’t sent a letter in a while, maybe you were out of paper. So I sent you some paper and an envelope, along with a quill in case you don’t have that. Oo! Oo! And the Cupcake! I made it SUPER spicy, mostly because I used pure Rainbow Water for the filling. But I also put peppers in the frosting. I call it “The Dragon Tongue!” I was going to put some milk in here too but I couldn’t find a small enough spatula.

Write back soon! I want to hear all about your trip! Bye!

From,

Ponyville’s Personal Pink Party Professional: Pinkie Pie.

“Wow…nice tongue twister.” Shade said as he re-read Pinkie’s title.

“So what is it?” Candlelight asked.

“A care package from Pinkie Pie.” He turned the letter over to see more.
P.S. I included the first book of Daring Do for you. In case you got bored.

Pinkie Pie Statement. Try not to damage the book, Twilight would be mad.

P.P.P.S. I found my Spatula.

Shade placed the letter down, and grabbed the book. “You ever heard of this?” He said showing the cover to Candlelight.

“Yes I have.” Candlelight replied. “It’s a series of popular adventure books. I don’t know if you would like them…”

“Eh…I’ll give it a shot. I’ve got nothing better to do.” Shade said as he placed the book on a small table on his right. Then reaching for the envelope and quill. “Well…I guess I have one thing to do. Um…. Can you help me with this?”

About an hour later, Candlelight had left the room, holding onto the letter she would send to Pinkie. Shade meanwhile was starting to read through the Daring Do book, it wasn’t exactly his favorite genre, but he was currently a prisoner of Equestria, so he would make do.

He was enjoying the read, mostly because it gave him something to actually do aside from sit still and twiddle his non-existent thumbs. But also because it provided him with a way to actually get a chance to read what ponies considered award winning literature. Which was actually rather good, granted it wasn’t on par with some of the more…action oriented books he had read from the Fiords, but it was at least decent.

The next time he looked up from the book was when the door opened and Dr. Rose walked in talking to the Guards. “Really I’m fine. It’s just a scratch. Now I just need to talk with him for a minute.” She closed the door before either of the Guards could retort.

“Are you okay?” Shade asked guiltily, he still felt bad about the whole attempted murder thing, even if he couldn’t control himself.

“Yes. Yes. You didn’t break the skin.” Rose replied, but Shade could tell she was lying, mostly because he knew the smell of blood, and he could smell blood.

“Listen…I’m really sorry about that.” Shade replied. “I… Wasn’t trying to kill you… my body was just moving on it’s own.” Shade felt like he should slap himself, there is no way she is going to buy that.

“I believe you.” What? “You warned me to back away. I should have listened. I just didn’t expect you to try and bite my neck off.” Shade rubbed the back of his neck. “But I should have figured something bad was going on when both your eyes turned solid blue.”

“My eyes… turned blue…”

“Well…your single eye anyway. Your left eye is already solid blue…” She was looking at Shade “Kind of like it is starting to now…”

Oh shi-

“AH!” He shouted as it felt like someone was ramming a railroad spike through his head. It was so sudden, almost like when Blackout had swarmed his head with her hive mind…almost is the wrong word.

Rose looked on scared. “Shade? Shade! Shade talk to me. What’s going on?”

“Pain!” Was all Shade could reply before he wasn’t in control of himself anymore.

He stopped screaming and looked around for a moment before noticing Dr. Rose. “Oh hello. Who are you?”

Rose was surprised to see that Shade’s eye had completely changed, no longer the orange lizard like slit, it was a pony’s eye, rounded pupil with a blue iris. “I’m Dr. Rose.” She replied. “What happened to Shade?”

“Shade?” he tapped his chin. “Oh! That must be the Changeling.” What is going on? Rose thought. “My name is Sunglider.”

“WHAT?” Rose shouted.

Chapter 21: Friendly Visits, Hungry Changeling

It was early in the morning, the sun was beginning to rise as the gray Mail Mare delivered her letters to Sugar Cube Corner, Pinkie Pie hopped out of a nearby bush and looked in it. “YAY!!!” Pinkie shouted. “SUNNY SENT ME A LETTER!”

“SHUT UP!”

“Oops…SORRY!” Pinkie shouted down the street before diving back into the bush.

Twilight just woke up when she heard the familiar pounding on her door that could only be Pinkie Pie. “Pinkie… Why are you up so early?” Twilight said through a small yawn opening the door. She saw Pinkie Pie wearing a bush. “Um…Pinkie?”

She shoved an envelope in Twilight’s face before she could say anything. “Look Twilight! Sunny sent me a letter!”

Twilight moved back a little to be out of Pinkie’s arm length before looking at the envelope. “Pinkie…this is one of yours.”

“No it’s not. I sent it to Sunny along with the Care package so he could write back because I hadn’t heard from him in a few days.” She shoved the letter back in Twilight’s face. “And look. It worked!”

Twilight backed away even further from Pinkie. “That’s great Pinkie…what does it say?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t opened it yet silly.” Pinkie said, hopping completely out of the bush. “I’m nervous. What if he isn’t coming back? What if he couldn’t find Meadow’s mom? What if he DIDN’T LIKE THE CUPCAKE?” She said shaking Twilight. “THE CUPCAKE TWILIGHT!”

Twilight teleported away from Pinkie “I’m sure he’s fine Pinkie. And I’m sure he enjoyed the cupcake you sent him.”

“But what if he didn’t?” Pinkie said.

“Pinkie… I’m sure he won’t think of you as any less of a friend.” Twilight said dusting herself off. “Now just open the letter and let’s see what it says.”

“Okie Doki Loki.” She squeezed the envelope with her hoof and the letter popped out of it.

Twilight placed a hoof on her face. Don’t ask Twilight…Don’t ask.

Dear Pinkie Pie (And others),

“Ooo…he’s good.” Pinkie Pie said as Twilight read the letter.

To answer your Questions in order, I did find Meadow’s mom, I’m not sure when I’ll be able to go back, and I’ve been in prison.

Twilight re-read that to make sure she said it right. “Prison?”
The Care package is amazing Pinkie, thank you for sending it. I have been so bored for the past few days… there is very little to do in a prison besides bang your head against the wall. Also a slight tidbit… I attempted to kill Princess Cadence…
“He What?” Twilight said, looking back over the letter.

Before you freak out (Unless Twilight is reading this)

“He’s really good.” Pinkie replied. Getting a glare from Twilight.

I thought she was Chrysalis, long story, I was tired, I was angry and she mentioned Chrysalis… so… yeah. Anyway. I am currently being detained in the Canterlot Royal Hospital along with a large number of Ponies who probably would try to kill me were they not currently paralyzed Being looked at due to some very serious wounds I received shortly before my capture. These include: Broken leg, lacerations, and a shattered Wing membrane. (I should make a full recovery within the week… hopefully). And Pinkie. The Cupcake was delicious.

“Phew.” Pinkie said wiping her eyebrows.

Alright…so on a much more serious note. Meadow is currently missing

“WHAT!” Both mares said, waking Spike.

“What’s going on?” He said sleepily.

“Hi Spike!” Pinkie said bouncing over to the dragon “I got a letter from Sunny.”

“Does it mention me?”

“Not yet.” Pinkie replied.

For those of you who would like to know… She was taken by my (And I hate to say this) Old commanding officer. Before I slammed my head into his chest. I have no idea where they are or how to find them. Also I may be going crazy…

From,

Shade/Sunstreak. Ponyville’s resident Changeling.

P.S. Candlelight is the one who wrote this…as I am strapped to a bed and cannot use magic, or my left hoof.

“Aw…. Poor Sunny. He must be so lonely.” Pinkie said as Twilight finished.

“I really wish I could see how he was doing…” Twilight replied, handing the letter to Pinkie. “Those injuries sound severe.”

“What’s this on the back?” Spike said, looking at the back of the letter.

P.P.S. I have recently discovered that my Draconic blood has been retained. I should heal faster than originally expected.

“Wow…that is worse than Rainbow Dash’s hoof writing.” Twilight said looking at it. “Maybe there is a reason he had Candlelight help him.”

“Oo! Oo! Oo! Twilight!” Pinkie replied bouncing.

“Can we go visit him?” Pinkie asked, looking like a foal that asked to have a puppy. “Please! Please! Pretty please with a cupcake on top!”

“Well…” Twilight had to think about it for a moment. “I suppose it wouldn’t be too bad…”

“I can throw him a Get Well Soon Party! It will have balloons and streamers and Rainbow Cookies!”

“Pinkie… He is currently a prisoner of the Royal Guard.”

“Oh…” Pinkie stopped mid hop. But then she bounced up a bit. “They wouldn’t stop me from throwing the best Partay they’ve ever seen!” Pinkie was about to dash out the door, but Twilight stopped her by grabbing her tail in a pink aura.

“Pinkie!” Twilight shouted. “No big party!”

“Aww…” She gasped. “Can I throw him a small party?”

“No!”

“How about a teeny Weenie itty bitty bite sized party.”

“Ugh…Fine. But no party cannon, no streamers, no sharp objects. Got it?”

“Okie Doki Loki! I got to get back to Sugar Cube Corner and gather my party supplies!” Before Twilight could stop her, she rushed out of the Library in a pink blur.

“Spike…Take a letter.”

Back in Canterlot, Rose was still trying to wrap her head around Sha…Sunglider’s problems. “So you are Sunglider.”

“Yup.”

“The catatonic Pegasus Guard a few rooms down the hall.”

“Apparently.”

“So how are you here?”

“I have no clue.”

“Wonderful.” Rose said, rubbing her temples. “I need coffee before I deal with this.”

“Understandable. I reacted nearly the same way.” Sunglider replied looking through one of the holes in his right hoof. “I’m still getting used to the fact that this is my life now.”

“Intriguing…” Said a soft voice from the doorway. “You seem much different when you aren’t trying to bite her neck off.”

Rose turned to look and found the blue unicorn she knew as her boss. “Sapphire…”

“Morning Rose, all is well hopefully.” She spoke softly, but Rose knew she was slightly aggravated. She had worked with her for over five years and had been in her office more times than she could count. “I must admit you gave me a little scare when I heard what happened to Rose.”

“I had no influence over the Changeling’s actions Ma’am.” Sunglider replied. “I would never harm a civilian.”

“So am I correct in thinking I am talking to Sunglider?” Sapphire asked, lowering her red-rimmed glasses.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Interesting…” Sapphire was looking Sunglider up and down. “The mind of a pony…inside the body of a Changeling… Fascinating.”

Hungry…

“What?” Sunglider said out loud in response to the voice.

“I said that you are fascinating.”

“Not you…shh…”

Must…eat…

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Rose replied. Looking between Sapphire and Sunglider, Sapphire seemed like she knew what was going on.

Prey….

“Tell me you hear that.” Sunglider said. Rose noted he sounded panicked.

“Lay still for a moment.” Sapphire said to Sunglider. He obliged and Sapphire locked the clamp on his right hoof.

“Sapphire, what are you…”

Food….

“Just watch Rose…”

Must have…. FOOD!

Sunglider’s right eye expanded, turning his entire eye into a solid blue orb. Almost instantly, the Changeling began trying to fight against its restraints, hissing and screeching as it tried to grab the blue unicorn in front of it. Rose had backed away from it, while Sapphire just stood and watched.

“Calm down.” Sapphire said to the Changeling, which still fought against its restraints trying to bite down on her. After it could not, it hissed, releasing droplets of spit over her red-rimmed glasses. She took them off and rubbed them with a cloth.

“Oh dear… You are not going to make this easy for me are you.” Sapphire said to the Changeling.

Rose noted the banging on the door. “What’s going on in there?”

“I’m merely testing something. No need to barge in.” Sapphire said as the Changeling was still trying to bite her. “Now then…let’s see how you react.”

Sapphire’s horn began to glow blue, and Rose found what she was doing…she was taking off the magical suppressor.

“Sapphire! Don’t!” Rose shouted, trying to be heard over the Changeling. There was a wisp of green fire, and…nothing happened.

“Just as I thought.” Sapphire replied. As the Changeling continued to try and bite Sapphire. She placed the magical suppressor back on his horn. “You have no Love left.” The Changeling stopped trying to bite Sapphire and instead hissed at her.

Rose watched as Sapphire smirked at the Changeling, and then turned to look at Rose. “Complete mental Regression.”

Rose was still trying to calm herself down. “What? Sapphire! I…”

“It is quite alright Rose.” Sapphire replied, wiping her glasses again. “He can’t do anything.”

After Rose calmed down enough to actually feel her legs again, she looked at Sapphire. “He requires food.” Sapphire said in that authoritive tone she held so well. “In your notes I believe you wrote he eats meat.”

“Yes…I did…” Rose said not taking her eyes off the Changeling.

“Well…from what I have been told, he has not eaten in nearly a week. He seems to have regressed to his primal instincts.” As if on cue, the Changeling growled at Sapphire. “So we need to feed him.”

At that moment, a wisp of green sparkling smoke appeared in front the Changeling, who attempted to bite into it. The smoke condensed into a letter which Sapphire quickly pulled away from his jaw.

“No!” Sapphire reprimanded the Changeling, tapping him in the center of his face with the scroll. “You are not to eat letters.” The Changeling hissed at her. Sapphire handed the letter over to Rose. “I believe this is his.”

The scroll looked official, like something that would be sent by Celestia herself. “Well go on, read it.” Sapphire replied. “He isn’t going to.”

Rose took the scroll and unrolled it, looking over it.

Dear Sunstreak,

I am writing back to inform you that we are sorry to hear about Meadow, and I am also writing to inform you that Pinkie Pie is planning to throw you a small party, we plan to arrive in a few hours. We hope that you will heal soon.

From

Twilight Sparkle.

Rose looked over the letter a few times. “So?” Sapphire asked. The Changeling had calmed down a bit, but was still slightly hissing. “What does it say?”

Rose had calmed down enough about the Changeling trying to kill them that she could actually talk without stuttering. “Twilight Sparkle and her friends appear to be coming to Canterlot.”

Sapphire’s eyes widened. “All of them?”

“I’m not sure…” Rose admitted. “It doesn’t say.”

Sapphire adjusted her glasses. “Well…I need to try and get clearance to get him food.” She began walking to the door. “And I must contact Princess Cadence… She may be able to help with getting him Love…”

“What kind of meat do we even have?” Rose asked she was never made aware that they served meat in Canterlot. The closest thing they had was fish when the Griffon Dignitaries came around, but they weren’t scheduled to arrive for two months.

Sapphire rubbed her chin. “I’m certain we can find something… If not than we can get the Fisherponies to get a quick catch.” She walked out of the room. Leaving the guards to enter the room.

The Changeling began trying to attack them as soon as they entered, hissing and snapping towards them. “Are you alright Dr. Rose?”

“I’m fine…but I think we should leave him alone…” Rose said, backing away from the Changeling as it spat a green glob onto the floor that sizzled slightly. It began thrashing its head around, trying to get any closer to the guards.

Rose walked out along with the two guards who walked in and heard the Changeling stop thrashing as the door closed.

“What happened in there?” Silver Shield asked looking at Rose. “We heard screaming inside.”

“He’s hungry,” Rose replied. “He hasn’t eaten in nearly a week, so Sapphire is going to try and get a hold of Princess Cadence. Try to feed him.”

“Did he attack you?” Silver asked.

“No…he was restrained.” Rose replied. “He couldn’t. He did startle me though.” Rose became aware that her heart was still pounding. “I… need a minute…” Before they could ask her anymore questions, she walked down the hall, trying to grip what was going on.

As Sapphire walked up to her office, her secretary, A changeling by the name of Callsign, currently disguised as a gray earth pony with a curly white mane, called to her. “Cytes, Queen Acari wished to check up on Sunstreak’s condition.”

“Thank you Callsign… I am not to be disturbed. Place all calls on hold.” Sapphire replied opening the doors to her office. “And please attempt to get a hold of Princess Cadence, we need her assistance.”

Callsign nodded before turning attention to the small phone that only really worked with the other rooms in the Hospital.

When Sapphire was inside of the blank room, she was surrounded by blue fire and returned to her natural form. Of all the Changeling Queens, her hive was one of the few that had no decay on their bodies. Her horn was as tall as Chrysalis’ but was curved, making it look more like a normal Changeling horn. Her back plate was a light shade of purple while her eyes retained a sky blue color.

“Acari is not going to be happy to hear about this…” She sighed to herself as she walked over to the safe she kept behind her degree. Professor Sapphire, MD. And pulled out a cluster of multicolored crystals.

She looked over them before pulling out a pink colored crystal with her magic and tapping it to her horn. The Crystal blinked with light for a few seconds. “Come on Acari…” She said under her breath. “Pick up…”

The Crystal glowed brightly for a second before Acari appeared on the crystal’s surface.

“Cytes!” Acari replied. “Is there any news?”

“Acari…There has been a complication…” Cytes replied.

“What’s going on?” Came another voice from Acari’s side. “What kind of complication?”

“Darkblaze…shh.” Acari said looking to her side as a blue eyed Changeling flew into view.

“Is that a Changeling from Chrysalis’ hive?” Cytes asked, noticing the color scheme. “Acari, did you find her hive?”

“No. He’s an exile.” Acari replied. “He isn’t connected to her Hivemind. So what were you saying?”

“He has gotten worse.” Cytes replied. “The mental changes between him and the Royal Guard are beginning to last longer. He spent all night as the Guard.”

“Then it is worse than I thought…” Acari replied. “Have you spoken to him?”

“Yes… and he appears to be regressing mentally. He gave into his instincts and if I had not recognized it in time, I’m afraid what might have happened.” Cytes could tell that Acari was shocked.

“Darkblaze… When was the last time Shade fed off Love?” Acari asked slightly worried.

The Drone flew up next to Acari. “Substantially? It had to be…right before the whole Crazy spell problem…so around…two weeks. He nibbled here and there but didn’t really eat any love for quite a while.”

Both Acari and Cytes looked at each other eyes wide. “This can’t be good….” Acari said under her breath. “Are you sure there are no possible threats to him in Canterlot?”

“Well there is Spine…but I don’t think that he would…”

From out in the hall, Callsign knocked on the door. “I know that you told me not to disturb you… But a situation developed with the Love bug.”

“Callsign…” Cytes said, turning to look at the drone. “What happened?”

Lower down in the Hospital, Two Changelings were fighting inside of one hospital room. The two Guards from outside had been knocked out by the new entrant, who was now battling Shade.

“Just…Stay…down…” The Changeling hissed as it pinned Shade into a wall by his neck, Shade hissed in response and bit down hard on the Changeling’s leg, breaking through the Carapace and covering his fangs in bluish green blood.

“You filthy Nymph.” The Changeling hissed as Shade fell to the ground. “Why don’t you just stay down?”

Shade pounced on him, hissing aggressively. But the Changeling flew out of the way, leaving Shade to slam into a wall.

The Changeling flew down and pinned him in place, making sure to place more pressure on Shade’s hind legs. “Don’t struggle…and I will make this quick.” It lowered its face to stare Shade directly in his eyes, but found a curved horn jammed into his eye. “Aw! Chrysalis Damn it!”

While the Changeling tried to recover, Shade pounced, pinning the changeling to the ground. “How could you beat me? You are nothing more than a Nymph!” Shade bared his sharp teeth, his two fangs lowering down to the Changeling’s throat.

Shade hissed as he clamped down on the Changeling’s neck, his fangs breaking through the Carapace, splattering bluish green blood around the room. Shade began to rip through the Carapace, biting into the meat underneath the armor.

The two guards outside the room began to stir, looking at each other before turning towards the source of the loud crunching sounds. Looking into the room, they found Shade, feeding on the corpse of the Changeling, the metal restraints broken off; all that remained was the magic suppressor.

“Halt!” One of the guards said walking into the room, causing Shade to stop mid bite and release the Changeling. “Step away from the Changeling.”

Shade began to turn, his two solid blue eyes now a bright crimson color, his fangs were spattered with green and blue blood, as he turned, he snarled at the two of them, bits of muscle and chitin inside his teeth.

“Turn around and lower your horn.” The Guard demanded. Shade began slowly walking up to the two of them.

Shade growled at the two guards, a small flicker through his eyes like that of a wild animal.

Shade pounced towards the two Guards but was stopped by a blue shield placed in front of them.

“I think that is quite enough.” Sapphire said, walking into the room, her horn glowing bright as Shade continued to smash into the shield. “Guards, pacify him.” The Unicorn Guards both fired light blue beams towards Shade, which both hit him, however unlike before, he didn’t go down instead he just slinked away.

He hissed towards the guards before turning his attention back to his meal, making Sapphire wince at the crunching sounds that followed before Shade threw the Changeling corpse at the shield, the blue blood splattering across the shield. Sapphire looked towards the bite mark, noticing the veins had been pulled apart. The sight made Sapphire hold back the feeling to vomit as it slammed into the shield.

“Well?” She turned to both the Guards. “What are you waiting for? Pacify him.”

Sapphire dropped the shield, allowing the two Guards to use knockout spells on Shade before restraining him back onto the bed.

“Are you alright Doctor?” One of them said upon seeing Sapphire. “You look…kind of green.”

“I’ll…I’ll be fine…just…give me a moment I need to head back to my office.” Sapphire left the room, avoiding all calls to her or those trying to talk to her. When she met her secretary, she stopped, turned towards a nearby garbage can, and puked into it.

“Callsign… Clear all appointments for the day.” She said as she walked into her office. She picked up the pink crystal from her desk and tapped it against her horn.

“I’m sorry Acari…I had to handle a situation.” Sapphire replied, gulping. “Shade just killed a Changeling…”

“What? How?” Acari asked, surprised.

“I…I don’t know…but… hold on.” Sapphire grabbed the trashcan nearby and puked into it. “I’ve seen ponies cut open before, I’ve seen Hydra attacks…but that…” Sapphire shivered. “He was…eating the changeling.”

Acari held her jaw open in shock. “I…I have no idea what to say to that…” Acari was shocked, Changelings killing one another is nothing new, there have been wars and battles fought, but never did Changelings eat one another…

“To think that they were from the same hive…” Sapphire replied. “Whatever I just saw…I never want to see it again.”

“What are you planning to do?” Acari asked, still shocked from the information she was given.

“The Guards have probably doubled his restraints. The Changeling’s body should disintegrate on its own. I just need to focus on getting him fed before he kills anypony else.”

“I agree with you on that Cytes.” Acari replied. “Controlling him is of the utmost importance. We can’t have a raging Changeling running around the heaviest populated city in Equestria. Might I suggest the southern docks?” Acari said helpfully. “They got a fresh shipment of Carp for the Griffon Dignitaries coming in a few months.”

Sapphire smiled. “For once, I’m glad you track shipment orders.”

“I’m merely doing my part to ensure the safety of the Hives.” Acari replied. “Now I need to handle a situation developing in Cloudsdale. A small number of Chrysalis’ Changelings have been located there.”

“Do what you must Acari.” Sapphire replied. “I’ll handle Shade.” With that both of them cut their connections to the crystals. Sapphire placed the crystal back in its place in the cluster before putting them back behind her Degree.

Callsign walked into the room. “My Queen, who should I send to pick up the fish?”

“Just send a few of the Royal Guard.” Sapphire replied. “I need to focus on getting Cadence back here.”

“Should I send for her?” Callsign asked.

“If you would.” She replied. “Inform me when Shade wakes up; I need to look over him myself.”

Along with the usual hoof clamps, Shade was now chained to the wall behind him, his wings bound to his side, and the muzzle was replaced over his mouth. All the Changeling could do was glare at the blue unicorn while she examined him. Shining the bright light in his eyes and listening to his chest.

“You shouldn’t have fought that other Changeling.” Sapphire said as she examined his hind legs, the cracks now wider from when he fought. “You only made these injuries worse.”

Shade hissed at her in disgust. If he was not held away, he would bite down on her neck with ease, eating the insect had done nothing but give him energy, he wished to bite down on something with more substance.

“You will get your food.” Sapphire told him. “After I am certain you are fine.”

Shade hissed again.

“The more you fight it…the longer this will take.” Sapphire said as Shade attempted to bite her for the third time. “And the longer this takes, the longer until you get to eat.”

Shade hissed again before leaning back as Sapphire looked at his leg.

“Well…this is healing nicely.” Sapphire replied, looking at his right leg, the wound had been cleaned out and was healing on the inside, they gave it nearly hourly injections of healing potion to close it up as quickly as possible, all that was left was the Chitin.

“That may still take a while…” She said looking at his left leg, which was still sticking out at a weird angle but had healed on the outside.

“Now show me your wing.”

Shade hissed at her stupidity.

“Oh…right.” She used her magic to remove half of the harness keeping his wings attached. Obediently he lifted his right wing which was noticeably better, but still in no condition to fly.

“Well…that’s great. I thought it would take longer for that to heal.” Sapphire said looking at it. “At this rate you should be able to fly in a couple of da-“

“SUNNY!”

Before Sapphire could stop it, a pink pony rushed in and pulled Shade into a hug. Making him hiss in discomfort and try to bite the new pony.

“Oh! Sunny I missed you so much!” Shade continued to hiss as this new pony was forcibly crushing him. “Oh I got your letter and I couldn’t wait to see you again! So I decided to bring a party to you to make you feel better and-!” The pony looked at Shade. “Hey! What’s with your eye? It’s all blue.”

Shade managed to squirm out of the hold and hissed at the pink pony.

“Hey! Don’t hiss at me! I tried to bring you a party!”

Sapphire had grabbed the pony with her magic and wheeled her around to see her eyes. “What are you doing here?” She growled through her teeth.

“Well… I was here to bring a party to Sunny. But apparently he doesn’t want it.”

Shade snapped his jaw at her and hissed at her.

“Listen to me…” Sapphire said snapping the Pink pony’s head around to look at her. “This Changeling is a patient. We have two guards outside this room. How. Did. You. Get. In. Here?”

“I used the vents silly.” She pointed up to the ceiling where a vent was hanging open.

Sapphire looked at the vent and adjusted her glasses. “I didn’t even know that was there…”

“Pinkie!” A purple Unicorn walked into the room. “I told you not to run off. We could…” the Unicorn looked at the three of them. “What is going on in here?”

Shade hissed at the new arrival.

“Quiet you.” Sapphire said to Shade. “Who are you two?”

“My name is Twilight Sparkle.”

“And I’m Pinkie!”

“Great… glad we got that out of the way.” Sapphire threw Pinkie at Twilight before pushing the two of them out of the room. “Now stay out here until he is ready to have visitors or I will have the guards detain you until further notice.”

Twilight was going to say something, but Sapphire quickly slammed the door on them.

“What is going on in this hospital lately?” Sapphire said as she turned her attention to Shade. “Show me your wing again I need to make sure that pink one didn’t damage it.”

Shade lifted his wing.

“Buzz it for me.”

Shade tried to buzz it, but couldn’t.

“Alright… that’s…bad.” She looked at it. “Great… that pony seems to have dislocated it… This is going to hurt.” Sapphire used her magic to grab Shade’s wing. “3…2…1…” SNAP!

Shade hissed violently at her as he buzzed his wing.

“Great! Fixed that problem.” Sapphire said pushing the intercom. “Alright bring it in.”

The door opened, and a stallion with a dinner tray walked in, along with a Royal Guard. The tray was placed in front of Shade; on it was three raw fish. While the rest of them walked out the Guard removed the muzzle and the two clamps on his front hooves, before he closed the door and Shade began to tear into the three fish.

“You sure this is a good idea?” Silver said watching as Shade tore into the fish, not even stopping to pull out the bones.

“He needs food,” Sapphire replied. “Like you or me. If he doesn’t get it, he becomes a creature of instinct. All we need is Cadence and he will be himself again.”

“But is that a good thing?” Silver asked.

Sapphire glared at him. “Would you prefer he try to bite another Doctor? Personally, I don’t want to lose any of my staff. We are spread out enough as it is.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing…” Silver replied.

“You have no idea Silver…”

“She was a meanie head.” Pinkie Pie said while the group was waiting in the lobby.

“Well you did try to hug a Changeling in a locked room.” Twilight replied.

“But I wanted to see him!” Pinkie replied. “He sounded so lonely…”

“I thought he tried to bite you?” Rainbow Dash replied.

“I’m not going to hold that against him.” Pinkie Pie replied. “Maybe that’s just how Changelings say Hi.”

“I doubt that darling.” Rarity replied. “I think that would become rather uncomfortable. Although it would explain why they don’t care much for each other…”

“He didn’t sound too friendly.” Fluttershy said, thinking back to how Pinkie described the encounter.

“Well yah can’t really blame ‘im.” Applejack replied. “Knowin’ the condition he was in, Ah would probably act the same way.”

“But she didn’t have to throw me out!” Pinkie said. “With her spooky powerful magic.”

“Pinkie just because she can lift you doesn’t mean she is evil.” Twilight replied. “She probably just studied more than me.”

“Yeah…I guess your right. OH!” Pinkie perked up. “Do you think I could throw her party?”

Twilight placed her hoof on her face. “Pinkie I’m sure she has better things to do than to come to a party.”

“Indeed I do.” Sapphire said walking up to them. “I came to apologize for my handling of that situation.” She said adjusting her glasses. “My name is Sapphire. I run the Hospital.”

“Hi Sapphire I’m-“

“Pinkie Pie…I remember.” Sapphire replied. “And I certainly remember Twilight Sparkle. The number of times you came here to study biology will always be some of the most hectic moments of my life.”

Twilight blushed.

“Who are your friends here?” Sapphire said looking at the others.

“Well… That’s Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity and Fluttershy.” Twilight replied pointing to her friends.

“Oh hello… Wait…” She moved her glasses. “You six were at Cadence’s wedding.”

“Yes we were.” Twilight replied.

Sapphire ground her teeth slightly. They’ve made my life so much worse… “I’m certainly glad that you six were here.” She lied. “Imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t been here.” Maybe we would have caught Chrysalis…

“We didn’t really do much…” Fluttershy said timidly.

“Oh don’t be so hard on yourselves.” Said a kind voice.

“Cadence!” Twilight said surprised as she saw her old foal sitter.

“Hey Twilight.” She said.

The two of them performed their special greeting.

“Hello Princess, I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon.” Sapphire said to Cadence.

“Well when I got your letter about Sunstreak, I decided I should come over as quick as possible.”

“Well he is ready now if you want to-“

“Wait!” Pinkie said. “How come she gets to talk to Sunny? And I get thrown out!”

Sapphire wiped her glasses. “Because when you tried it, I was in a guarded room, supposed to be alone with a patient who was fully willing to kill you.” She placed her glasses back on. “And now he has stopped trying to kill others and he needs to be fed love. That is the reason Cadence is here.”

Pinkie gasped. “Does this mean I can throw him a party now!”

Sapphire looked at her surprised. “No loud noises, no streamers, no sharp objects and you have to stop before 10 O’ clock.”

“Okie Doki Loki!” Pinkie Pie replied.

“If you will follow me.” Sapphire replied before staring down Pinkie. “Quietly. Many of our patients still need sleep.”

Shade had just managed to regain consciousness and the first thing he noticed was that the roof of his mouth tasted like blood, and that there was a rather large green splat on the wall. Then next thing he noticed was the fish bones in front of him and that his hooves were free from the usual restraints. Then he noticed the chain holding him to the wall.

“The hell?” He said to himself. He looked up at the clock on the wall. “Holy…” He had been unconscious for almost an entire day. The last thing he remembered was a stabbing pain in his head. Had he been out for almost twenty-four hours?

He was pulled from this thought by two stimuli, one he recognized as Pinkie Pie attempting to crush his lungs, and the other was a very overpowering pink flame in his eye.

“OH! Sunny I missed you!”

“Pinkie….Still…need…air…” Shade said struggling against not only Pinkie’s grip, but against the chain holding his neck to the wall. “Can’t…Breathe…!”

Pinkie released her iron grip. “I got your letter and couldn’t wait to see you again! So I decided to bring a party to you! And your eye is back to normal!” Pinkie hugged him again, luckily without her gorilla strength.

“My eye?” Shade replied. “What are you talking about?” Shade looked behind Pinkie in an attempt to see what was currently forcing him to squint with his left eye. “Cadence?”

“Hello Shade.” Cadence said waving.

“Should have figured it was you when I was half blinded.” Shade said fidgeting with the collar around his neck. “Can…I get this thing off?”

Shade noticed a blue glow around his neck as the collar fell off. “Thanks.” Then he saw the caster… “Who are you?”

“My name is Sapphire, I’m in charge of the Hospital.”

“Where’s Rose?” Shade asked.

“She is currently on leave.” Sapphire replied. “Apparently trying to kill her twice in two days isn’t the best way to build relations.”

Shade’s ears fell against his carapace, “Oh…” He had done it again. Rose was beginning to be someone he could trust, and so far he had tried to kill her twice.

“Don’t worry Sunny.” Pinkie replied tightening her hug a bit. “I’m sure she’ll forgive you.”

“So… um…what’s with that?” Shade asked pointing at the green spot on the wall.

“That…was where you ate a Changeling.”

“WHERE I WHAT!” Shade shouted in surprise. “Who was it? What was going on? Why?”

Sapphire held up her hoof. “From what we have gathered, the Changeling was sent to kill you, you were currently in heavy need of food, and he was the closest thing you had. Instincts took over.”

Shade sighed in relief; he thought that he attacked Darkblaze, or even one of Acari’s Changelings. Hearing it tried to kill him made it… fine by legal standards… probably.

Shade only just noticed his headache returning. “ow…” he said rubbing the carapace. “So…what is Princess Cadence doing here?” Shade asked.

“Well…she is here to…” Sapphire twirled her hoof. “Supply you with the required amount of love.”

“Oh…” Shade replied. He had been quite conscious about his feeding habits, he tried not to take too much from any one pony, and he had mostly just been nibbling. He hadn’t gotten a decent amount of Love since Meadow went missing.

“Now I must admit.” Cadence replied. “I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m not even sure how I could help.”

Shade adjusted his sitting position to be more comfortable. “You shouldn’t really have to do anything.” He replied to Cadence. “There’s this nova coming off of you that is blinding me right now.” He could tell Cadence was flattered. “I think I can manage to absorb it…just warn me if you feel light headed.”

Shade let out a relaxed breath as he closed both his eyes. He began to focus on Cadence, or rather, the emotions. It wasn’t difficult, as Cadence’s pink flame overshadowed everything else. He began to pull it in slowly, causing his horn to glow dimly, he didn’t want to drain it quickly, as there could be side effects. So he just slowly fed on it, feeling his headache recede as he did.

To Shade, it felt oddly soothing, like a small warming current washing over him, giving him energy. When he felt that it was good enough, meaning when he didn’t feel his headache and he felt slight warmth over his body, he stopped.

“Well…” Shade replied. “I haven’t done that in a while. Last time was the first day in Ponyville.”

“When did ya have time to do that?” Applejack asked.

“Actually…it was during that dinner at the Orchard… granted I was trying to stop myself from feeding back then.”

Shade looked around to find Pinkie had somehow gotten a punch bowl, about ten balloons, a small table, a banner, and multiple party hats into the room.

“Where did…” Shade began to say looking at the various objects Pinkie placed around. “…I don’t want to know.” Shade replied as Pinkie pulled a cake box out of her saddlebag.

“She spent an hour getting everything together this morning.” Twilight told Shade. “She really wanted to throw you a party.”

“So wait…” Shade replied. “Where are you six staying?”

“Oh just in a hotel.” Twilight replied. “Celestia had to head to Cloudsdale for important business.”

“But enough about us.” Rarity replied. “What happened to you?”

“Yeah.” Rainbow Dash said in agreement. “What happened? You said something about Meadow going missing.”

“Well she is.” Shade replied. “She was taken by a group of changelings hiding in Meadow’s house. Spine decided to make it so I couldn’t follow.” Shade pointed towards his hind legs. “He still holds a grudge for me slamming into his chest during the invasion.”

“Well Ah reckon that varmint can’t be too far.” Applejack replied.

“Unless he took her back to the hive…” Shade sighed. “The traces probably went cold by now…”

“Hey!” Pinkie said “Turn that frown Upside down.” Pinkie replied.

“She’s right Shade.” Twilight replied. “Celestia has had guards patrolling all over the cities perimeters. If they tried to leave the city they would be found.”

Shade perked up. “So they can’t have left the city…” Shade began thinking about the new information, if they never left the city, then that drastically decreased where they could be. “This is great news!”

Pinkie smiled. “Does this mean we can party now?” She was practically bursting with excitement.

“As long as you all promise to help get me out as soon as possible,” Shade replied. “I’ve got bugs to hunt.”

“Deal.” Twilight replied, looking back at her friends, who all nodded in agreement.

“Alright then.” Shade turned to Pinkie. “Go ahead.”

Pinkie jumped in the air as confetti rained from her mane. “It’s Party Time!”

Author's Note

IT"S PARTY TIME UP IN THIS BI-:yay:

Chapter 22: Royal Meetings

It is unusual for Celestia to travel outside of Canterlot without a small group of guards accompanying her; however the delicate nature of this meeting required she come alone.

It had been only this morning that she received an urgent letter from Cloudsdale saying that a small group of Changelings had been captured masquerading as members of the court. She had cleared her schedule for the day and took off immediately for the flying city.

She had been sure to hide the capture from media, as she knew of the backlash this would have on not only her relations with her subjects, but with that of the courts. She needed to be sure that these changelings were truly masquerading as members of the court, and were not simply members of the court.

Upon reaching the Weather capital of Equestria, she quickly picked out the only pony she had told of the incident. A dusty pink Pegasus with a short gray mane pinned up into a bun, her brown eyes staring back at the Alicorn.

“You’re late…” The Pegasus said to Celestia as she walked up.

“Well if I was warned of the incident when it happened and not the day after, I could have gotten here quicker,” She replied.

“I don’t blame you.” The Pegasus replied as the two of them began to walk down the streets made of clouds. “You have a kingdom to watch over, and nobles to put in their place.”

Celestia smiled. “Half of that is your job as well.”

“Only when they break the laws set in place by the Legislature,” The Pegasus replied, “or when they make false accusations.”

“You will be happy to know that I prevented this information from getting leaked.”

“Yes… only after five ponies saw the scuffle…” The Pegasus replied. “Tracking down ponies is not supposed to be my job.”

“So you dealt with it then?” Celestia asked.

“Yes. They won’t remember a thing; they believe they saw a drunken brawl. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“That makes one hundred and thirty five ponies this year.” Celestia replied. “You must enjoy that explanation.”

“It is just the easiest to fake…” The Pegasus replied. “Besides, I needed a reason why several ponies attempted to kill each other.”

Celestia looked around at the streets and the flying pegasi above them. “I believe we should make this conversation a little more private.”

The Pegasus nodded. “I believe it is your turn to cast the silence spell.”

Celestia’s horn began to glow bright yellow as a faint yellow bubble surrounded the two of them. “Acari.”

“Princess.” Acari replied. “I do not need to tell you how disappointed I am in my scouts' disability to handle this matter silently.”

“My knowledge of the incident is limited.” Celestia replied. “What happened exactly?”

“I will allow them to tell you.” Acari replied. “They are detained just ahead.”

“By your own guard?”

“You know I trust no one else.” Acari replied. “Especially with the security of my hive. You should know that, Princess. Given what happened nearly eight centuries ago.”

Celestia remembered. She had to allow a nearly full citywide memory wipe to cover up the discovery of a changeling hive underneath Canterlot. She was not pleased by it, however it had been a part of their agreement… up until they managed to remove all Changeling hives from civilization. “I remember…”

“I’m sorry it came to that…” Acari replied genuinely. “If I had known Morphi’s hive was down there I would have cleared them out centuries ago.” She noticed Celestia’s expression. “I’m sorry…for…Starswirl… I realize he was your only friend at that time”

“I’d rather not talk about it.” Celestia replied. “That…was not the best time in my life…”

Acari nodded. “I’m just surprised Chrysalis knew about the old hive… Was that not where she placed the Love Princess?”

“It was…” Celestia replied. “I would not like to talk about Chrysalis until you locate her.”

“Of course, Princess.” Acari replied bowing her head. “Hopefully that day will be soon.” She looked up at Celestia. “But remember Princess, the Monarchy wishes to interrogate her before she is judged by Equestria.”

“I do not intend to back down on our deals. Whether we made them years ago or today.” Celestia replied.

“We’re here,” Acari said as she stopped walking.

Celestia turned to look at the building; it looked to be a run down warehouse, made nearly completely out of clouds. It was boarded up with large planks but seemed to be missing a chain lock that looked as though it was burned off. The building had a sign on it saying: CONDEMED in bright bold letters.

“How long have you been operating out of here?” Celestia asked.

“About six hours…” Acari replied. “We would normally use Ovi’s outpost, but she is currently mortally wounded from that blast you used. So her Changelings are in a rather testy mood.”

“More so than usual?” Celestia asked, from what she had been told, Ovi ran almost every one of the more…questionable locations in Equestria, and her Changelings fed off the emotions of the clientele, she would attempt to get rid of them, but the nobles always stood up for the establishments.

“They’ve begun biting the clients.” Acari replied, pushing the broken door off its hinges. “Needless to say, my Enforcers are standing guard at the establishments until Ovi has made a recovery or….” She trailed off. “Let’s hope it does not come to that.”

“Why?” Celestia would rather enjoy that particular hive vanishing all together, but she didn’t want them dead.

“The Changelings would begin going rampant, Ovi never had an heir, so the hive would need to be spread out, or the generals would fight for the right to lead.” She pushed the other door open. “I have an heir, she is currently in a holding chrysalis until she is needed. She knows everything she needs to in order to be a good leader.”

Acari motioned for Celestia to come in, as the Princess walked in, Acari picked up the two sides of the door and placed them back perfectly. A bit further down, two pegasi landed in front of them.

“Identity…” One of them growled.

“Queen Acari of the Just Hive. And Princess Celestia, Ruler of Equestria.” Acari’s eyes flashed pink. She hissed briefly before the two pegasi bowed.

“Welcome back My Queen.” One of them replied. “They are this way.” The two pegasi led them further into the warehouse, where the boards became heavier and the light stopped shining through and small green crystals dimly glowed through the darkness.

“They are just through here.” The Pegasus replied before flying back to their posts.

Celestia could hear hissing and buzzes coming from the room. Acari pushed open the door and Celestia noticed a single Changeling outside the small cells hissing at a small group of Changelings. All six of them were from Acari’s hive

“And not one of you caught it?” The single changeling asked the others. “It was one scout! How did none of you catch it?”

“Because I do not train my Changelings in combat Sergeant.” Acari replied, changing to her natural form. “Chrysalis does.”

“My Queen. I did not notice you.” He said with a bow. “I am simply trying to figure out how a starved changeling managed to avoid capture.”

“Understandable.” Acari replied. “I have Tornado Dust searching around for any sign of it. He will be returning soon. Tell him to report to me as soon as he can.”

The Sergeant bowed. “These are the four who were discovered. The fifth retained their cover.”

“Good for her.” Acari replied looking at the four changelings. “You will need to handle this issue yourselves. Try and be discreet about it.”

The four of them nodded. “Were there not six of you involved?” Acari asked.

“He’s…unconscious.” The Sergeant replied. “He has been since the attack. His faceplate has been cracked. And his eye has suffered a laceration.”

“I expect him to be moved to the emergency chrysalis as soon as possible.” Acari replied. “I am going to be speaking with Princess Celestia for a bit. Ensure their covers are secure before they leave.”

The Sergeant saluted as both Acari and Celestia moved to the next room.

“Who were they?” Celestia asked she had trouble telling Changelings apart without their covers.

“Just a few minor bailiffs, but the problem is…if the nobles find out about this…they will search the entire court.” Acari had sat down at a small old looking table. “You know how many of my best are in the higher ups.”

Celestia sat across from her. “I cannot guarantee their protection… and if they find out about it… the nobles could believe the court makes laws based around Changeling sentiment.”

Acari gasped. “My subjects would never do that!” While it is true that with Changelings the laws were a bit different, that only applied inside of hives and between changelings. Inside of pony cities or when disguised, they follow the rules of Equestria. “You know they studied law themselves. It is like Cytes’ changelings, they all learn to perform in their field of medicine!”

“Yes…but I believe that Changelings being doctors would be much more difficult to get used to.”

“Why is it so strange?” Acari asked. “You ponies can choose to be whatever you wish. Why is it so strange for a Changeling?”

Celestia looked at her. “You know what I meant Acari. The ponies of Canterlot are still… jumpy about the whole situation. I’m sure you are familiar with the Changeling discovered in Canterlot.”

Two changelings flew in and placed a tea tray in between the two monarchs. “Yes I am… his name is Shade.” Acari replied taking a sip of tea. “He has been living in Ponyville since the Invasion.”

“Then you should know I had to practically fight off the nobles who told me to kill him.” Celestia said sipping her tea. “For the first few days after his capture became public knowledge, many of them wanted to kill him. At first I thought the nobles had injured him. Until I found out the true reason.”

“That Spine changeling.” Acari said nodding. “That explains the boosted security then.”

“I’m not letting anything get through the city without being checked.” She sighed. “The nobles still are not thrilled with the fact he is in the city, especially in the hospital.”

“Yes… I heard about the incident.” Acari shivered. “Reminds me of those corrupted Changeling stories I heard as a nymph. Red eyes and all.”

“Well…that did not help in convincing them he was not going to harm anypony.”

“He only wishes to…” Acari was cut off by a caretaker flying up to her.

“My queen…the Infiltrator has returned.”

Acari nodded to the caretaker. “Thank you Biome. Tell him I would like to hear of any progress he has made.”

As the caretaker flew off, Celestia raised an eyebrow at Acari. “You have Infiltrators now?”

Acari dismissively waved her hoof. “Adjust to the times Tia. I had to implement changelings into your Royal Guard. Granted they were always changelings from the beginning of their training so they wouldn’t stand out too much.” Acari sipped her tea. “Pupa is much better at raising soldiers than me.”

The door squeaked open. “I’m starting to think this is a lost cause.” Came a voice from behind Celestia. “I’m running out of free days Acari.” Out of her peripheral vision, she saw a flash of green light.

She spun around in her small chair to look towards the source of the green light. She saw another Changeling, not like Acari’s, its eyes were a light blue color while its backplate was a dark blue and its wings were a light shade of green. It didn’t seem to notice Celestia though.

Acari nodded. “Darkblaze, I would like for you to meet an old friend of mine.”

“Hold on…” Darkblaze replied rubbing his thin ears. “I had to check through the Weather facility, a thundercloud went off next to me…”

“This is Celestia.” Upon hearing the name, Darkblaze looked up towards the Alicorn, gave a small uncertain smile, and backed away as quickly as possible while keeping his eyes on her.

“Oh…well I see you’re busy…” He replied nervously, “so I’ll just go and check the Wonderbolt’s Track again and-“

“Darkblaze remain here.” Acari replied. Causing the Changeling to freeze in place. “She is an ally.” Darkblaze still stayed as far away as possible. “Now I understand that you have information on your Hivemate.”

Darkblaze sighed and walked closer to the two Monarchs. Being careful not to remove his eyes from Celestia. “I have discovered it is definitely a female.”

“How?” Celestia asked making the Changeling jump slightly.

“The pheromone trail.” Darkblaze replied. “It coincided with a Caretaker.”

Acari, who had been taking a sip of her tea, placed the cup down. “A caretaker?”

Darkblaze nodded. “They are trained in bloody combat, they are the final defense for the Queen, and so they are the most brutal.” Darkblaze seemed to calm down slightly, but still took periodic glances at Celestia.

“Anything else?” Celestia asked.

“She is injured and starved.” Darkblaze replied. “And…she is without the Queen.”

Acari looked down at him. “She is our best chance to find Chrysalis… Have you figured out any possible locations?”

“With a wounded leg,” Darkblaze replied. “She cannot leave the city, so she must be close to where it occurred… I estimate she cannot be more than a few hundred yards from the conflict.”

Acari sighed. “Are you certain of that distance?”

“Relatively,” Darkblaze replied. “There is only a hoof full of locations remaining.”

“Very well…” Acari replied. “Take a small squad of Changelings, I want her found… I want to know where Chrysalis is.”

“Very well Acari.” Darkblaze said with a bow. “I will return when we find something.” Darkblaze gave a small shiver before walking out of the room.

“Since when have you been harboring wanted criminals?” Celestia said raising an eyebrow.

Acari sipped her tea. “He is an exile. He has been pardoned for his crimes by me personally.” She refilled her tea. “He has been an ally to Shade for quite some time.”

“Aren’t you worried he will slow down the search?” Celestia replied.

“He has yet to place his loyalty into question.” Acari replied. “He is grateful for the chance at a new life. He has been looking for a way out of the hive for years. I trust him and that is what matters here.” Acari sipped her tea. “Now back to the issue at hoof.”

Celestia nodded. While she wasn’t against Changelings assisting one another, she was not too happy about Acari employing the help of one that was at the invasion. But she had to admit it would be the only way to track down Chrysalis. “Agreed.”

“What do you plan to do with Shade once he has made a recovery?” Acari asked.

“I am not sure…” Celestia admitted. “If what you have told me is true… then the best course of action would be to let him try and find the foal.”

“Understandable.” Acari replied. “Now the situation with the court…”

“The media will catch on eventually.” Celestia replied. “They always do…”

“So I suppose the proper question would be, how do you plan to confront them?”

Sapphire had managed to sneak out of the room before the party commenced, she was never a fan of social interactions, she left that to her Drones, and the pink one made her head hurt far too much.

She walked through the halls to where the elevator was placed; the inside was standard, steel grey, boxed in. But where the floor numbers were located, there was a small hole, which could easily be considered a key hole, were it not for the fact that no keys could operate it. Sapphire pulled a small crystal from her lab coat and placed it into the hole, causing it to glow bright red.

Sapphire touched her horn to the crystal, and it flashed blue before vanishing into the elevator. As it did, the elevator began to move down,

3rd floor, 2nd floor, 1st floor, basement, Under-center.

The elevator slowed to a halt as the crystal removed itself from the hole. The doors slid open, revealing the glowing underground, black Changelings flew around the area, holding clipboards and stethoscopes, all of them busily flying through the small chambers.

Sapphire put the crystal back in her pocket as she walked down the lightly glowing blue hallways, listening to the chatter of the changelings as they flew and ran down the halls. She looked around the halls, looking into the sealed off chambers, a blue membrane blocking out the sound. She could see her sky blue eyed changelings with their dusty purple backplates looking over the various changelings.

Sapphire sighed. They had been doing their best to keep up with both the changeling’s and the ponies' needs, but there have been far too many injuries for them to keep up with, for nearly the first time since she became the Queen, the hive was full. Some patients were outside of the sealed rooms, nursing various degrees of injuries.

Some had lost wings, horns, and even entire pieces of Chitin. The amount of deaths had been climbing for quite a while; Sapphire regretted being one of the smallest hives. If she had just a few more Changelings, then maybe she could save a few more… but the ponies needed help too, and they had not been dying off as quickly.

“My Queen,” One of her Changelings flew up to her, she recognized it as a caretaker, and she had re-employed them to focus on patient emotional needs. “I regret to inform you that we are running out of supplies for Pupa’s soldiers.”

“How much longer until the stores run out?” Sapphire asked.

“A few days at the very most…” the Caretaker replied. “We estimate heavy losses.”

“How many today?” Sapphire asked as they passed by a Changeling getting their leg amputated.

“Thirty-Two,” The caretaker replied, “mostly from Pupa, a few from Acari, and one from Chrysalis.”

Sapphire sighed. “How many of Pupa’s changelings are still ready to collect?”

“Very few of them… They are doing their best to stay discreet, but many of their food sources are wounded.”

Sapphire sighed again. “Has my daughter replied to my requests yet?”

“She has her hooves full dealing with those Changelings that were shot out of the city.” The caretaker looked at Sapphire. “My Queen…she has sent a few Changelings to bring over reserve emotions.”

“How long until they meet up with the main Hive?” Sapphire asked. Celestia had been boosting security around the city, the only way for them to get reserve supplies was from the main hive, but she couldn’t risk sending Changelings out.

“They should arrive before midday tomorrow.”

“Not enough time…” Sapphire replied. “We won’t be able to get it here in time…” It took at least a day to manage to get the emotions in a high enough concentration to be shipped safely. Then it was up to the delivery service.

“How are we on Lust supplies?” Sapphire asked, passing by one of Ovi’s orange eyed Changelings, missing both wings and having a severed horn.

“They are at a constant rate,” the Caretaker replied. “Ovi’s hive has been doing the best they can for their Queen… but it doesn’t help the others.”

“Attempt to reassign them.” Sapphire replied. “They will try and fight it, but we need the other emotions, I do not want more deaths than we already have.”

“Of course my Queen.” The Caretaker flew off up one of the tunnels. Sapphire continued to walk down the halls, stopping at a single room, in which a group of at least fifteen changelings were crowding around a single patient.

Sapphire walked through the membrane sealing off the room. “Every one out.” She said as she walked in. “I need to be alone with Ovi.” There was hissing and a very angry caretaker, until Sapphire transformed back to her natural form.

“Out. Now.” She said. “I will allow the caretaker. Drones, go and gather.”

There were a few hisses towards Cytes. “Ovi placed me in charge of you until she has recovered. What we need is more energy for Pupa’s changelings. Otherwise they will die.” Some of the Changelings were still less than pleased.

“Drones…” Ovi groan, currently she was disguised as a black unicorn with bright orange eyes. “Obey…”

“But Queen-?”

“Now…”

The Drones bowed to her before they exited the chamber, leaving only two other changelings.

“How is she holding up?” Cytes asked her Changeling writing on a clipboard.

“Not too well.” He replied. “She is determined to help her Changelings before herself. She isn’t accepting any food we try to give her.”

“She doesn’t want your help!” The Caretaker replied. “She would rather die than-”

“Care…Do me….a favor… and shut up…” Ovi groaned every word physically hurting.

“Ovi…” Cytes walked up to the Queen. “You can’t just starve yourself.”

“And why…not?”

“You must take care of yourself.” Cytes always admired her resilience to protect her hive, but often it turned into a weakness. “Your Drones wouldn’t want you to die.”

“They…will understand…”

“Who will lead if you fall?”

Ovi smiled at Cytes. “We both…know the answer.”

Cytes understood, Ovi had no heir, but if she would die, she wanted Cytes to use her hive for the best. But even if it did come to that, Cytes would only let them follow until they decided on their next Queen.

“How is…Selena…?” Ovi named her Changelings, at least…those she admired. Most were merely numbered Drones, but some who had an identity beyond pleasing the client were given names.

“She is bad… we lost her wings and her horn is shattered.” Cytes replied.

“She…would make…a good…Queen.” Ovi replied her eyes beginning to close.

“Cytes…she’s crashing.”

“Help her!” The caretaker replied, looking panicked.

“GET A REVIVER TO OVI!” Cytes announced through the hive. “NOW!”

A changeling rushed through the membrane, horn alight with electricity.

“My Queen…” The caretaker said shaking the unicorn. “My Queen. Please. Say something!”

Cytes reached up and grabbed the caretaker, turning her away from her Queen. “It’s alright…”

“But she’s…” The Caretaker tried to look as her Queen was shocked by the Changeling.

“Don’t look…” Cytes replied. “Shhh….she’ll be fine.”

“My Queen…” The Caretaker looked away as Cytes carried her out of the room.

“There’s nothing you can do for her now…” Cytes said in an attempt to calm the Changeling.

“Will she be alright?” The caretaker asked, looking back through the membrane.

“I don’t know…” Cytes told her. “All we can do is hope…”

Acari had frozen suddenly, a feeling of dread rushed through her.

“Is something wrong?” Celestia asked, noticing Acari’s expression.

“Ovi…” She replied. “Something terrible has happened.” Acari placed down her cup, staring off towards the direction of Canterlot.

“She isn’t-?”

“I hope not…”

The Changeling Queens are not often connected, they prefer to govern their own hives, however whenever an entire hive exhibits a feeling of such intensity, the Queens can feel it. It was never a good sign.

A small blue flame appeared on the center of the table, condensing into a letter. Acari picked it up. The letter appeared to have been written quickly, given the sloppy work of the writer.
Acari,

An urgent matter has arisen that requires your aid. While I understand that you are currently handling a situation in Cloudsdale, and are meeting with Celestia, this matter is important for the safety of the hives.

Enclosed are two crystals, these will allow you to quickly transport here and back. I beg of you Acari, come quick, I cannot handle this situation on my own.

~Cytes

Acari read through the letter and found the two crystals curled up in the parchment, they were small blue shards, Acari looked at them in loathing.

“What is it Acari?” Celestia said, looking at the two crystals.

“I have been called by Cytes.” Acari replied. “It is urgent…”

“What is the problem?” Celestia asked, looking over the letter.

“Whatever it is, Cytes is worried.” Acari replied picking up one of the crystals. “She did say you would be allowed to enter. If only for the fact it is Canterlot.”

Celestia nodded. “Do you believe your soldiers can handle the situation here?”

“Darkblaze understands the situation, he will lead them.” Acari replied. “Now come close, the crystal must touch your horn.”

Cytes paced nervously inside of her throne room, fidgeting with her glasses. It was one of the few times she wished she had a caretaker to speak with. Along the walls, designs of medical doctrines were etched in, along with some of the more famous Changelings. Cytes used to find solace in gazing at the portraits of her ancestors, but now…they only made her more nervous.

“Acari… Come on…” Cytes had never been this nervous before, at least not since the first time she took her Medical Exam. Only this time, it was not something she could try again, if something went wrong here, it could mean the end of their race.

When the door opened Cytes almost jumped as a Drone rushed up to her. “My Queen” he said bowing. “Sorry for disturbing you. But we have managed to clear out Queen Ovi’s chamber.”

“Thank you…” She replied, continuing to pace the room. “I expect her to be ready to move as soon as possible.”

“Of course Queen Cytes.” The drone replied before rushing out of the room.

“Acari…hurry…” Cytes was worried, Acari didn’t often hold a conference with Celestia, usually only during rough times for the hives, and often they could not contact her. So Cytes was hoping that the letter got through.

When a blue flash appeared in the middle of the room, Cytes let out a very heavy breath. “Acari I am so glad that you…”

She noticed that Acari was not the only one, as Celestia was there as well. So on instinct, Cytes turned back into Sapphire. “Celestia?”

Both Acari and Celestia were rubbing their heads. “I understand why you hate those now…”

“Acari…” Sapphire said. “Not to sound rude. But why is Celestia here?”

“I decided it would be her place to decide, seeing how it is on her land.”

“I can understand that but…” Sapphire was about to begin arguing about this but decided to focus on the problem at hoof. “Ovi just got worse.”

“How much?” Acari asked.

“Follow me…I need your help to deal with this issue.” Sapphire replied, walking out of the door, Celestia and Acari were quick to follow.

Celestia couldn’t help but be impressed with the Hive, how well it was laid out to be almost identical to the hospital above, how it handled the added third dimension of flight. How quickly the Changelings managed to rush from room to room. She stopped for a moment when she saw a few of Chrysalis’ changelings behind one of the blue membranes.

“So how many hostile changelings are still in Canterlot?” Celestia asked motioning to the changelings. “And be honest with me.”

“There are only around ten.” Sapphire replied. “Each of them have suffered some kind of mortal injury. They’ve been dying slowly one at a time. We can’t get any of them to come out of a comatose state.”

Sapphire continued to walk as a group of orange eyed changelings flew up to her.

“What’s wrong with the Queen?”

“Is there any way for us to help?”

“Will she be alright?”

“Please…” Sapphire said to the Changelings. “If you want to help, go out and gather more energy for Pupa and Chrysalis’ changelings. We don’t want more deaths. And please… inform your Swarm that if they have any more questions, to leave a message with Callsign, I will get back to them as soon as I am able. Now please leave me alone.”

The group of Changelings caught sight of Celestia and hissed at her.

“Go.” Sapphire replied, her eyes flashing blue. “NOW!”

The Changelings flew off, leaving the hallway clear aside from the few that were next to others suffering.

“Queen Cytes!” Another Changeling called.

“What in Celestia’s mane is it?”

She recognized the changeling as Ovi’s caretaker. “I-I wanted to ask…if it was possible for me to…”

“You want to stay by her side?” Sapphire asked, looking the Changeling in the eyes. She could tell it was worried.

It nodded. “I-I want to stay by her side till the end.”

“Of course…” Sapphire replied. “If I may ask…do you have a name?”

“Carrie.” She replied. “The Queen is my birth mother.”

Acari looked surprised. “Yet you are not her heir?”

Carrie shook her head. “I was not brought up to be her successor.” She replied landing. “I merely watch over her.”

Sapphire nodded. “If it is what you wish. I will allow it.” She bowed her head slightly. “Princess…”

Carrie blushed, though it was hard to tell through the chitin. The four of them continued until they reached the chamber where Ovi was being held, her black unicorn disguise had fallen away to reveal her natural form, her eyes were closed, though her mane was allowed to hang loose against her carapace. If it were not for the different colors, one could easily mistake her for Chrysalis.

“What happened?” Acari replied, stepping through the blue membrane.

“She has refused to take care of herself before her changelings.” Sapphire explained. “She would not take any treatment until her Changelings were all recovered.”

Carrie had flown over to where her Queen lay. “Mother…please…”

“She’s catatonic; we can’t manage to get any kind of reaction from her.” Sapphire took off her glasses and placed them on the side table. “That’s why I needed your help.”

Acari looked at her for a moment. “Cytes…you know I cannot use healing magic as you can.”

“Even if you could, it wouldn’t help,” Sapphire replied. “I need the machines in the main hospital…the only problem is…”

“Managing to get a Changeling Queen there without anypony noticing.” Celestia replied. Having a Changeling Queen in Canterlot would open up a can of worms that Celestia didn’t want opened. The Nobles would be seeking redemption for the Invasion.

“Exactly…” Sapphire replied. “I need a powerful illusion spell to make her look disguised.”

Acari shook her head. “Cytes…I would love to help…but I cannot keep that kind of enchantment up for very long, at least not constantly. I can keep it up for a few hours…but the spell will break.”

“What if I gave you some of my power?” Celestia asked.

“Even then…the spell would break eventually. It may extend its life for a few days…”

“That is all we need.” Sapphire replied. “A few days is more than enough time to get her back to health.” Sapphire grabbed her glasses. “Or at least enough time to get her back to consciousness.”

“Alright…” Acari replied. “Then I suppose it is what we must do. Are you prepared Celestia?”

Celestia nodded.

“Very well, I will warn you, you will feel light headed after this.”

“I understand. Do what you have to.” Celestia prepared herself, but wasn’t expecting it to happen so quickly, as soon as Acari’s horn began to glow, Celestia felt winded. It didn’t take very long for her to gain a headache from the drain.

“You should sit down Princess.” Sapphire said pulling up one of the chairs brought down from the main hospital.

Celestia found it, but her vision was oddly blurry. “You haven’t had to do that in centuries…” She said as she managed to sit down.

“And I hope I do not need to again.” Acari replied. Celestia saw a bright pink light, and Acari began breathing heavily.

“It…Is…Done…” Acari replied before wobbling slightly. “I’m fine…I just…give me a minute…” Acari found another chair and sat in it, still breathing heavy.

“Where is she going?” Carrie asked Sapphire.

“Well…” Sapphire replied. “There is only one room in this hospital that has both a free spot, and an occupant who wouldn’t try to kill her.”

Carrie looked up from the black unicorn in front of her. “Who?”

Author's Note

I seem to have come to the wrong party.... Ah well whatever. :trollestia:

Chapter 23: Roommates?

Shade had enjoyed the party while it lasted, sure he couldn’t move from the bed because his legs were still far too injured for him walk on, but he didn’t let that stop him. Pinkie had been a thrill to have back, the constant happiness she had provided nearly endless energy for Shade. The food was much better than what Shade had eaten in a while, and Twilight had even brought more of the Daring Do books for him to read.

That’s why he was sad when the party had to end, even though he knew it was inevitable. Though he was pleased when Rainbow, Twilight, and Pinkie all agreed to stay in Canterlot until the whole situation blew over. Pinkie even made a promise to come see him every day until he was able to walk again.

So as the night began to crawl in and the clock ticked away the hours, Shade picked up the Daring Do book and continued to read from where he left off.

He managed to get a decent way into it when he picked up what sounded like four sets of hooves rushing down the hall while a very squeaky cart was carried behind them. Then he saw the door flung open, which caused him to jolt up from where he was sitting.

“Put her right there.” Sapphire ordered to the other two doctors, they placed the bed a little ways away from Shade.

Curious, Shade placed the quill Pinkie gave him inside the book to hold his place and watched.

The doctors had quickly stopped the cart, plugged the black unicorn up into the various vital monitors, and placed an IV into one of her front legs. While Shade couldn’t be sure, he guessed that the Unicorn was in a coma, given that nothing about her changed except for the slow rise and fall of her chest. She was clearly reaching an elderly age, as her orange mane was beginning to grey.

“Everything is good.” One of the doctors said to Sapphire.

“Alright, Carrie, you can come in now.” Sapphire announced to the door. Shade looked to see what looked like a smaller version of the black unicorn, only the mane was a bit curlier and a little less grey. Her orange eyes were fascinating, as they were the first thing that Shade’s attention was drawn to.

“Are you sure about this?” Carrie asked.

“Of course…” Sapphire said motioning at Shade, who smiled reassuringly. “He won’t hurt her.”

The unicorn looked at Shade and backed up slightly. Causing Shade to remember he had two rather large fangs and the smile was probably just showing them off, so he lowered the smile.

“I’m not sure…” Carrie said not taking her eyes off Shade.

“Oh don’t worry about him.” Sapphire replied. “He wouldn’t hurt either of you.” She moved her glasses further down her snout. “Isn’t that right?”

Shade smiled nervously. “Yeah…”

“Besides,” Sapphire said fixing her glasses. “He knows what happens if he tries anything.” She said it with a threatening tone that made Shade swallow loudly. “Now if there are no more complications…” She yawned. “I think it’s time to hit the hay.” She began walking towards the door.

“Oh, and Shade.” The Changeling in question looked up at the mention of his name. “Rose should be back tomorrow.”

Shade nodded appreciatively as the Unicorn left the room. He still thought there was something off about her, but couldn’t put his…hoof on it….

Though almost the instant the door closed, the young black unicorn switched her personality all together to snap Shade’s head around to look at her.

“Let’s get one thing straight, love sucker.” She spoke in a cold angry voice. “If you so much as lay a hoof on her.” She moved Shade’s head to look at the older unicorn. “I will end you.” She stared Shade directly in the eyes. “Got it?”

Shade nodded. “I understand.” It was the only thing he could do to not get in trouble with the Guards outside again. “Now can you please let go of my head? I still need that.”

The unicorn glared at him for a few seconds before letting go of him and walking over to her mother.

“Note to self: Don’t mess with them.” He said under his breath, grabbing the book he had been reading and reopening it.

“What in Tartarus is going on?” Sunglider shouted to the pegasi.

“Canterlot is under attack!” The Lunar Captain shouted. “Pegasi! Get your feathered Flanks up there!”

Obediently Sunglider grabbed his helmet and took off into the sky. Flying through the oncoming insects. He flew up and tackled one of them, slamming it into the ground.

“Sunglider!” He turned to see his unicorn brother. “Get back!”

Sunglider jumped off the pony shaped insect as a beam of red hit it, throwing it into a wall, knocking it unconscious.

“What are these things?” Sunglider asked.

“Changelings. They feed off love. And they’re attacking.”

At that moment, a group of ponies ran past the alleyway.

“There go the Element bearers.” Silver said checking over the unconscious Changeling.

“What are they planning to-?” Sunglider began as a Changeling slammed in between Sunglider and Silver. It looked towards Silver, and then pounced on Sunglider. Pinning him to the wall while hissing at him.

“Sunny!” A red beam hit the changeling. Silver ran up and tackled the Changeling, pining it to the ground with his hoof.

“Traitor!” it snapped at Silver. “Chrysalis will-”

“Shut it!” Silver brought his hoof down on the Changeling’s head, knocking it out. “Sunny! You alright?”

“Yeah…just a little winded. Why was it calling you a traitor?”

“No idea.” Silver replied, looking up at the sky. “That one looks like it’s trying to follow the Bearers.”

“I’m on it.” Sunglider said jumping into the air. He could hear his brother trying to get his attention. But he was busy building speed.

He slammed quickly into the Changeling's chest, causing it to spiral a few yards away. As it managed to steady itself, Sunglider charged at it again. He planned to slam it into the ground as hard as he can. But when he expected to hit it, he felt a pulling on his wings.

‘What in Tartarus?’ He thought as he found himself getting closer to the ground.

He was flipped around in the air and saw up close what had grabbed him, two long fangs, black carapace, a curved horn, and two mismatched eyes. Sunglider didn’t have a chance to try and maneuver. Before he saw the Changeling’s horn glow and felt all the energy drain from him. He had barely enough energy to keep his eyes open as the Changeling pushed itself off him, causing Sunglider to slam into the ground.

“SUNNY!” he heard his brother shout at him. Looking up at the sky, he saw a second Changeling meet up with the first, before the second one dashed and slammed into Silver.

“Hey…” Sunglider heard close to his ear, it sounded so distant.

He managed to open his eye to see a black unicorn.

“Try to stay still…” The Unicorn replied.

He didn’t have anyway to move, his legs wouldn’t listen to him, his wings felt broken, and he couldn’t keep his eyes open.

The world began to blur as darkness filled his vision. He could barely hear some strange chanting, then from the black, a single orange eye snapped open, glaring down, a wicked white smile pierced the darkness, as the snakelike creature burst into flames it charged towards Sunglider, opening its sharp teeth.

Shade jolted awake. That wasn’t my memory. He thought over what he just saw. He remembered everything happening from his own point of view, he understood what was going on, switched perspective. However, what was what the giant fire snake? That didn’t happen, probably just his imagination messing with him… again.

He looked up at the clock. For the first time I’ve had a nightmare, and it didn’t make me wake up at midnight. Awesome.

He decided to grab his book and continue reading, seeing how he had nothing else really to do. When he heard the Unicorn begin to stir slightly.

“Dr…one…”

“Well, hello there.” Shade said, looking over at her.

“Where…”

“Hospital.”

“Care…”

“No idea actually.” Shade replied. “I just got up.”

The unicorn looked as though she tried to move, but couldn’t manage it.

“Don’t rush yourself.” Shade said opening the Daring Do book. “They must have been very desperate to put you in this room.”

Shade looked over to see the Unicorn trying to lift herself up. Clearly it took a lot of effort, because of how she wobbled as she tried to lift herself, and the fact that the machines connected to her were going crazy. Shade watched both fearfully and curiously.

“You okay?”

“I…jus-” She slammed onto the bed.

“Umm…you still with me?” Shade asked, trying to look at her. At that time, Carrie walked into the room.

She gasped loudly. “What did you do to her?” Before Shade had the chance to look at her, she rushed over to her mother. “Mom? Did he hurt you?”

She turned to glare at Shade. “I swear…”

Shade rolled his eyes. “How could I do anything?” He tapped the ring on his horn, and then motioned to the two clamps on his hind legs. “Unless I somehow willed her to move slightly, I don’t see why you are blaming me.”

Carrie just glared at him, and Shade could have sworn he saw small fangs…

The door opened and Rose walked into the room, she saw the two other Unicorns in the room. “Oh… you have a roommate now.” She said, not noticing the deadly look Carrie was giving him. “Well that is a good way to boost public relations.”

Shade took his eyes off of Carrie. “So…how did I manage to scare you off this time?” Shade asked.

“Oh… you turned into Sunglider for a bit and then became a brainless savage and tried to kill both me and my boss.”

Shade’s ears fell against his carapace. “Did I-”

“No… no… Sapphire stopped you before you did anything too drastic.”

Shade let out a small sigh. “Didn’t stop me from killing that Changeling…”

“You did what now?” Rose asked.

“Ask Sapphire… I don’t know.” Shade replied, noticing the angry look from Carrie.

“Well, on that note.” Rose replied. “I’m here to tell you that you are due for another X-ray of that leg of yours.” She put on a smile. “And… I managed to talk the Guards into allowing a side by side comparison of your bone structure when in your pony form.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Nope.” Rose replied. “Turns out that Sapphire wanted to get a better look at your injuries, and Celestia was curious how the injuries you sustained link up with a pony’s biology.”

“You going to tell me how you managed to talk them into letting you do this?”

“Didn’t plan on it.” Rose replied. “Just so you know, that won’t be happening for a few hours… and you have a guest.” Shade caught Pinkie rushing up to him and braced himself for what he knew was coming.

“Sunny!” Pinkie hugged him tightly.

“Well, at least you aren’t crushing me this time.” Shade replied.

“When we got back to the hotel, I wanted to come back and see you right away!”

“That’s-” Pinkie Pie tightened her hug. “Great, Pinkie… But I was kind of expecting you to be back later.”

Pinkie released her grip and began talking quickly. “I couldn’t wait. You were gone for almost a week! I just-”

“Pinkie. Breathe.”

Pinkie took a deep breath before continuing. “I’m sorry. I’m just so excited! I want to throw you a Changeling party! I’ve been making plans since I found out. But I didn’t know if there was anything special I needed to know about how parties are thrown.” Somehow she pulled out a notebook, a box set of crayons, and a marker.

“Where…” Shade began before slapping himself. “Rule 1: Don’t Question Pinkie Pie…” He looked over to where Carrie was, and saw that she was both confused at Pinkie and simultaneously hate filled.

“Well…uh…” Shade said, surprised scratching the back of his head. “I’ve never really…heard of…Changelings having parties…” He saw Carrie roll her eyes.

“Stupid Love Sucker,” She sighed.

Pinkie Pie looked over at Carrie. “Hi there! I didn’t see you there!” She rushed over. “My name’s Pinkie Pie. Who are you?”

“Carrie.” She replied, looking over her mother.

“Carrie? That’s a nice name. So what are you doing here?”

“Keeping a watch on my mom…” Carrie replied looking down at the Unicorn in the bed.

“Oh no… What happened?”

Carrie’s eyes started to water. “She-she wanted to protect us…She didn’t think about herself. She only wanted to protect us!”

Shade knew what she was talking about, the invasion probably left a lot of ponies around Canterlot, she must have just been found… or she got much worse...

“What happened to her?” Shade asked, feeling responsible for what happened.

“Why would you care?” Carrie shouted at Shade. “You’re the reason this happened to her! Your Queen caused all of this! Cytes was wrong about you!”

“Cytes?” Shade repeated confused.

“Hey! Don’t yell at Sunny. He didn’t do anything.” Pinkie retorted. “Sure he may have been a bad changeling at one point, but he isn’t like those other meanies.”

“Prove it!” Carrie yelled towards Pinkie. “Prove to me that this isn’t all just an act!” Carrie pointed towards Rose, who was still in shock from the outburst. “Sapphire must have told you what HE did! How can I trust him if he sees his own family as threats!”

Shade was shocked by the hatred in her words. He didn’t expect her to treat him as well as Pinkie or even Rainbow Dash, but she was treating him as if he had personally done this to her.

“Prove it to me he won’t rejoin Chrysalis the next chance he gets!”

Pinkie gasped. “Sunny would never do something like that.”

“Oh please, he’s using you!” Carrie pointed her hoof angrily at Shade. “And once he doesn’t need you, he’ll just throw you aside.”

“No he wouldn’t do that!” both of them started to raise their voices.

Shade just placed his hooves over his ears, trying to block out the sounds of the two mares arguing. He just wanted to have a peaceful day for once, but all he got was more and more trouble as his time in Canterlot continued.

“girls…” He said trying to be heard over the two of them. “Pinkie…” His temper was coming to a point.

“PINKIE!” Shade shouted. Causing both mares to look towards him. “I can’t…Ugh!” Shade said planting both of his hooves into his face. He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Pinkie, but I think you need to leave.”

“But-”

Shade held up his hoof and pointed it towards the door. “Now, Pinkie.” Pinkie’s head drooped as she walked over to the door. “I’ll try and help later.” Shade said as she looked back.

“I’m sorry, Sunny.” Pinkie said walking out the door.

When Pinkie left the room, Shade couldn’t help but feel bad, she was only trying to help him and he yelled at her. He let out an aggravated breath.

“Typical.” Carrie replied. “Care for them until they aren’t needed.”

Shade had to stop himself from trying to lunge at the unicorn. It hurt Shade to have to yell at Pinkie like that, and she was acting as though he didn’t care about her. He was going to start arguing, but he saw Pinkie left her planning stuff right next to him.

Shade flashed Carrie a glare before turning his attention to the planning notebook, on the outside it was just a pink notebook with the words “PARTY PLANS” written in multicolored crayon. But when Shade opened it and started looking it was much more than that.

Inside was a list of everything she knew about him. Where he was from, favorite pastry, color palette, even his cover story was written down. Pinkie must have asked everyone he had talked to, either that or she was one sneaky pony.

Every page he flipped through had either information on a different pony, location, or even a separate party she had thrown. He was surprised by the details, How did Pinkie have this much information?

“I underestimated Pinkie Pie’s tenacity.” Shade mumbled.

“Wouldn’t be the first time…” Carrie replied.

Rose walked over to look at what Shade was reading. “Is that…”

Shade nodded. “Pinkie takes her job as Ponyville’s Party Planner very seriously from the looks of it.” He flipped the page to find the plans for a party planned almost two weeks ago…

“Hey.” Shade said, remembering the details. “This was the first one Pinkie threw me.”

Rose leaned in to look over the notebook; it had a drawing of a small house, with a variety of markings. The ceilings had streamers drawn on them, balloons were drawn everywhere. The entire house looked like some kind of wild party.

“That was an enjoyable night.” Shade said looking back on it. “If a bit frightening.”

“Why’s that?” Rose asked.

“I had to place a small spell on myself I learned that blocked out my emotional senses so that I wouldn’t freak out.” Shade remembered how he shook Darkblaze into almost dropping his disguise. “That made it so much easier…”

Rose looked away from the notebook. “Well, I can see you are going to be occupied for a while,” she began moving back to the door. “I need to go get the X-Ray prepped for your use, so I’ll just get going.”

As Rose left the room, Shade reached over and grabbed the marker Pinkie had left behind with his mouth, being careful not to puncture the marker with his fangs.

He flipped through the notebook until he found a page that was full of questions labeled “Shade’s Welcome Back Party” The questions all seemed to be based around his preferences, or about the hives. While he had only gotten a fairly brief look at the layout of the Hive he had been in, but he figured he could determine the rest of the hive followed a similar aesthetic.

He looked through the questions, modified how he held the marker slightly, and began to fill it out.

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Just?” Sapphire asked the gray unicorn mare next to her as the two walked down the Hospital halls. “Aren’t you worried about any possible court duties you have?”

The gray mare waved dismissively. “You know that nothing ever happens that requires my aid and even then, I get weeks' worth of warning.”

“Even so…won’t it draw attention to you?” Sapphire asked. It wasn’t common for the Equestrian Court’s Judge to be seen on the streets, mostly because she didn’t like to push her luck.

“I have been around town a few times,” Just Sentence replied. “I told you why I decided to stay, I wanted to see Lieutenant Sunglider’s condition myself before I was forced to make any kind of judgment.”

Sapphire knew it was a lie, mostly because Just had told her that she needed to look at Sunglider’s condition to see if the problem was fixable, and if so, how to fix it.

“He is just in here.” Sapphire said as they passed a room with the White Pegasus, his armor still attached. His wings still broken, his legs all bent oddly, and his back slightly arched. His eyes just stared at the ceiling, unblinking.

When the two of them walked in, both of them nodded before closing the blinds and the room, blocking out the world beyond the room.

Just Sentence’s horn glowed with a pink light, and kept it constant. “Silence spell is up.”

“All right, Acari,” Sapphire said looking towards the Pegasi. “He was found with two broken wings, his legs messed up, and his spine nearly severed in three different locations.”

“All from a single fall?” Acari asked, walking over to the side of Sunglider. “Why haven’t you removed his armor?”

“The fall wasn’t the only thing, minor bruising sustained before the fall, his left wing seemed damaged before the spine was, and we can’t remove the armor.” Sapphire replied. “Some strange enchantment locking it in place, anytime we try to remove it, that doctor gets a nasty burn.”

“A burn?” Sentence replied. “How could he manage that?”

“We still aren’t sure, the closest we came up with was an enchantment placed on the armor so it couldn’t be removed.” Sapphire replied, adjusting her glasses. “Celestia has admitted that a few soldiers have agreed to take part in an experimental enchantment to avoid espionage tactics.”

“Cross referenced him?”

“Of course…he was on the list, so the only one who can remove the armor is him.” Sapphire replied. “And before you ask, we have tried transformation, the armor won’t come off.”

Just Sentence was now looking over Sunglider, looking in his eyes, moving his eyelids, and checking his breathing. “Have there been any irregularities? Any brain activity spikes, heart beat rushes, anything?”

Sapphire shook her head. “Nothing noticeable, small sparks, but nothing important.”

“Do you have records of when Shade swapped personalities?” Acari asked, flashing a light into Sunglider’s eye, which caused no dilation.

“We only have two records,” Sapphire summoned a few papers out of thin air. “When Shade did it in front of me, and when it happened in front of Rose.” She levitated the two papers up to Just Sentence. “The one on the left is Sunglider’s vitals at those times, the one on the right is Shade’s.”

The two papers could have been interchanged, as they were practically identical. If not for the small scan of heart beats that spiked on Shade.

“So…the two of them are connected somehow.” Just replied. “It seems as though whenever Shade’s heartbeat raises quickly, he switches personality… strange.”

“The real question is can you fix this?” Sapphire asked looking at the guard.

“Perhaps…” Just replied. “However it would require me to drop my disguise to be sure.”

Sapphire nodded as her horn glowed blue, slowly Just Sentence’s horn dimmed. “I’ve got it. You just handle the rest.”

Just Sentence nodded as a wisp of pink flame surrounded her and she returned to her Queenly appearance.

She lowered her horn to touch the Pegasus’s forehead; she closed her eyes as a bright light appeared from where she touched.

Shade dropped the marker he had been holding as a wave of pain shot through his skull. “Son of a Phoenix!”

He put his hoof up to his forehead as the searing pain began to spread. Moving up to where his horn was, almost as though it was trying to focus on something.

He couldn’t think. It was like the pain was focused on not letting him think. Similar to a migraine, it just moved along his skull focusing around his horn mostly, but spreading to various points.

Carrie looked towards him, confused. She tried to talk to him, but Shade couldn’t focus on anything at all. His horn began to glow green, only near the base as it came to a stop when it touched the Suppression Ring.

The pain became more focused, being centered on his horn. He couldn’t think of anything to do, the only thing he could do in response was to start clawing at the suppression ring, desperate to pull it off. He just kept clawing at the enchanted metal, but he couldn’t pull it off, the ring refused to budge.

He started to see images flash before his eyes, The Invasion, Meadow, The Timber Wolf, The Fiords...

Drone, calm yourself

The voice pierced through his mind, breaking through the images and sound that it surprised him at first. It was a very commanding voice, giving an order. He could understand what the voice was trying to do, but he couldn’t manage it.

Drone, clear your mind. Do it now.

Shade didn’t know whether to trust the voice, but it was all he could do. So he stopped focusing on anything just tried to focus on the voice, a strangely motherly voice.

As he did, the pain began to disperse, and slowly it vanished. Leaving a small feeling of familiarity behind. It was…pleasant, almost like a weight was leaving him.

Remain calm. Focus on my voice. Do not think about anything else.

Shade only thought about one thing. “Who are you?”

A friend…

Acari was still focusing on the Guard, and Sapphire was beginning to get nervous.

“What’s on your mind, Sapphire?” Acari asked.

“Are you almost done?” Sapphire asked, constantly looking towards the door. “I don’t want you to get found.”

Acari smirked. “I’m almost done. There was a bit of resistance at first. It’s died down now, that makes this much easier.”

“So…can you fix it?” Sapphire asked.

“I may be able to…” Acari replied. “I can start the process now but he will only remember basic information.”

“Such as?”

“Name, Race, and what happened to him.” Acari replied. “He will still be able to fly, just pull the Amnesia card for a while. I need time to figure out the procedure to handle this.”

“If you would, then we may be able to help him remember on his own.”

Acari nodded and her horn flashed for a second before she transformed back into Just Sentence. “He’ll wake up in a few hours, his personality will be intact, and his instincts will remain. Just like Amnesia.”

At that moment Rose walked into the room. “Sapphire, I’m sorry to disturb you… But the Guards are not allowing me into Shade’s room, something about an outburst.”

Just Sentence and Sapphire looked at each other surprised.

“What do you mean, Rose?” Sapphire asked.

“I’m not sure… Silver Shield is being his aggressive self.” Rose looked at Just Sentence. “What is Celestia’s Court Judge doing here?”

“The number of times Nobles have thrown that Changeling at my door…I decided to come look at his one known casualty.”

“You could just ask him yourself…” Rose began but Just Sentence held up her hoof.

“A judge must remain impartial. It would break my code to speak with him. Even slightly.” She turned to Sapphire. “I will speak with you later.” She walked out of the room. “I will need to return to Cloudsdale. Speak with you later Cytes,” Acari said to Sapphire through her mental link.

“So what is going on with Shade?”

“What did you just do, Changeling?”

“I have no idea. My head started hurting, and now it doesn’t.” Shade replied. “Now can I have my hoof back?”

Shade had been locked back into the restraints, barring the muzzle. The guards had rushed quickly to make sure he couldn’t do anything. Again.

“Not a chance.” Silver growled. “Now what did you do?”

“Silver, what did I tell you about interrogating our patients?” Sapphire said walking in. “You did promise to stop trying to scare my patients.”

“Doctor Sapphire, I-“

“And what is this I hear about you preventing Dr. Rose from inspecting her patient?”

“Sapphire, I’m just-“

“Following orders, yes I know.” Sapphire replied adjusting her glasses. “But I want to remind you that while Celestia gave you permission to handle any situation in which he, himself, tries anything aggressive...”

Silver tried to talk, but Sapphire held up her hoof to stop him. “From what I have learned, he has not attempted anything that would cause harm to me or my employees. If he attempts any form of aggressive attack, you have my blessings to detain him however you see fit. Until then however,” Sapphire used her magic to remove Shade’s restraints. “He will be treated as a normal patient.”

“Sapphire, while I understand what Celest-“

“Do you know how many bits a single X-ray costs?” Sapphire replied.

Silver shook his head.

“Over five-hundred and seventy five bits to power up the machine for a single X-ray. This Changeling has not one, but two full body X-rays and multiple X-rays along his wings and legs. Celestia has approved this operation, and seeing how the time of the reservation is in ten minutes. I would like for you to remove the magical suppressor around his horn.”

Silver looked shocked. “Doctor, tha-”

“Now, Silver.” Sapphire replied as Rose looked between them surprised.

Silver sighed as his horn glowed red and Shade watched the metallic ring fall in front of him. “If he tries any magic, even if it isn’t harmful, that ring is going right back on.”

“A fair deal… It will be replaced when we are finished, Sergeant, you have my word.” Sapphire looked back at Rose. “Now I believe we have somewhere to be.”

“Pinkie?” Pinkie hadn’t left the hotel since she came back from her visit with Shade, and Twilight was starting to worry about what happened.

“Pinkie? Are you all right?” Twilight said knocking. “You haven’t left the room for nearly six hours. Is everything okay?”

“No…” Pinkie replied.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Twilight asked. She knew firsthand how much a problem can weigh down on you if you don’t talk about it. And she never wanted to talk about that day again.

“Yes…” Pinkie walked up to the door and opened it. Her hair wasn’t as curly as usual, but wasn’t flat, it was in a sort of half way state.

Twilight walked into the small bedroom. Noticing it lacked the normal Pinkie Pie style of having everything thrown everywhere. “So what happened?”

Pinkie walked over to the bed and fell onto it. “I made Sunny mad.”

“Pinkie… You shouldn’t feel bad about something like that.” Twilight always thought Pinkie tried way too hard to keep all her friends happy. “What happened?”

“I went to talk to Sunny about his special ‘Welcome Back To Ponyville’ Changeling Party when I found out he has a roommate.”

“They found another changeling?” Twilight asked surprised.

“No… They put a pony in the room with him.”

“Oh…”

“And the Unicorn’s daughter started yelling at Sunny for something he didn’t even do. So I started to defend Sunny, and she kept yelling at Sunny for stuff.”

“And then what?” Twilight asked, looking at Pinkie.

“Sunny yelled at me and told me to leave.” Pinkie turned to look at Twilight. “I was just trying to help…”

“Pinkie… I’m not saying what you did was necessarily wrong, we just don’t know enough about Changelings. Maybe he didn’t want the problem solved.”

“But she was such a meanie about it.” Pinkie retorted. “She kept yelling like Sunny was the one who did whatever happened to her mother.”

“Pinkie…remember when Cranky came into town?” Twilight asked. Cranky was a donkey that moved into Ponyville a while ago.

Pinkie nodded.

“And remember how he acted before finding Matilda?”

Pinkie nodded.

“Well… Shade was a part of the invasion force; he may not have directly hurt this Unicorn, but he was there, and I think he was just getting irritated at the situation. There are just so many ways he could have handled it…I'm not sure that you handled it the best. Not everypony is going to accept that he has changed.”

“But Twilight, she was so mean to Sunny.” Pinkie lifted herself up. “She kept saying that Sunny was just using us. She didn’t even know about how much he did to protect Meadow.”

“Nopony is going to trust him overnight, this kind of thing will take time. I’m sure that Shade has already forgiven you.”

“You think?”

“I’m sure of it, if he really thought of you as a friend, he wouldn’t hold something like this against you.” Twilight gave her friend a small hug. “I’ll tell you what, you come with me and Rainbow out to Lunch and we’ll go talk to Shade together okay?”

Pinkie’s hair exploded back to its normal curls and size. “Okie Doki, Twily” Pinkie hopped off the bed. “I’ve got a party to plan!”

“Cytes, I still don’t know how you can trust him.” Carrie replied, looking at the Queen behind her desk, her red-rimmed glasses lowered to look at the documents in front of her. “What has he done to warrant your trust? Especially after what his Queen has done.”

Cytes removed her glasses and placed them on the table. “I understand your hatred for him. It is well deserved. However we cannot blame the actions of a single Queen on her Drones.” She floated the documents so that Carrie could see them. “He has been under a near constant lie detection spell from the Guards, not once has he done anything to warrant hatred.”

“But, Cytes,” Carrie began “He is using those ponies, even you must see it.”

“All I see is six ponies that trust him, see him as a friend.” Cytes placed her glasses back on. “Acari seems to trust him.”

“But do you?” Carrie asked.

Cytes looked over her glasses at the caretaker before sighing. “When I went through Medical school, they taught us the Hippocratic oath: ‘Do no harm’. What that means is that regardless of my own personal feelings towards a patient, I have to help.” Cytes had to learn this lesson over fifteen times during her time as a Queen, why can’t ponies have longer life spans?

“I am not asking the Doctor. I am asking you as a Queen.” Carrie replied.

Cytes let out a sigh of annoyance; she placed the documents down, “Were I not a practitioner of medicine, I would have had him interrogated for everything he knew the instant he set hoof in this hospital.” She removed her glasses and closed them before laying them down. “But knowing he has no knowledge of his hive or even a mental connection, I would try to keep him alive as best I could.”

“But…what did he do to earn your trust?” Carrie asked. She understood the reasons to keep him alive, but she wanted to know if he could be trusted.

“Acari has told me of what he has done to save a single filly. I didn’t want to believe her at first, but after spending a little time watching over him, I’m certain that he wants to redeem himself.” Cytes looked at the Drone. “And while your Queen is within my care, she has placed me in charge of her Hive. Since then, the number of deaths has reduced among the Changelings, which allows me to focus on the ponies.”

Carrie looked angrily at her. “Are you saying my Queen’s condition is a good thing?”

“The loss of any one Queen will always be a tragedy,” Cytes replied. “However at this time, we are collecting more and more emotional energy to help keep those Changelings that are in critical conditions alive, while I regret that Ovi is in such a dangerous condition, it has made my job easier.” Cytes turned her attention back to the documents.

“If you are so sure he is deceiving us, then why not interrogate him yourself.” Cytes replied over her work. “You are practically living in that room, why not make use of it? I’m sure he will cooperate. Just…don’t mention that she is a Changeling Queen, he doesn’t seem to understand how many of us are out there yet.”

Carrie sighed. “Of course, Cytes…” She bowed before walking out of the room.

Cytes looked up in time to see Carrie put on her disguise. When Carrie left, Cytes turned her attention to her documents. Ovi… Please recover quickly. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.

Shade had enjoyed what little time he had to transform, sure it was under nearly full-armed supervision, but he enjoyed the familiar feel of Sunstreak, and the lack of a horn made it easier to see straight up. He was only really allowed to transform for as long as it took for the X-Rays to finish, afterwards he had to transform back into his Changeling form, while he would have liked a few more minutes with his magic, he knew it was for the best.

Back in his room, he just sat with Pinkie’s Party plans and looked them over, it was clearly originally planned to be a town wide celebration, but it had been pulled back, probably by Twilight. She really must have been planning it since she did find out, because on the other side, there was what looked like a shopping list, with checks next to half of the items.

As he was trying to figure out which building Pinkie based the schematics for the party off of, the door opened and Carrie walked in.

“Hi…” She said nervously.

Shade spat out the marker he was holding in his mouth. “Hello.”

Carrie was rubbing one of her front legs. “Listen. I’m…sorry for how I reacted.” She seemed to be having trouble saying this, almost like a child forced into apologizing. “We got off on the wrong hoof…”

Shade nodded. “What with the whole threatening my life thing? I just thought that was how you ponies said ‘Hi’.”

Shade saw that she giggled slightly. “So you aren’t mad at me?” She asked timidly.

Shade waved his hoof in a dismissive manner. “It’s all in the past.” Shade saw that she was surprised by how easily he forgave her. “Is there something you wanted to talk about?”

Carrie sighed. “I…wanted to apologize for earlier, and try again.”

“That’s fine by me.” Shade replied giving a small smile.

Carrie took a deep breath. “Hi, my name is Carrie.”

“My name is Shade or Sunstreak.”

Carrie raised her eyebrow. “You have two names?”

“Well… Not really,” Shade replied. “My real name is Shade, but my pony disguise is Sunstreak. I’ve gotten used to it.”

“Strange for you to make your own identity.” Carrie replied. “I thought all of you just replaced ponies.”

Shade rubbed the back of his head. “I…um…Maybe… I really don’t know too much about my race…” Shade gave an unsure smile. “I just made it up.”

“So… what made you create an identity?”

“Well…” Shade began. “I figured out how to disguise before the invasion, so I just used that form I made. And now, I just consider it my base pony form.”

“Well…if you were shot out of the city, then why did you come back?” Carrie asked, looking up at Shade.

“I made a promise to a young filly named Meadow Song, that promise was to get her back home.” Shade lowered his head and his ears drooped. “But I failed…”

Carrie felt a small pang of sympathy, but she had many more doubts about him. “Failed… How?”

Shade told her about how he had brought Meadow to her home and about how Spine had captured her and crippled him. He had answered her questions about the prison, his time in Ponyville, almost anything she asked.

“Alright…” Carrie replied. “You may have a complete story…and I may believe you.”

“All of it was true.” Shade replied.

“Regardless. There is only one thing left I want to ask you.”

“Go ahead.”

“If Chrysalis came back and offered you the chance to be free if you killed another Changeling, would you?”

Shade was stunned for a moment. The idea of Chrysalis coming back had been a source of some hope in him that he could repay her for what she did to him, but the thought of going back to her never crossed his mind. But it didn’t matter there was only one true answer. “No.”

“Are you lying to me?” Carrie asked.

“I have no reason to lie to you. She may be the Queen of the Hive, but she is not My Queen.” Shade replied, he never had a queen, he didn’t want one, never has.

Carrie looked at him for a few seconds. “Then I suppose I have no reason to mistrust you… I am sorry for how I acted before…”

“Like I said… All in the past.”

Carrie smiled a little before walking back over to where her mother was and standing on the far side of her mother’s bed. Looking over her.

Shade grabbed the marker again and started looking over Pinkie’s Party Plans, when something bothered him.

He had been mentally suppressing his emotional senses for some time, mostly because he felt wrong doing it when talking to someone, but also because he still wasn’t used to seeing a small fire near someone. Now that wouldn’t have been a problem, except that when he was looking at Carrie, he hadn’t been thinking about it.

He looked back over to Carrie. Now he wasn’t used to being inside of hospitals, but if his mom was in a coma and next to a member of the invasion force that did it to her, he would feel, something. Looking at Carrie, he focused. He was at least happy to see a small blue flicker, mixed with a large red one.

He let out a small breath. Alright…crisis averted. He turned back to the notebook and looked over a few more of the questions Pinkie wrote down.

‘Do Changeling’s have any kind of special dance?’ Shade read, trying to think back to Darkblaze, he never mentioned anything about that. So he just left that one blank, along with half of the questions he had no clue about.

Then the door began to open and Shade looked up to see Rose walking in, levitating multiple X-Ray scans in her magic, she was currently looking at one that looked like it was of Shade’s wing.

“Hello, Rose.” Shade said to the unicorn. Shifting the marker to the side of his mouth. “Learn anything?”

“Actually yes.” Rose replied placing the X-Rays on a backlight. “By pony standards, your wings can handle a little bit of flying, and your leg has recovered enough to begin Physical Therapy.”

“What about by Changeling standards?” Shade understood that she had no idea how a normal Changeling’s body works the best, but it was probably close enough to a pony to make a guess.

“Well…when you weren’t disguised, the inner chitin in your right leg has fixed itself and closed up nicely.”

“So no more needles jabbing into my leg?”

“No more needles. And your left leg isn’t fully healed yet, still a bit of cracks on the outer Chitin. But so long as you don’t get hit with anything heavy you should be fine.”

“So… What does that mean for me?” Shade asked. He never figured out what would happen after he was cleared.

“Well… After you can walk and at least fly a bit, the Royal Guard will have to take you back to that dungeon.”

Shade lowered his head. “Oh…well it was fun to stay above ground while it lasted…” He hadn’t been looking forward to being fully recovered for the pure reasoning of fear he would just be thrown back into the dungeon. “Well… all good things must come to an end…”

“Listen… Sapphire has been trying to work something out with the Captain of the Royal Guard. He’s looking for somepony on the guard that is willing to take you in.” Rose explained. “But…you can understand the implications and why they wouldn’t exactly be alright with it.”

Shade nodded. He could understand why the guard wouldn’t want him in their house… but if they just asked Candlelight she would probably allow it, but who was she really. To the guard, she was nobody. It would take a miracle for Shade to be allowed out…or maybe…

“By the way… You have guests.” Rose said as Twilight and Pinkie walked in, Rainbow Dash just sort of hovered in.

“Hey, Sunny…” Pinkie said without as much energy as he was used to from her.

“Pinkie, are you okay? You aren’t-URK!” Pinkie had pulled him into a bone-crushing hug.

“Sunny, I’m so sorry I didn’t mean to make you mad. Please don’t be mad at me!” She was talking very quickly but Shade couldn’t hear her as he was focusing on trying to breathe.

“Air…Pinkie…Lungs!” Shade tried to say as Pinkie kept her tight grip. “Twilight…help…”

Shade’s vision was covered with a purple light and he found himself on the floor gasping for air. “Thank…you…ugh…”

“No problem. I thought that Pinkie could handle this” Twilight sighed. “Especially after all the practice.”

“Really…You girls…practiced?” Shade said through gasps of air, he looked back at his wings and buzzed them to make sure they weren’t damaged.

“Yeah we practiced how to handle this situation.” She said before adding a bit embarrassed. “Thirty seven times."

“Pinkie, I’m not mad at you…I was just…stressed that’s it.” Pinkie rushed over and lightly hugged him.

“I’m sorry for making you mad, Sunny. I won’t to do it again.” Pinkie said, squeezing slightly.

“Pinkie…I think we both know who you should be apologizing to.” Shade pointed his hoof over to Carrie. “She already said sorry about what happened earlier, so I think you two need to make up.” And I need to figure out how my legs work again…

Pinkie let the hug go as Shade tried to stand up on his hind legs but found sitting to be the closest thing he could manage.

“Do you need some help there?” Rainbow asked, flying down to Shade.

“Just…give me a minute.” Luckily Shade still remembered how to fly. He was buzzing his wings and hovered back over to the bed. “Okay…legs don’t want to work… glad my wings still work.”

Shade looked over to where Pinkie was hugging a very confused unicorn, Carrie appeared to be trying to figure out whether she should be scared or accept it.

“So how have you three been holding up?” Shade asked looking towards the other two; Twilight had turned her attention to the X-ray images.

“Hm?” Twilight said not taking her eyes off the images.

“Well we spent most of today trying to get Pinkie out of the apartment.” Rainbow Dash replied.

Shade rubbed the back of his neck, “Sorry about that…”

“Whatever… It just made it difficult to get her out. I was busy trying to find Pinkie’s stuff she lost.”

Shade closed the notebook and held it up to Rainbow. “You mean these?”

Pinkie rushed over to the side of the bed. “My Party Planner! I must have left it here.” Pinkie giggled. “I guess you didn’t have to search all over Canterlot after all.”

“Now you tell me.” Rainbow Dash put her hoof in her face.

Pinkie grabbed the notebook and flipped through it. “Hey. You were looking in here.”

Shade shied away from the topic. “I couldn’t help myself… It was too tempting.”

Pinkie didn’t look angry, if anything, she looked happy. “So…what’d yah think?”

“It’s a good plan…but I don’t know a lot about Changelings so I won’t be able to answer many of your questions…”

“Then I’ll just throw you a Pony Party! Is that okay?”

“That’s more than alright Pinkie.” Shade replied. Looking over at Twilight. “See anything you like?”

Twilight looked over at Shade. “Sorry I was just…”

Shade chuckled slightly. “I understand. A strange unknown creature and you get to look at its endoskeleton.”

Twilight blushed a little. “Yeah… Sorry.” She pointed to the Pegasus skeleton. “Is this one you as well?”

Rose walked up. “Yes. Sapphire managed to get the OK from Celestia to get a skeletal X-Ray of him when disguised. And I must say, if I didn’t see you transform in front of me before this X-Ray was taken, I would have sworn you were just a Pegasus.”

“That must be distressing, it means that they take on the complete anatomical look of whatever creature they become,” Twilight replied looking at the X-Rays. “That would mean that there could be hundreds of Changelings and we wouldn’t even know.”

Carrie looked a little nervous, Shade picked up on it but none of the others seemed to. “I’m sure that none of them are left in Canterlot.” Shade replied. “I mean…I was the only one to get found here, and it was around a week after the invasion.”

“Yeah…you’re probably right, that spell Cadence and Shining used blasted you clear out of Canterlot.” Twilight replied.

“Actually…something weird happened during the invasion…Sapphire got thrown into a wall by that blast thing.” Rose said thinking. “It was really weird.”

Pinkie gasped. “Maybe she is a changeling!”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Pinkie…changeling magic is green.”

“But what about Aca-“ Rainbow Dash quickly put her hoof in Pinkie’s mouth.

“Pinkie…you’re such a joker.” Rainbow said to Pinkie.

Shade let out a held breath, they almost mentioned Acari’s hive that would only end badly. Twilight looked at Pinkie in shock, and Rose looked confused. Shade turned to look at Carrie, who looked scared. Why is she so scared?

To break the tension Shade remembered something he wanted to tell Twilight. “Twilight! I need you to do me a huge favor.”

“Of course…what is it?”

“I need you to talk with your brother, or Cadence, or whoever is in charge of this…” Shade took a deep breath. “Shining Armor is trying to find someone to keep an eye on me within the Royal Guard so that I don’t go back to the dungeon, I was thinking maybe you could talk to them to allow them to let you handle that.”

Rainbow and Rose looked shocked. Twilight looked curious. “Well…I’m not sure if I have a high enough-“

“You are the personal student of Celestia. Try to talk to her or something. Please…I need to get to finding Meadow!” Shade was pleading now. “At the very least try! I don’t want Meadow to be stuck with that deranged insect for any longer than is absolutely required.”

Twilight was shocked for a second. “I’ll… Try but I’m not sure that I’ll be able to persuade them…”

“Please Twilight…You are my best chance.” If Shade could get down on his knees he would, but as of this moment, his legs still had the maneuverability of wet noodles. “I’m begging you here. Just Pinkie Promise me you will try.”

“Cross my Heart and Hope to Fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.” Twilight said while doing the required movements, but she appeared to forget to close her eye.

Shade let out a loud sigh and fell back onto the bed. “Well…that’s great…”

“I’ll try but…”

“Shhh shhh shh” Shade said. “Keep that negative Nancy stuff out of here. This is one of the best things to happen in a while… just let me have this.”

“Yeah, Twilight, don’t be such a downer.” Pinkie Pie replied. “I’ve got to make up for lost time!”

Pinkie Pie grabbed the notebook, box of crayons and the marker before placing all of them into her mane where they somehow vanished. She then began to hop out of the room.

“I’ll see what I can do.” Twilight said as she walked out of the room, quickly followed by Rainbow Dash.

When they left, Rose looked back at Shade. “So… When do you want to start Therapy?”

Author's Note

*Looks at time*
OH DAMNIT! I almost forgot to upload something! :pinkiegasp:
So first off, going to apologize for any grammar issues, did this one kind of quickly...

Chapter 24: Long Live the Queen

“279 check here, 392 here, 189 you’re with me.” Darkblaze told Acari’s scouts while pointing at locations on a map. They hadn’t come anywhere close to finding the wounded Changeling yet, and time was running out.

Two of the three Changelings saluted and transformed into their Pegasus disguises before flying out of the building. Leaving Darkblaze and one of the Changelings.

“What are you planning, Infiltrator?” Scout 189 asked.

“We’ve checked nearly everywhere in this city.” Darkblaze placed his hoof on the market place. “This is the last place to check. We will attempt a three way search.”

Darkblaze placed his hoof to the north of the market. “279 will enter from here,” he pointed to the south, “392 will enter from here.” He pointed to the west. “We will enter from here.”

“But why do you need me?” 189 asked. “Shouldn’t I enter from the east?”

“No I need you with me so that the others don’t mistake me for the Caretaker. If she is alone, I may be able to connect using the Hive mind, but I’ll need to be close to make the connection.”

189 looked at Darkblaze. “What will you do after the connection is made?”

Darkblaze turned to look at the Drone. “I’ll track her down and we’ll have our line back to Chrysalis.”

189 contemplated his offer, as though unsure whether to believe him or not. He eventually nodded in agreement. “Very well, Infiltrator. I will follow you.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Darkblaze said while a wisp of green fire surrounded him and Tornado Dust was standing where he was. “Let’s get moving.”

Usually Caretakers were a cool color, blues and purples, simply for the purpose of quick disguises and easy recognition. They rarely left the Hive, and even when they did, it was to handle a problem with Nymphs or egg thefts. Never for gathering, unless it was foals…but that was always seen as a last resort when the Love supplies were low.

“Tornado, 279 has found something.” Crimson said.

“Color scheme.” Tornado replied.

“Light blue, curled pink mane.” Crimson replied.

Tornado Dust paused for a moment, light blue with a pink mane…that could be it. “Mark?”

Crimson paused for a moment. “A purple child rattler.”

Tornado opened his wings. “Tell him to keep an eye on her.”

Crimson opened his own wings. “He’s following her.”

The two of them took off and headed south towards 279, Crimson led them, as he knew where the changeling was. They eventually found the orange Pegasus standing on top of a building made of clouds.

“There she is.” 279 said pointing towards a light blue Pegasus with a rather bad limp.

Tornado Dust looked towards the Pegasus in question. She was exactly how Crimson described her, and Tornado Dust recognized her. “That’s her.”

“You sure about that?” Crimson asked.

“That pony has been locked in a containment chrysalis for nearly ten years, and she’s supposed to be a unicorn.”

“Have anything to back that claim up?” Crimson replied, still doubting Darkblaze’s intentions.

“I was the one that caught her.” Darkblaze replied. “I think I would know better than you.” Darkblaze kept his eye on the Pegasus. “Get 392 over here now. We have work to do.”

Once the purple Pegasus landed alongside the others, the four of them moved so they wouldn’t be seen before transforming into Royal Guards, armor included. Crimson turned into a Unicorn, he was lifted off the ground until he cast a special spell to allow him to walk on the clouds.

Once they were ready, the four of them walked out into the street.

Crimson began looking around the crowd. Drawing stares from the Pegasi, it wasn’t normal for a Unicorn to be in Cloudsdale, coupled with the Royal Guard made the crowd slightly nervous.

“Alright, citizens,” Crimson projected over the crowd. “We’ve gotten a report of Changeling activity in the area. Celestia sent us to sniff ‘em out.”

At this the other three disguised Changelings took to the air, Darkblaze kept an eye on the Caretaker. “Any attempt to leave the street before you are checked will be seen as a confession.”

Rumored whispers began to float through the crowd, as Pegasi began to wonder who the Changeling could be. Some of them looked worried, eyeing their friends or those closest to them in fear.

“It’s a relatively simple spell.” Crimson began to explain, “It detects illusion spells, and most of you should be fine.” With that, Crimson’s horn began to glow blue, he then began walking through the crowd, looking towards every pony in the crowd. Tornado Dust could hear the relieved sighs coming from small crowds as Crimson walked away.

Tornado kept his eye on the Caretaker, he had to admit, her resolve was something to be admired she kept a steely expression the whole time. Up until Crimson came closer and his horn began to deviate from its blue color.

When Crimson came close, the Caretaker turned and ran as best she could. “Got you.” Tornado said under his breath. He motioned to the other two Changelings disguised as Pegasi and they went after her.

“She’s a fast one isn’t she?” 392 replied as they managed to catch up to her as she dashed into an alley.

“Box her in.” Tornado Dust ordered, flying towards the center of the alley, 279 went to the far end of the alley, while 392 landed and stopped her from doubling back.

Tornado Dust watched from above as the Caretaker skidded to a halt upon seeing 279, she quickly tried to turn back but noticed that 392 had blocked her escape.

She growled and took up a defensive pose, she had beaten them before, and she would do it again, until Tornado Dust flew down on top of her. He quickly spun her around and slammed her into the alley walls, before throwing her to the ground.

Quickly she recovered, turning in time to see Tornado Dust buck her in her chest before standing over the top of her.

Tornado smiled. “Thought you’d get away didn’t you.”

The Pegasus beneath him began trying to squirm out of the hold. Trying anything that would work.

“The Princess has a few questions to ask you. So will you handle this peacefully, or do we need to drag you there?”

The Pegasus grew two long fangs and hissed at Tornado.

“Dragging it is then.” Tornado raised his hoof, before aiming where he would do the least physical damage, and bringing it down on the Caretaker. Knocking her out.

Tornado Dust sighed. “Take her back to the base. I think I know how to get some info out of her.”

Antenna began to regain consciousness; she was in some kind of holding cell, made of stone. There was no light piercing through anywhere, and she knew she was doomed.

Her leg was seriously injured, and that Pegasus gave her a nasty stinging feeling. As she came to, her vision was blurry and she couldn’t find anything of any use to her. She tried to lift herself up, but her leg refused to listen to her.

I’m going to die. Antenna thought. They are going to kill me.

“So you’re finally awake.” Antenna heard the voice, she knew it from somewhere, but she couldn’t put her hoof on where. “About time, I was starting to worry those Guards caved in your head plate.”

Antenna tried again to stand up, but finding it difficult, she instead opted to sitting. “Who are you?”

The source of the voice walked up to the cell bars. “An ally,” Antenna looked to see a member of her hive looking back at her. “Infiltrator 75, Darkblaze.”

“Caretaker 4, Antenna.”

“A Queen Caretaker?” Darkblaze replied surprised. “What is a Caretaker doing this far away from the Hive?”

“I was sent alongside the invasion force to look after the Queen.” Antenna replied. “I was launched alongside the Queen.”

“So she is safe?” Darkblaze asked.

“You mean you didn’t feel it?” Antenna asked, looking up towards her Hive mate’s eyes. He was confused.

“Feel what?” Darkblaze asked. “Antenna, what happened?”

“The Queen…She’s…” Antenna couldn’t finish the sentence; it was too difficult for her.

Antenna heard the cell door open as Darkblaze walked into it. “Caretaker, what happened?”

Antenna looked up at the Infiltrator. “The...The Hive mind has dispersed.” Antenna said, holding back her sadness.

“Dispersed?” Darkblaze replied. “How do you know?”

Antenna was chocking up a little. “I…I can’t feel her…” She said.

“But… That means that…” Darkblaze replied his eyes widening.

“She’s dead!” Antenna shouted grabbing onto the nearby Infiltrator. She couldn’t hold back her tears any longer, she wept into the stunned Infiltrator. “The Queen… I-I found her…” She began to say through the sobs. “She…she was bro-bro-ken…I-I-I couldn’t…”

Darkblaze was still processing the information. “Queen…Chrysalis…” Darkblaze couldn’t believe it, his Queen. “Antenna,” Darkblaze replied looking down at the Caretaker. “What happened?”

The Pink explosion launched the Changelings out of the city, hurling them all across Equestria. Antenna was hurtled with her Queen, spinning as they were thrown towards the badlands. The Queen tried to stop her subjects from leaving the beautiful land, shot them back so they wouldn’t starve.

Antenna managed to correct herself just as the two of them were over a forest, she managed to land without too much damage, but she knew something was wrong.

The Hive, her brothers and sisters, were silent. The back of her mind where the familiar chatter of Changelings was, left a silent void, the only thoughts her own. “My Queen!” She shouted, hoping to get a response. “Chrysalis are you near!”

She worried, Caretakers had a direct connection with their Queen, they needed to know when the Queen required them, and a lack of that connection made Antennae worry.

“My Queen!” She shouted out again, taking off from the ground and flying towards where she believed her queen had landed. “Are you injured?”

As she flew over the canopy, looking for any sign of an impact, her mind began to race, trying to link back up to the Hive mind while searching.

After a few minutes of frantic searching, the Caretaker found a skid mark along the ground, crashing through trees; she followed the trail into a small dark cave. “My Queen!” She shouted into the cave, hearing only the echo, she began to search the inside of the cave, using her horn as a light source.

“My Queen, are you safe?” She shouted through the cave. “Where are you?”

Antenna began to search further into the cave, her fears being drowned out by determination. The light glow from her horn reflected back to her from a shiny black surface. “Chrysalis!”

Antenna quickly went to work, moving pieces of rock off of her monarch. She moved boulders that were far too large for her normally, but her determination prompted her to keep trying.

After about ten minutes of shifting rocks, Antenna could see her Queen, and she had to fight the urge to scream.

Her Queen, she wasn’t moving, no sign of any movement or even any life in her. Antenna tried everything she could, giving her Queen love, shocking her, but nothing helped.

“Chrysalis… Please…” Antenna was tearing up. “Say something…please… Don’t leave me…” Antenna wrapped her hooves around her Queen’s chest and cried. There was no breathing, nothing to feel, her Queen was just cold. Her wings were cracked, bent in unnatural ways, her Chitin was cracked in multiple places, and her horn…her horn was broken in half.

“My Queen…” Antenna said through the stream of tears. “Please…don’t go…”

Antenna could hear a growling from behind her, she quickly turned to see a Manticore, a Lion with a scorpion tail and bat wings glaring down at the two of them, hunger in its eyes.

Antenna laid her Queen down before turning to face the creature. “You will not!” Antenna’s horn began to glow violently, “You will never. HURT MY QUEEN!” She channeled all of her emotions into a single magical attack, a large beam of pure sadness and anger, quickly overpowering the large beast, launching it out of the cave, where it lay, motionless.

Antenna turned back to look at her Queen, the emotions she felt welling back up inside her. She laid down next to the motionless body; she didn’t want to leave her.

“Go…” Came a voice through Antenna’s mental link, sounding exactly like…

“My Queen!” Antenna replied, highly surprised by her Queen’s voice.

“Go…Do not…Die for me…” Her queen said to her. “Go…Survive…”

Antenna was tearing up again, mostly because she was given an order to abandon her Queen.

“I’ll go get help!” Antenna replied, looking towards her Monarch.

“It’s too late for that I’m afraid…” Antenna didn’t believe that her Queen was giving up. “I’ll be dead and gone in a few hours… There is nothing you can do.”

Antenna wiped away her tears, “My Queen…”

“Go… Live…” Antenna couldn’t grasp what her Queen was telling her. “Do not return to the Hive… Return to Equestria… try to live…”

“My Queen…” Antenna replied. “I-I can’t leave you.”

“Antenna…you were always loyal.” Antenna smiled. “Prove to me you are still loyal, my dying wish…is for you to survive.”

“Chry-.”

“Please…do this for me. Go…live.”

Antenna was crying again. She didn’t want to leave her Queen, but she must respect her Queen’s wishes. So she got up, and walked towards the entrance to the cave.

“I-I-I won’t give up…” Antenna said. She flew around grabbing sticks and any other flammable object she could find. She built a small fire, and lit it with her horn, causing the smoke to rise into the sky, a giant black cloud. Meant to get attention instead of create warmth. When she was satisfied with the large smoke trail, she gave one last look back at the mouth of the cave, shedding a single tear; she lifted herself off the ground with her wings.

She stayed hovering above the cave for a few minutes, before she turned back towards Equestria, and began to plan out her new life.

When Antenna had finished her story, she was still crying into Darkblaze. The Infiltrator was processing the story, mostly his Queen’s behavior. Usually she concerned herself over her subjects; she would kill a single changeling if they even attempted to reveal themselves. So why had she been adamant about Antenna living?

“She-She gave me a chance,” Antenna replied. “A-and I wasn’t going to try anything… I ju-just wanted to m-make her proud.”

The Caretaker looked up at Darkblaze. “B-but I r-ran out of en-energy. And then, the Enforcers found me.” She was sobbing again. “I-I got injured…and I-I…”

“Shh…” Darkblaze replied, comforting the Caretaker. “It’s alright… you’re safe now.”

“The-The Roya-al guard are after me…and I-I Don’t know what to do!” She sobbed back into Darkblaze. “I-I-I’ve failed her…”

Darkblaze lifted her head up. “No don’t say that.” He said, comforting her. “You’ve done a great job. I’m sure she would be proud of you.”

Darkblaze looked back out into the hall. “Listen…I’ve got to go and speak with my informant, you just rest here.”

Darkblaze managed to get out of Antenna’s grip, and walked out of the cell. When he was far enough away not to be heard by Antenna, He dropped onto his haunches. “If Chrysalis didn’t allow for Spine’s little expedition, then who did?”

Shade learned a downside to his rapid healing, he couldn’t figure out how to use his hind legs for quite a while, though given it was only the first day, that wasn’t a surprise to him. Through the entire nearly three hour therapy session, he had managed to keep himself on his hind legs for a total of three hundredths of a second before falling back down.

On the plus side, his wings were listening to him. So he could keep himself airborne for a few minutes, though his right wing was still healing preventing him from staying too long.

He was even given a bit of time to mess around with his transformations, most of which he spent as Sunstreak, but he also fidgeted around with his Changeling form, mostly trying to make himself less threatening, which really just involved him making his fangs disappear, which while small, Shade thought it made him almost infinitely more approachable.

When he was brought back to the hospital room, he was surprised to find Sapphire inside the room; she was looking over Carrie’s mother.

“Oh, Sapphire,” Rose said surprised to find her boss in the room. “What are you doing here?”

“I am looking over a patient…” Sapphire explained. “I moved Clean Bill to handle Lieutenant Sunglider. He woke up only a little while ago.” She said all of this while shining a light into the black Unicorn’s eyes, trying to get a response.

“That’s great news.” Rose replied. “Right?”

Sapphire looked away from the Black Unicorn. “It would be,” She said writing on a clipboard, “If he could remember anything.”

Shade flattened his ears against his head. He felt responsible for what happened, and just hoped there was some way to help.

“He appears to be suffering from some form of Retrograde Amnesia,” Sapphire explained. “He can remember who he is, but nothing else. He has no memory of his family, his job, or even his home.” Shade felt worse and worse with everything she said. Even if he didn’t cause it, he had a hand in it.

“That’s terrible.” Rose replied. “Is there anything that may have set it off?”

Sapphire shook her head. “Not that we know of… The most we could come up with was he slammed into the ground.”

Rose sighed. “Every time I think he is getting better…” She trailed off. “Anyway, any progress with our mystery Mare?”

“Very little…” Sapphire replied. “A brief moment of consciousness but aside from that nothing substantial.” Sapphire sighed. “What about you, Shade? Any progress to walking?”

“I may want to work on standing up first…” Shade said slightly embarrassed as he hovered into the bed. “After all being strapped into this thing for a while doesn’t help much with muscle memory.”

“I can guess.” Sapphire replied. “Now…I have to go check on Clean Bill’s progress with Sunglider. Rose if you could inform the kitchen staff that we will need to prepare a meal for Shade, then that would be a great help.”

“Of course, I would be happy to help.” Rose replied.

“Wonderful. Now if you’ll excuse me.” Sapphire walked out of the room and headed down the hall.

“Hearing about Sunglider must have been a weight off your mind.” Rose said to Shade.

“A small weight but yes, I’ve still got plenty of other things troubling me though.” Shade replied. “But…nothing I can do about it now.”

“Bit for your thoughts.” Rose replied.

Shade sighed. “I’m worried about multiple things, Meadow Song, my own freedom, Chrysalis, Sunglider, all of that is just weighing down my thoughts. I keep trying to go over every possible way to find Meadow, but nothing works…I just… don’t know enough about this city.” Shade rubbed his temples. “Then there’s all the risks my friends are taking, they are making a huge risk in taking me in, I’m sure that a lot of these ponies want me dead.”

Rose looked at Shade, concerned for how he looked like he was giving up. “So what are your plans?” Rose asked.

“So far, my plan is to find some way to help Sunglider, then…try and get out and find where those Changelings are hiding.” Shade replied. “And after that…either warn Celestia or go in by myself.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Rose asked.

Shade shook his head. “If Celestia doesn’t help, then I have to do it myself. I won’t let Meadow stay there any longer than she needs to be.”

Rose nodded in understanding. “I’ll keep it from the Guards for you…”

Shade smiled back at her as she left the room. He then reached over to the side table before deciding to read the rest of the first Daring Do books he still needed to read.

Night fell quickly over the Hospital, the lights had all been lowered, and the only still awake creatures were Sapphire and her Changeling night watch. The hospital had been checked every night since the Changeling snuck in before, an attempt to keep Shade alive as well as hide the rest of them.

Shade had finished the Daring Do book before he slept, he was busy thinking about the story he had read…but that didn’t last long.

The world exploded in green fire. Shade quickly whipped around to find the source, but he found nothing but blackness around him.

“Attention all Changelings of the Swarm!” A voice pierced through his head. Coming from everywhere at once. “It saddens me to say this. But my mother, Queen Chrysalis, has died.”

‘Chrysalis is dead?’ That one thought was repeated through his mind over a thousand times, from each Changeling in the Hive, he was connected to them…he could feel their thoughts.

“Calm, my subjects, this matter wounds us all deeply, however there is nothing we can do. If she were alive, she would not want us to mourn.”

‘Lies…’ A voice pierced through, it sounded familiar, but it seemed as though only he could hear it.

“While I know that many of you do not think I am an adequate successor to Chrysalis, the leader of our hive for almost eight hundred years, I assure you my subjects, I will follow the example my mother has set for us! We will be brought into a new age for the Swarm! An age where we need not worry if we will survive the month, an age where we are once again, the dominant hive!”

Shade felt a wave of excitement, not from him, but from the Hive. Almost every one of them believed what their new Queen was saying. Blindly following her, all except a few. Shade focused on these few, it was a small portion of the Hive, probably only a hundred or so, but they clearly were not thrilled with this change of Leadership.

‘Fool…’ the Voice pierced through him again, ‘She doesn’t know what that will mean.’

“I have also become aware of a traitor in our hive. One who sought the end of our Queen.” At this the Changelings all felt a surge of anger. “But this threat will be eliminated, I assure you. We will track this traitor down and then we will destroy our enemies!”

The Changelings all shouted proudly through Shade’s mind. “Queen Ceymi! Long Live Queen Ceymi!”

‘Enough!’ the voice pierced through his mind, and through Shade’s closed eyes, he saw two flaming green cat-like eyes of his new Queen staring back at him.

Shade was jolted awake by the image of the green burning eyes, his heart rate had gone up and he was taking in deep breaths. “What…Did I… Just see?”

If that dream or Hive mind thing or whatever it was, was to be believed. Then Queen Chrysalis was dead. That also meant that a new Queen was just implemented, and from the sound of it, she was actually less peaceful than Chrysalis.

He reached up and rubbed his head, the headache that always followed a mental link was much worse than it should be. Now I know it wasn’t a dream…

He could feel a small tingle near the base of his skull, the mental connection must still be going… He thought about that. Why was I pulled from the connection… almost like someone had severed it?

Shade began running the words and what he knew through his head, trying to find some reason for it. He thought about it for nearly two hours before he eventually succumbed to a dreamless sleep.

Darkblaze continued to pace the old warehouse, he had not heard back from Acari since he sent for her with information, and he was beginning to worry.

Come on, Acari…Where the Hive are you?

“Bit for your thoughts, Infiltrator.” Soldier 189 was watching him from on top of a pile of boxes.

“I’m worried.” Darkblaze replied.

“For what reason?” 189 asked. “We have your Hive mate, she should lead us directly to your Queen.”

Darkblaze shook his head. “She isn’t connected… Our Hive mind dispersed.”

“Meaning?” 189 asked.

Darkblaze sighed. “Queen Chrysalis is-”

At that moment a Drone flew down besides Darkblaze. “Acari would like to speak with you.”

Darkblaze turned to the Drone. “About time. 189 keep a watch on the prisoner.”

The changeling gave a small salute as Darkblaze turned to follow the Drone through the warehouse. Night had fallen fast in Cloudsdale, allowing them to walk up near the front of the warehouse without disguising, but there was always that small itch that you were being watched…

“Queen Acari.” Darkblaze said, bowing as he came close to the dusty pink Pegasus. “I wish I had better news to share with you.”

Acari looked at him suspiciously. “You summoned me here because what you had to say was important.” She leaned into Darkblaze. “I hope you did not waste my time.”

Darkblaze looked up at her. “We did manage to capture the Caretaker, she is one of the Queen’s personal caretakers.”

Acari looked surprised. “I thought you said the Queen was not here.”

Darkblaze shook his head. “She is not…and she will never be again.” Darkblaze lowered his head to look at the floor; he still couldn’t believe what he was about to say.

Acari noticed his sadness and disbelief, so she raised a hoof to tilt his head up. “What is it, Darkblaze?” She said in a light motherly tone.

Darkblaze let out a deep sigh. “Queen Chrysalis…she’s dead.”

The astonishment that went through not only the Queen, but her other three Changelings was palpable. The room went silent, and all of the changelings held their jaws open.

“You’re certain…” Acari asked, eyes still wide. “I… little Chrysi…”

The other three changelings began whispering amongst themselves.

“What happened?” Acari asked worried. “How did she die?”

Darkblaze began to tell the story Antenna had told him, with every detail that she had, he could tell that Acari was shocked when he described Chrysalis’ condition. Especially the horn, when he mentioned it was split in half, all of the Changelings looked at each other. When he finished with Antenna’s story, he looked up the see Acari had shed her disguise.

“I wish to speak with the Caretaker.” Acari said, looking down at him angrily.

Darkblaze sighed. I figured it would come to this… “Alright… Just… Let me talk to her first.”

“I will allow it.” Acari replied. “Now lead the way.”

Darkblaze walked down the warehouse, heading to the far edge where the makeshift cages were. Darkblaze didn’t like the look on Acari’s face, she seemed angry about something, almost like she was willing to execute Antenna on the spot.

“Acari…” Darkblaze asked, looking back at the Monarch. “Can I ask…what are you going to do?”

Acari looked down at him, her posture reminded him of Chrysalis when a Changeling was almost caught, straight and predatory. “I plan to question her. Then… I’m not sure.”

“I just need you to tell me one thing…that’s all.” Darkblaze replied. “Will she still be alive after this?” Darkblaze stopped staring directly at Acari.

The two stared at each other for a few seconds before Acari sighed. “If what you told me about her not attempting to harm a single pony in her time here is true, then she will be fine. However, if I find a single memory of her attempting to harm one of these ponies, I will bring her before Celestia.”

Darkblaze sighed. “Alright… She is just in here… give me a minute alone with her.”

Acari nodded. “You will have a minute. After that I will enter regardless.”

“Of course, your Majesty.” Darkblaze bowed before walking into the room. He quickly walked over to Antenna’s cell.

“Antenna! I-” He noticed that she wasn’t moving. “No. No. No. No!” Darkblaze said rapidly. He ran into the cell and began to shake the Changeling, looking into her blank eyes.

“Antenna! Can you hear me?” Darkblaze was shouting now. “Wake up! Antenna! I can’t lose you too!” Darkblaze shook the Changeling.

Darkblaze sighed. “I’m sorry about this…” He touched their horns together and linked himself to her mind.
“Long Live Queen Ceymi!” The familiar voice of his kin in his head.

“Silence!”

‘Princess!’ Darkblaze knew her voice.

“The Traitor we seek is being cared for by the enemy! I believe him responsible for the death of the Queen! An informant has told me of his location! I will need a brave Soldier to handle this situation. Any volunteers?”

‘Traitor? Queen’s Death! What is this crazy Princess on about?’ Darkblaze kept his thoughts separate from the Hive, ensuring he would go unnoticed.

He could hear a large number of Changelings send out signals of acceptance, so many blindly willing to die.

Darkblaze could feel Ceymi’s joy. “There is one problem my subjects, you must already be in Canterlot. The security has blocked us out, you must be quick, and you must be deadly. Leave. No. Witnesses.”

“I will do it, My Queen!”

‘That can’t be!’ Darkblaze focused on the voice. His fears were realized. Bloodpool, Chrysalis’ personal assassin, never caught, never seen, and known for his massacres.

“I will always serve the Hive. No matter what I must do.”

“Wonderful. And I have a way for you to get close to him, after that. You merely need to kill every guard that stands in your way.”

“I live for that kind of problem, never enough bloodshed.”

‘oh…Chrysalis…no…’ Darkblaze thought he knew what was going on.

“Now then… Your target-”

Darkblaze forcefully cut both him and Antenna from the connection, it was difficult and left him with a pounding headache, but he managed it.

“What happened?” Antenna said quickly recovering. “Where did the Hive go?”

“I’m… Sorry…Antenna…” Darkblaze was panting from the exertion of severing two minds from the Hive. “I needed…to sever…us from…the Hive…”

“What?” Antenna looked shocked and angry. “Why would you do that? My job requires it!”

“Antenna! Didn’t you hear what the Princess was saying? Doesn’t that go against what the Hive believes in? He is going to slaughter everypony in a Hospital!”

Antenna looked angrily at Darkblaze. “He killed our Que-“

“NO HE DIDN’T!” Darkblaze was shouting at her. “HE CAN’T HAVE!”

“And how do you know that?” Antenna asked suspiciously. “Unless you were a part of his plan.”

“Antenna… You know that I would never harm our Queen.” Darkblaze replied, “I’m just as loyal as you.”

“Then why don’t you tell me why you are defending this traitor?” Antenna asked, her forelegs shape shifting into blades. “Unless you are to blame.”

“You know that you wouldn’t win this fight… Not with that leg of yours.” Darkblaze replied. “And I know because he was with me since the Invasion failed, in Ponyville.”

Antenna looked surprised. “Ponyville?” She repeated. Her forelegs returning to normal. “What were you doing in Ponyville?”

Darkblaze sighed. “I was leaving the Hive…” He mumbled. “I couldn’t take it anymore… My sister…I just…”

The door opened. And Acari walked in. “Not interrupting am I?”

Antenna backed away from the Queen. “A-A-Ac-c-cari…” She began to huddle in the farthest corner from the cell doors.

“Acari.” Darkblaze said trying to get her attention. “I need to tell you something. It’s important.”

“It can wait, Darkblaze.” Acari was determined to get into Antenna’s head. “I want answers. Chrysalis could provide those answers…even if she is dead.”

“Acari! Chrysalis is dead! Her body would have burned by now! Listen to me!”

“Darkblaze… We agreed on this. One minute, then I get to decide what happens to her.”

Darkblaze couldn’t do anything about it, he was a lone Infiltrator and she was a Queen, she could just will it and he could explode or something. “Please Acari…just let me tell you this one thing.”

Acari looked between the two Changelings in front of her one cowering like a hatchling, and the other determined to get her attention. She sighed. “Very well what is it?”

Darkblaze had so much he wanted to tell her but Shade’s safety was of his major concern. “A deadly assassin is after Snake Eye.”

Acari looked at Darkblaze. “What kind of assassin?”

“One that doesn’t leave witnesses, and he is being released on Shade and that entire Hospital.”

Acari’s eyes widened. “That could set back Equestrian relations hundreds of years. Why would a hive send…”

“Princess Ceymi is using Chrysalis’ death to rile up the Hive.” Darkblaze explained. “And she is pinning the death on Snake Eye.”

Acari sighed. “Intelligent youngster… Needed a Scapegoat, so pick a useless Drone and pin it on them. Gives her credit… and gets rid of slack.”

Acari turned to look at Antenna. “I will still need to search your memory.” Acari replied moving closer to Antenna. “If you have not harmed a pony since you have been here, you have nothing to fear.” She leaned in to look directly into Antenna’s eyes. “However if you have deceived me or my ally, I will turn you into the Equestrian authorities as is my side of a deal made with Celestia. Is that understood?”

Antenna nodded quickly.

“Good. Now do not fight it and this will be quick.” Acari lowered her horn to touch between Antenna’s eyes. There was a brief pink flash, and Antenna was lying on the ground, not moving.

Darkblaze stared at Antenna, holding in a breath of anticipation.

“She will be fine, Darkblaze.” Acari said looking at Darkblaze’s expression. “She is merely unconscious.” She stood up, looking towards Darkblaze. “Now tell me about this assassin.”

When Shade woke up in the morning, his mind went to work picking through the Hive’s communication he heard last night.

Alright, so Chrysalis was murdered by another Changeling… But if I understand them correctly, the Queen is the most powerful in a Hive, even if she was injured by the blast, she must still be able to fight… His mind worked in overdrive, thinking about everything he knew, his plans he had made to track down Chrysalis were gone now.

What do I tell the ponies? If he said that Chrysalis was dead, it would be difficult to explain how he knew, and then there was the problem of them thinking of him as a spy if he didn’t.

“Ugh…” Shade groaned. “Why must my life be so damn complicated?” He rubbed the side of his head, trying to clear his mind. He didn’t want to think about the complications, he wanted to focus on the problem at hand…or hoof. Stupid terminology… I still don’t have this crap down.

He was spared any more pain when he saw Rose walk into the room. “Good morning, Shade.”

“Morning, Rose…” Shade replied looking up from the ground. “Sorry if I’m a little distant… weird dreams…”

“I’m sure it was nothing.” Rose said dismissively. “It’s normal to have strange dreams from time to time.”

Shade noticed that there was a strange silence from outside the room, usually the Guards were there, but there was nothing he could feel from them.

“What happened to the guards?” Shade asked, looking out of the room with his left eye.

“Oh they just left…something about more important duties that required their attention.” Rose’s magic surrounded the door, and Shade heard a faint clicking sound of a lock.

“Umm…What are you…?” Shade asked as Rose turned to look at him, her normally light red eyes had turned a venomous green.

“Something wrong?” Rose asked a wicked smile curling across her face. “I’m making sure we won’t be interrupted.”

Carrie walked down the hall, thinking through Shade’s answers for the third time that morning, she was still wary about the Love sucker, but he seemed genuine. Maybe he wouldn’t be a threat to the Queen…

She was absentmindedly walking to the room where Ovi was being held, but when she reached the room, she was surprised that it didn’t open.

“Guards…what is…” She stared at the two Royal Guards, to everyone else, the Guards may have still been stoically standing there, but to her, their eyes were glowing with a light green color, the staple of a Brainwash.

She panicked, trying to get into the room anyway she could. She rammed into the door, but every time she tried, she was repulsed from it by some unseen force. She fired a magical beam at the door, but the same unseen force absorbed the spell.

She ran up to the covered windows of the room, she quickly used her magic to pull the curtains aside to see into the room. When she did, her eyes widened.

Inside the room, Dr. Rose was looking over Shade maliciously, her eyes were glowing green and her forelegs had morphed into black blades. Shade was trying to get away from the Unicorn, but he couldn’t manage to stand up.

She needed to help…some way to distract them, even for a second. So she did the only thing she could think of. She took a deep breath and yelled down the halls. “Guards! Come Quickly! There’s a Changeling trying to kill somepony!”

It wasn’t much, but it did get the Changeling to pause from attacking Shade to look towards Carrie. The Changeling looked surprised to see her, but then turned to look at the disguised form of Queen Ovi.

“Don’t you dare!” Carrie shouted as she slammed her front hooved into the window, not even causing the glass to bend.

The Changeling looked back at her and laughed.

“Guards! Hurry!” Carried shouted. She was beginning to worry.

As the Changeling laughed, Shade looked over to Carrie, to see the unicorn trying in vain to break into the room.

“This is too good.” The Changeling replied, its forelegs returning to normal. “Not only do I get to kill a traitor, but I get to end the life of a Queen.” It reared its head back in laughter. “And to make it even better, she won’t even fight back!”

Shade was confused. “Queen? The hell are you talking about?” Shade looked between the Unicorn and the Changeling in front of him. It was still creepy because it spoke with Rose’s voice.

“Oh come now…” The fake Rose replied. “I know that you’re insane for trying to kill our Queen, but you must recognize a Queen when you see one.”

Shade was still confused. There was another Queen? Here of all places?

“It doesn’t matter what you think, Nymph.” The Changeling replied walking over towards Ovi. “I’m here to kill you and kill any possible witnesses. That includes Queens.”

“GUARDS!” Carrie kept shouting down the halls trying to get the attention of someone. “Anypony! Help!”

At that time, a small group of four guards rushed down the hall, Carrie could pick out three Pegasi and one Unicorn. They stopped in front of Carrie.

“What’s going on?” One of the Pegasi asked.

“A changeling!” Carrie replied. “It’s trying to kill them!”

“Stand back citizen,” a large gray pegasi replied, who began slamming into the door. Upon seeing it having no effect he turned to the unicorn. “Silver! Get your magical ass up here.”

The unicorn walked up to the door as his horn began to glow a deep red color. He focused his attention on the door as he drew a circular rune in the air. Once it was completed, the rune sunk into the door. He nodded at the gray Pegasus lifted his hind legs and bucked in the door.

“Surrender now, Changeling!” The Gray Pegasus shouted towards the false Rose.

“Not a chance, prey.” The fake Rose replied, her horn glowed bright green and shot the three pegasi back into the wall. “I’ll deal with you three when I’m done here.”

Carrie rushed into the room and flung herself at the Changeling. “Leave my Mother alone!” She was willing to bear her fangs and bite into the Changeling’s neck, but she wasn’t given enough time before she found a bladed foreleg jammed into her stomach.

“Pathetic Caretaker.” The Changeling hissed as it threw Carrie into a wall.

“Carrie!” Shade shouted, buzzing his wings quickly to fly over to where the black unicorn was slowly bleeding out. He tried to get Carrie to look at him. “Carrie, Stay with me!”

“It’s no use, traitor.” The fake Rose said, wiping the slight orange blood off of its foreleg. “She’ll bleed out before long.”

“Not before I crush you underneath my hoof.” Silver replied, his horn violently glowing.

The Changeling laughed. “You don’t even know who I am.”

“Nor do I care.” Silver replied. “You’re still just a worthless insect.”

“Coming from you?” The Changeling replied. “That’s a laugh.”

Shade was busy trying to keep Carrie alive, but he could have sworn that he saw the Fake Rose crack a smile.

“What are you talking about?” Silver asked, not letting himself be distracted.

The Fake Rose laughed. “Oh…oh this is great! You don’t even know!” Her horn glowed bright and Silver was knocked into the wall and held there.

“You call me an insect.” The fake Rose replied, walking forward. “And you don’t even know what you are.” She leaned in to be close to Silver. “Allow me to show you.”

There was a bright green light and Shade turned to look over to the source. What he saw astonished him.

Where the strong white Unicorn was held, there was now a Changeling. Its eyes were a bright red color, much like the color of his magic before. His backplate and wings were a similar red color. His golden Armor was still where it should be on his body, but now the false-Unicorn looked at himself in shock.

“I-I-I-” Silver stuttered. He had no idea what to say, he was a monster.

The Fake Rose just smiled at him. “Now you know the truth.” The Changeling released its magical grip on Silver, who fell to the ground unsure of how to process this new information.

“Now I suppose this is a good thing.” The Fake Rose replied, walking back over to where Ovi was. “Now I can get out. And you will be blamed for this entire thing.”

“My…Queen…” Carrie whimpered, trying to lift herself up, but getting pushed back down by Shade.

“Don’t…you’ll just make it worse.” Shade said to Carrie.

“I…Have to…Protect…” Carrie replied, Losing her strength.

“Well then you’ve failed.” The Fake Rose replied, her sharpened forelegs ready to stab into both of them. “And you will die just like your Queen.”

Shade laid Carrie down and stood up, turning to look at the Fake Rose. “One too many…” He said under his breath.

“What was that?”

“You harmed one too many innocent bystanders.” Shade replied.

“And exactly what are you going to do about that?” The Fake Rose asked staring directly at Shade.

“Me? Nothing.” Shade replied, pointing his hoof behind the Fake Rose. “But I think she has something to say.”

The Fake Rose glanced behind her before both of her eyes widened in fear.

Quickly the Changeling was grabbed in an orange aura and whipped around to stare into the angry face of a Changeling Queen. She growled at him before throwing the Fake Unicorn into the wall, holding him there.

“Queen Ovi!” The Fake Rose said surprised, before being slammed back into the wall.

“Silence, or I will personally end your life you miserable gnat!” Ovi replied, voice dripping with anger. “You were a fool if you believed you could end my life and survive to the next moon. My Drones would hunt you down and tear apart every piece of you until there is nothing left but bones!” She slammed the Fake Rose into the wall again.

“You pathetic Pupa!” Ovi shouted. “You dare to attack your own kind. Let alone my daughter!” Ovi slammed the Changeling into the wall again, with a very noticeable cracking sound. “You will be brought before Acari and she will determine your fate.” Ovi hissed at the Changeling. “And if my daughter dies, I will not give you a chance at redemption!”

With every slam, the Changeling’s carapace cracked more and more, the disguise etching away to reveal the black shell underneath. “Now tell me who sent you, and I promise my swarm will leave you be.”

The Changeling slowly lifted its head; Shade thought it was less from lack of energy and more from the sheer number of cracks his carapace had retained at this point. “Queen Ceymi…”

“There is no such Queen!” Ovi replied. “Now tell me!”

The Changeling smiled. “Queen Ceymi, daughter of Chrysalis. She will take her rightful place as High Queen!”

Ovi pulled the Changeling off the wall, preparing to crush its spine into the wall. But Shade flew up between them.

“Wait!” Shade exclaimed, turning to look at his Assassin. “Where are they?”

Author's Note

Again... Grammar problems are probably in here... Honestly I'm too tired to look through it all...

Chapter 25: Silver Tongues

For as long as Silver Shield could remember, he had been a Unicorn. He had always considered himself a Unicorn brought up by a Pegasus family; he never once questioned his lineage, never once asked his family why he wasn’t like his brothers.

Now he knew.

The Truth is he was never really a Unicorn, or even a Pony. He had been a Changeling his entire life, unknown to him until earlier that day. And now that he knew the truth, it terrified him.

He had simply been doing his duty as a member of the Royal Guard, protecting civilians from harm, when he was grabbed by an assassin hired to kill the very Changeling that sent his brother, Sunglider, into a deep coma. The assassin pinned him against a wall and ripped apart the very skin that Silver Shield held for the better part of twenty-five years.

Now he just sat on the cold floor, the same place he was when his true form was revealed, dumbstruck. He couldn’t comprehend what happened to him.

“Silver?” Shade said, looking at the dumbfounded Changeling, questioning everything he knew. “Are you alright?”

The Royal Guard looked up from the ground, looking at the mismatched eyes of the Changeling. “No…” He replied, he was surprised by the sound of his own voice, the slight distortion that came from it.

“Want to talk about it?” Shade asked.

“What is there to talk about?” Silver asked, looking down at his Hooves, now foreign to him. “Look at me! I-I’m…”

Silver felt one of Shade’s hooves on his shoulder. “You’re still you.” He said, looking right into Silver’s eyes, now solid red orbs. “No matter what happens, you are still the same Unicorn you always have been.”

Silver swatted the hoof away. “No.” He replied. “My life is a lie! Everything! My family, my friends, my comrades. All of it!”

Shade just looked at the Guard in front of him. He once loathed the Guard for how he treated him, the way he blamed Shade for what happened. But now he just saw what happened to him.

Shade landed next to the Changeling. “Listen…Silver.”

“That’s not my name anymore…” Silver replied. “That pony never existed…”

Shade cracked a smile. “Well neither did Sunstreak.”

The Changeling looked up at Shade, this one Changeling that treated him like he wasn’t a monster. “What are you on about?”

“Listen…Sunstreak is my own identity. I created him to fit into Equestria. He never existed before then, and he won’t exist. He was always me. Just like Silver Shield, was always you.”

Silver shook his head. “Look at me… I’m an enemy of my own home. I can’t…I can’t be a Royal Guard like this…” He pulled off his helmet and threw it across the room.

Shade looked from the helmet to the Changeling. “Do you truly believe that?”

Silver looked up. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Shade flew over and grabbed the helmet from the floor. “Is this really that big of a change for you?” Shade asked as he landed next to Silver. “Does this change who you are?” Shade placed the helmet in front of Silver.

“When I told you that I hurt Sunglider, you were angry. Would a monster feel that strongly about their family?” As Shade said this, Silver looked up at him, “I only have one question for you, Silver,” Shade slid the helmet closer to Silver. “Do you still care for your family?”

Silver looked at the helmet, then up at Shade. “Why are you helping me?”

Shade looked down at the Changeling. “Because I was in this same situation,” Shade explained. “It took a single filly to show me that nothing changed. So why not spread that with someone who needs it.”

Silver still looked unsure.

“Listen, Silver.” Shade replied. “You have a family, a group that cares for you, and will accept you no matter what you are. Do you really think they are going to shun you because you look different?”

Silver pushed himself off the ground. “But… This just changes my entire life…”

Shade flew over to where his bed was and grabbed a pink letter. “I thought the same thing. I figured that once my friends knew the truth, they would hate me. This letter proves otherwise.” He handed the letter over to Silver. “It was written by a friend of mine, one who doesn’t care how I look, she can see past that, and if anyone tries to do otherwise, they aren’t really your friends now are they.”

Silver looked up at the Changeling, the single thing he hated after his brother was hospitalized. He was openly trying to help him, “How do I…”

“Let me help you…” Shade replied. “Focus on your form… don’t ask me why, just do it.”

Silver looked questioningly at the Changeling. “Why?”

“Do you want help or not?” Shade asked as a few doctors ran in and grabbed Carrie.

Silver was going to argue but instead just closed his eyes and focused. He heard a flash of flame and opened his eyes to see Shade grinning at him.

“What?” Silver asked, before looking down at himself. He was back to normal, the black Carapace being replaced with the familiar silver coat he was accustomed to.

“Feel better?” Shade asked.

“How…?” Silver replied. “I…don’t understand.”

“Well…neither do I to be honest.” Shade replied. “But doesn’t it feel better to be back in your normal body, Silver?”

Silver nodded, his red eyes looking back at the Changeling.

“Took me a few hours before I managed to get Sunstreak right,” Shade replied. “But you have a form already.”

Shade lifted the helmet up and placed it on the Royal Guards head, causing Silver’s coat to change to a solid white and his red eyes to change to blue. “I-I don’t know how to handle this…”

Shade held up his hoof. “Don’t worry about it. You’ve been doing fine so far.”

“And that enchantment finally broke I see.”

Both of them turned to look at the new entrant to see Sapphire standing in the doorway.

“Enchantment?” Silver asked looking at the Unicorn. “What do you mean?”

Sapphire walked into the room, “When you were a foal, I put an enchantment on you, sealing you into the first form you ever took,” The unicorn walked up to the disguised Changeling. “It would essentially turn you into a pony. Normally I don’t condone the use of such enchantments at such a young age, however your mother and father wanted you to live a normal life, free from the secret world of the Changelings.”

As Sapphire explained, both Shade and Silver looked at her in confusion.

“I…didn’t exactly want to place the enchantment, however I did manage to find a pony family willing to take you in regardless of what you were. Then all that was left was for your Queen to permanently sever you from the Hive mind. She understood the decision and allowed you to live a Pony life.”

“The only trade off we placed was that your parents could never reveal what you were, and if you ever did find out, we would be forced to take you from them.”

Silver stood up staring down the unicorn. “And just what makes you think you could?”

Sapphire smirked. “All in good time, Silver.” Sapphire replied. She turned to look at Ovi. “Ovi, we still need him alive. I would prefer if you not crack his carapace like an egg.”

Queen Ovi, who had still been slamming the Changeling into the wall, stopped to look at the unicorn. “Cytes, you know what she means to me.” She dropped the Changeling from her magic, and Shade involuntarily winced at the state of him. His backplate was completely shattered, and the long snaking cracks across his carapace were leaking a bluish green liquid.

“Ovi, that is no excuse to nearly kill the only lead we have at finding Chrys-” Sapphire had to stop herself from finishing the old Queen’s name. “Ceymi.”

“Ah yes, Chrysalis’ daughter.” Ovi said, stamping down on the Changeling assassin, stopping him from trying to crawl away. “What about her?”

“She’s the new Queen.” Sapphire replied, she looked back at Silver. “Silver, I know that this is a brand new discovery for you and yo most likely have many questions, but I need you to do something very important for me.”

The Unicorn nodded.

“Swallow this.” Sapphire pulled a small pink pill from her pocket, levitating it over to Silver.

“What is it?” Silver asked.

“Procedure.” Sapphire replied, so Silver shrugged and popped it into his mouth. When he swallowed the small capsule, his eyes turned pink and he fell over, passed out.

Shade looked at him. “What was that?” He asked Sapphire.

“I’m sorry, Shade…” Sapphire replied, taking her glasses off and wiping them with a small cloth. “He chose his life’s path. He wanted to be a pony. That capsule is a memory drain. He will not remember the past few minutes. The last thing he will remember is being shot back by the assassin.”

“Why?” Shade asked looking over the unconscious body of the Unicorn.

Sapphire sighed. “He is far too adjusted to pony life. Him knowing he is a Changeling could have terrible consequences. While your hive is known, Pupa’s is not. We cannot risk any more Hives being discovered by common ponies right now.”

Shade was still looking over the Unicorn. “Don’t worry, when all of this blows over, he will be allowed to remember, just not right now.”

“And who is this?” Ovi asked looking over Shade. “Another one of Chysi’s?

“No, Ovi.” Sapphire replied, placing her glasses back on. “He has no allegiance to any hive. He is a failed conversion.”

“Oi!” Shade shouted. “Standing right here.”

“Yes you are.” Ovi replied. “Shall we talk more about this underneath the Hospital?”

“Yes, however we need to send a Siege team to get Rose. I don’t like the idea of my Employee’s being trapped inside those cocoons.” Sapphire replied. “Shade, you are to remain here. I will keep you informed on Carrie’s condition, though it may not be good.”

“Oh don’t worry…” Ovi replied grabbing the assassin with her magic and pulling him close to her. “This one will pay if she dies. Rather painfully I might add.” Shade didn’t like the smile she had on her face. It was strangely calm, yet…malicious.

“Your Drones will certainly be happy to see you again.” She turned to look at the three pegasi. “Up and at ‘em boys. You have work to do.” The three pegasi were briefly covered in blue fire before they were all replaced with Changelings each one with sky blue eyes and a dusty purple backplate.

Each of the Changelings grabbed onto Silver and carried him out of the room quickly followed by Sapphire and Ovi, who had retaken her Unicorn disguise. Leaving Shade in the room to go over his thoughts and figure out what was going on.

Rose was having a very strange day. Last night she had been walking home from the Hospital when a mysterious Colt asked for her help. She of course tried to help, then she found herself face first on the stone street.

And now, now she found herself dangling upside down in some kind of gelatinous matter. Through which she could hear what sounded like Royal Guards talking to each other.

She saw what looked like two black pegasi fly up to where she was hanging, and noticed that she was nearly twenty feet in the air, normally this would frighten her knowing there was almost nothing stopping her from falling head first to her death, but she felt strangely content.

“Bloodpool should have gotten back by now.” One of the pegasi said to the other.

“You know him.” The female of the pair replied. “Always trying to make a show of things.”

“Yeah…but he’s been gone a pretty long time, even by his standards.”

“Oh come on…What, are you afraid he died? Come on I bet he’ll come through the door at any time with that traitor’s head on his foreleg. At least he better be.” She said through ground teeth.

There was a banging on the door beneath all of them. The female Pegasus looked at her counterpart. “See? What did I tell you?” She flew down and landed next to the door. At which point an earth pony knocked down the door.

“Take ‘em out!” He shouted as he held down the female one, followed by three other Pegasi flying in and pinning the male to the ceiling.

“What did you do to Bloodpool!” The female Pegasus asked angrily.

“He’s been pacified. Now where is the hive?”

The Female Pegasus spat at the Earth pony.

“Got anything useful out of him?” The Earth pony asked the other pegasi.

“Nothing!” one of the Pegasi called back down.

“Alright…just get the Doctor down and we’ll deal with these two later.”

Rose’s vision faded to black as she heard a sawing sound from above her.

When she regained consciousness, she found herself in some kind of, underground blue room, being looked at by a group of strange looking ponies.

“How long do you think she was inside the chrysalis?”

“Can’t have been longer than a few hours…”

“The emotional drainage levels correspond with around seven hours.”

“She’s waking up…”

One of the ponies horns glowed a bright blue and Rose’s vision began to fade out again.

“Ugh…” Rose said as she regained consciousness. Reaching to feel the top of her head. She felt drained… and tired. She tried to open her eyes but the lights were blinding.

“You’re awake!”

“Ow…” Rose replied. “Not so loud…” The voice physically hurt, simply because her ears were being super receptive for some reason.

“Oh…sorry…” Rose began to adjust to the light. As her eyes finally did adjust to the light, she saw Shade standing next to her.

“Shade?”

“Hi…”

“What are you doing here?” Rose looked around and saw that she was in the Hospital. “What am I doing here?”

Shade’s ears flattened against his head. “You were…captured by Changelings…”

“What?” She replied. “What happened?”

Shade took a deep breath and began to explain the events as best he could, he had to be careful to avoid any mention of Queen Ovi or Cytes or even Silver being a Changeling, which was not easy.

“Then the Royal Guard found you trapped in the Chrysalis and brought you here…” Shade concluded. “I was starting to worry if you were going to wake up… You looked almost like Sunglider did when they first brought him in.”

Rose looked at the Changeling. “Are they letting you wander around freely now?”

“No…I just wanted to see how you were doing…” Shade replied. “You were the closest thing to a friend I’ve had while I’ve been in here…and I would hate for you to be hurt just because you knew me.”

“Well that’s very nice of you… But what happened to Carrie?”

“I’m…not allowed…to go in there…” Shade replied, his ears flattening against his skull. “They’re worried I might aggravate her…”

“Understandable given what you told me…”

Shade looked guiltily at the floor. “Yeah…” Shade sighed.

“Hey, bug boy!” Silver called from the doorway. “Times up.”

“In a second.” Shade replied. “I hope you get better soon, try not to…do anything strenuous…for a bit.” Shade turned and walked out of the room.

Silver closed the door behind them. “What were you talking to Dr. Rose about?”

“The assassination attempt on my life.” Shade said blankly. “I thought she deserved to know.”

“I still don’t know why you can’t tell me about that.” Silver replied. “Nopony here will tell me.”

“Well…she was kind of required for it to happen, you just sort of…showed up.” And were vital in the prevention of not only my death, but Carrie’s, Queen Ovi’s and everyone else in this damn place.

“Still doesn’t answer my question as to why nopony will tell me.”

“No idea, Sergeant.” Shade replied. “Maybe there is a reason for it. Then again maybe there isn’t. I’m still getting used to the laws of your nation.”

Silver smirked. “Well… Your friends haven’t found anything yet. Shining Armor wants to make sure you are fully recovered.” Shade stumbled a little; his hind legs were still not listening to his commands sometimes. “Like that.”

“Point taken…” Shade replied steadying himself. “You know that you don’t have to watch over me when we get back to the room, might be good for you to go talk to your brother a bit. Maybe help him remember something.”

Silver sighed. “Yeah…”

The two continued in silence. Until they reached the now empty room that Shade was staying in while he perfected walking. “I can handle myself from here.” Shade replied, walking inside the door, the instant he closed it, he slumped to the ground. God this keeping secrets stuff is getting stressful.

Shade rubbed the side of his head. I hope Twilight is having an easier time than me.

“What do you mean he said no?” Rainbow Dash asked furiously, slamming her hoof on the table, upsetting a glass of water.

“Exactly that, Rainbow,” Twilight replied, using her magic to replace the glass. “Shining Armor said no.”

“But how could he say no?” Rainbow Dash asked, drawing a few wandering eyes from nearby ponies. “He’s done nothing wrong.”

“Calm down, Dashie.” Pinkie Pie replied. Then leaning in to Rainbow added. “They’re watching us…” She whispered as her eyes quickly moved back and forth.

“I’m with Pinkie here, Rainbow. You should calm down.” Twilight replied, taking a bite of her Daisy and Daffodil Sandwich. “This is still supposed to be a secret.”

“How can you be so calm about this?” Rainbow asked, settling down.

“The ponies here are still jumpy around Changelings,” Twilight explained “I can see where he’s coming from, a Changeling walking around would probably cause some ponies to think the worst.”

“Yeah…but we can’t just abandon him.” Rainbow replied. “Would he do the same for us?”

“I’m not sure, Rainbow.” Twilight replied. “How much do we really know about Sunstreak?”

“Oo! Oo! I know this one!” Pinkie replied. “He came from the Burning Fiords, he’s looking for Meadow, and he can eat super spicy food.”

“Now what do we know about him as a pony?” Twilight asked Pinkie.

“He keeps his promises, he’s nice, and he is trying to do the right thing.”

“Yeah…but Shining Armor is still a little bit skeptical of him.” Twilight replied. “And he has reason to, after all his leader was the one who brainwashed Shining.” Twilight took another bite of her sandwich.

“But what has Sunny done to warrant him being treated like that?” Rainbow asked.

“What hasn’t he done?” Twilight replied. “He openly admits to being present at the Invasion, as far as the Guards are concerned, that already makes him a threat.” Twilight sighed. “I don’t agree with them, Sunstreak has shown a genuine want to help make up for it. There’s just so much that was caused by them that so many of them are just really jumpy.”

“But Everypony deserves a second chance.” Pinkie replied. “Even if they were meanies at one point.”

“Yeah, just look at Princess Luna.” Rainbow Dash argued. “She’s fine now.”

“It’s not the same, Rainbow…”

“How?” Rainbow slammed her hoof on the table again; Twilight steadied the glass so it wouldn’t fall over again. “How is he any different than Nightmare Moon?”

“She was always a pony…that’s the difference.” Twilight replied. “She may have tried to plunge the world into endless night, but she was always a pony. Sunstreak is… it’s just not the same, Rainbow.”

A Pegasus guard flew down beside them. “Pardon the interruption, but you are Twilight Sparkle correct?”

“Yes.” Twilight replied. “Who are you?”

“I am Swift Wing, a runner for the Royal Guard, the Captain wishes to speak with you.”

“Shining Armor?” Twilight replied. “Did he say what it was about?”

The Pegasus shook his head. “No sadly. He mentioned an incident that occurred involving the prisoner.”

“Sunstreak.” All three of the mares asked. “What happened?”

“I have been ordered to keep it a secret. The Captain will explain everything. Now please, follow me.”

The three of them paid for their meal before following after the guard, all the while wondering about the incident.

“Can you tell us anything about what happened?” Twilight asked.

“I’m prevented under command to tell you any of the details.”

“Is Sunny alright?” Pinkie asked.

“Yes. He is fine.”

“Isn’t there anything you can tell us?” Rainbow asked bluntly.

“The incident made the Captain rethink your offer.” Swift replied. “I told you, he will explain everything to you.”

They walked in silence until they reached the Castle grounds, where the group turned towards a medium sized tent that that seemed to have been placed there for training purposes.

“The Captain is just through here. He wanted the meeting to be away from the main castle grounds.” Swift Wing stated before flying off.

Walking into the tent, Twilight saw it was some kind of mobile war room, a round table with a map of Canterlot was placed in the center of the room. On the far side of which, Shining Armor was looking over the map.

When the group entered the tent he looked up. “Twily, I’m sure Swift told you why I asked you here.”

“He said something about an incident.” Twilight replied. “What happened?”

“There was an attack at the Hospital.” Shining Armor replied. “Their target was Shade.”

“What?” Rainbow Dash replied. “Who did it?”

“The attacker was another Changeling, one loyal to Chrysalis.” Shining Armor explained. “That’s the main reason why I began to rethink your offer.”

“How did it get in?” Twilight asked. “I thought you were keeping an eye on everypony coming in or going out of Canterlot.”

“We are…it must have been caught by a building or something. It took the form of one of the Doctors looking over Shade, he was eventually stopped by the other patient in his room.”

“Yeah! Go Carrie!” Pinkie replied.

“She…got stabbed in the stomach.” Shining Armor replied. “It’s…pretty bad. But that was enough to cause her mother to nearly kill the Changeling by slamming it into a wall.”

“What’s happening to it?” Twilight asked.

“Sapphire removed it from the Hospital, said she had enough on her hooves already without a murderous Changeling added into the mix.”

“So what exactly made you reconsider?” Rainbow asked, flying up to him.

“The main reason I didn’t want you three getting involved was because I was still skeptical about him claiming to be ‘disloyal to Chrysalis’ especially if he wouldn’t reveal any of the Hive’s secrets.” Shining Armor sighed. “Though the fact that one of his own just tried to kill him made me reconsider.”

Twilight looked at her brother quizzically.

“Maybe he really isn’t a direct threat to Equestria. Maybe everything he told us was the truth. But I’m still skeptical about him roaming freely around Canterlot, the main reason I wanted to try and find a Guard willing to take him in was so that I could keep tabs on him. Just in case all this time he was trying to get us to lower our guard. Not even including the threat to his own life from the townsponies.”

“Understandable…” Twilight replied. “Then why not let him have his magic, just in case he needed to defend himself?”

“Twily, the nobles would never allow that.” Shining Armor shook his head. “I need something a bit more…” Shining Armor twirled his hoof. “Specific.”

“Uh-huh.” Twilight replied.

“Listen… This whole Changeling prisoner situation has been weighing down on all of us heavily.” Shining Armor explained. “The Nobles have been all but begging us to have him killed. Celestia has to keep fighting back their requests and plans for him…most of which involve some form of torture until he gives up where his hive is.”

“They can’t do that!” Rainbow Dash replied angrily. “They can’t just torture somepony!”

“That’s why we’ve been pushing back against them… But they are slowly gaining more support… The only way I can assure that he was allowed to walk around was to put a Guard on him…but many of my own are still less than hospitable to Changelings. That’s why I reconsidered your offer Twilight.”

“So, does that mean yes?” Pinkie replied.

“So long as Twily here has a spell to stop combat magic.” Shining Armor replied.

“You mean you are actually going to let us keep an eye on him?” Twilight replied.

“Yes, but I want daily reports from you three. Any sign that he still has allegiance to Chrysalis, and I’m putting him back in that dungeon.” Shining Armor said, he leaned in to Twilight. “And try to find out as much as you can about them. Celestia wants to know.”

Twilight looked up at her brother with a wide smile on her face. “You can count of me, Shiny!” She wrapped her brother in a hug. “You won’t regret this!”

“I hope not, Twily… I had to pull out all of my favors to get this to work. So it better be worth it.”

“I’ve got to get ready!” Pinkie Pie shouted, dashing out of the tent.

“Where is she going?” Shining Armor asked as the pink dust cloud vanished.

“To prepare a party for Shade…” Twilight replied. “Rainbow, could you…”

“Make sure she doesn’t go overboard. On it.” Rainbow Dash flew off after Pinkie.

“So you do know that suppression spell right?”

Silver was standing outside his brother’s hospital room, looking in to the blank stares of his brother. He was afraid of Sunglider’s condition. Sunglider was Silver Shield’s best friend for many years, the only pony he confided many of his secrets to. Now he barely remembered anything Silver told him, and barely remembered who he even was.

Silver took a deep breath and stepped into the room.

“Oh hello.” Sunglider said as Silver walked into the room. “I don’t recognize you… Are you another one of the doctors?” Silver felt his heart drop.

“No…” Silver had to fight back the tears welling up inside him. “I’m your brother.” He removed his helmet, letting his white coat turn back to the silver sheen and his blue eyes changed to red. “Don’t you remember me?”

Sunglider tapped his chin. “Mmm…No… I’ve got nothing.” Silver felt the lump in his heart get heavier.

“Sunny, Come on…” Silver replied. “After all the things we did together. Everything I told you. You’re going to pull this on me.”

“Whose Sunny?” Sunglider replied. “Am I Sunny? I thought I was Sunglider… I’m confused.”

Silver was having trouble…his brother…the one he confided so much in, barely remembered him. “Sunny…I-I-” Silver had to turn away from his brother.

“Hey. Are you alright?” Silver looked back towards his brother, his eyes full of tears. He said it the same way he had always said it. The same words that Silver learned meant that it was okay to tell him.

“I’m sorry, Sunny.” Silver wrapped his forelegs around the light orange Pegasus. “I-I couldn’t get to you fast enough.” The Pegasus was shocked but seemed to fully understand. “If I-I just-” He stopped when the Pegasus wrapped his hooves around Silver.

“It’s alright. Don’t blame yourself.” Sunglider replied. “It wasn’t your fault I can’t remember anything.”

Silver looked up at the Pegasus, wiping his eyes with his hoof. “But…I-I could have stopped you…and then you wouldn’t…”

Sunglider looked at his brother with a small smirk on his face. “Come on…you…don’t go blaming yourself, I probably had it coming.”

Silver didn’t realize the door opened until he heard it close. He turned to see Shade inside the room.

“Ooo…What are you?” Sunglider asked looking at Shade.

“Changeling… more specifically the one who did this to you…” Shade replied rubbing the back of his head.

“What are you doing here?” Silver asked, looking at the Changeling.

Shade looked a bit nervous. “Well…” He let out a breath. “I could see all the emotion going on in here… and since I…you know…”

Silver cleared his eye. “Are you saying you’re actually sorry for this?”

Shade nodded. “I…I’m not sure what kind of consolation it is…but I will try whatever it takes to fix this.” Shade walked up to the two of them. “I tried to save him after I pushed him into the ground…”

“You were being serious about that?” Silver asked surprised. He just thought that was something he came up with in an attempt to get on Silver’s good side…that just caused Silver to blow up the cells next to Shade.

“Yeah…I used the only real spell I knew from the Fiords…it is a weak healing spell. But it stopped him from bleeding out.” Shade replied. “So…that was lucky.”

Silver looked at the Changeling surprise and shock on his face.

“Do you two know each other?” Sunglider asked. Looking between the two.

“You could say that, Sunglider.” Shade replied. “I just…wanted to let you know that…since…you kind of saved my life.”

“Whoa…when was that?” Sunglider asked.

“Shush.” Shade replied. “Anyway…I’m looking into a possible way for me to transfer the memories I got from him back…but it may take a while…”

Silver sighed. He couldn’t believe he hated this changeling at one point. He was genuinely trying to help, even if it was a long shot. “Do what you have to.” Silver replied.

Shade nodded. “By the way… What exactly happened over the waterfall?” Shade asked. “I keep seeing it in my sleep.”

“It’s…a family secret.” Silver replied.

“Alright then…I’ll just ignore it.” Shade replied. Walking out of the room, he turned back to Silver. “I’ll see you around, Sergeant.”

Shade felt better about himself, he managed to clear that whole situation up. Sure, Silver would still probably be wary of him, but it was better than him loathing Shade with every fiber of his being.

Looking back into the room, he could tell that Sunglider was very gradually remembering Silver, but at the rate it was going, it would take years for him to remember the Waterfall incident like Shade did.

Shade let out a sigh, his eye changed to a blue rounded pupil. “I’m sorry, Wingless…”

Author's Note

Probably going to be the only update today, I need to finish this other thing I have. If I get that done, then I can post the next part. It gets a bit... Chaotic :facehoof: That was bad... I'm sorry...

Chapter 26: Chaos Theory

As Shade wandered back to his room, he couldn’t help but feel a rather odd tingle down his spine… Not like with Spine, but it was familiar to him. In a bad way…
“Why not just submit to me?”

“We would rather die than live under your rule!”

Shade began reminiscing stories his village elders had told him, the Reign of Discord had been one of the worst time for the Alliance. The Griffons land all but destroyed, the Minotaur race was forced to live in the badlands, Equestria was plunged into chaos, The Changelings starved, and the Dragons fought the Centaurs.
“Come now Drak-ill, even you must realize that there is no reason to keep up this slaughter. Amusing as it is.”

“Ha! You think our resolve is that easy to break Draconequus? Then you must be crazy!”

“Oh wasn’t that obvious from the beginning? Oh dear…I seem to have turned your son into a horse. How did that happen?”

Shade had always enjoyed hearing the stories about the Alliance, a golden age of Unity between the races, until Discord and an army of Centaurs decided to rough everything up a little.

Shade walked inside of his room, closed the door, and flew into the small bed. He focused on the old stories and let his mind replay them.

1000 Years Ago

The Fiords were once much more hospitable, while still mostly a lava flow filled area, it was easily much more accessible. There wasn’t just random lava flowing everywhere, the sky was clear, and the moon shone down unto the rocky plains.

“I don’t care what it takes!” Drak-ill, the leader of the Dragons shouted. “Celestia needs us to protect that element, and we will. Do not let a single Centaur pass!”

The final days of Discords rule had acted in a similar manner to this, defense of the last stronghold of the Element of Loyalty, each element spread across the lands to ensure that Discord could not collect them.

“Sir, we only have enough reserves to keep this up for a few hours.”

“That’s all we need soldier.” Drak-ill replied. “Her Radiance is on her way. We need to hold out until morning.”

At this the moon fell from the sky and the sun popped into existence overhead. “Well…actual morning.”

“Oh come now Drak-ill”

“Discord…. Show yourself.” Drak-ill shouted.

“Oh what fun is there in just showing myself?”

“Afraid of something clown?” Drak-ill replied searching around for the Draconequus.

“I came here to offer you a deal. Give me the element, and I’ll leave your race alone.”

“Not a chance you Urpalash!”

Discord gasped. “My do you kiss your wife with that mouth of yours?”

“Not anymore Draconoquis.”

“Ah yes…what did I do to her again?” There was pause. "Oh yes…I believe I turned her into that sword you’re holding.”

Drak-ill gripped the hilt of his blade. “We decline.”

“Oh come now. Why not just submit to me?”

“We would rather die than live under your rule!”

“Oh come now Drak-ill, even you must realize that there is no reason to keep up this slaughter. Amusing as it is.”

Drak-ill laughed. “You think our resolve is that easy to break Draconequus? Then you must be crazy!”

Discord laughed. “Oh wasn’t it obvious from the beginning?” There was a brief flash next to Drak-ill, and where the draconic soldier had once been, there stood a rainbow colored earth pony. “Oh dear. I seemed to have turned your son into a horse. Now how did that happen?”

The earth pony was looking at himself in shock. “Dad?”

“Oh my…he can still talk. I’ll fix that.”

The Earth pony attempted to speak but all that came out was a ‘neigh’ before he slapped his forelegs over his mouth and looking very scared.

“Discord! Turn my son back now!”

“Oh alright… You’re no fun.”

Drak-ill was consumed in a flash of light and was turned into a pure white unicorn. “Why you dirty little…” His horn began to bubble with a dark magic. “KORAK PALOS!” He slammed his hooves on the ground and Discord popped into existence in front of him.

“Oh…well now.” Discord replied, clearly surprised.

“Years of magical training under King Sombra and Princess Celestia you mix and match Son of a bitch.” Drak-ill replied. Grabbing his sword in his magic. “Now fix my son.”

“Spoil sport.” Discord replied, snapping his clawed fingers and his son returned to normal. But when he tried to speak, all that came out was another ‘Neigh’

“Discord! Fix! Him!” Drak-ill replied.

“Oh I can’t have a little fun every now and then. Is that it?” Discord vanished and appeared behind Drak-ill, running his lion paw down Drak’s back. “You seem to be forgetting who you are talking to Lizard.”

Drak-ill whipped around and planted the blade against Discords neck. “Never! Call us lizards! You deranged psychopath!”

“You may want to tell that to the boys over there.” Discord teleported out of Drak’s grip. He reappeared above them with a chef’s hat on and a small cowbell. “Din Din is ready! Come and get it while it’s nice and squishy!” He called while shaking the cowbell.

“Sir! Incoming Centaurs!”

“Get those Ballistae ready Private. And tell our “Valiant protector” to get his ass out here now!” He said ‘valiant protector’ in a highly sarcastic tone. “And tell him that if he keeps me waiting again. I’ll rip that hatchling’s armor right off of him!”

“Ooo…I need to get some popcorn for this.” Discord snapped his fingers and a large bucket of highly buttery popcorn was floating in front of him. “Want some?”

“GO to hell!” Drak-ill replied. Slapping the offered bucket of popcorn away. “And turn me back to normal!”

“Not with an attitude like that.” Discord replied. “Now if you’ll excuse me. I have some delicious Chaos to spread.” With that the Draconequus disappeared.

“What does Celestia see in him?” Drak-ill asked no one in particular. Receiving a whinny from his son. “Ditto.”

“Sir! Ballistae are ready!”

“On my mark!”

There was a rumbling felt on the ground, like a small earthquake.

“Remember soldiers! This is the last stand we have! Do not let a single Centaur through!” He gripped the sword in his magic, “Every Man, Women and Hatchling! Get ready for the fight of your lives!”

The rumbling became more intense as over the hills, a large number of red skinned Centaurs ran up the hills. All of varying sizes, their horns of different lengths, but there was a single one back there he recognized.

“Tirek…” He hissed. “Get those Ravenous children up here now! We’re going to have to use them a lot sooner than I anticipated!”

At that, multiple metallic cages were brought forward, each one holding a small dragon, slamming into the walls of the cage and trying to get out to release their animalistic anger.

“Three...” The Centaurs ran forward.

“Two…” The Cages glowed with a black aura.

“One…” The Ballistae all took aim.

“Mark!”

The ensuing chaos was a wonder to behold, Sword clashing with sword, magic causing heat to wiz through the air. The Small recently hatched Dragons rushing up to the largest of the Centaurs, attacking like a wild pack of wolves, ripping into flesh. They all took time to kill, parts of the Centaurs flying away as the dragons ripped through them, ignoring everything else.

The Ballista volleys pierced through the iron hides of the Centaurs, leaving them open to lightning from the mages.

“Where the hell are those Darklings?!” Drak-ill shouted, firing black magical beams from his horn that caused black crystals to tear through the Centaurs’ chests “They were supposed to be here!”

“Problem in the Badlands!” An intelligence officer called back. “They were reassigned!”

“Well get Morphi on the line! We won’t be able to hold this out for much longer!”

A large fireball hit one of the towers surrounding the city, causing the dragons to fly off it. “Sir… Ballistae 1-5 are down!”

“Shit! Where is that bastard?”

“You called?” A dragon clad in a red crystalline armor flew down and landed next to the Unicorn.

“What the fuck took you so long?” Drak-ill asked the new arrival.

“I was getting back up.” He pointed up to where a large number of Changelings were falling onto the Centaurs like flaming torpedoes.

“Bout time too.” Drak-ill replied. Then looking at the new dragon. “Go for Tirek! He’s the big ugly one!”

“Morphi. You ready?”

A bright green light shone in between the two of them, and a Changeling Queen stood there. She was clad in a pink crystalline armor, contrasting the black and green of her body. “As ready as my subjects are going to be.”

A few Changelings landed next to the Unicorn. The one in the center saluted. “Protector 489, Ironwall At your service sir!”

“Focus on that big ugly brute in the middle! If he gets up here we’re all dead!”

The Changelings nodded and took off, their forelegs morphing into blades, maces, anything that could be classified as a weapon, and started to push back the Centaurs.

“Oh my…how the tides have turned.” Discord replied from behind Queen Morphi. “And to think…I nearly destroyed your daughter.”

Morphi reached a breaking point she had held since her Hive was almost destroyed by Discord. “I will end you! You pathetic mix and match creature! And I will bring your head to Celestia myself!” She began rushing towards Discord.

“Morphi! Don’t!” The Dragon grabbed onto Morphi’s tail. “He wants you to get close. You remember what he did to Sombra.”

Morphi glared at the Draconequus, floating with that stupid grin on his face. “We have a more important issue here. Tirek! Remember what he did to your hive!”

Morphi turned her attention to the Centaur who was currently draining her Changelings of their magic. “Indeed I do. Shall we?”

On the ground, Drak-ill was pulling his sword out of the chest of a centaur, when he looked up to see two very bright orbs of light hovering above Tirek.

“What the hell are those two doing?” Drak-ill asked, shielding his eyes with his hoof.

The two orbs began spinning around each other, opening what looked like some kind of portal.

“Oh…Shit… EVERYONE HANG ON TO SOMETHING!” Drak-ill stabbed his sword into the rock and gripped it with his teeth as best he could. There was a rather powerful vortex coming from the center of those lights, and Drak-ill knew what was going on.

Temporary portal to Tartarus, which was based on the forbidden spells for a reason. It was stupid to do. But as he opened his eyes to look towards the battlefield, he saw Tyrek being pulled into it. Keep it up you two…

As Tirek was pulled into the portal, the two orbs of light vanished, being replaced by Queen Morphi and the Dragon Bearer.

Drak-ill fell to the ground and quickly picked himself up. “Alright boys! Clear ‘em out!”

At this the Dragons all flew into the air, followed by the Changelings rising above them. Every one of them shot fire across the battlefield, scorching the area.

There was a slow clapping from behind Drak-ill. He turned to see Discord’s legs clapping a few feet away from Discord’s body. “Bravo. Bravo! Encore!” He threw a red rose at Drak-ill, which turned into a herring that slapped Drak in the face a few times with its tail.

“I simply must say that was a brilliant choice of actors. Can I have your autograph?” A notepad formed in front of Drak.

“No.” Drak slapped the notebook to the ground, and was jabbed in the neck by a pen. “OW!” He glared at Discord.

“Don’t go blaming me. You were the one who hit his friend.”

“Why you little…”

“Discord!” Celestia’s voice rang out over the area and Discord’s smile dropped.

“Oh Tia. I was wondering when the all mighty Sunbutt would show up.”

Celestia was obviously not pleased with that comment. “Discord. Turn Drak back.”

“Or what?” Discord asked. “You can’t do anything to me.” He flicked Celestia’s horn. “Or do you want this to be a repeat of last time?”

“Discord. You’ve lost.”

“Lost?” Discord laughed. “I’ll admit that it is a shame that I won’t be able to add these lizards to my collection. But I’m no where near powerless.”

Discord raised his talon hand and as he did, the very ground began to shake.

“What are you doing Draconequus!” Drak-ill shouted.

“Oh…just spreading a little bit of Chaos!”

The Ground split open, everywhere lava began to flow through the ground, sending black clouds of poison gas into the air, a few Changelings began to spiral towards the ground, the Centaurs screamed as their very flesh was melted off.

“GET THEM OUT OF HERE!” Drak-ill shouted. All at once, the Dragons began to gather up the Changelings and the few ponies that were there and began flying them out of the Fiords.

“Prin Cough Princess Cough You need to Get out.” Drak-ill said, leaning on the sword to keep himself up. He was having trouble breathing in the gas with his new body.

“Discord! Change him back!”

“Oh Why should I?” Discord asked. “I think he looks rather funny.”

“He’s dying!” Celestia shouted. A light yellow glow surrounding her head.

“I’m fully aware of what is happening to him.” Discord replied. “I have no intention of reversing it.” He snapped his fingers and gave himself a pair of sunglasses. “Especially not on such a beautiful day as this.”

Drak-ill couldn’t stand any longer, he fell to the ground. “P-p-prin-ce-ss…” He coughed and wheezed, trying to get his lungs to cooperate.

“Now Discord!” Celestia replied. “Or are you just as gone I feared.”

Discord looked over his glasses at Celestia, and then turned to look at the unicorn gasping for air. He rolled his eyes. “Oh fine…” He snapped his fingers and an air bubble formed around Drak-ill’s head. He gasped in the fresh oxygen he desperately needed. “There…happy now.”

“No… You’ve just destroyed another land Discord.” Celestia replied.

“Oh well I suppose that is rather bad. Well…Arrivederci.” Discord vanished.

“I’m going to… Kill him…for this…” Drak-ill replied still having trouble breathing. “He’s…gone too far…”

Celestia just looked at the Unicorn. She let out a deep breath. “I’m afraid you’re right Drak-ill. He must be punished for this…”

Drak-ill lifted himself up, using his sword as a crutch. “I feel there is nothing…that can be done for him… Princess… he must be dealt with… Before he does any more damage.”

Celestia sighed. “Just rest Drak. I’ll get you medical aid when we return to Equestria.”

“Celestia…Thank you…”

Present Day

Shade opened his eyes and walked over to a small window. “Drak-ill, valiant defender, I understand the pain you went through…”

“So you aren’t what you appear either?”

Shade whirled around. Trying to find the source of the voice. “Who said that?”

“Oh come now. Really you must remember me? After all…You were just thinking about me.”

“Discord?”

“The One and only.”

“Show yourself coward!” Shade shouted.

“Would if I could little Changeling. But I’m currently trapped in stone.”

Shade smiled. “You deserved it too.”

“Oh ha ha ha… Look at the big bad Chaos Spirit that ruined your lands.”

Shade closed his eyes, focusing on the voice. “So what ever did happen to the Almighty Discord? Tracked down by a single Unicorn stallion before the Alicorns sealed you away?”

“Oh you dirty little insect.” Discord’s form appeared before his eyes. “If I could move, I would turn you into a cockroach!”

“Listen to me you child’s toy reject.” Shade wanted answers to something, and Discord may be able to provide. “I don’t care what you did in the past! I want you to tell me one thing.”

“And what would that be Changeling?" Discord flew over and poked Shade.

“Meadow… Is she alright?”

The Draconoquis looked at Shade, “That little Filly? Why would you…” He gained a wicked smile. “No…Ahahaha! That’s priceless!” He wiped a tear from his eye. "Well if you really must know…she isn't dead… Yet. Now if you’ll excuse me…I need to go and haggle Celestia.”

Shade opened his eyes, and the voice in the back of his mind vanished. He continued to look out of the window. “Meadow… I swear…I will find you… And I will make sure you are safe before I leave you again…”

Shade was sitting back down on the bed, thinking about Discord. How had he connected to me? That question bothered him for quite a while, then he remembered something very important about Discord, ‘The laws of Nature need not apply.’

That was one of the biggest things Shade had to get used to in this land, there were so many things that made no sense to a rational mind, such as Pinkie and Discord, then there were just so many things he knew about. The problem was adjusting to everything, forgetting most of what he knew in order to figure out his new life. At least until I can manage to transform into my old form…

Shade looked up at his horn, which still had the silver metallic ring around it, the single thing preventing him from trying to find answers… Impossible for him to remove, and it just makes his life much more difficult. While he never enjoyed magic, he had to admit; not having it at all was a pain.

Since the Assassination incident, Shade had little to do, not from lack of things he could do, but because of what he wanted to be doing. He wanted to do so many things, Fly, was a big one. He also wanted to actually talk with his friends, but the closest thing to a friend he had in the hospital was currently being monitored for anything wrong with her, and Silver, who was more of an acquaintance, was looking over his brother. The biggest thing he wanted to do though…was figure out how to help Sunglider and find Meadow, all of which hinged on Twilight managing to convince the Guards to let her keep an eye on him.

He even read through the other two Daring Do books, not that he really absorbed any of it; it was just something to distract his mind. Much like how he was chewing on the pen Pinkie left here a while ago. Which looked much less like a pen, and now looked like a lock pick.

When the door opened, Shade was hanging his head upside down facing the door, which almost caused him to fall flat on his face before he caught himself.

Shade turned himself over so that the world wasn’t upside down and allowed the blood to flow from his head. Even through his slightly blurred vision, he recognized the lavender unicorn, which was currently beaming at him.

“Shade! I’ve got great news!” Twilight replied, hopping like Pinkie Pie.

“Whah iz-“ Shade spat out the chewed on pen. “What is it?”

“He said yes!” Twilight replied pulling Shade into a hug.

“Who said yes?” Shade felt like he just entered the conversation, even then he would have at least some idea what was going on.

“My brother.” Twilight replied releasing the hug. “He gave us permission to watch over you.”

Shade understood what was going on now. “That’s great! Does that mean I can finally have something to do?”

“Well…” Twilight replied. “Not entirely… One of us needs to be with you anytime you leave the apartment…”

Shade lowered his ears slightly. “Oh…” He quickly recovered though. “Better than being stuck in here forever. I’ve got stuff to do!” Shade hopped off the bed, tried to land and ended up falling on the ground. “And…legs are still a bit wonky. Great.” Shade pushed himself up, looking at Twilight who was holding her hoof in front of her mouth.

“Not right now.” Twilight replied. “There are a few things I need to do before you can just walk out.”

“Oh…Well…” Shade lowered his head. “Whatever you have to do I guess…”

Shade saw Twilight’s horn glow and felt the suppression ring on his horn come off. “There we go.”

Shade reached up and touched his now smooth horn, surprised at what Twilight just did. “They…They just let you do that?”

“Well… not without a little restraint of my own.” Twilight replied as her horn glowed again.

“What do you mean?” Shade looked up at his own horn, where a small pink aura was surrounding it, before the glow faded. “What was that?”

“A little…suppression spell that I modified.” Twilight stood in front of him. “Try to hit me with a spell.”

Shade’s eyes widened. “Twilight…I…No!” He was in no way looking forward to even trying something like that. Especially with the whole, ‘brother is the Captain of the Royal Guard that caused him to fly into a dangerous forest full of wooden wolves’ thing.

“Just try it.” Twilight said rolling her eyes. “I never said it had to be a strong spell.”

Shade was still nervous, but he swallowed that. “Alright…” He sighed, pointing his horn at Twilight. He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see what was going to happen, but when he thought there should have been a spell leaving his horn, instead he found himself getting shocked.

“OW!” Shade said as the current of electricity shot through his body. “Son of a-!” He looked at Twilight who was currently a mixture of curious pleasure and success.

“It worked!”

“Wonderful…” Shade replied, kicking his right hind leg to get the last few sparks out of his body. “You could have just told me…”

“But I needed to make sure that the spell would work on Changelings.” Twilight looked back at Shade. “Now try and transform.”

Shade raised his eyebrow…ridge…thingy. “Will I get electrocuted again?” This is important.

“Well if the Spell worked the way I hoped it would, then no.” Twilight replied. “It should only stop you from using any kind of Combat magic with intent to harm, so your transformations shouldn’t be affected.”

Shade eyed her skeptically before rolling his eyes and trying to turn into Comet Trail, mostly because Twilight probably had more questions about Changeling magic, and Shade figured it would be easier to do that as a magic user.

He was pleasantly surprised to see the wisp of green flame, and then find himself in Comet’s body, the long strands of blue mane covering his vision. “Well that worked…” He replied, looking himself over to make sure there was nothing different. “How do I look?”

Twilight walked around him. “Well… you certainly aren’t Sunstreak.”

“Nope.” Shade replied. “This pony’s named Comet Trail.” Shade replied. “I saw him inside Tornado Dust’s house. So… Until I come up with something better for a unicorn form. This is it.”

“But why not change into Sunstreak?” Twilight asked.

“Well…mostly because I wasn’t sure if this would work, and in case it shorts something out, I would prefer my wings be left alone.” Shade transformed back to his natural form.

“Alright…well now that we know you aren’t going to be altered because of that spell, you should probably turn into Sunstreak. As that was another one of the restrictions…” When Shade looked at her curiously, she continued. “When Shining managed to get clearance, he had to put some restrictions on. One, no combat magic.”

“Obvious…” Shade commented.

“Two: Me, Rainbow, or Pinkie have to be by your side. Three: You can only disguise as Sunstreak.”

Shade was going to argue, but found that last one completely understandable, can’t have a possibly dangerous criminal just run around with the skin of anyone.

“Four: We have to fill Shining Armor in on everything you do, everypony you talk to, and any suspicious behavior will get you locked up again. Five:-“

“How many more of these do you have?” Shade asked getting kind of bored.

“Last one.” Twilight replied. “You are not to leave the city.”

“That it?” Shade asked anxious to get out of the Hospital.

“Yes… I have your release papers right here.” Twilight pulled a group of papers out of her saddlebag. “We just need to show this to the receptionist and you should be good to go. I already got your things from the Dungeons by the way. It’s all in the apartment.”

“Don’t your parents live around here?” Shade asked, remembering reading that Twilight grew up in Canterlot in Pinkie’s party planner.

“Well…yes but our house is not really suited for…Pinkie Pie…and I doubt my parents would be okay with you being there…”

Shade nodded in understanding, it would get pretty awkward if they had to explain why Shade was with them. He doubted that Twilight’s parents would be too understanding…if past experience were anything to go on.

“Are you ready to finally get out of here?” Twilight asked him.

Shade didn’t even need time to think about it, he quickly transformed into Sunstreak. “Yes!”

Twilight giggled slightly at his eagerness. “Alright…but we are going to have to wait a bit before heading back to the apartment, Pinkie is planning something.”

“Fine by me.” Sunstreak replied, picking the suppression ring up off the ground.

“Why are you taking that with you?” Twilight asked as she levitated the Daring Do books into her saddlebag, along with the rest of what was left on the bedside table.

“Well…Might as well have something to remember all the time I spent in here. It’s not like I can take the bed now can I.” Sunstreak replied. “And…in case for some reason I get found out by someone, I doubt they are going to trust my word on your little… What was that spell anyway?”

“It’s a heavily modified suppression spell,” Twilight explained. “Most suppression spells stop all magic, or certain spells, usually it doesn’t stop entire categories of magic. So I had it modified so that anytime you try and use magic specifically to cause physical or mental harm, the spell will backfire and shock you.”

Sunglider paused for a moment, “That spell I used…I tried to make it as painless as possible…so…”

“The suppression field amplifies the magical power of the spell you use, just to make sure that you don’t try anything.”

“Oh kay…” Mental note: DO NOT USE ANY SPELLS! “Glad we got that out of the way. So what’s next?”

After signing a few forms with the receptionist, most of which were just forms saying stuff like ‘He knew Twilight’, or ‘Understood what he was doing.’ But one of the forms he could have sworn was called ‘Queen’s Insurance.’ But after that, Sunstreak and Twilight were finally allowed to leave.

Sunstreak took a deep breath and let it out in a relaxing exhale. “Ahh… I almost forgot what fresh air smells like.”

“You were only away for around a week.”

“Yes…but in that time, I was underground, in a dark dungeon and in the sterile nature of a hospital, in which I could not open the windows.”

“Oh come on...” Twilight replied. “It can’t have been that bad.”

Sunstreak looked directly at her. “Do you know when they last cleaned those dungeons?” Twilight shook her head “Well neither do I… But it wasn’t recently.”

Sunstreak was enjoying the small breeze that was floating through the white and gold city. He began to flap his wings, lifting himself off the ground and hovering there for a while.

“You must have missed flying.” Twilight said, looking at Sunstreak keep himself off the ground.

“What gave it away?” Sunstreak replied lowering his head to look at Twilight.

“The fact that you are currently acting like Rainbow Dash normally would.” She gestured to his wings.

“Well…” Sunstreak replied. “I’ve been unable to get off the ground for quite a while… so I think I have a right to be a little excited about flying again.” Sunstreak did a flip over Twilight to illustrate his point.

Twilight rolled her eyes, “Alright I get it. You’re happy to be out and about. But you need to keep yourself grounded.” Twilight grabbed Sunstreak in her magic, pulling him to the ground. “At least for today. I want to be sure that wing of yours isn’t going to cramp up.”

Sunstreak folded his wings. “Yes my Queen.” Sunstreak replied lowering his head in a mocking bow, which could easily have been a small nod of approval if viewed from farther away.

Twilight punched him in his foreleg. “Don’t even start joking about that.” Twilight hissed. “Might draw somepony’s attention.”

“Oh alright.” Sunstreak replied. “I’m just having a bit of fun. No need to get all punch happy.” Sunstreak rubbed where Twilight punched, while it wasn’t as hard as say, Rainbow Dash, it still stung.

“So…” Sunstreak said, looking up at the sky. There was still a few hours of Daylight left. “Anything worth seeing around here?”

Twilight’s expression changed to a wide smile. “I’m glad you asked.”

Before Sunstreak could react, he found himself being pulled along the street by a very excited unicorn.

“So those are the Wonderbolts.” Shade said as he watched the flight team of pegasi fly above. “I can see now why Rainbow wants to join them so much…”

Twilight had showed him around town, showing him the various museums and… basically anywhere that was on her long list that him and Meadow didn’t look at before Joe’s place. When they came across the Wonderbolt Museum, Shade decided to actually learn a bit about Equestria.

From what he learned, the Wonderbolts were a faction of a defense force created after the Nightmare Moon incident, which Shade found correlated with the Nightmare fog’s creation in the Fiords. The defense force was originally created with all three ‘tribes’ working together, which made Sunstreak wonder what happened to the other members of that division.

“So… What ever happened to the rest of the EUP or whatever it was called.” Sunstreak asked..

“Well…most of them went on to become members of the Royal Guard, most of it isn’t to well documented.”

Sunstreak was looking over a list of battles they were involved in, which wasn’t very many, but then again, these ponies were more of a peace-loving race.

“So how does a military organization become a stunt team?” Sunstreak asked. “I mean…I understand there aren’t very many large scale conflicts in Equestria, but you always need a strong air force.”

“Well… That’s not exactly documented…” Twilight replied.

“So you have no idea.” Sunstreak replied, he knew that ‘Undocumented’ tended to mean nobody cared to write it down.

Twilight began looking around the room. “What time is it?”

Sunstreak kept reading a section on their founding, he didn’t even need to look up to tell what time it was. “about 5:43 give or take a few minutes.”

When Twilight found a clock hanging on the wall, Sunstreak could tell she was more curious now mixed with a tiny bit of surprise. “5:43” She said in surprise. “How did you do that?”

Sunstreak pointed out the nearby window, small clouds were blocking the setting sun’s rays. “We learned to tell time based on the position of the sun, useful for when you’re hunting out in the Fiords, because nobody wants to be out there at night.”

“Why not?” Wonderful…how do I explain this.

Sunstreak looked up from the panel. “Remember Nightmare Moon?”

Twilight nodded.

“Well…The elders always told me about when she was sealed away, apparently when Nightmare Moon was sealed away her influence over the world wasn’t destroyed…just shifted.” Twilight was listening with a great deal of interest in the subject. “It took the form of something we called ‘Nightmare fog’ it was a huge cloud of pure darkness that floated over the Fiords, and if you were caught in it…” Sunstreak paused, both because he didn’t want to think about it, and also because he needed to come up with some way to say it without drawing attention to himself.

“What happens?” Twilight asked with a studious curiosity.

Sunstreak sighed. “You are pulled into your dreamscape, an inner working of your mind which acts as an in between area of dreams… but the worst part is that you are challenged.” Sunstreak took a relaxing breath, just talking about it tenses his muscles. “At which point, there are only three outcomes, you survive and are let free, you fail and die, or…” Sunstreak wiped his eye. “Or you become a mindless beast.”

Twilight looked concerned for him. “I’m sorry but…who did you…”

“My best friend…” Sunstreak replied. “I-I don’t want to talk about it.” Stupid repressed memories…making me feel sad.

“I’m sorry for you. That can’t have been easy.”

“No…it was not…now if you’ll excuse me…I need to purge that memory from my mind…” Sunstreak replied. “Again.”

A few minutes later, Sunstreak had managed to rid that memory from the front of his mind, he would need to get rid of it later that night. But right now he needed to focus on enjoying himself before the three-hour time when he had to block out a memory.

“So where to now?” Sunstreak asked as the two of them walked out of the Museum.

“If it’s all the same to you Sunny, I think we should head back to the apartment… I’m worried what Pinkie will do if we give her too much time to plan this.”

Sunstreak nodded. “Yeah I can understand that…” Sunstreak grew to be used to Pinkie’s antics, but she seemed really adamant about throwing a party for him, and if he didn’t show up soon, he was pretty sure she would make it the size of Equestria, and time would be needed before he revealed himself to all of Equestria.

“Just follow me, I know this city like the back of my hoof.”

“I thought you never left the library?” Sunstreak replied jokingly, earning him another punch in the leg.

“And what have done in the past few days?” Twilight asked while Sunstreak rubbed where she punched.

“I spoke with Discord.” Sunstreak replied as casually as saying ‘I went out’.

“You what!” Twilight shouted causing nearby ponies to look over at them.

“Shh!” Sunstreak replied. “You were the one saying I shouldn’t draw attention to myself.”

“Well why didn’t you tell me that you talked to the lord of cha-“ Sunstreak covered Twilight’s mouth before she could finish.

“SHH!” Sunstreak hissed. “Not here. Not now.”

Twilight forcibly moved Sunstreak’s hoof from her mouth. “When and Where?”

“Earlier today, Hospital.” Sunstreak replied.

“About?”

“Nothing… Just…” Sunstreak sighed. “I asked him about Meadow…”

“And?”

“She’s fine.”

Twilight glared at Sunstreak, then looked around the street at the ponies staring at them. She sighed. “We’ll talk about this later.” She whispered to him.

“Fine by me.” Sunstreak replied.

The two of them walked in a tense silence, Twilight was radiating a aura of annoyance, and Sunstreak was very aware that she was angry with him about keeping this from her, even for a few hours. He wanted to know why it was so important to her that Discord talked to her, but he was afraid to do it in public… as she could easily just reveal him and wait for the rest of the ponies to deal with him.

They continued to walk in silence, drawing a few stares from passersby until they reached a rather fancy looking hotel type building that Sunstreak could have easily thought was being overly fancy if he hadn’t seen the rest of the city. He had the usual look over from the receptionist because of his eye, before they were allowed to head up to the room.

Sunstreak was surprised by the intricate inner designs; it looked like something that should belong in a castle. Marble pillars, gold laced wall tiles; he wouldn’t have been surprised to find an indoor fountain on a small magically created lawn in the middle of the room.

Twilight just walked through it as though everything was fine, but Sunstreak could tell she was still mad at him about the whole Discord thing. Mostly because he could smell it, a faint hint of something burning, but also because she refused to talk, and seemed to be putting her brain into overdrive working something out. At first Sunstreak thought the burning smell was coming from her brain, all that was left was for steam to come out of her ears.

When they reached the ornate wooden door, complete with small fancy golden numbers, Twilight put the key into the lock and opened it. When she pushed open the door, all Sunstreak saw was a pink blur and found himself on the ground in one of Pinkie’s hugs.

“Just couldn’t wait could you?” Sunstreak asked looking up at the pink pony.

“I was going to but I got too excited. I spent all day working on this party!”

Rainbow Dash, She’s on the ground! It’s a miracle!, was standing in the doorway. “It’s true. You should have seen her, running up and down the streets gathering party supplies. I lost track of her a few times.”

“Really?” Sunstreak replied. “I thought you could keep up with her. Especially with you being able to fly.”

Rainbow sighed. “It wouldn’t be the first time she vanished into nothingness. Twilight remember when she…” Rainbow realized Twilight had walked into the room without her noticing. “Twilight?”

“Why’s she all distant?” Pinkie asked, letting go of Sunstreak. “Normally she would at least say something before walking off…”

“That’s probably my fault…” Sunstreak replied. “I…uh…I’ll tell you when we are inside…”

“Well come on then Silly Billy.” Pinkie grabbed Sunstreak and pulled him into the room. “The Party’s in here.”

“Whoa…” Sunstreak said as he looked around, The apartment had been covered with multi colored balloons and streamers, on the small counter, there was a small cake, a plate of cupcakes and cookies, a punch bowl, and a bunch of cards. In the corner of the room was Pinkie’s Party Cannon, a blue cannon with pink wheels that Pinkie could pull out at will. That explains the confetti in the ceiling then.

“You set all this up in five hours?” Sunstreak asked admiring Pinkie’s handiwork.

“Yup, I had to get all the flour and baking powder from Donut Joe. Then I got the rest of the supplies from the nearby party store and the icing came from the same store.” Pinkie was hopping around.

Twilight was taking out all the stuff from the hospital and laying them on the small table. She turned around to look at Sunstreak. “What did you do with that suppression ring?” She asked.

“Oh that,” Sunstreak replied. “It’s in my leg.”

Rainbow Dash looked at him in confusion. “What?”

“It’s in my leg.” Sunstreak replied there was a small green flame on his right foreleg and one of the holes in his leg appeared, he shook the leg and the silver ring fell out of it. “See.”

“How did you do that?” Pinkie asked hopping up and down.

“I found out that I could do that a while ago… I was in Everfree, when I got a bunch of sticks stuck in my leg. I just transformed my leg and when I changed back, the stick fell out.”

“Isn’t that…uncomfortable?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Ehh… Kind of. Having anything in your leg feels really weird, I’ve only used it like twice…” Sunstreak replied as he fixed his leg. “It feels better when I fit it perfectly into the holes.”

Twilight had finished unpacking and looked at Sunstreak expectantly. “Don’t you have something you would like to share?”

Sunstreak sighed. “Fine…” He looked at Pinkie and Rainbow. “I talked to Discord.”

“What!” Rainbow said opening her wings in surprise. “What does that goat face want?”

“Nothing… Well… Not that I asked.” Sunstreak replied. “I was just thinking about an old story the elders of my village told me. Then he kind of…cut into my mind…”

“How?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Sunstreak replied. “I just asked him about Meadow, and he said she was fine…”

“I hope you didn’t trust him.” Twilight replied.

“Why?” Sunstreak asked. “Do you have some kind of grudge against him?”

“You could say that.” Rainbow Dash replied.

“Well. Details would be nice.” Sunstreak replied. “I mean…as far as I know, he should still be in that stone prison.”

“You may want to sit down.” Twilight replied with a sigh. “You can drop your disguise now by the way.”

Sunstreak sat on the floor where he was and dropped his disguise. “So. What happened?”

The three of them began to tell a very interesting story, cotton candy clouds, chocolate milk rain, soap roads, ripping apart harmony. When they began talking about how Discord changed them, Shade was already deeply invested, he already had a reason to hate Discord, but hearing what he did to Equestria was quite eye opening.

“Then we used the Elements to seal him back in stone and fix Equestria.” Twilight concluded.

“Wow…” Shade said as they finished. “So…he really can do… All that?”

“Can and did.” Rainbow Dash replied. “But what I’m really wondering is how do you know him?”

Shade sighed. “The Fiords were where most of the fighting in the war took place, between Centaurs and Dragons. There are lots of stories about what Discord did to the other races… But…” Shade was processing all of this, if Discord really did cause all of that…then why had Celestia kept him alive?

“What story were you thinking of?” Twilight asked, looking at him curiously.

Shade sighed again. “The Last Defense of Loyalty.” He watched as both Twilight and Pinkie looked up at Rainbow Dash.

“As in…” Twilight began. “The Element of Harmony?”

Shade nodded. “It was the day Discord destroyed the Fiords, making it uninhabitable by any but the dragons. Legend says he turned the leader of the troops into a Unicorn…”

Twilight’s jaw was hanging open. “He did what?”

Shade sighed. “According to what the elders say, Drak-ill was once a revered General, but after Discord transformed his wife into a sword.” Shade held up his hoof so he wouldn’t be interrupted. “He dedicated his life to trying to stop his tyranny, and during the last battle was transformed into a Unicorn.”

Twilight was running through the details in her head. “But…How did he survive the toxic smog?”

“Celestia talked Discord into saving him. If I’m remembering correctly… Drak-ill joined up with the Equestrian military as soon as he was cleared. He spent the rest of his extended life protecting the civilians.” Shade looked down at his own hooves. “And now I know what he went through…” He transformed his right hoof into a Griffon Talon. “Forcibly changed with no way back…”

There was silence in the room for a few seconds until Shade shook his head. “No point worrying about it… Nothing I can do about it.”

“Shade…I’m sorry for snapping at you.” Twilight said. “I didn’t realize that-”

“Shade held up his hoof. “No worries… I understand where you were coming from, hearing what he did…I don’t blame you.” Shade looked around the room. “Well… Now that we got those depressing stories out of the way. What do you say we make the most of this party?”

Author's Note

Is it Tyrek or Tirek? Eh I'll figure it out.
Anyway some head canon stuff in here... so Allow me to explain.
Before Celestia and Luna used the Elements, they were scattered. Each race had their own to look after as defenders, while one 'Bearer' was chosen from each race to safe guard them. After Discord's sealing, the elements connected with Luna and Celestia. Over time the elements Drifted into Legend by most races, so much so that it is debated if they ever truly existed by the Dragons....
Maybe I'll write a story explaining this... Sounds easier than trying to tell all of you this way...
Also Don't worry, this is probably the last mention of this particular battle and events for the rest of the story.

Chapter 27: Memory and Mystery

Last nights party was an interesting affair, It wasn’t completely awkward, just slightly. Shade could tell that everyone was slightly on edge after the whole Discord incident, but it wasn’t as much their primary thoughts as their secondary ones, Pinkie was still as enthusiastic about partying as ever.

The Party was still amazing, considering how small it was, it still was probably one of the best times for enjoyment. So much so that Shade actually just let himself absorb the ambient emotions, with just that he felt more full than he had in a looong time.

However something that was completely familiar to him was waking up with a headache. This time however, it was probably brought about by him falling off the couch he was sleeping on. Which would explain why he was looking at the floor.

“Ugh…” Shade groaned, “floors…why must you spite me.”

Shade pushed himself off the ground to look out the window, the sun was just starting to poke above the horizon line, casting an orange light across the sky. As he looked out, he saw that a few ponies were already walking, so he transformed into Sunstreak just in case.

He noticed a few ponies that just looked the rich and fancy types, holding their heads up in a pompous manner. Aside from them, there were some standard ponies that looked like they just wanted to see the place. He probably could have picked out details, but his mind was busy.

He was trying to figure out how to best use the time he has… He wanted to look for clues on Meadow…but the problem was, these ponies may put together the locations and figure out what he was. On the other hand, he did promise Silver he would look for some kind of lead.

Sunstreak had started pacing unconsciously, when he was far enough away from the window he dropped his disguise.
How do I handle this? I can try to find some sort of lead…but then…I might not be able to help Sunglider… Then I’ll be stuck with his memories…And Silver may never have his brother back… Why am I getting dizzy?

“Shade?” He heard Twilight’s voice coming from… Above him? “What are you doing on the ceiling?”

Ceiling? Shade looked up, sure enough, above him was the couch he had slept on, a small table, and a lavender Unicorn. “I…have absolutely no idea.”

“Well get down from there before somepony notices.” Shade opened his wings and buzzed them to make sure he wouldn’t just plummet from the ceiling into the ground. After seeing that it did nothing, he decided to just walk down the wall.

“Sorry…I was just thinking…I must have walked up the wall when I wasn’t paying attention.” Shade kicked his hind legs to try and get the blood flowing again.

“What were you thinking about?” Twilight asked curiously.

“I’m trying to balance out my plans…” Shade replied. “I’m trying to find a way to transfer memories while looking for Meadow…and I can’t figure out how to do this without making it obvious to others that I’m a Changeling…”

Twilight looked at him curiously, trying to find a way to help. “I’ve got it!”

Shade looked up at Twilight. “Do tell.”

“I can help you find that spell you’re looking for. While Rainbow and Pinkie try to talk to the local Law Enforcement on anything to do with Meadow.”

“Can they do that?” Shade asked. “Isn’t it technically still an open case?”

“Well… I’m sure that Candlelight has found something in her house…” Twilight replied. “But which do you want to focus on right now?”

That was a question Shade wanted to ask himself, he swore he would protect Meadow no matter what…but the problem is he didn’t want to interfere with an ongoing investigation…especially if it contaminates evidence… It may lead them to think he did it.

“I really want to find Meadow…but the problem is, if there is an investigation, me trying to find something might interfere, and then I’ll get held responsible for everything… And then I’ll have gone in a huge circle.” Shade rubbed his temples. “I also told Silver Shield I would help him… and I had to promise Sunglider that-“

“Wait wait wait.” Twilight replied. “Isn’t Sunglider the Royal guard you nearly killed?”

“Yes…after I absorbed Cadence’s love, I managed to contact him through my memories, I told him I would try and fix him…and after that he left me alone. Now I have to find out how to fix this...” Shade looked at Twilight. “And to top it all off. I have no way to talk to Queen Acari about this.”

Twilight had listened to him calmly. “Well…I have an idea of where we can start looking.”

“Really? Where?”

“You have got to be kidding me.” Sunstreak replied as he looked at the Royal Library, it was huge! It looked like you could easily fit two full-grown Blue whales in there, and they would probably still have a ton of room left.

“How the hell are we going to find one spell in all these books? ECHO!” Sunstreak just listened for the echo. Which by his count echoed twelve times in a coherent way.

“Oh I’ve been in here enough times to have the books order memorized.” Twilight replied. There was a green wisp of green flame next to Twilight. “Shade. Put your disguise back on!”

Shade was dumbstruck, at the fact that Twilight was able to memorize every book in this enormous space that he dropped his disguise with his jaw hanging open. He quickly shook his head and turned back into Sunstreak.

“How in the name of every deity did you memorize this library?” Sunstreak asked still surprised by this piece of information. “How much time did you spend in here? Do you even need sleep?”

“Sunstreak…I spent many long nights studying in here. I must have read every book in here.”

“How old are you again?” Sunstreak asked. “Because if you are under one-hundred and thirty-five, I’m calling bullshit.”

Twilight laughed. “Would you be surprised if I told you that you weren’t the first pony to say that.”

“Not at all.” Sunstreak replied. “So where do we start?”

“Well…I haven’t rearranged the books in here since I left for Ponyville.” Going to ignore that for a minute. “But it should be somewhere in the far left corner. You can go check there, I’ll start trying to figure out where they moved everything.”

“Alright. Holler if you find something.” Sunstreak took off from the ground and flew towards the corner, which took about a minute.

Sunstreak began looking at the top of the bookshelves, looking for anything that could be even relatively close to something useful. Most of the books just seemed like old tomes and Sunstreak was sure that they hadn’t been touched in over a few hundred years.

J…K…L…N…Hold up. Sunstreak backup up in mid air. Looking over the books again. Sure enough, where there should have been a book with a title of ‘M’ there was just a large empty slot. Where about three books should have been. “Why must this world spite me…” Sunstreak said under his breath.

He looked down at the ground, trying to find someone who might know where the books went. The closest thing he found was a young looking blue unicorn. Worth a shot.

He slowly flew down next to her. “Um…Hello.”

The blue unicorn jumped a little. “Oh sorry I didn’t see you there.” She looked at Sunstreak for a second. “How did you get back here?”

“I’m here with Twilight Sparkle. I’m looking for a book on memory transference spells,” He remembered that he wasn’t a unicorn so that sentence made almost no sense. “It’s for a friend.” Sunstreak added a small smile.

“Oh…well they should be on the top shelf.”

“I didn’t see them…” Sunstreak replied.

“Oh…umm…” The Unicorn looked around the shelves. “If it isn’t here…then it may have been moved…check the right corner closest to the entrance. If it isn’t there…then Celestia may have it.”

“Thanks.” Sunstreak replied, flying higher in the area before starting to slowly fly over to the right corner, keeping his eye on the book titles for no other reason than curiosity.

A few of them were standard, things like basic spell tomes, law books, but as he passed one of them, something jumped out at him, quite literally. When he passed one of the books, some kind of ethereal hand grabbed him.

“THE HELL!” He shouted. He was not used to books trying to kill him. “Get off of me.” Sunstreak tried to fight against it, but couldn’t manage to move. Only one idea popped into his head, and he hated himself for it.

A wisp of flame surrounded his head as he gained a black curved horn and he instantly charged it with the same spell he tried to use on Twilight. The amount of electricity that flowed through his body was enough to cause the hand to drop him, but also too much for his wings to handle.

He fell towards the ground, he closed his eyes before hitting the ground, but when he thought there should have been a rather loud crash, he heard nothing. He opened his eye to look at what was stopping him from falling any further, and found Twilight breathing heavily.

“What…were…you doing?” She said panting. She must have run all the way here. “What…did you…do?”

“Nothing!” Sunstreak replied defensively. “The book grabbed me!”

“What book?” Twilight asked. “Is that why you have a horn?”

Sunstreak looked up on the top of his head, and saw the black curved horn he forgot to get rid of. “Whoops…” There was a flash of green light and the horn vanished. “Umm…I can’t feel my anything.”

Twilight dropped the spell holding him causing him to land upside down on the ground, with no ability to control his legs as they spastically swung everywhere. “What book?”

“Top shelf…third from the right.” Twilight rolled her eyes and pulled the book down. It was a rather old looking book, given how brown and torn the spine was, but that didn’t stop the red circular rune drawn on it from glowing like hot coals.

“You sure this old book grabbed you?” Twilight asked as she held it in front of her.

“Not a hundred percent, I was kind of focusing on not getting crushed by a hand made of blue mist.” As if on cue the same hand grabbed Sunstreak again. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He asked as the hand slowly tried to crush him. “Twilight…help…”

Twilight was looking astonished between the book and Sunstreak. “You going to help?” Sunstreak asked.

Twilight quickly threw the book across the hall, causing the hand to vanish. “What just happened?” Twilight asked shocked.

“How would I know?” Sunstreak retorted. “All I want to know is when can I burn that stupid book?”

Twilight glared at Sunstreak. “Did you see anything that would help me figure out what just happened?”

“No…” Sunstreak replied. “I was just flying past the book shelf and then the homicidal book decided to grab me.”

“But why?” Twilight asked, walking over to the book. “I don’t recognize this rune…”

“Well as long as it is far away from me I don’t care.” Sunstreak remembered why he was over here. “The memory tomes were moved.”

“Uh-huh.” Twilight replied absent mindedly, paying more attention to the rune.

“Uh…Twilight?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh Kaaay…” Sunstreak said to himself. “You are clearly busy, so I’m just gonna go look over there…”

“Uh-huh.” Twilight was too focused on the book. So Sunstreak took the long way around the bookcase and couldn’t fly as his wings were still sticking up from the electricity, so were his mane and tail. He also stayed away from any kind of metal, as he was afraid that it would discharge the remaining electricity all at once.

He managed to find the right corner, which happened to be much nicer…less of the books tried to kill him. One however did explode in his face… that wasn’t fun.

“Magic books… Not fun…” Sunstreak said as he put the book back before wiping the soot off his face. “What’s next… A book that electrocutes me?”

Sunstreak tried to grab the next book, but felt an electric current run down his spine. “Me and my big, fat…”

“Sunstreak.” Twilight called from the far side of the room. “I found out what this rune is.” She began walking closer with the book.

“No no no! Keep that demented thing away from me!” Sunstreak said as he backed away from Twilight. “Unless that book is on fire, do not bring it near me!”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Drop your disguise Shade.” At the disapproving look on Sunstreak’s face, Twilight added, “It is an illusion detection rune, created to stop illusion spells. Just drop your disguise and you’ll be fine.”

Sunstreak sighed before transforming back into Shade. “You better be right about this…”

Twilight levitated the book up to Shade. There was no hand yet, but Shade kept that spell in his mind just in case. “So what is it?”

Twilight looked curiously surprised. “I’m not sure. I can’t make out any of the writing.”

“Well let me see it. Maybe I can make something out.” Twilight opened the book, and Shade recognized it instantly.

“That’s draconic writing!” Shade snatched the book out of Twilight’s magical hold and began looking over the pages. What is this doing here? He began reading through the dates. Nothing was useful, the writing was definitely Draconic, Shade wouldn’t forget the writing of his first race, but it was what was written that confused him.

“What is it?” Twilight asked seeing Shade’s confused expression.

“I’m not sure…” Shade replied. “It’s full of gibberish…”

“Are you sure that it is draconic?” Twilight asked looking over his shoulder.

“Yes… but I can’t make any of it out…” Shade began flipping through the pages, trying to find something he could recognize as coherent writings, but all he found was more random gibberish written in the draconic language. Which really just looked like someone scratched it into the book using a claw, but that is how the old Dragons wrote it.

He eventually came to a page with something he recognized. It was a single spell that he recognized…and it caused him to drop the book.

“What?” Twilight asked.

“This…This book shouldn’t be here…” Shade was getting nervous.

“What is it?” Twilight asked looking into the book.

“It’s a forbidden tome…That shouldn’t be here…” Shade was trying to think about how it could have gotten here… and he didn’t like any of them.

“Well what’s so ‘forbidden’ about it?” Twilight asked looking at the symbols. “I mean I can’t read it and I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t be able to cast any of these.”

“The spells were seen as too dangerous for anyone to cast… They…they shouldn’t be here. That’s why there was that protection rune… Anyone who may steal it is reprimanded…”

“So why did you freak out?” Twilight looked over the page Shade flipped to.

“It’s a portal to Tartarus, I-I just don’t feel comfortable around that book… It needs to be locked somewhere…or thrown into a fire…”

Twilight placed the book on a table nearby. “I’ll inform Celestia about it. In the meantime, you should be able to turn back…Oh and you have some soot on your face.”

Shade turned back into Sunstreak, and luckily the electricity had left enough for him to fly, he flew up towards the top shelf and read through the title, none of them were very useful.

“Find anything?” Sunstreak called down to Twilight.

“No.” Twilight called back, she was levitating about twenty books around her. “Are you sure this is where they moved it?”

“I don’t know Twilight…” Sunstreak replied. “It’s where the unicorn told me it was either that or someone has it.”

“Well I doubt that anypony took it out, the only ones who can take books from here are Castle staff and myself.” Twilight replied as Sunstreak flew down to the ground.

“So this has just been a dead end. Wonderful…”

“Oh come on Sunny,” Twilight replied full of optimism. “I’m sure we’ll find something useful. If not us than maybe Rainbow and Pinkie have found something.”

Sunstreak shook his head. “I wait with baited breath.”

“Listen, Miss Pie. For the last time.” The Royal Guard replied. “I cannot give you any information about the foalnapping. It’s an open case.”

“Please.” Pinkie said, fluttering her eyelids.

“No.” The Guard replied. “The Princess has requested that the case remain classified. Only the Captains know the details.”

“But we-”

“Miss Pie… Please leave, if you don’t I will be forced to escort you off the castle grounds.” The Guard’s horn began to glow.

“Come on Pinkie…There’s no point in arguing…” Rainbow replied pushing Pinkie towards the exit. “He clearly isn’t going to give us anything. So let’s just go.”

Once the two of them were outside the building, Pinkie looked back at Rainbow. “Come on Dashie, I was so close to…”

Rainbow Dash facehoofed. “Pinkie…The last thing we need is to be kicked out of the castle.” In any other circumstance, Rainbow would keep trying until they did throw them out, but Twilight told her to keep Pinkie under control, so that is what she had to do. “Come on Pinkie.”

“Where are we going?” Pinkie asked hopping alongside Rainbow.

“We’re going to find our own answers.” Rainbow replied.

“Oo! Oo! I know where to start!”

A short walk later and the two of them were standing outside one of the near identical looking houses; the only real thing that made it slightly different was the light blue door.

“Pinkie are you sure this is the right place?” Rainbow asked, looking at the buildings next to it.

“Of course Dashie. This is where I sent the Care package.”

“But how do you know this is actually Meadow’s house?” Rainbow asked. “Where did you get the Address?”

“Meadow told me silly.” Pinkie replied as she raised her hoof to knock on the door.

“Oh…right…” Rainbow replied as Pinkie knocked on the door, a few moments later it was opened by a light Cream colored Unicorn with a light purple and white mane.

“Can I help you?” The Unicorn asked looking at the two ponies.

“Hi. My name is Pinkie Pie. Are you Candlelight?”

“Yes…What is this about?” The Unicorn replied.

“You know about Sunstreak?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Yes… But why are you here?”

“We’re a few of his friends.” Pinkie replied bouncing up and down. “We want to help him look for Meadow.”

Candlelight’s eyes widened. “Is he out?” She asked stepping out of the door way to let the two mares in.

“Well…we can’t exactly tell you that.” Rainbow replied.

Pinkie leaned in to whisper in Candlelight’s ear. “It’s a secret…”

Candlelight moved away from Pinkie before closing the door with her magic. “Alright… But what are you doing here?”

“Well… Twilight and Sunny are looking for a way to help a Royal Guard in the Hospital get his memories back. Because he’s worried that he’ll be blamed for taking Meadow and thrown back in jail. Then he’ll never be able to find Meadow and…”

“Pinkie…Breathe.” Rainbow Dash said because Pinkie hadn’t breathed the entire time she was talking.

Pinkie took a deep breath. “And then he’ll make you sad, so we came here to try and find something that might help him figure out where Meadow was taken.”

“Alright… But I’m not sure what you’ll find.” Candlelight replied walking into the kitchen. “The Royal Guard took anything they could find that even had the slightest possibility of being in contact with a Changeling.”

“I take that as a challenge!” Pinkie Pie replied, as she flipped a black bowler hat onto her head and pulled a magnifying glass out of her mane.

Rainbow looked at the hat. “Pinkie…has that been in there since…”

“Yes…Yes it has. Why do you want the other one? I think I have that somewhere too.”

“I’m good Pinkie.” Rainbow replied as Pinkie began walking along the ground, searching it with her magnifying glass.

Candlelight walked back into the room to see Pinkie snaking along the ground underneath her couch. “Does…Does she do this often?” She asked as Pinkie crawled out from under the small space as easily as if she had just walked through a door.

“This specifically? Not that often.” Rainbow replied. “But usually it’s just as unexpected.” At that Pinkie walked into a side room and back out through a closet on the other side of the room.

“AH HA!” Pinkie replied as she held up a small clear ball.

“How did she…” Candlelight began to ask but Rainbow just shook her head.

“Don’t ask.” Rainbow replied. “What is it Pinkie?”

“It’s a crystal.” Pinkie replied. “And it looks almost exactly like those ones I saw at Tornado Dust’s place.”

“You mean his ice?” Rainbow replied. “It’s always looked kind of weird. But I don’t see why-”

“Look at it.” Pinkie said, shoving the magnifying glass into Rainbow’s face.

“Pinkie I-”

“Oh give it.” Candlelight grabbed the two objects with her magic. After a few seconds her eyes widened. “I’ll be damned…”

“What is it?” Rainbow asked.

“It’s a crystal... It seems to be a naturally created containment gem, probably made quickly given the rigid edges… I’ve only seen a few of these before…but never in this kind of condition.” She looked up from the crystal to see Rainbow Dash looking at her in surprise. “What?”

“How do you know that?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Gems are a hobby of mine.” Candlelight replied floating the objects back to Pinkie. “I’ve traveled all over Equestria for my job, so I started gem collecting. Breaks up the monotony of business trips.”

“I was right about this being a gem? Sweet! I thought it would be weird for an ice ball to be in the closet and not to have melted, so I just thought it was a gem.”

Candlelight just shook her head. “I will never understand you Pinkie…”

“Me neither…” Pinkie replied. “Now let’s get some lunch, all this investigating is making me hungry.”

Both Rainbow Dash and Candlelight rolled their eyes.

“Alright… But then you have to bring me to Sunstreak.”

“Deal.”

“You sure about this Twilight?” Sunstreak asked as the two of them looked up at the waterfall Canterlot had flowing just outside the castle.

“Relatively.” She replied. “The books weren’t there but I’m sure this will help.”

“How?” Sunstreak asked. “How does me flying you up to the top of a waterfall help?” Twilight had an idea to try and recreate the clearest memory Shade had from Sunglider, which was also the most dangerous for both of them.

“I know it sounds dangerous.”

“That is the understatement of the year.” Sunstreak replied.

“But it is also the only thing we have that could help.” Twilight explained. “Maybe if we find out about Sunglider, then you can try and transfer the memories easier.”

“Assuming that I can even fly you up there, what is the plan? Are you going to walk off the cliff and make me skydive after you?”

“Yes actually.” Twilight replied. “I’ll catch myself if it becomes too dangerous.”

“I know that you can stop yourself… but what about if anyone sees me? I’m not even sure if this is…”

“I’ll say it was my idea.” Twilight replied cutting Sunstreak off. “Happy?”

“No.” Sunstreak replied. “But it is the only plan we have… So might as well get this over with.”

Sunstreak started flying. He picked up Twilight by grabbing under her forelegs, and began flying up the Waterfall. About halfway up, he realized how bad of an idea this was.

“Are you okay?” Twilight asked as she saw Sunstreak having a bit of trouble.

“Can’t… Talk…Focus…” Sunstreak grunted as he forced himself to ignore everything he was feeling.

When the two of them finally got above the waterfall, Sunstreak collapsed and dropped his disguise. “You…are…heavy…”

“Come on…you flew all the way around Canterlot with Meadow on your back.”

“When…I’m running…On adren…alin…Pain... can be… negated…” Shade pushed himself off the ground. “Plus…she’s a…Filly…she weighs less…”

“Are you okay?” Twilight asked.

“I have a cramp….the size of the Sun…In my wings…Aside from that… I’m fine.” Shade replied. “Oh…and I…need a minute…”

Shade took several deep breaths, before he stretched his insect wings. “Alright…I think I’m good.”

“You sure?” Twilight replied. Looking over at Shade, who transformed back into Sunstreak.

“Yeah…just don’t make me fly you back up here…” Sunstreak replied. Flexing his wings. “Let’s get this over with before I change my mind…”

Twilight nodded, looked over the edge and swallowed audibly. “I’m starting to regret this decision…”

“You and me both…” Sunstreak replied. “So are you going to-?”

Twilight took a deep breath and stepped off the edge.

Sunstreak didn’t even wait to dive after her. “WINGLESS!”

Sunstreak dove off the cliff as fast as he could, rushing towards the Unicorn. He flapped his wings as fast as he could to catch up to the Unicorn. When he managed to get above the Unicorn, he grabbed her and began to slow himself, gradually tilting in order to have more time. When he slowed himself down enough to land effectively, he dropped Twilight on the ground and flew a few feet away before landing himself.

“Damn it Wingless! What were you thinking? Don’t you ever learn!” Sunstreak reprimanded Twilight. “As a Foal maybe but not as a grown Pony! Come on!”

“Sunstreak…I.”

“Wingless… I know what happened hit you hard…but think about he others before you pull some kind of…” Sunstreak turned to look at Twilight. “Who in Tartarus are you?”

“Sunstreak…I’m Twilight.”

“Twilight?” Sunstreak replied. “Sorry…I…” He looked down at himself. “Ah…”

“What is it?”

“I’m still that Changeling aren’t I?”

Twilight was confused. “Sunstreak what are you-?” She caught a look at Sunstreak’s right eye, which was now rounded and blue. “What?”

“My name is Sunglider.”

“Oh dear…”

“So…You’re telling me, that you and this, ‘Sunstreak’ decided it would be a good idea to fly you up to the top of the waterfall, have you walk off, and then have me fly after you like I did when my brother fell.”

Twilight had explained everything that happened in the plan to get a better idea of Sunglider. They were now sitting outside a small café in Canterlot, having a small lunch.

Twilight nodded.

“I expected better from Celestia’s personal student.” Sunglider replied. “What were you thinking doing that?”

“I was just trying to-”

“Help?” Sunglider finished.

“Yeah…” Twilight replied lowering her head.

Sunglider thought about what Twilight told him. He saw how sad she was about the whole incident. “Listen… I can understand that ‘Sunstreak’ is a friend, crazy as it sounds, and you want to help him fix me.” Twilight looked up at him. “So now you have two problems. I don’t know any of you, and ‘Sunstreak’ is now dormant.”

Twilight perked up. “I’m sure that we’ll-”

An old looking dark gray Earth pony walked up to the two of them. He had a small brown saddle bag and large glasses over his eyes. “I hate to interrupt you,” The stallion said as he pulled a small package out of the saddle bag.

“You weren’t interrupting much.” Sunglider replied.

“Well are either of you a… Mr. Sunstreak?” The stallion asked, looking at the bottom of the package.

“That’s what I’ve been called,” Sunglider replied. “So I guess that’s me.”

“Well this package is for you, I was given the directions to tell you that… Hold on.” The Earth pony pulled a small card out of his saddle bag. “You are not to open it in a public area, at night, or around other ponies. You should open it as soon as possible.” He put the card back in his saddle bag. “It is from the Honorable Just Sentence. So it is probably important.”

At the mention of just Sentence, both Twilight and Sunglider looked at each other in surprise. “You’re sure it was Just Sentence.”

“Well of course I am.” The Pony replied. “She was the one who gave me the package to deliver after all.” With that he walked down the street.

Both of them looked at the package in surprise. They stayed that way for a few seconds before Twilight broke the silence. “Did… Did Sunstreak ever-?”

“No idea…” Sunglider replied looking at the small package. “This probably isn’t a good thing…”

“Court is adjourned.” Just Sentence pronounced. The large group of nobles that had come to the court room got up to leave, along with Filthy Rich, a Ponyville resident very against how a certain Changeling wasn’t thrown into the badlands.

“If I have to listen to one more self-entitled pony, I am going to break something.” She said to Celestia, who was sitting next to her. “Thanks for coming on such short notice Princess.”

“It’s no trouble.” Celestia replied. “I was happy to talk down Filthy Rich for you.”

Just Sentence picked up her papers with her magic. “It’s been a struggle keeping these nobles in their place.” She told Celestia. “For the past three days, all I’ve been hearing is rumors and superstitions about Changelings in attempts to persuade me to take legal action.” She rubbed the side of her head. “Can’t they take a hint?”

“Nobles are second only to Minotaur’s for their stubbornness.” Celestia replied, to which Just Sentence nodded.

“Have you gotten any closer to finding that spell I asked for?” She asked Celestia.

“Sadly no, it seems as though it was moved from the Royal Library.”

“Strange.” Just Sentence replied, hopping down from her chair. “Anyway, this way Celestia, we have much to discuss.”

“Indeed we do.” Celestia replied turning and following the old Unicorn out of the room. They walked in silence until they reached Just Sentence’s office room.

“So what would you like to start with?” Just Sentence asked, opening a small filing cabinet and placing the folder of papers inside.

“I wanted to know how you were handling the Prisoners.” Celestia replied placing a silencing spell on the door.

“Well so far we have managed to get answers out of the assassin. His name is Bloodpool, he serves Queen Ceymi, and the reason he attacked was to destroy the traitor that caused Chrysi’s death.”

“Has her body been recovered yet?” Celestia asked.

“Not as of now… The problem isn’t that the body will disintegrate, we are more worried something ate her.” Just Sentence replied. “But as of now we have two fully conscious prisoners who are refusing to give up any information.” Just Sentence pulled out a small stack of papers and a quill, and began filling out the forms.

“What about Shade?” Celestia asked. “Have you gotten any closer to helping him?”

“The last time an incident like this happened, and it wasn’t a Nymph, was during my mother’s reign.” She replied. “I have the four changelings that couldn’t keep their cover searching now. But it may still take a while to dig through all those records.”

“What of Darkblaze?” Celestia asked. “Surly he could help.”

“He is busy looking after the Caretaker back at my Hive, he hasn’t left since she collapsed.” Just Sentence replied, looking over the files. “But enough about my exploits, what are you planning to do about-” There was a knock on the door.

“Come in.” Just Sentence called, when the door opened, a dark grey Earth Pony walked in.

“My Queen.” He said as he closed the door. “I have news.”

“Well don’t keep us waiting.”

“Shade has reverted to Sunglider again.” He said with a bow. “His form appears to be holding; however I have doubts as to how long.”

Just Sentence nodded. “Understandable. Sunglider doesn’t understand feeding. Should I assume you gave him the package?”

“Of course my Queen,” He replied with a bow. “I assured him it was important.”

“Wonderful!” Just Sentence replied. “This should turn out nicely.”

Celestia looked at the Unicorn. “What are you planning Acari?”

“Well…assuming that Sunglider opens the package soon, we should have a duplicate of his memories.” Just Sentence explained, “Which should make a transfer easier if I can pinpoint the exact memory that I need to sync with Shade to avoid any possible scrambling.”

Just Sentence reached into the bottom desk drawer and pulled out a pink crystal. “Assuming they took your advice, it should be starting any…Ah.” The Crystal began to glow a bright blue color. “There we go…”

Celestia looked at the crystal, on the outside of the prism, images flashed rapidly, almost like a sped up film. A few times it slowed down, showing a small silver unicorn foal. One of the memories showed him diving after the same foal only to have it float itself in place using its horn.

The memories quickly whizzed by again, until they slowed down again showing the silver Unicorn and a dark blue Pegasus. Before Celestia could make out what was going on, the memories sped up again, stopping at an image of all three of them saluting, two of them in Royal Guard Armor, and the third wearing Lunar Guard Armor.

The memories flew past again, this time stopping at what looked like an alabaster Unicorn mare with magenta eyes.

The next few images took Celestia by surprise. The first was of the invasion, a Changeling shoving Sunglider down. The next few couldn’t be Sunglider’s, as these appeared to be after he passed out. These were Shade’s, he flew above the city, looking around for something, saw Celestia in a cocoon, and then saw two ponies. The next image that could be made out was with a small light brown unicorn filly, then other Changelings, then the images whizzed past again. The next few were of another Changeling talking to Shade, then him falling through the air, Spears at his throat, A Timber Wolf, Ponyville, and then the images all whizzed past too quick to catch any other ones.

“Wonderful…” Just Sentence said. “Some of the memories got mixed in… That is going to make this difficult.”

“What does that mean?” Celestia asked, amazed at the memories.

“It means that he changed back, and it means that I have a lot of work to do…”

Sunstreak looked at the strange pink crystal that just disintegrated in front of him. He felt really drained… Or rather, Drunk. He found himself in a pretty dark alleyway, and his vision was wobbling. “Where…Am I?”

Sunstreak wobbled towards the light at the end of the alley, and found Twilight waiting for him. “Oh Sunstreak…” She saw him wobbling. “Are you alright?”

“Oh…Hi there…My brain hurts…” Sunstreak replied. “AAAnd there go my legs.” Sunstreak’s legs started to buckle underneath him. Luckily Twilight ran up and caught him.

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Have I ever told you how much I love you?” Sunstreak replied drunkenly.

Twilight frowned at him. “Okay….we need to wake you up.”

“But mom…” Sunstreak whined. “It’s the weekend.”

Twilight moved from underneath Sunstreak, making him fall to the ground. “Ow…” Sunstreak moaned. “Why am I on the ground?” He looked up to see Twilight. “Well…You’re still alive. So what happened?”

“You turned into Sunglider, yelled at me, then a delivery pony gave you some kind of package.”

From the alleyway, there was a small explosion. “Well…Whatever it is, it’s gone now. And I have a massive headache…”

“Well then…I assume you don’t want to go searching for anymore answers today.”

“I would prefer we don’t…” Sunstreak replied, pushing himself off the ground. “If anything…I want to sleep…”

“Alright…” Twilight sighed. “I guess I can look into it on my own.”

Sunstreak nodded. The last thing he wanted was to be a part of another of Twilight’s plans, especially if they center around him.

“Alright… I’ll help you get back.” Twilight replied, helping stabilize him. “Let’s go sleepy.”

As Twilight helped Sunstreak down the halls, Sunstreak couldn’t help but feel a little strange as they walked towards the door. Almost as if something was wrong.

“What’s up Sunny?” Twilight asked.

“It’s…Probably nothing. Just an odd feeling.” Sunstreak replied as Twilight opened the door. “Oh Holy mother of God!” Sunstreak said as he covered his nose. “What is that smell?”

Twilight sniffed in the air. “I don’t smell anything.”

“How do you not smell that? It smells like a Timber Wolf if someone decided to shove a pile of manure down it’s throat.” Sunstreak was turning green. “I’m gonna be sick…”

Twilight led Sunstreak into the room, and he quickly rushed over to the small sink and puked into it. “Okay…Something in here needs to be cleaned…” He looked around the room. “Candlelight?”

“Hello Shade.” Candlelight said with a wave.

“I’ll talk to you in a minute.” Sunstreak replied, looking around the room. He noticed that Pinkie was strangely green…

Sunstreak walked up to her, staring directly into her mane. He wasn’t mistaken, there was definitely something green in there. “Pinkie stand still.” He reached into Pinkie’s mane, he pulled out a magnifying glass, a hat, Pinkie’s box of crayons, and a strange looking spatula before he finally pulled out the strange green object.

“Pinkie…” Sunstreak said covering his nose. “Where did you get this?” Sunstreak was holding a small crystal ball, which inside had a swirling light green energy inside of it.

“I got it from Candie’s place.” Pinkie explained.

“Candie?” Sunstreak replied.

“That’s me.” Candlelight replied.

“Deal with it later…” Sunstreak replied. “Now where specifically?”

“In the closet.” Pinkie replied. “Why?”

“Because this thing smells like a Dumpster.” Sunstreak replied. “And I can feel my nose burning off.” Sunstreak said, flying over to a cabinet and tossing the crystal in it.

“What was that thing doing in your house?” Sunstreak asked, the smell was still lingering in the air, but it was at least bearable now.

“I’m not sure…” Candlelight replied. “It was the closet, that’s all I know.”

“Could it have been left there by the other Changelings?” Twilight asked. “I mean given how you are reacting they must have hated the stuff.”

“The problem is that they had to create it from something…” Sunstreak replied. “So one of them must have been starving to try and eat…whatever that was.”

“Can’t you tell what emotion it is?” Rainbow Dash asked. “I mean… Isn’t that what you do?”

Sunstreak glared at her. “I’ve managed to figure out a few emotions, but I’m not an expert on it.” Sunstreak dropped his disguise.

“So…when did you get out?” Candlelight asked trying to change the subject.

“Yesterday actually.” Shade replied. “And in that time I have been attacked by a book, and was a part of a really stupid plan courtesy of Celestia’s personal student here.”

“I agree,” Twilight conceded, “It wasn’t the best plan I’ve ever had. But it was worth a try.”

“What plan was that Twilight?” Pinkie Pie asked as she put everything back into her mane.

Twilight began explaining her plan and what happened afterwards, up until Sunstreak wandered out of the alleyway.

“Twilight… I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about that.” Rainbow Dash said when Twilight had finished. “I could have helped.”

“Well….I figured you would be busy dealing with the…”

“We almost got thrown out.” Pinkie replied before Twilight could finish.

While the two of them explained what happened to Twilight, Shade walked over to Candlelight. “So how have you been holding up?”

“As well as I am going to.” Candlelight replied. “I was worried about Meadow when I lost her before, but now I’m just afraid of what will happen to her.”

“I get it…” Shade replied. “But if it helps, I don’t think Spine will try anything.”

“What makes you say that?” Candlelight replied. “If what you told me about him was true, then he wouldn’t think twice about hurting her.”

“This isn’t just a battle of morals now, it’s personal.” Shade replied. “He wants to pay me back for cracking his chest, I’m his target…Meadow is just my incentive.”

“Is it working?”

“Let’s put it this way.” Shade replied. “If I find him, I’m going to pay him back for what he did to me.” Shade turned to look at Candlelight. “And if he hurt Meadow, I’ll make sure he will never be at peace again.”

Candlelight had no idea what Shade was planning, but the fact he was so determined to find Meadow made her feel better about placing her trust in him. “If you ever need help, my door is always open.”

“Thanks Candlelight.” Shade replied, looking back at the three Mares. “You ever wonder what they would be like if they never met?”

Candlelight turned to look at the group. “Well…I would figure that Equestria would still be in trouble, since the Elements wouldn’t have bearers.”

“That is true… So how did you get dragged into this?”

“Those two came to my door and said they knew you.” She pointed at Rainbow and Pinkie. “Then Pinkie looked around my house and found that containment gem.”

“You mean the Sewer stone?” Shade replied. He was not happy about that thing still being around, but it could be useful at some point…Maybe as a Stink bomb…

“Yes…that… well I have a hobby of collecting gems, and I had never seen anything like it…”

“When I learn how to make them I’ll give you few…”

Candlelight blinked at him. “You can make those?” She asked surprised.

“Yeah…I was getting taught how to by another Changeling, before…Well…the Invasion. It’s sort of like a… ration of emotion if you can think of it that way. We store excess emotions into them and then save it for later.”

“Interesting…” Candlelight replied. “So what do you plan on doing now?”

“Now?” Shade repeated. “Well… Now I plan on sleeping off the cramp and headache I have for the rest of the day… then I may try to find where the Changelings have been storing all their supplies…”

Candlelight nodded. “If you find anything new, feel free to tell me about it. Just remember, my door is always open.”

“I’ll tell you if I find something. And don’t worry…I’ll find her.”

Candlelight walked over to the door. “I know you will.”

Dear Shining Armor,

There is not much to report on today, when I woke up, Shade was pacing on the ceiling trying to sort out his plans to handle his two current problems. We are planning to come up with a schedule for him to work around; however it has been hard as he is currently asleep from today’s exploits. We did discover that Changelings can contain excess emotions inside of naturally created crystals for a food source later, and that one emotion is absolutely putrid to them. What this emotion is, I have no idea. However Rainbow Dash and Shade are going to try and find any hidden Caches of these crystals tomorrow.

From,

Twilight Sparkle.

Chapter 28: Paternal Instincts

“You ready Sunny?” Rainbow Dash asked, stretching her wings on top of her cloud.

“Remind me when I agreed to this again?” Sunstreak asked on his own cloud. Rainbow Dash had insisted that he agreed to race her at some point, and she was refusing to help him find any of these stockpiles until after a race.

“It was after the thunderstorm.”

“You mean when my memories were wiped and I thought I was a Pegasus?”

“Yeah.” Rainbow replied. “I had to go and get Twilight so that-”

“You do realize that I was not myself at that time right?”

“You still promised.” Rainbow replied.

“Ugh…Fine…” Sunstreak replied, he didn’t want to argue, he just wanted to get to work. “Where are we going?”

“Mmmm” Rainbow said tapping her hoof to her chin. She was looking around the open sky for something worth racing to. “How about…”

Sunstreak felt a small prick in the back of his neck, making him turn towards the castle.

“Sunny? What is it?”

“I’m not sure… Probably nothing…” Sunstreak replied, looking away from the castle. “So where are we going?”

“I was going to say let’s just fly around the city, but you can’t leave it…so that would be difficult. Then there’s the problem of me just smoking you.”

“Yes…the agreement was for you to stay close to me… they didn’t really specify a distance, so just try to keep me within your line of sight alright.”

“Well then. I have a finish line.” Sunstreak didn’t like the smile on her face.

“Where?” Sunstreak asked trying not to just fly off now.

Rainbow Dash lifted her hoof and pointed towards a large hedge maze at the castle. “First to the center wins.”

“Alright Rainbow…” Sunstreak replied.

“Ready…” Sunstreak leaned down, getting ready to push off the cloud. “Set…” Sunstreak kept his eyes on the maze.

“HELP!”

“What…?” Sunstreak stopped. He didn’t hear Rainbow shout go, but he knew what had happened, she was already blasting across the sky. “Damn it…” Sunstreak pushed himself off the cloud and dashed after her. He knew she wasn’t trying, she wanted to have at least a little challenge, which would explain why she was doing loops in the middle of the air.

Once he got close enough for Rainbow to start flying around him, she spoke up. “What took you so long? Are your reflexes really that bad?”

“No Rainbow I just…” What had happened? “I thought I heard something.”

“Like what?” Rainbow Dash asked, slowing down to be at the same pace as Sunstreak.

“I’m not sure… I think it was someone saying ‘help’.” Sunstreak replied.

“Well I didn’t hear anything.” Rainbow replied, turning over to fly on her back. “And my ears are probably better than yours Bug Boy.”

“Alright Airhead.” Sunstreak replied. “I could have sworn I heard something…”

“It was probably nothing. Just your imagination coming up with a reason you couldn’t be as awesome as me.”

Sunstreak rolled his eyes. “Whatever you say Airhead.”

“Now come on.” Rainbow Dash said as she flipped herself over. “This is supposed to be a race, not a leisurely fly.”

“Well then let’s go!” Sunstreak replied as he focused on keeping pace with Rainbow. He was doing pretty well, even though he knew that Rainbow would still win, it was nice to see her not just fly away and see her in a few minutes.

“You’ve gotten better.” Rainbow Dash said, looking over at Sunstreak.

“Had more time to adjust than last time.” Sunstreak replied.

“So whadda yah say we try and pick it up a bit?” Rainbow Dash replied as the Hedge maze came into clear view.

“Well… I’d say you’re on.”

“There’s the Sunny I know and love.” Rainbow faced forward and Sunstreak could see the rainbow ribbon starting to show up behind her.

Not this time Rainbow. Sunstreak put all his energy into flapping his wings, but right before he could pick up speed…

“HELP ME! PLEASE! SOMEPONY!”

Sunstreak slowed himself to a near stop, turning to face away from the Hedge maze. Was that a filly?

“Hey Sunny!” Rainbow shouted back at him. He looked like he was just staring back at the city.

“Sunny? What’s holding you?” Rainbow flew back towards Sunstreak. “Sunny? Are you okay?”

“PLEASE! SOMEPONY!”

“What is that?” Sunstreak mumbled.

“What are you talking about?” Rainbow asked.

“I…I think I hear a filly.” Sunstreak replied.

“A filly? Are you sure?” Rainbow Dash asked, looking at Sunstreak.

Sunstreak turned to face Rainbow. “I think so… Just give it a minute. Listen.”

Both Sunstreak and Rainbow focused their ears, listening for any change.

“HELP! PLEASE! THEY’RE GOING TO KILL ME!”

“Got ya!” Sunstreak shouted before flying back towards the city.

“Sunny! Where are you going?” Rainbow shouted as she flew to catch up to Sunstreak.

“You heard that right?” Sunstreak asked, not slowing down.

“I didn’t hear anything different.” Rainbow Dash replied as she caught up to Sunstreak.

“How? It was practically screaming?” Sunstreak replied.

“Well what did it say?” Rainbow Dash asked rolling her eyes.

“They were begging for…”

“HELP!”

Sunstreak turned to the right, quickly flying up to a cloud and looking down on an alleyway.

Rainbow Dash flew up and joined Sunstreak. “Sunny? What are you-”

“Shh!” Sunstreak replied, pushing his hoof into Rainbow’s mouth. “Look.”

Rainbow Dash slapped Sunstreak’s hoof and looked to where Sunstreak was pointing. It was in a dead end alleyway, and there seemed to be a group of around ten ponies at one end, and they seemed to be getting closer to the other end, where…

“What?” Rainbow Dash said in surprise. “That…That’s a Changeling.”

“I noticed…” Sunstreak replied. Down in the alleyway, there was a small Changeling, which was frantically looking around the small alley, looking for some way to get away from the angry ponies. It was scratching at the walls, trying to get a grip, it kept sending out those messages. However, Sunstreak doubted that it understood what it was sending.

“HELP!”

The Changeling below made a small screech. It was afraid.

“I can’t just watch this…” Sunstreak said as he watched the group of Ponies walking closer to the Changeling. “I have to do something…”

“Well I’m all ears if you want to tell me.” Rainbow replied. “How are you going to go about this?”

“Every biological part of me is telling me to rush down there and start biting down on throats…” Sunstreak replied, much to Rainbow’s disgust. “But I can’t…” He began looking around the open sky for some kind of way to enter the crowd without it seeming like he was watching.

His eyes settled on a small black thundercloud. “I think I have an idea…”

“Um…Sunny you sure about this?” Rainbow asked as she stood on top of the thundercloud, looking down at Sunstreak.

“It’s the best thing I can come up with.” Sunstreak replied, he was busily calculating his trajectory so that he wouldn’t land on either the ponies or the Changeling. “If you have a better plan I would love to hear it.”

Rainbow just shrugged. “I hope you know what you are doing…”

“So do I Rainbow…” Sunstreak replied, turning his body down towards the ground. “Do it.”

Rainbow Dash looked unsure but flew above the cloud and dove down on it, slamming both her forelegs into the cloud, causing it to crackle with lightning that shot out and hit Sunstreak.

Sunstreak shot down towards the ground, forcing himself into a spinning collision course with the ground. When he was getting close he shouted. “LOOK OUT!”

Sunstreak corrected himself just before slamming into the ground so that he would skid to a stop in front of the group of ponies. His mane was sticking up and his wings seemed to be a bit singed.

“Stupid thunderclouds…” Sunstreak said as he looked at his wings, he tried not to look at the ponies in front of him. When he finally did, he turned to look at them with a small smile on his face. “Oh hi there. So what’s going on here?”

The largest of the group, and the one Sunstreak nearly rammed into, was a white unicorn with a sleeked back blue mane. “We are trying to rid Equestria of one of those abominations that attacked us.” He had a very pompous accent that probably only belonged to those who try too hard to be royalty.

“Abomination?” Sunstreak asked stupidly. “What are you-” The stallion in front of him pointed behind Sunstreak directly at the Changeling, in response, the Changeling ran and hid under a dumpster.

Sunstreak looked at the Changeling and gave it a small smile. “Well hello there.” He said to the Changeling. “What are you doing under there?”

“Who cares what it is doing?” The Stallion replied. “It could be trying to get us to lower our guard.”

Sunstreak’s smile vanished and he looked back at the Stallion. “You are kidding right?”

The stallion seemed confused by the question. “I beg your pardon?”

Sunstreak rolled his eyes. “Look at it.” He said. “It can’t do anything.”

“What makes you so sure?” A light purple mare replied.

“Because it’s scared.” Sunstreak pointed back at the cowering Changeling. “And I’m no expert on Changelings, but I’m fairly certain they are supposed to be bigger than that.” A small whisper sounded through the small crowd of ponies.

“We know nothing about them.” A second stallion replied. “For all we know it could be-”

“For all YOU know?” Sunstreak replied with a raised eyebrow. “What is your job?”

“Banker.”

“And… Now please…Mr. Banker. Tell me, what do you know about Changelings?”

“Well they uh…”

“That is what I thought.” Sunstreak replied. “Now…I’m not going to act like I was here during the invasion, because I wasn’t, but what did they honestly do that would warrant this kind of behavior?”

“They attacked us!” The first Stallion replied. “Who gives a damn what their reasoning is?”

“I do.” Sunstreak replied with a friendly smile. “Now…because of our limited knowledge of Changelings, wouldn’t the proper thing be to turn it over to Celestia for study?”

A few of the ponies shook their head. “I mean… I’m not against a bit of the old revenge… but not on a foal.” Sunstreak flew up to stare the Stallion directly in the eye. “Never on a foal.” He growled.

Sunstreak landed again. “So I‘m going to make a deal with you...”

“What kind of deal?” The Stallion replied, his interest peaked.

“Let me talk to it.” Sunstreak replied. “If I can manage to talk it into coming out, I will bring it to Celestia personally, if I can’t then I’ll give you free reign over the situation.” Sunstreak held out his hoof. “Deal?”

The Stallion was going over the prospects in his head, but it didn’t seem like he was going to change his mind. “And just what makes you believe you can talk to it? It is nothing but a monster.”

Monster huh? Sunstreak chuckled slightly. “Ah…yes…Monster. Well…by that logic, the Minotaurs should be treated the same way. They are monsters are they not?”

“Do not twist my words Pegasus.” The Stallion replied lowering his head to stare at Sunstreak. “If you even are a Pegasus. For all I know you are just another Changeling.”

Pushing my luck here… “And for all I know…You could be a changeling… any of you could.”

The group began looking at one another in surprise.

“I’m not asking for much time Sir, I only wish a few moments to speak with it. So,” Sunstreak held his hoof out again. “Do we have a deal?”

The stallion thought it over again. Taking wayward glances behind him, and Sunstreak knew he had placed a small nugget of fear into him, that was all he needed… “Very well Pegasus.” He shook the hoof. “You have two minutes.”

Sunstreak nodded and walked over to the dumpster where the Changeling was cowering. He knelt down to be eye level with it. “Hello.”

The Changeling held its hooves in front of its face.

“Hey…can you look at me?” Sunstreak asked calmly. When the Changeling just shook its head and kept shivering Sunstreak looked at it. “I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.”

The Changeling just sent out another signal for help, and being within close proximity to it made it much more painful. “Don’t worry. I’m here to help.” Sunstreak stuck one of his hooves out to the Changeling and channeled some of the emotions he had into it, hoping it would prove he wasn’t going to hurt the Changeling.

The small Changeling stopped shaking and looked up at the hoof, sniffing it curiously. It looked between Sunstreak, the hoof, and then to the crowd of angry ponies.

“Don’t worry about them.” Sunstreak replied. “They won’t hurt you so long as I’m here.” Sunstreak looked around him for a moment, before he transformed his left eye back to its normal state briefly. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The Changeling kept looking at the angry ponies. “Focus on me… not on them.” The Changeling obliged, looking right at Sunstreak. “Come on out. I won’t hurt you…”

The Changeling was clearly very unsure about the decision, but after Sunstreak gave it a reassuring smile, it began to crawl out of its hiding spot.

“Well I’ll be damned…” The stallion said, looking at a golden pocket watch. “One minute and thirty eight seconds.” The watch vanished from thin air. “Well…I suppose I am a pony of my word.”

Sunstreak ducked down to let the Changeling climb onto his back. “Climb up.” Sunstreak was surprised when the Changeling actually did. “Sometimes the key to speaking with something different than you is to remain calm.” And then immediately freak out.

The Stallion sighed. “It goes against my better judgment, but I suppose you will be able to…”

The Changeling on his back was covered in a green flash, before Sunstreak looked back and found that the Changeling had taken the form of a smaller version of himself without the Cutie Mark. Sunstreak’s eye twitched slightly. He didn’t pick up the rest of the Stallion’s speech.

“Thanks…that’s great. Bye!” Sunstreak said quickly pushing himself off the ground.

“I’m impressed Sunny.” Rainbow Dash said laying on top of one of the buildings. “I wasn’t sure you were going to manage it.”

“Yeah…Um… This may be problematic…” Sunstreak replied, motioning at the filly on his back. “I… I think I need some help with this…”

Sunstreak looked at the small filly version of himself that was on his back, he was waiting outside the room’s window, the filly was sleeping, and Sunstreak didn’t want to answer questions.

Rainbow Dash pushed the window open and motioned for Sunstreak to come in, he handed the filly to Rainbow and flew himself into the building. He quickly closed the window and began to panic.

“No. No. This is bad…” Shade said, quickly shedding his disguise. “What was I thinking?”

Rainbow Dash was looking at the filly. “I’m not sure…but this Changeling looks like it could be your kid.”

“She.” Shade corrected. “She’s a girl.”

“How can you tell?” Rainbow Dash asked, placing the filly lightly on the couch so that she wouldn’t wake up. “She looked like a smaller version of you from up on that building.”

“I can just tell…” Shade replied. He wasn’t exactly sure about it himself, he just knew the Changeling was female. “Probably a Changeling thing…”

“Well listen…I’m gonna go get that help we need.” Rainbow Dash replied walking out of the door. “Make sure the little Sunny doesn’t cause any trouble.”

Shade waved back and then looked back at the filly. “What do I call you?” If their cover story was going to be that he had a daughter now, then she needed a name, but what?

“Hungry…”

“You’re hungry?” Shade asked, looking at the filly.

The Filly let out a small screech, while Shade didn’t understand what the filly was saying, it was clearly still young. Hopefully she’s a fast learner…

How do I feed her? Shade asked himself. He didn’t know anything about Changeling children; he didn’t even know anything about this Changeling.

“Hungry…” The filly said again, nuzzling up against Shade’s hoof. “Food?”

Shade looked down at the filly. Okay…so my instincts led me to her, so maybe they can tell me how to feed her. Shade looked at the foal, hoping that something would click inside his mind. Eventually Shade lowered his head so that his horn was within reach of the foal.

The foal looked at it, and changed back into its natural form, and grabbed onto the curved horn with her mouth. Shade felt himself get weaker, and a small headache was forming itself, as it became more pronounced, Shade pulled his horn away from the foal.

He wobbled slightly, managing to steady himself on the small table in the middle of the room. He had a bad headache and his vision was foggy, but he could at least see that the foal was happier, and it had transformed into the miniature Sunstreak and took her place back on the couch.

“Daddy!” She said happily looking at Shade.

“Hold up…” Shade replied, managing to focus his vision. “I’m not your… father.”

“Daddy!” The changeling repeated beginning to hop up and down.

Shade rolled his eyes. “I don’t have the energy to deal with this…” Shade touched his head with his hoof, it was still pounding. “I need to rest…”

“Daddy Sunstreak!” The filly said, quickly flapping her small wings, keeping herself hovering off the couch.

“Yeah. Yeah…” Shade replied. “I guess I can’t argue…” Shade wandered over to one of the side rooms. “Now don’t go causing any trouble missy.” Shade said to the filly, before collapsing onto one of the beds.

Queen Cytes had been looking over the two captured Changelings, each one suspended in their own containment chrysalis, when the female suddenly began to get nervous.

“And just what has gotten you so riled up?” Cytes asked, looking directly at the Changeling.

“You have to let me out!” She replied slamming her hooves against the side of the chrysalis. “Please! She’ll die if we don’t!”

“She?” Cytes repeated. “And who exactly is she?”

The Changeling clearly wasn’t going to give up the information, but it just tried to break the chrysalis even more, she slammed her front hooves against the side, trying to smash it. “Please! She’s just a Nymph! You can’t just let her die!”

“A Nymph?” Cytes repeated. “What…Why?”

“She was hatched here, little over a few years ago. Please! You have to help her!” The Changeling inside the Chrysalis looked over at her counterpart. “Tell her!”

The other Changeling turned away, as if he was embarrassed. “She’s right… You have to help her. She had nothing to do with the Invasion.”

Cytes eyed the two of them for a moment, before adjusting her glasses. “And where, per say, would we find her?”

“She’s in an alleyway!” The Female replied. “Please! She’s crying for help! They’ll kill her!”

“Captain!” Cytes called to outside the room, one of her own blue eyed changelings walked in and bowed. “A Nymph is in danger. I want a team of caretakers on it now. I want to be informed about any developments they make. Understood?”

“Of course my Queen.” The Captain walked out of the room and began giving orders to the few unassigned Changelings.

“Now then…” Cytes replied, turning to look at the two changelings. “Why was a Nymph in Canterlot?”

“What do you think the problem is?” Twilight asked Pinkie as they reached the floor where the apartment was.

“Maybe they found something… Maybe Sunny is in danger! Oo! Maybe they found Meadow!”

“Perhaps…” Twilight replied. “But wouldn’t Sunstreak want to give Meadow back to Candlelight as soon as he found her?”

Pinkie gasped. “You’re right Twilight! If Dashie had to get Candie, it can’t be good!”

“Now it may not be good, but there is nothing proving it was bad either.” Twilight replied as Pinkie was beginning to over exaggerate again. “Sunstreak probably just found something important that he didn’t want other ponies to see.”

They stopped in front of the apartment door as Twilight unlocked it. “Look I’m sure it is nothing. We’ll ask him about it when we…” She pushed open the door, and saw the small filly laying on the couch. “Or…it could be bad…”

“Oh Sunny.” Pinkie said rushing over to the filly. “What did those mean Changelings do to you?” Pinkie asked while giving the filly a light hug.

“Pony!” The small filly said enthusiastically. Hopping up and down on the couch.

“Sunstreak?” Twilight asked surprised. “I-What happened to you?”

“Ponies!” The filly replied continuing to jump up and down. “Friends!”

“It’s okay…” Twilight replied nervously. “I can fix this…” Twilight looked at the filly. “Sunstreak I need you to hold still.”

The instant her horn began to glow, the filly stopped hopping and bolted from the couch giving a small screech. It ran under Twilight and hid underneath the small table.

“Pony scary!” The filly said from under the table.

“I’m trying to help.” Twilight replied. “Just don’t…”

“What’s with all the yelling?”

Twilight and Pinkie turned around to see Shade walk out of one of the bedrooms, holding his hoof to his head.

“Shade…but…” Twilight looked back and forth between the filly and Shade. “What?”

“Where’s the filly?” Shade asked, looking around the room.

“Daddy!” The Filly rushed out from under the table and hid behind Shade.

“Daddy?” Both Pinkie and Twilight looked confused.

“Long story…” Shade replied, his horn beginning to glow. “Short version is I need some energy and I feel like I was just at a bar…” After a few seconds Shade shook his head and his horn stopped glowing. “Note to self…Shock and confusion taste like metal…”

“You’re a father?” Twilight asked still shocked.

“Again…long story.” He turned behind him. “It’s alright. They aren’t going to hurt you.” The little filly leaned out from behind one of Shade’s legs, saw Twilight, and hid again.

“How long has this been going on?” Twilight asked.

“Ummm… What time is it?”

“About 11:34.” Pinkie replied, pulling an alarm clock out of nowhere.

“Then about two hours.” Shade replied. “I’m still wrapping my head around it.”

“Purple scary.” The little filly said, poking her head out from behind Shade.

“She won’t hurt you. I promise.”

The filly stepped out from behind Shade. “Hi.”

“Oh you’re so adorable!” Pinkie said trying to give her a hug, but Shade stuck his hoof out to stop her. “What’s her name?”

“No idea.”

“How old is she?”

“No idea.”

“Who’s the mother?”

“Ditto mark.”

“Is there anything you do know?” Pinkie asked excitedly.

“She’s a changeling.” Shade replied. To which Twilight seemed to instantly take interest.

“A changeling?” Twilight replied. “How did you find her?”

“She was sending out a signal through the hive mind, shouting that she needed help. So I came flying, shot myself down with a thundercloud, and managed to get her away while keeping my own cover.”

“Why does she look like Sunstreak?” Pinkie asked.

“Well…I was the first one to show her compassion I guess… And the fact that she…”

“Daddy…Pink funny.”

“Yes she is.” Shade sighed. “So… Here is the biggest problem.” Shade dropped his hoof to let Pinkie hug the filly. “I don’t want her to be discovered.”

“But I have to tell Shining-”

“No!” Shade shouted, cutting her off. “Listen…Twilight…I’m running off instinct here. That’s how I found her, and I’m afraid what will happen if someone tries to take her. Hell, I had to stop myself from ripping some pompous stallion’s throat out. Please…just keep this one thing from them.”

“I…I don’t know…” Twilight replied. “I’ll…I’ll try to ask my brother about it.”

“I’m warning you Sparkle… I’ve already lost one of them…” Shade growled as he walked up to Twilight. “I promised her…”

Twilight sighed. “I-I’ll make it work…I’ll say it-it’s for uh…study…” Twilight replied. “I’m sure they’ll understand.”

“They better.” Shade growled.

“Hey! That’s pretty good.” Pinkie said from behind Shade, he turned to see Pinkie holding a smaller version of herself on top of her head.

“Dear god…” Sunstreak said looking at them. “There are two of them…”

“Pink Fun!” The filly replied bouncing just like Pinkie.

“Is it wrong that I am frightened?” Shade asked Twilight.

“No…I can understand.” Twilight replied as the smaller Pinkie jumped off Pinkie’s head and bounced over to Shade.

“Daddy! Daddy! Look!” The Filly said as she pulled a small party cannon out of nowhere.

“Dear god… It’s worse than I thought…” Shade said. “Now don’t imitate ponies unless they say it’s okay.”

“Did you come up with a name for her yet?” Pinkie asked, hopping up and down. “If not then can I help?”

The filly turned back into her Sunstreak form. “Sunstreak!”

“That’s my name.” Shade replied. “No I haven’t gotten a name yet… Though given that she refers to me as her father for some reason, may need to be something like…”

“Sun Ball. Sunstreak Junior! Oo! Oo! Sunny D!”

“Sunspot?” Shade asked the filly, to which she bounced up and down.

“Sunspot! Sunspot!” She said happily.

“Well that settles it then.” Shade replied ruffling her mane. “Until I find out your real name, it will be Sunspot.” He stopped for a moment. “Though we are going to have to modify your disguise a bit so you don’t look exactly like me.”

“Oo! Oo! I’ll ask Rarity!” Pinkie replied. “She’s coming back for a visit in two days!”

“Well…that’s… Convenient…” Shade replied as the door opened.

“Candlelight’s here!” Rainbow Dash said.

“Don’t bother filling me in, Rainbow explained everything.” Candlelight said, levitating her Saddlebags off. “So where is she?”

Sunspot had hid behind Shade as the door opened. “She’s right here.” Shade moved so that Candlelight could see her.

“Daddy…?” Sunspot said slightly afraid.

“It’s okay Sunspot.” Shade said calmly. “She’s a friend.”

“So this is the little Changeling?” Candlelight asked, looking at her. “How old would you say she is?”

Shade thought about it for a second. “Two…maybe three.”

“Alright…I can handle that.” Candlelight replied. “Come here Sunspot.” She said to the filly. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Sunspot slowly walked up to Candlelight. When she was close, Candlelight scooped her up in her forelegs and began rocking her softly.

At first Sunspot was surprised, and looked scared, but after a few seconds, she began to nod off into a steady sleep.

“Thanks for this Candlelight.” Shade whispered as he turned back into Sunstreak. “I’ve got work to do.”

“It’s no trouble.” Candlelight replied. “Anything I should know?”

“If she gets hungry, just let her feed on some of your emotions, lower your horn and pull it back when you start to get dizzy.” Sunstreak replied. “Come on Rainbow.”

The two pegasi left the room and headed for the roof.

“You’re really good at that.” Pinkie whispered.

“Lots of experience.” Candlelight replied with that Sunspot transformed into a near exact copy of Meadow Song. Causing Candlelight to tear up.

“So what are we looking for here?” Rainbow Dash asked as the two of them took off from the ground.

“I’m looking for any large concentration of Emotional energy, you are looking for any possible locations.” Shade replied.

“Well then let’s get going.” Rainbow Dash replied. “See anything?”

Shade transformed his left eye back to normal, if anything just to make it easier to spot any hotspots. “It looks like there’s a lot of activity in the park…but that may just be because it’s Sunday.” He looked up at the sky. “And it is a beautiful day.”

“So we check the park first.” Rainbow Dash replied, turning to face the direction Sunstreak indicated. “Race you there.”

“You’re on.”

A few hours later, and still very few leads…

“I’m starting to think this isn’t going to work.” Rainbow Dash replied, making another pass over the docks. “Have we even found a single…”

“Got something!” Sunstreak replied, slowing down. He had his left eye focused on a warehouse overlooking the large expanse of sky over the cliff. There was some kind of orange glow coming from the building.

The two of them landed outside the warehouse door. “You sure about this?” Rainbow asked as Sunstreak fixed his left eye.

“Glowing light orange building… Yes.” Sunstreak replied.

“What emotion is orange?”

“No idea...” Shade replied. “We’re about to find out.”

Sunstreak pushed open the door, and found himself face to face with an orange eyed Changeling that instantly uppercut him in his jaw.

“Sunny!” Rainbow said before three Changelings jumped on her. Pinning her to the ground. “Get off me!”

One of the changelings hissed at her.

“Hey!” Sunstreak shouted, getting the Changeling’s attention. “Get off her!”

“Love bug…” One of them hissed. It motioned towards Sunstreak with its head, and a few more Changelings rushed out and grabbed Sunstreak, pulling him into the warehouse along with Rainbow Dash.

“What’s the matter?” Sunstreak asked, struggling to get out of his captors’ hold. “Too afraid to finish me off?”

“Your time will come Moth.”

“Shade… But whatever.” He looked over towards Rainbow Dash. “So…Why bother capturing her?”

“Orders.” The Changeling replied, as they passed a group of orange cocoons that held a few Changelings in them.

They stopped at two empty cocoons. “You will remain here. Until our Queen speaks with you.”

“And what makes you think I’m going to just sit quietly?” Sunstreak replied.

“You won’t…” The Changeling replied as the other three pushed Sunstreak through the membrane of the cocoon, which almost instantly began to harden.

Shade turned around and tried to slam into the cocoon, but when he tried, he felt weak, and very tired. He closed his eyes, and just relaxed.

“What did you do to him?” Rainbow Dash demanded as she struggled against the Changelings holding her.

“He is alive.” The changeling replied. “For now…”

“You’re crazy if you think you’re going to put me in one of those cocoon!” Rainbow Dash began to fight harder.

“I’m not crazy.” The Changeling replied running it’s hoof across Rainbow’s neck. “But you must be to join with them.” It moved away from Rainbow. “Put her in.”

Queen Ovi was looking over her daughter, still in bad condition. Her stomach was cut open, but she was stable. She hadn’t left her side since she had personally paid the pathetic Nymph that did it back by nearly cracking his Carapace in two.

She was in her Unicorn disguise, so that none of the ponies would notice the Queen. Until one of her of her scouts walked into the room.

“Explain yourself.” Ovi ordered not looking away from her daughter. “Why are you here?” She had instructed that she not be disturbed when looking over her daughter. “This better be important.”

The earth pony bowed. “Apologies My Queen.” It replied. “We have captured a new Traitor. He was with a Pegasus.”

“Describe her.”

“She is Cyan, Rainbow colored mane.”

Ovi sighed. “Explain the capture.”

“They came to us, and had no chance to put up a fight.”

“I assume you placed them in cocoons.”

“Of course my Queen.”

Ovi sighed. “I wish to interrogate them myself. Prepare the Changeling first.”

The Earth pony bowed and walked out. Leaving Ovi alone with her daughter once more. “Carrie… I’m sorry…” She said to her daughter, before walking out of the room.

“Wake up Love Moth!”

“Ugh…” Shade replied. Being pulled out of the orange membrane, he noticed that his horn was coated in a similar orange membrane.

“Do not even attempt to use magic.” The large Changeling said leaning into Shade. “That slime will destroy your horn if you even try.”

“Noted…” Shade replied looking at the cocoon next to him, which currently held Rainbow Dash. “What’s going to happen to her?”

“She will be interrogated for everything she knows by our Queen, and then she will not remember any of this.” The Changeling replied, pulling Shade along on a magical leash. “But first, you have to answer for your Queen’s crimes.”

Shade was pulled along the length of the warehouse, which now that Shade looked at it, was in heavy disrepair. After around six minutes of being dragged along by this large Changeling, he was pulled into a side room, which appeared to be an interrogation room.

“Sit.” The Changeling demanded, practically throwing Shade into the room. “The Queen will speak with you shortly.”

As soon as the Changeling left, Shade sat down in the chair, and bashed his head into the table. “What the hell is wrong with me?” First I get Meadow captured by Changelings, and now I get Rainbow captured by them.

“Maybe I can get Celestia captured by them next? That would show me.” Shade slammed his head against the table again. “Or maybe I’ll just off myself and end the trouble…”

“I’d be more than happy to oblige.” Shade looked up to see a black unicorn mare with glowing orange eyes. “Now…Tell me what you know about Ceymi.”

Shade blinked for a moment. “Ovi?”

“Yes that’s my name. Now who are you?”

“Shade. I-I was there when… Carrie…”

Ovi slammed her hooves against the table. “Don’t you dare mention my daughter!”

Shade leaned back from the Unicorn. “I-I I meant nothing by it. You saved my life.”

Ovi looked at Shade. “Ah…Yes I remember you now.” She replied. “You were the failed conversion the assassin was after.” Her face turned to a frown. “Which means you are also the reason my daughter is on her death bed.”

Shade’s ears flattened against his head. “I’m sorry about that… If I could have prevented it, I would have.”

“So what were you doing coming near our outpost?” Ovi asked, looking at her hoof, which she held up as one would admire their fingernails.

“Me and Rainbow Dash were looking for any kind of Stockpile of emotion containment gems… Hoping to follow someone to the main hive.”

Ovi nodded. “And you found us… Understandable…we have been stockpiling emotions here for Cytes. We needed more emotions for those few Changelings that are in very poor condition.” Ovi sighed. “And those few we can’t help… We have to place under the Ponies’ surveillance. So we are having trouble…”

“I’m…sorry…about Carrie… Again…” Shade replied.

“Yes well…You tried…and you prevented me from killing our only lead…so I think I should thank you. Now what have you been up to?”

“Staying with some of the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony, and I’m looking for Commander Spine so that I can get Meadow back. While I’m looking for some way to help fix the guard I drained during the invasion.”

“Ah…yes. I heard about that from Cytes. Acari should be able to handle it on her own.” Ovi replied. “Well…I know that you have absolutely no idea what is going on with Queen Ceymi, so…I will just…” She sniffed the air. “You smell like a Nymph. Why is that?”

“Uhh…” Shade chuckled nervously. “That’s…a bit complicated…”

Shade began to explain the situation to Ovi, as he got to explaining what happened in the apartment, her eyes widened.

“She believes you to be her father?” She asked, a smile creeping up her face.

“Yes… I’m having trouble with this…”

She stifled a laugh. “In that case…I think we can help each other.”

Shade raised his eyebrow. “How?”

“I have access to a Caretaker. You are able to find stockpiles of emotional energy.” Ovi leaned in. “Why don’t we help each other out?”

“You want me to tell you about any possible locations for you to harvest energy?” Shade asked.

“Yes.”

“And in return…you will help me take care of Sunspot?”

“Not directly, but yes.”

“Alright…but what will happen to Rainbow Dash?” Shade asked Ovi.

“She will be fine. But I cannot allow her to speak of this outpost, it could cause problems.”

“If you allow me to speak with her, I may be able to convince her.”

Ovi looked at Shade, as if trying to determine if she could trust him. “Very well… They are bringing her here now.” With that she pushed herself off the chair and walked towards the door. “I’ll contact Acari, and she will handle the rest. Now if there are no more distractions, I have to oversee my daughter.”

Shade was left alone in the room for a few minutes before Rainbow Dash was dropped into the room, still unconscious. As she hit the ground, she snapped to attention.

“What? Where am I?” She asked looking around.

“Interrogation room,” Shade replied. “We’re being let go.”

Rainbow Dash got up off the ground. “So then why are we here?”

“Because Queen Ovi wanted me to ensure you wouldn’t reveal their secret.”

Rainbow Dash looked shocked. “And why not? They attacked us!”

“Because they thought I was part of the Invasion…not entirely false but they thought I was loyal to Chrysalis.”

“Then why the Hay are we still here?” Rainbow Dash asked. “As long as you think they can be trusted, I’ll let you tell the others.” She looked up at Shade’s horn. “What is on your horn?”

“Goo.” Shade replied. “It stops me from using magic.”

“Okay…” Rainbow Dash replied. “So what did you and the Queen talk about?”

“Sit down…” Shade said. “This is going to be complicated.”

Queen Cytes walked up to the two Changeling prisoners they had. “Did you find her?” The Female asked. “Is she alright?”

“She is safe,” Cytes replied. “She was found by another Changeling.”

Her eyes widened. “Who? What Hive? Where did they take her?” She was panicking, worried for the Nymph.

“She was found by a member of your own hive, he has no allegiance to the Queen, and protected her.” Cytes replied. Watching as this did little to calm the Changeling’s nerves.

“Who? Where is she?”

“His name is Shade. He has been looking after her with the help of the pon-”

“He showed her to them!” The Changeling shouted, slamming against the chrysalis. “No! They’ll kill her!”

Cytes remained calm. “If they do, Shade will make them pay.” She took off her glasses. “She is being watched over by friends of the Changeling. We are sending word to get a Caretaker to come and assist him.”

“Then let me help!”

“I cannot. You are a criminal. I cannot trust you to keep your word.” Cytes placed her glasses back on. “Until you prove you can be trusted, you will remain here. Unless you can give me information on Ceymi.”

The Changeling began to tear up. “I don’t know anything! She contacted us in the night. Told us Chrysalis was dead, we had to help Bloodpool, or he would have killed us!” The Changeling looked right at Cytes. “Just…let me see her…”

Cytes looked the Changeling over quizzically. “I will attempt to arrange it.”

As Cytes turned to leave, she could hear the Changeling sobbing slightly.

Dear Shining Armor,
Today was…interesting to say the least. From what Shade and Rainbow told us, they did not manage to find any substantial stockpiles of any emotions, so that was a bust. However the biggest thing is surprising. Shade found a small Changeling foal, and saved it from a group of ponies attempting to harm it.

He assured me that the foal would not cause any trouble, and she seems to see Shade as her father, and Shade has told me that he will protect her. I know that this could be seen as a bad thing, but I plan to use it to study Changeling parental responses and how they care for them.

I will keep you informed on any new advancements we make. Please do not attempt to capture the foal, which has taken the name Sunspot, as Shade did say that he may not be able to control his instincts around her.

From,

Twilight Sparkle.

Chapter 29: Problems in Ponyville

Tornado Dust was moving clouds around the sky, his mind busily processing his situation. So far Antenna had been brought to Acari’s hive under the cover of night, and he had heard very little about Shade recently. Topped off with the fact that now his Queen was dead, and he had a difficult time focusing his mind on anything else.

“Tornado Dust?” A lime green Pegasus flew up to him. “Are you alright? You seem kind of distant?”

“I’m fine Morning Dew.” Tornado replied. “Just…have a lot on my mind…”

“Does it have to do with that trip to Cloudsdale?” Morning Dew asked.

“No… It’s not that.”

“Are you sure?” Dew asked. “It’s just that you haven’t been yourself recently.”

Tornado sighed. “It’s nothing… Just some personal stuff.”

“Does it have to do with the surprise inspection?” Inspection?

“What inspection?” Tornado Dust asked.

“You didn’t hear?” Dew asked looking surprised. “The Royal Guard is doing a surprise inspection of the weather Patrols to check for any Changelings.”

Oh Sweet Chrysalis I’m doomed… “When is the inspection supposed to be?”

“Umm…I’m not sure…” Dew replied. “It was supposed to be earlier today… I think it was rescheduled for-”

A whistle blew across the area. “All Pegasi land and line up!”

Oh Chrysalis… “Right now it seems…” Tornado replied, trying to hide his nerves.

“Well we should probably do what they say.” Dew replied as she headed for the ground.

Tornado Dust audibly gulped, before flying down and standing in line in front of the Royal Guards.

“We have intel that suggests there’s a changeling in the Weather Patrol.” One of the Earth pony guards stated, walking up and down the line of them. “Sergeant Silver Shield will be administering the disillusionment spell. If there are any Changelings here, do yourself a favor and reveal yourself now.”

Tornado Dust stood there, not wanting to give away anything, but he was sweating slightly.

The Guard walked up and down the line again, eyeing each individual pegasi. “No takers?” He asked. As the Pegasus began whispering among themselves. “Alright, Sergeant, check them.”

One of the Unicorns stepped forward as his horn began to glow a deep red color, he walked up and down the line, hovering his horn over each Pegasus before moving on.

After each Pegasus, Tornado began to feel more desperate. I should just run… This isn’t going to be good… I’ll be thrown in prison! Just like Snake Eye…

As the Unicorn came to stop at Tornado Dust; he was still contemplating whether to run or accept his fate, when the Pegasus next to him, dark grey stallion with a white Mohawk jumped out of the line and fell in front of the Guard.

“I confess!” He exclaimed, taking both the guard and Tornado Dust by surprise. “I’m a Changeling! Please just don’t hurt me!” He curled into a fetal position and began to rock himself back and forth.

“uh…” The Guard replied, clearly shocked by the Pegasus. “Okay then…” His horn glowed as he waved it over the Pegasus, there was a wisp of yellow flame and the Pegasus turned into a Changeling, its dark yellow eyes staring unblinking at the Unicorn.

“My Queen, forgive me…” The Changeling said as it kept rocking back and forth on its backplate. “Please forgive me…”

Tornado Dust felt conflicted. He was safe, but the ponies could now know about multiple hives. While he himself wasn’t in the cross hairs anymore, this may just put an innocent hive in danger.

“Thunderlane…” Tornado Dust replied in shock. “You- you…”

“I’m sorry Tornado!” The Changeling replied. “I-I wanted to tell you. But...”

“Save it Insect.” The Unicorn Guard said attaching a suppression ring to the Changeling’s horn while magically attaching cuffs to its legs. “You have a lot to answer for.”

With that the Changeling was led away by the guards, leaving the Pegasi alone. A few of them went back to work, but Tornado Dust just stared blankly, trying to figure out what had just happened.

“Dusty?” Morning Dew said, walking over to him. “Are you okay?”

“Huh?” Tornado Dust replied. Only now noticing he had been sitting in that spot for a few minutes now.

“Are you alright?” She repeated.

“Yeah…Yeah.” Tornado Dust replied. “I-I just need… To…I need to go.” Tornado Dust flew off, heading towards Everfree. I need to talk to Acari. He thought as he flew. Maybe I can…

“help” Tornado Dust stopped and turned to look up at Canterlot.

A nymph! What is it doing in Canterlot? Tornado Dust thought, but he shook away the thought. “I’ll deal with it later…” He said to himself as he continued to fly towards the Hive.

“Halt!” Tornado Dust stopped flying as two changelings flew up to him. “You are entering Acari’s territory. State your business.”

“Infiltrator 75, Darkblaze, Here to warn Acari about a possible security breach in Ponyville.”

The Changelings looked at each other. “What security-”

“I don’t have time for this. Move!” Tornado Dust removed his disguise and flew through the two Changelings and into the Hive, which looked like a large hole in the ground. While this wasn’t the main Hive entrance, it was the fastest way to Acari. So he would make due.

As he flew through the Hive, he was aware of the odd looks he was being given by some of the Drones and Workers that flew around the hive, but he ignored them as he rushed for Acari’s throne room.

“Darkblaze!” Blackout called out to him. “What are you doing in here?” She asked as she caught up with him.

“There’s a security breach.” Darkblaze explained. “The Royal Guard had a surprise inspection of the weather team.”

Blackout’s eyes widened. “Did you…?”

“No!” Darkblaze replied. “I wasn’t caught. Just before I was checked, another Changeling revealed himself.”

“What? Who?”

“I’m not sure…” Darkblaze replied. “He wasn’t from my Hive, so that means they could find out about other Hives.”

“But… That means that…” Blackout replied. “They could come right here!”

“That’s why I need to talk to Acari.”

Blackout stared, before flying ahead of Darkblaze. “Follow me. I know a shortcut.”

Darkblaze followed Blackout to a small tunnel. “This is a direct tunnel to the Queen’s chamber.” She explained. “It’s usually reserved for Caretakers but I think this is important enough.” She flew into the small tunnel, followed quickly by Darkblaze.

The tunnel was very small, only really big enough for Darkblaze to open his wings comfortably, but not really deviate too much from the center. There were no light crystals in here, only the faint luminescence of a few shards to show where turns were, and after about a minute of flying through the tunnel, the two of them shot out of it and into Acari’s throne room.

The room was as large as the other throne rooms, but had much less in the way of intricate aesthetic designs, Acari’s throne was made out of purple crystals, and the walls held memory gems of a few important Changelings. When they entered the room, Acari was looking into a crystalline pool, where a blue gem was held suspended in the center. When they flew in Acari grabbed the gem from the waters with her magic and turned to look up at the tunnel.

“Darkblaze?” Acari asked. “Aren’t you supposed to be-”

“At work? Yes. But this seemed important.” Darkblaze replied as he landed in front of Acari. “There’s been a breach of another Hive.”

“What?” Acari replied. “Darkblaze… What happened?”

Darkblaze explained about the surprise inspection of the weather team, how the Changeling had thrown himself in front of the guard and begged not to be hurt.

“Then as soon as I could, I flew over here to warn you.” Darkblaze concluded.

“It was wise of you to come to me as soon as you could, this incident could cause horrible backlash on the Changeling community.”

“So what are you planning to do?” Darkblaze asked.

“I need information…” Acari replied. “We have no records of any Yellow Eyed Changelings living in Ponyville, which means he either snuck in, or went rogue. I need to find out which.”

“Let me. I can…”

“HELP!”

“AH!” Darkblaze clutched his head. “Chrysalis damn it!”

“Darkblaze what’s wrong?” Acari asked.

“A Nymph… It’s crying for help… From Canterlot. And it hurts!” Darkblaze shook his head. “I’m good…I’m good.”

“If you wish to speak with this Changeling, I will allow it. However, Blackout must accompany you.”

“Of course My Queen.” Blackout replied with a bow.

“I expect you back in one hour.” Acari replied. “But this time…use the door.” Acari replied as Darkblaze and Blackout walked out.

As Tornado Dust and Lyra entered the prison at probably the worst time, there were groups of ponies trying to get to see the Changeling, a few of which Tornado recognized as Thunderlane’s family.

“So how do we go about this?” Tornado Dust whispered to Lyra.

“How do you think?” She replied walking up to the counter.

“Oh Lyra…” The Guard replied. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Lyra replied. “Listen, we have to talk to the Changeling. It’s urgent.”

“I don’t suppose you two have any possible credentials to show me?” The Guard replied.

Lyra’s eyes flashed pink while Tornado’s flashed green.

Lyra leaned in to the guard. “This is urgent Lockup.” She hissed, “Queen’s orders.”

Lockup nodded before leading them into the back of the relatively small prison. It didn’t look much like a prison at all, much more a small building converted into one on short notice. As they walked, Tornado noticed a lack of any guards near the back of the building.

“Where are the guards?”

“They are all dealing with the possible Changeling reports through the town.” Lockup turned to look at Tornado Dust. “I had bits on you getting caught by the way.”

“Gee… Thanks…” Tornado Dust replied. “I’ll remember that when I get thrown in here.”

“Anytime.” Lockup replied.

The group walked in silence before they came to a rather small cell in the very back of the building where the Changeling was shaking with his back facing the door and curled up in a corner.

“I’ll keep an eye out for you.” Lockup said to Lyra before walking down the hall.

Lyra hit the bars with her hoof. “Brother.” The Changeling didn’t move. “Changeling.” Still nothing.

“Thuderlane.” Tornado Dust said with an uncertain tone, the Changeling turned to look at him.

“Tor-tornado Dust.” He replied. “What…What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to ask a few questions.” He replied. “First being, where is the real Thunderlane?”

The Changeling got up and turned himself to face the two ponies in front of him. “He’s…He’s in Everfree…”

“Where?”

“The Castle of the Two Sisters… I-I was going to let him go. I promise! I just…”

“Save it!” Lyra said as she slammed her hoof against the bars. “You are in direct violation of several Changeling laws. Be lucky that I do not skin you myself!”

“Blackout!” Tornado said in surprise. “We’re trying to talk to him, not scare him witless.”

The Changeling looked between the two of them. “You- You aren’t ponies either?”

Tornado Dust shook his head. “No. We’re not.” Both of them returned to their natural forms.

The Changeling’s eyes widened at the sight of Darkblaze. “You-You were…You were in Canterlot…”

“Yes… My hive was in Canterlot… I regret what my Queen did.”

“You betrayed us!” The Changeling shouted. “You betrayed the ancient codes! You are never supposed to reveal yourself!”

Blackout slammed on the bars again. “Shut it!” The Changeling slinked back. “You broke one of those codes yourself! ‘Warn the dominant Hive before you take a Pony’s place.’ And If I remember properly, I never saw your flank in the Hive.”

“Blackout… Calm down.” Darkblaze replied. “Yes…I was in Canterlot… I saw what my Queen did, and I’m not proud of it. That’s why I left. Now please… We want to help you.”

“You don’t care about me!” The Changeling shouted. “You only care about your precious hives!”

“No! I want to help. You didn’t do anything wrong… You shouldn’t be punished.” Darkblaze replied calmly. “Please… Just answer our questions, and we’ll see about them letting you go.”

The Changeling blinked. “You…You would really…”

Darkblaze nodded. “There’s no reason for you to-”

“SOMEPONY HELP!”

“Son of a-!”Darkblaze said as a sharp pain shot through his head. “You ask why I hated Nymphs… it’s they’re stupid mental link.”

Lockup ran down the corridor. “I suggest you two get out of here.”

“Why?” Blackout asked as Tornado Dust rubbed his head.

“They caught one of Cytes’ Changelings.” He replied. “They're bringing her here. Go!”

Without a second thought, Blackout grabbed Darkblaze and charged up her horn, in a flash of pink fire, they were gone.

The group of three guards walked down the hall at that time with a second Changeling, from Cytes’ hive. “You don’t have the right to do this!” The changeling said to the Guards. “I am a legal citizen of Equestria!” The Guards threw her into the cell. “When my boss hears about this…”

“Where is Lotus?” Silver Shield growled at her. “I know you are holding her somewhere.”

“If you really must know, she is relaxing for the day. Running the spa can be a very stressful thing. I suggested that she take the day off a while ago, but she wanted to keep going until Sunday. And look what happens. I cover for her once and get thrown into a cell.” The Changeling replied laying down on the small bed she had.

“Don’t lie to me Insect.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it Sergeant.” The Changeling replied. “I studied physical therapy treatments for four years. But to answer your question, she is at home. Relaxing. She deserves it, worked herself to near death while I was handling a problem at the Hospital.” The Changeling turned away from the Guards. “If you had any decency you would just let her take the day off. Now go be brutish somewhere else.”

The two of them reappeared inside of the Golden Oak Library. Both of them had put their disguise back on the instant they reappeared.

“Why would you bring us here?” Tornado Dust questioned. “This is one of the worst places you could bring us.”

“I’m sorry.” Lyra replied. “Would you prefer if they caught us back there?” She replied. “I didn’t have much time to come up with a location.”

“So you bring us here?” Tornado Dust asked.

“It’s better than-!”

“Uhh…?” Spike replied, seeing the two of them. “What are you two arguing about?”

“Nothing Spike.” Tornado Dust replied. “Lyra here just wanted my help testing her skill with teleportation.”

“Didn’t you say you were going to-?” Spike began to say before he was hit with a pink beam.

“That was easier than explaining.” Lyra said as the two of them walked out of the library. “Short term Memory drain. He won’t remember us teleporting in there.”

Tornado Dust looked around the street for any Royal Guards. “You know that if they start checking anypony they come across, we may be in trouble. I mean…Two birds with one stone.”

“You’re right…” Lyra replied. “We need to warn the Queen.”

“What’s the plan here Lyra?” Tornado Dust asked.

“Hold on…I need to connect with her. Just walk like nothing is wrong…”

The two of them walked around the town, trying to avoid the Royal Guards while looking inconspicuous, which wasn’t difficult for the Changelings, but the fact that Lyra was supposed to be in Manehatten for a concert, made that difficult.

“Got her…” Lyra whispered. She stared off into the distance for a few seconds before shaking her head. “I warned her…”

“So? What is she going to do?” Tornado Dust asked, looking around the corner of a building to make sure the Guards weren’t walking this way.

“She is going to try and…Oh Acari damn it….” Lyra looked across the street to see BonBon, the two of them were usually inseparable. “I didn’t think she would be here…”

Tornado Dust took off from the ground and grabbed Lyra before flying up to the top of the nearest building. “Tell me you can disguise as somepony else.”

“I can…but I only have Lyra’s personality nailed down.” Lyra replied. “If you have somepony I could…”

Tornado Dust leaned in and whispered something to Lyra. “You are kidding me right?”

“You want a pony disguise. That’s a pony disguise.”

“Ugh… Fine…” There was a flash of pink flame, and lying next to Tornado Dust was a white and yellow version of Pinkie Pie with Pegasus wings. “I will end you if you joke about this.”

“No problem…” Tornado Dust replied with a smirk. “But I hold no promises about later.” Blackout stared daggers at him. “Oh come on, don’t look at me like that, at least you can fly.”

“Whoopee.” Blackout replied sarcastically

“So what is she going to do?”

“Right… We were talking about that… She is planning to contact Celestia to have them pull out, and right before then, we need to plan a small raid on the prison and get the Changelings out.”

“Why do we need to plan anything? There is only two of them.” Tornado replied. “I could probably get them out on…”

“No Tornado!” Blackout replied. “We need to do this by the book. This is why our hive has them.”

“Alright. Alright.” Tornado replied. “I’m just saying…”

“Meanwhile. We need to get back to the hive.”

Tornado was going to argue, but Blackout stuck her hoof in his mouth. “No arguing. We do this By. The. Book.” She said poking Tornado in the middle of his forehead with every word. “Got it?”

“Lead the way ma’am.” Tornado Dust replied.

Blackout opened her white wings and flew up to a cloud, quickly followed by Tornado Dust. She scanned the ground to make sure that no Guards were waking around. “Think you can stay on my flank?”

“I’d prefer not to. But I’m sure I can manage it.” He gave a small smile.

“You’re an idiot Love moth.” She replied. Before jumping off the cloud and gliding across the sky for a few seconds and flapping to keep herself above the clouds. She was followed shortly after by Tornado Dust.

“Shouldn’t we find Thunderlane? He is in Everfree after all.” Tornado Dust asked.

“Ugh… We’ll deal with him later. I’ll inform Acari when we return to the hive, an Insertion team will handle it.”

“Even so…”

“Look…Just focus on getting back to…”

At that moment two Pegasus charged at them from nowhere knocking them to the ground. The two pegasi held down the two Changelings, making sure they didn’t move.

“Going somewhere?” One of the Pegasus asked.

“To save my friend from a changeling cocoon!” Tornado Dust replied. “Now get off of me!”

“Not a chance.” The other pegasi replied. “Silver! We’ve got two of them over here.”

The White unicorn Tornado saw earlier that day walked up to the two of them. “So…thought you’d get away didn’t you?” His horn glowed red as both of their disguises vanished. “Looks like we have a family here.”

“We aren’t a couple!” Both of them replied disgusted.

“It doesn’t matter to us. You’re both criminals. And you’ll be treated like that.”

Deep in Everfree, Antenna was beginning to stir. “Ugh…” She groaned as she pushed herself up. “Where am I?”

“I’m glad to see you recovering.” A polite voice said.

“Who?” Antenna asked. She focused her vision to see a pink-eyed Changeling looking over her. She instantly tried to back away. “Please… I-I-I Didn’t lie… Please…”

The Changeling looked confused for a second. “Oh…No don’t worry. Queen Acari cleared you.”

Antenna relaxed a bit. “She- She did?”

“Yes…You weren’t lying to her, so she allowed you to come here and heal. And it looks like that leg is fixed.”

Antenna looked around. “Where’s Darkblaze?”

“I’m...Uh…I don’t know whether I’m-?”

Antenna ran up and grabbed the Changeling. “Where is he?” She said through clenched teeth.

“He…Uh…I…” The Changeling teleported out of her grip. “He’s in jail.”

“HE’S WHAT?”

“So glad to see you awake Antenna.” Acari said as she walked in. “And I see you found out about Darkblaze.”

“What happened to him?” Antenna asked.

“I believe this can only be explained fully.” Acari said walking over to Antenna, while her Changeling flew behind her. “The nearby town recently had a surprise inspection through it by the Royal Guard, they captured a few other changelings including one of my own, one of Cytes’ and one that shouldn’t be here.”

“Darkblaze was trying to find out the location of the Pegasus that the changeling was replacing, doing so he revealed himself to the changeling, that told the guards about his form, then the guards captured him and one of my own while they were coming back here.”

Antenna looked at the Queen angrily. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“My plan was to have a small raid party infiltrate the prison and get them out. However… The fact that the Guards captured two more…it makes it much more difficult than that…”

Antenna looked up at the Queen. “Let me handle it.”

The Queen raised an eyebrow and looked over the Caretaker. “And just why would I?”

Antenna walked up to Acari, staring right up at her. “I have been a loyal Caretaker to Queen Chrysalis for well over fifteen years, I have been there during battle plans, strategies, even rescue missions. I know how to handle this.”

Acari thought it over for a moment, weighing the risks, eventually she decided the loss of one other Changeling would be acceptable instead of sending her best team in. “Very well. Do you need anything to accomplish this plan of yours?”

Antenna looked behind Acari. “How good is she at flying?”

Author's Note

Trouble on the Homefront. And Two Parters. Oh My! Do not worry, I'll be uploading the second part sooner than I normally would. But still... Two parters :pinkiesick:

Chapter 30: Escape & Rescue

Ponyville had been the target of the surprise Changeling inspection for quite some time, ever since the captured Changeling had told them he came from there, the Guard had been planning a secret inspection, as every time they scheduled a search, they never found anything. So they had a small squadron deployed to Ponyville for a surprise search. So far it worked, not one, but four changelings had been found inside of the town.

“Did that pink one finally shut up?” Iron, an Earth pony guard, asked Thunder, a Pegasus guard that helped in capturing the latest Changelings.

“Nope…” Thunder replied. “I still think they’re a couple. They argue like one.”

“What is it about now?”

“I don’t know… I think they were still on about it being the guy’s fault.” Thunder replied, as the two of them left the makeshift prison.

“You ever wonder why all of them are different colors?” Iron asked as the two of them walked down the street.

“No Iron. I didn’t really care.” Thunder replied.

“Well…maybe it is how they recognize jobs or something.”

“Jobs? Really?”

“Yeah…like the Yellow one is supposed to be short term, the light blue one said that she was here for over four years, the pink one seemed to be mad about getting captured, while the dark blue one seemed to be just annoyed with it.” Iron explained.

Thunder looked at the Earth pony. “Is this what you think about in your spare time?” Thunder asked.

“Not all the time.” Iron replied. “I was just curious abou-”

“HELP!” The two guards turned towards the sound, it was inside an alleyway and it sounded panicked.

“Let’s go.” Thunder said running into the alley, followed by Iron.

“Get it off!” The voice shouted. “Somepony! Help!”

As the two guards ran halfway across the alley, they found a light blue unicorn mare with a pink curled mane struggling to push a pink-eyed Changeling off of her.

“Changeling!” Thunder shouted out of the alley, getting the Changeling to turn and look at the two guards.

The Changeling hissed before pushing the unicorn towards a wall and flying off.

“Iron. Keep an eye on her.” Thunder said, opening his wings. “I’ll handle this.”

Iron nodded as the Pegasus flew off after the Changelings, he walked over to the mare. “Are you hurt?” He asked, helping the unicorn up.

“No…No…” The Unicorn replied. “I’m…I’m fine…Just…” The unicorn wobbled.

Iron quickly caught her so she wouldn’t fall over. “I’ll escort you to the hospital.”

“No…You don’t…Have to…” She said, stabilizing herself. “I just…” Iron saw a green flash and found a black blade up to his throat. Following it, he saw it attached to the unicorns foreleg. “Make one wrong move, and I’ll paint that white coat red.” She leaned in to Iron. “And I don’t want to dirty up such beautiful armor.”

Iron looked at her, still surprised.

“Here is what’s going to happen,” The unicorn said. “You are going to bring me to the prison, I am going to free the prisoners, and we’ll be on our way.” She pressed the blade closer to Iron’s throat. “And if you make one move that I don’t like or tell anypony, I’m going to make sure it is the last thing you ever do. And neither of us want that.”

The unicorn moved further away. “I don’t want to have to clean my foreleg of dried blood, and your family wants to see their daddy again. So… Do we understand each other?”

Iron nodded.

“Good. Now move.” Her foreleg transformed back into a hoof, but Iron could still feel it up against his skin.

The two of them walked out of the alley, the Unicorn had continued to act weak, and Iron kept glancing around for Sergeant Silver, or some Unicorn guard.

“Don’t bother…” The unicorn whispered. “They’ll be too busy chasing the others.”

Sure enough, not a single other Guard was on the street, they seemed to be elsewhere, and when Iron reached the prison, he was surprised to see it empty aside from Lockup.

“Hey Iron.” Lockup said, looking over his newspaper. “Who’s that?”

“A Changeling attacked her, I’m here to make sure that there is nothing we need to worry about involving her health before I bring her to the Hospital.”

Lockup shrugged. “Whatever…” He motioned to the door. “They’re in the back.” He pulled the newspaper up and continued to read.

Iron led the fake Unicorn back towards the cells.

“This is your fault!” Blackout shouted at the cell next to her. “If you hadn’t made me transform, I could have gotten out of that!”

“Please darling…calm down.” Cytes’ Changeling replied. “You’ll blow out your vocal chords and believe me when I say that is painful.”

“Yeah…I-I think you sh-should c-calm down…” The Yellow Eyed changeling replied.

“Well there you go Blackout, Democracy in action.” Darkblaze said. He was laying on the ceiling of his cell, his hind legs crossed and resting his head against his front hooves. “Just accept it… There’s nothing we can do about it.”

“How are you all so calm about this?” Blackout asked, looking at each of the Changelings. “We are all enemies of Equestria because of Somepony’s Queen.” If Darkblaze could, he would have made a rather inappropriate gesture at her. “and now we are all going to be judged as War Criminals!”

“I have a paper trail.” Cytes’ Changeling replied calmly. “Going all the way from when I first met Lotus, I have my degree, I have my transcripts, I have my Citizenship. By all legal accounts, I am a citizen of Equestria. I also have an alibi for the invasion, I was helping Lotus at the spa.”

“I-I’m St-t-till wor-r-ied, I’m ju-u-ust looking at the b-b-best.” The Yellow eyed Changeling replied.

“Snake Eye will vouch for me.” Darkblaze replied. “The court is in Canterlot, I’m sure that I could get him to show up.”

“Really? All of you?” Blackout replied. “We are looking at a life sentence in the best possible case!”

“Wh-what’s the wor-or-orst case?”

“The Worst case? Oh well let’s see.” Blackout replied looking right at the Changeling. “We could be dissected for study, tortured, flat out executed, used as test subjects for Equestrian science experiments, or shipped somewhere else for them to deal with us.” The Yellow eyed Changeling’s already large eyes grew wider with every possible outcome. “Oh and worst of all…I’m supposed to keep all of you in line! Do you know what my Queen does to those who betray our hive?”

“No.” Darkblaze replied. “But I get the feeling you are going to tell us anyway.”

“She’ll have my horn destroyed, my wings torn, and I’ll be severed from my hive…” She laid down and was beginning to panic. “I’m not an Infiltrator…I’m not supposed to be cut from the hive! What if I just die? I’ll never make it back to Equestria… I’ll be used as a plaything for the Manticores! I can’t be split from the Hive! I can’t!”

“I can smell the stress from here.” Cytes’ Changeling replied. “Darling… Don’t worry I’m sure Acari will understand. You were just following your orders. So take a deep breath…and then release…”

Blackout took several deep breaths.

“Good. Now just close your eyes… let it all out…” The Changeling took a deep breath and let it out in a steady stream. Followed by Blackout.

“Besides Enforcer,” Darkblaze replied. “Acari has a plan, you said it yourself, she wouldn’t just leave us here to die.”

“I-I-I…” Blackout replied, she took another deep breath. “You’re right…I need to have faith in Acari… She’ll get us out of here…”

Darkblaze smiled and looked down from the ceiling. “So what are your names anyway?” Darkblaze asked the other two Changelings. “I mean…we may be here a while…so might as well.”

“I’m Therapy Drone 59, or Ortho, I work at the Spa and part time at the Hospital.”

“I-I-I…” The Yellow Eyed changeling replied. “I don’t…have a name…”

Darkblaze looked down at him. “You’re an exile?”

“No…I just…I was…” He took a deep breath. “I never saw my Hive…I’ve been on my own my whole life. Just taking a pony’s place for a day, feeding off the emotions, then releasing them and running out of town before I get spotted.”

Ortho looked at him. “I’m…I’m so sorry for you…”

“I didn’t mind…” He replied, looking up. “I’ve been an orphan my whole life, never had anypony to talk to, at least not as myself…”

Darkblaze looked down at him, shifting himself onto his stomach. “That must have been difficult for you… What do you like doing?”

“I-I like it when ponies laugh.” He replied, smiling. “I usually try and replace an older brother, so I can see a foal’s happy smiles…” His smile faded. “But how am I supposed to make ponies laugh from in here?”

Darkblaze was tapping his chin. “I may have somepony you would like.”

He looked up. “Really? Who?”

“I’ll show you when we finally get out of here.” Darkblaze replied. “Now then, my turn.” He flipped himself back over. “Infiltrator 75, Darkblaze. I’ve been living in Ponyville on and off for nearly five years now, had a separate life from the hive for nearly fifteen years now.”

“If I may…” Ortho replied. “What made you want to have a separate life?”

“My twin Sister.” Darkblaze replied with a smile. “She had a pony as a friend for the longest time, then when she revealed herself to that friend, Chrysalis punished her.” Darkblaze stopped smiling. “And I could feel every. Little. Thing… The pain nearly made me kill myself.” He looked down to see Ortho and the yellow Changeling looking up at him. “I don’t like talking about it…” He looked at Blackout. “So what about you?”

“Scout 256, Blackout, I focus on handling any issues in Ponyville and Everfree.” She said as the sound of hooves met their ears.

“Somepony’s coming.” Darkblaze replied, relaxing again.

As the sound got closer, Darkblaze realized that one of them was a guard, while the other only had about three hooves hitting the ground.

“Thanks big boy.” Wait a minute.

Darkblaze looked down to see a light blue unicorn with a curled pink mane, her right fore hoof was replaced with a black blade.

“You get a reward, which is you get to live.” The Unicorn bashed her left hoof into the back of the Guard’s head, knocking him out. “Now…which one of you wants to get out?”

“Who are you?” Ortho asked, looking at the Unicorn as her hoof changed back.

“I’m Antenna, and I’m here to get you out.” She walked up to Darkblaze. “You are in a lot of trouble when we get back.”

“Yeah…I figured you were going to say that. Can you just get us out and punish me later.”

Blackout looked between them. “You two know each other?”

Darkblaze sighed. “Guys…this is my mom.”

“Your Mother!” Blackout shouted surprised as Antenna changed her hooves into thin blades and began picking the lock on Darkblaze’s cell.

“I’ll explain when we get back.” Darkblaze replied as his cell door opened and the suppression ring on his horn flew off. “I haven’t had to do this in a while, so I’m a bit rusty.” The two of them began picking the locks on the other cells and opened them.

“So what’s the plan here?” Blackout asked kicking the suppression ring away. “I mean we can’t just walk out like this.”

“Well…we don’t really have to, but I have an idea of how to clear us.” Darkblaze replied. “But we need to get out first.”

Antenna looked at Darkblaze. “Plan 34 B?”

“Yup.”

“What is that?” Ortho asked.

Antenna and Darkblaze smiled.

The five of them burst out of the prison door and began running towards the forest, Tornado Dust and Thunderlane flying through the sky, while Lyra, Antenna and Aloe ran on the ground. They had no real plan, the idea was to rush in a somewhat organized group with a set objective and get out, anyone that slowed you down was to be taken care of. However, with the fact that most of the Guards were busily dealing with the fake Changeling sightings, it was pretty simple.

A few guards tried to stop them, however a quick magic blast or sky dive and most of them weren’t really an issue. The problem was when a Unicorn was around they often had to modify, luckily, most of the unicorns were taken to the changeling sightings.

“We’re almost there!” Tornado Dust shouted down to the others. “Just a little longer!”

“Are you sure this plan of yours is going to work Love moth?” Lyra asked. “It seems like a long shot.”

Tornado Dust looked back down at Lyra. “It’s worked in the past. I don’t see any reason for it not to work now.”

“Well won’t they think that four ponies randomly reappearing is-?”

“They won’t be random Enforcer.” Antenna replied. “They’ll be right where we left them…”

As Thunder and Silver returned to the Prison, they noticed the door burst open, when they got in the building, Lockup was tied to a chair with a rag stuffed into his mouth, while Iron was starting to wake up, his helmet having a noticeable dent in it.

“What in Tartarus happened in here?” Thunder asked rushing over to check on Iron. Silver Shield used his magic to pull the rag out of Lockup’s mouth.

“The Changelings escaped!” Lockup reported. “Another Changeling came and used Iron to get to the others!”

Silver was noticeably angry. “Why was this Changeling not in custody?”

Iron stood up, being supported by Thunder. “It was disguised as a mare under attack by another Changeling.” He replied, not physically able to look at Silver. “I think it dented my skull…”

“Did you see where they were headed?” Silver asked, trying to contain his anger.

“I heard them talking about the Everfree Forest.” Lockup replied as Silver untied him from the chair. “They said something about a castle and leaving them for the wolves.”

Silver’s eyes widened. “They have hostages?”

“Maybe.” Lockup replied. “It could also be injured…”

“Whatever it is,” Silver replied, “We need to get to it before anything else does.”

“Sir.” Thunder replied. “Iron is in no condition to enter Everfree. He can barely hold himself up.”

Silver cursed under his breath. “Get him to the hospital, I’ll gather a patrol and head into the forest. We’ll find them. Lockup, go to the south side of town and get me as many soldiers as you can.”

Lockup saluted and rushed out the door, however instead of going straight to the south side of town, he ducked into a nearby alleyway.

“Lockup, what happened?” That caused Lockup to jump slightly.

“Damn it. What did I tell you about that?” Lockup said looking up the nearby wall to see Haze.

“Did they believe you?” Haze asked. “This is important Exile.”

Lockup sighed. “Yes. They believed me.”

Haze smiled. “You have been doing well.” She replied. “Maybe Acari will eventually welcome you back?”

Lockup looked saddened. “Yeah…Listen I have work to do. So…”

Haze lifted her leg and in a flash of pink fire, a small sack fell in front of him. “There’s your payment. All one hundred bits, and enough emotion to last another few months. Just as we discussed.”

Lockup grabbed the bag with his teeth before placing it inside of his armor. Looking back up at the wall, he saw that Haze was still there. “You going to leave or have something else to say?”

Haze looked down at him. “We miss you Lockup… It’s been…difficult without you.”

“Yeah? Well it hasn’t been easy for me either Haze.” Lockup replied. “How old are they?”

“Habeas is sixteen and beginning Law School. Zakon is four and honing her Shape shifting.”

Lockup smiled. “They’re getting big.” He replied.

“Lockup…I’ve got to return to the Hive.” Haze replied. “I’m not even supposed to be talking to you.”

“I’ll see you tonight won’t I?” Lockup asked.

“I think we will have to reschedule.” She replied. “This whole situation has caused us to place the town on lockdown, I’m not going to be able to see you for a few days. Goodbye Lockup.”

“Bye Haze.” Lockup replied as there was a pink flash and Haze was gone. He hung his head. “I’m so sorry…”

Silver and the group of twelve others stepped into the crumbling ruins of the castle, the Pegasus entering first, looking around to ensure no ambushes were waiting for them. After a few minutes of searching around the castle, one of the pegasi found something.

“Sir!” He called. “I found them!”

“Let’s go.” Silver said to the rest of the guards, they walked into the large crumbling hall.

Inside, there were four cocoons, each one holding a separate pony. One, a gray Pegasus with a black scraggy mane and a brown Tornado for a Cutie mark. Another was a mint green unicorn with a lyre for a cutie mark. A pink earth pony with a blue mane with a lotus flower cutie mark. The last was the dark gray form of Thunderlane.

“I guess we found them.” Silver replied. “Pegasi, get them down, Unicorns work on getting them out.”

The four pegasi they brought with them began to one by one pull the cocoons off the ceiling, and lower them down to the ground. When they brought Lyra down, she instantly slapped the first unicorn that tried to talk to her. “Stay away from me! You aren’t going to get me again!”

The guard was rubbing the side of his face, which had a rather noticeable red spot on it. “We aren’t here to hurt you.”

“That’s just what they said last time!” Lyra shouted before walking into the corner. “Just stay away from me. I’ll be fine.”

The other three were luckily not as slaphappy, although Tornado Dust seemed more surprised by it. “What? Where am I?”

“In Everfree.” Silver told him.

“How did I get here?” Tornado looked down at the slime that covered his body. “What is this stuff?”

“Changeling goo.” Silver replied.

“Oh Sweet Celestia!” Tornado began trying to wipe it out of his coat. “Ugh… This is gross…”

“No worries.” Aloe replied. “I’ll help get it out.”

Thunderlane was being pulled out of the membrane with much more difficulty than the others, while Lyra, Aloe, and Tornado Dust gathered together.

“You okay?” Tornado asked the other two.

“Well…my mane smells like rubbing alcohol, and is the consistency of syrup, but a quick spa treatment should clear that up.” Aloe replied.

“That felt good.” Lyra replied shaking her hoof. “He deserved that.”

“Are you sure this plan won’t fail?” Aloe asked.

“It shouldn’t, they only think we put ponies in cocoons, not other Changelings.” He whispered.

“Where am I?” Thunderlane asked as he was pulled out of the cocoon. “Where’s my brother?”

“He’s safe Thunderlane.” Silver told him. “He was worried about you.”

“Can I- Can I see him?” Thunderlane asked.

“When we get back to town.” Silver replied.

“Thunderlane!” Tornado shouted running over to him. “I was worried about you earlier today. During the inspection.”

“Tornado?” Thunderlane asked. “What are you doing here?” He looked at the purple goo in his mane. “Why do you have jelly in your mane?”

Tornado ran a hoof through his mane, pulling out a bit of the goo. “It’s…Changeling goo… and it smells…so bad…”

“We have some questions for all of you.” Silver said, walking up to them. “We need to know how many Changelings there are here.”

“Can’t it wait?” Tornado replied. “We kind of have…whatever this is stuck to our coats.”

Silver nodded. “We’ll wait. Follow us out of the forest.”

Thunderlane looked back at Aloe and Lyra. “How long have I been here?”

“I think we all want to know that.” Tornado replied, as Aloe kept comforting Lyra.

A few hours passed before any of them were able to slip away back to the hive, when they finally could, Darkblaze was yelled at by his mother, right in front of the Yellow Eyed changeling was, nervously listening to it, while trying to not interrupt.

“Were you trying to get us killed?” Antenna asked.

“What? Antenna I…” Darkblaze replied. “You know I wouldn’t do that.”

“Really? You were-”

“Am I interrupting something?” Blackout replied as she walked in. “Have you two been doing this since you got back?”

“Uhh…” Darkblaze replied.

“Save it. Acari wants to talk to you.” She was leaning against the entrance to the chamber. “Both of you.”

“Me?” Antenna replied. “Why do you need me?”

Blackout shrugged. “I’m not in the loop right now… I’ve been put on probation for a while. Getting caught, let alone getting captured, puts me on probation. I’m lucky I didn’t get Nymph duty…” Blackout shivered. “Anyway, follow me.”

Darkblaze and Antenna looked at each other before following Blackout through the hive, causing some very weary looks aimed at Antenna. Both of them were aware of it, but held in their own comments, when they came to Acari’s throne room. The two Guards standing in front of the door nodded at Blackout, before opening the doors with their magic.

Acari was speaking with Queen Ovi through an orange crystal. “Shade told you this himself?”

“Yes Acari. Apparently he found her.” Ovi replied.

Darkblaze heard this part of the conversation and flew up to Acari. “Did he find Meadow?” Darkblaze asked.

“Who is Meadow?” Antenna asked Blackout.

“I’ll let him explain.” Blackout replied.

“No Darkblaze.” Acari replied.

“So you have one too?” Ovi asked. “Seems like all the Queens are getting Chrysalis Changelings. Maybe I should find one.”

Darkblaze backed away from the crystal. “Ummm…No…Offense…Queen, but… My Hive isn’t on the best terms with yours.”

“Oh I remember Infiltrator.” Ovi replied. “I’ve already got a death wish for one of them. Although he also tried to kill my daughter.”

“You have a-”

“Later Darkblaze.” Acari replied, she looked back at Ovi. “I will speak with you later.” The Crystal died down as Acari placed it back in its box.

“Darkblaze… Who is Meadow?” Antenna asked with a raised eyebrow.

“She’s…A little complicated…” Darkblaze replied landing.

“Tell her on the way.” Acari replied getting confused looks from all three changelings.

“Where are we going?” Antenna asked.

“Canterlot.” Acari replied getting off of her throne and waking towards the door, while Darkblaze was sitting on the ground with his jaw hanging open.

“Wait. Wait. Wait.” Darkblaze replied. “You are bringing us to Canterlot? The city that has the most security in Equestria, and is on the lookout for any Changelings?”

“Yes Darkblaze. I am.” Acari replied. “I have a job for both of you.” With that all three of them followed Acari out of the room.

“My Queen.” Blackout said, flying up to her Monarch. “You know that I would never question your plans.”

“I am aware of that Blackout.”

“But if I could ask, why are you bringing them to Canterlot?”

“Oh I’m not.” Acari replied.

“But you-”

“You are.” She replied, continuing to walk as Blackout hovered there shocked.

“WHAT?” She flew up to her queen. “Acari…I understand that I wasn’t the most-”

“Scout 256.” Acari said. “This has nothing to do with the earlier incident. I am sending you with them to monitor Shade yourself. I need somepony I can trust to keep an eye on him and inform me of his condition.” She said this while Blackout tried to interject. “And I need you to keep an eye on him for another reason. He has found a Nymph.”

Antenna flew up to Acari’s height this time. “A Nymph? In Canterlot?”

“I felt it… I just didn’t know somepony found it.” Darkblaze replied.

“Who is it? How old is it?” Antenna began before Acari held up her hoof.

“I’m not sure Antenna. My knowledge is just as limited as Shade’s, and given that he knows very little about Nymphs, we know almost nothing.” Acari began hovering, tucking her legs against her body so that she could silence them without impeding her movement.

“That is the exact reason why I need you Antenna.” Acari said. “You are the only Caretaker that I may be able to trust with this situation.”

“Why is that Queen?” Antenna asked.

“Your son.” Acari replied. “He is close friends with Shade. So I believe this to be a perfect opportunity for you to repay for what your Queen did, by helping one who doesn’t follow her.” Acari looked back at Darkblaze. “I’m going to guess you never told her about that little tidbit.”

“I was going to…” Darkblaze replied rubbing the back of his neck.

“Regardless, you are to fly there, and find the pheromone trail along the city’s walls, I have Pupa allowing you three in. So don’t keep them waiting, it would be best to do it under the cover of night. I have already arranged everything you need, you will be staying in the apartment across from Shade and his friends. Stay below the radar of the Royal Guard. Do you understand?”

All three of them nodded.

“Good. So unless there are any Questions.” She turned a corner to which a caretaker flew up to her. “Not now Biome. I need to speak with our newest guest.”

“Acari…I do have a question.” Darkblaze replied. “What if we do get caught?”

Acari paused. “If you do, then I suppose Blackout or Shade will have to bail you out. I barely managed to keep the nobles from attacking Shade when there was just him, now there could be six Changelings in Canterlot they know about. That could cause them to think it is another invasion. That is the last thing we need.”

“Understood… Oh…And I have an idea of what to do with Mustard Eyes.”

“I’m listening?” Acari replied.

“Well…seeing as I’m probably not going to be back for quite some time, and all of my free days are gone, maybe he could take over my spot on the weather team until I get back.” Acari thought it over.

“I will have to put somepony on him… But that could work… Perhaps Haze… She seems to want to talk with Lockup.”

“Well their son is going into Law school soon it only makes sense that they wish to reconnect.” Blackout replied.

“I’ll think about it… It will take much more for me to believe I can trust him again… In the meantime. You three have a city to fly to.”

Chapter 31: Meet the Neighbors

As Twilight suggested, today was a dedicated Research day, specifically on Changeling Paternal responses and physiology of both the Child and adult forms. To test the full extent of Shade’s natural protection reflexes, he was placed on the far side of the room, while Twilight was going to use her magic to pick up Sunspot, who was still scared of Twilight.

Pinkie and Rainbow meanwhile would continue looking for anything outside. Though Shade didn’t hold his breath.

“You sure about this?” Shade asked as he looked at the various devices stuck to his carapace, each one monitoring something different, exactly what Shade wasn’t sure. “Shouldn’t you be wearing some kind of armor…just in case?”

Twilight, who was busy attaching the same devices to Sunspot without magic, waved her hoof dismissively. “I’m sure you wouldn’t do anything too drastic.” After a short pause though she turned to look at him. “Right?”

“Well…you wanted to see the full extent of these instincts, so I’m not going to hold anything back.” Shade replied, which was a lie, he would definitely hold back if he ended up endangering her life.

“On second thought… maybe I’ll just put up a shield…just to be safe.”

Shade just rolled his eyes. “Please do…I don’t want to be the one to explain why you have seventeen stab wounds to the chest…”

“Cold…” Sunspot said as Twilight placed the last monitor on her horn.

“I know Sunspot. It’s almost ready.” Shade replied. “You are almost ready right?”

“Just about… I need to put up a small shield.” Her horn began to glow slightly, and a faint purple shied appeared around Twilight. “You ready Shade?”

“As ready as I’m gonna be.” He replied.

Twilight looked over at Shade, while her horn glowed and she picked Sunspot off the ground a few inches.

“HELP!”

Shade rushed forward, his forelegs turning into blades without input as he began stabbing at the purple shield, trying to get at Twilight, who was recording everything on a clipboard in front of her.

Shade’s forelegs burst into green flame as his blade arms stabbed through the shield, he began to pull them apart, opening up a hole in the shield. As the hole became big enough, Shade hopped through, killing the green flames, he held the blade up to Twilight’s neck.

Now came the hard part, not killing her…

“Twilight! Stop!” Shade said as Twilight’s horn dimmed and the shield around them fell as Sunspot was released. Shade let out a tense sigh as his forelegs changed back into hooves, which he moved away from the Unicorn’s throat.

“Interesting.” Twilight said, as though her life wasn’t just at risk. “You said you didn’t know how to do something like that.”

“I don’t.” Shade replied, walking over to Sunspot. “I just let my instincts take over, they did the rest.”

“Do you feel any weaker?” Twilight asked.

“It’s noticeable, but not by a lot. That flaming arm trick took a bit out of me…” Shade replied, sitting down next to Sunspot. “Then again…I haven’t fed off love substantially for quite a bit. I’m trying not to hurt any of you. Though…I guess I could always fly over to the park and feed there?” He began contemplating this. “Would that technically break one of the rules?”

“I don’t think so…” Twilight pulled a flash card out of her Saddlebag. “No combat magic, no leaving the city, no other disguises than Sunstreak unless directed, we have to be around you. Nope.” Twilight said placing it back into her Saddlebag.

“Daddy.” Sunspot said. “Can we go to the park?”

“Maybe later Spot.” Shade replied. “So what’s next Twilight?”

“Well…I was kind of curious about your ability to modify an existing ponies form.”

Both Sunspot and Shade looked at her confused. “Come again?”

“Well…I was curious how precise your control over your transformations is when you have a pony that already exists.” Twilight explained again.

“Daddy?” Sunspot asked. “What is purple saying?”

“I think she wants to see how precise we can be with our forms.” Shade replied. “So you want me to use your form?”

“That would be the easiest, so that we could see the exact changes and have a form to compare it to.” Twilight replied.

“Alright…” Shade said uncertain. There was a wisp of green flame, and Shade turned into Twilight. “How’d I- I forgot about this.” ‘She’ said when ‘she’ heard ‘her’ voice.

“Fascinating…” Twilight said walking around the clone of herself. It’s very accurate.”

“Thanks I…Hold on… This is going to be very confusing for me…” Shade replied.

“Well might as well start off small.” Twilight said. “Try and turn me into a Pegasus.”

Shade tried, and after three failed attempts, he decided it would just be easier to, instead of getting rid of the horn and growing wings, do it one at a time. Then it turned out to be much easier.

“So…How’d I do…” Shade replied, slightly tired from the failed attempts. ‘She’ opened up the purple wings ‘she’ now had attached to ‘her’ side.

“Very interesting…” Twilight replied. “Now try and fly.”

Shade flapped the wings, but she didn’t manage to get too high off the ground. “It’s a lot harder than it normally is…” Shade replied. “Bone structure probably…”

Twilight nodded. “That does make sense, Pegasi are naturally lighter boned than Earth ponies and Unicorns…” She was scribbling onto a notepad. “But you can modify your bone structure, so that is a great bit of magic, strange how you still don’t have teleportation down.”

“Focus Sparkle.” Shade replied. Knowing how prone she was to going on tangents. “So how much more are we going to do this?”

About an hour later, Shade had transformed into a unicorn version of Pinkie Pie, an earth pony Rainbow Dash, and was currently struggling to turn into anything else.

“Ugh… This headache is killing me.” Shade said rubbing his temples. “We may need to head to the Park soon…” He said.

“Park!” Sunspot said bouncing. Around him.

“Please stop Sunspot…” Shade said, laying down on the floor. “How am I going to go anywhere with this kind of-”

There was a knock on the door, causing all three of them to look at it.

“Rainbow and Pinkie aren’t supposed to be back yet are they?” Shade asked.

“No…They aren’t…” Twilight motioned for the two of them to get into a side room, with difficulty, Shade managed to push Sunspot into the room and close the door.

When Twilight opened the door, the only thing there was a small box, with a card placed onto it reading. “For Sunstreak. From A Friend.”

Twilight looked at the package for a minute, trying to figure out who sent it, the hoof writing wasn’t anyone she was familiar with, and it didn’t seem to have anything bad in it… In fact…nobody even knew they were there aside from her friends, so who sent it…

“Twilight?” Shade asked through the door. “Who is it?”

“Nopony… It’s just a box…”

“A box?” Shade replied opening the door. “Well what’s in it?”

“I’m…I’m not sure… But it’s for you.” Twilight brought the box into the apartment while Shade held Sunspot back from the box.

“Sunspot…stay back until I know what’s in there.” Shade replied, while he was pushing the eager filly away with his hind leg.

“Awww….” The filly replied.

Shade grabbed the box in his hooves, looked at it for a moment and began to slowly open it, then once the box was punctured, his eyes widened and he tore into it.

“Shade…What are you doing?” Twilight asked.

“em moumenning de hack-“ He spat out a rather large amount of paper. “I’m opening the package what does it look like?”

“But…Why?” Twilight asked.

Shade tore off the rest of the top layer of paper to show a box of small spherical crystals, underneath which was a green crystalline tray. “These.”

“Well what are they?” Twilight asked, holding one up in her magic.

“Love crystals.” Shade explained. “And that tray is how I’m supposed to make more of them.” Oo wait… “Except…I was never taught how to…”

Twilight smiled at him happily. “Well this will be an experience for both of us then.”

Shade picked up the card and began to read it.
Dear Sunstreak,

We are your new neighbors, we wish to speak with you privately. Do not show this note to anypony, it is important, meet us behind Donut Joe’s, midnight tonight.

~A Friend

Shade finished reading the letter and looked up at Twilight.

“So what was on the card?” Twilight asked, looking at one of the small crystals.

“Just a note from the sender…” Shade replied. “There’s no name or anything…”

“Strange…” Twilight replied, placing the crystal down as Shade grabbed one and placed it in his mouth. He broke the skin of the crystal with one of his back teeth and let the warm feeling flood through him. His headache receded, and he felt ready to start testing again.

“Daddy… Can I have some?” Sunspot said nudging Shade’s leg.

“Of course Spot.” Shade replied, to which Twilight grabbed her notepad and watched while Shade fed Sunspot. This time he stopped when his head began to hurt a little, but Sunspot still seemed to be fine with it.

“Thanks Daddy.” Sunspot said happily hugging Shade.

“No problem Spot.” Shade said to the changeling filly. “So Twilight, what’s next?”

Next they tried to find out how good Sunspot was at transforming, which caused Shade to end the day with a raging headache. Apparently children use more energy to transform, or can’t control it as well.

Sunspot was clearly new to transforming, she could really only copy other ponies, and they usually had to be near her, she couldn’t exactly modify her appearance, but she could transform into her Sunspot disguise effortlessly, now all they needed to do was wait for Rarity to help them modify it.

“You okay Shade?” Twilight asked after Sunspot fed off him for the fifth time.

“Yeah….Yeah…Brain just…Give me a minute…” Shade held his head in his hoof, the world just kept spinning. “I…Just need…To Sleep for a bit…” He fell onto the floor.

Sunspot giggled. “Daddy funny.”

“Yes he is.” Twilight replied. “Sunspot, we can wait a bit until he wakes up.”

“Okay Twilight.” Sunspot replied, jumping onto Shade’s back and curling up. “I’ll just take a nap with him.” With that Sunspot closed her eyes and the two Changelings stayed there.

“Are you sure that was smart?” Lyra asked Tornado Dust. “This could end very badly if he doesn’t listen.”

“Have some trust in him.” Tornado replied. “I’m sure he’ll show up.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Lyra asked. “This is not only a major breach of our own security, but we may just damage our only way in and out of the city.”

“Oh come on… he isn’t in any danger.”

“Not directly, he can resist a disillusionment spell, as can most of our Guards… However, I fear they will attempt to deduce where we came in, or do a full search of the guard. Pupa won’t forgive me twice.”

“That’s your fault.” Tornado replied. “look…I’ll take the blame if this goes south. But your little memory trick should help us here.”

“It’s difficult for me to do to a lot of ponies. Maybe one or two. I’m a scout, small single targets. I’m not a Cleaner.”

“Well we are going to do it at midnight. So there shouldn’t be too many ponies out… Aside from the Lunar Guard.” Tornado replied. “If you really are worried, then why didn’t you tell me to change the location?”

“Candy Floss would have my carapace if I kept her away from the Nymph.” Lyra replied. “You saw how she was last night, we had to practically pull her into the room.”

Candy Floss was the name they gave to Antenna, granted it wasn’t too good of a name, but it was the only one they knew about that wasn’t taken by anyone else they would run into. She is also currently tied up in the room, as earlier today she almost burst through a wall, a door, and several ponies’ skulls in order to save the Nymph. So both of them decided that it would be best to restrain her for a bit.

“Yeah… I don’t think she would let you do that…” Tornado replied, to which Lyra rolled her eyes.

“Yes… I would enjoy my carapace to remain where it is.” Lyra replied, as the two walked out of the building. “I have to report to Private Clear Wings. You…just stay out of sight of anypony that could recognize you.”

“Not a problem.” Tornado replied. “I can sense Pinkie a hundred yards away, it will be easy to convince Rainbow, and Twilight’s in there with Shade.”

“So long as you’re sure.” Lyra replied. “We’ll meet up in a few hours. Don’t keep me waiting.”

“You know I wouldn’t darling.” Tornado replied mockingly causing Lyra to look at him uncomfortably.

“Ugh…You are enjoying this far too much.”

“Yup.” Tornado Dust replied with a pleased expression on his face. Because of how much Acari’s hive messed with his life, such as taking his sister’s horn, and wiping Shade’s memory, while both of them were short issues. They caused him to cry his eyes out, and fear for his life, respectively. Because of this, he enjoyed every moment of time they spent acting like they were a couple, for the pure reason of it annoying Blackout.

“And I’m going to continue to enjoy it until we’re done here.” Tornado replied, taking off from the ground.

Lyra sighed. “I hate that stallion…” She said under her breath before walking towards the castle.

“Private Clear Wings!” Captain Shining Armor had entered the barracks and called to the sky blue Pegasus. “Get down here!”

The Pegasus in question flew down and saluted to the Captain. “Yes Sir?”

“You were on Watch duty last night correct?” Shining Armor asked.

“Yes sir.” Clear Wings replied. “I was guarding the west perimeter all night.”

“Well… I have reports from some of the Lunar Guard saying you left your post. Are these reports true?”

Damn it… “Sir. I would never leave my post unless given a direct order.”

“So are you telling me the Lunar Guard lied to me?” Shining Armor replied, raising an eyebrow.

“Quite the opposite sir,” Clear Wings replied. “You know full well the capabilities of Changelings.”

“That’s strange Clear Wings,” Shining Armor replied, “because I heard from the Lunar Captain himself that he witnessed you letting three unknown ponies into the city.”

“Sir, I checked them myself, I am familiar with one of them, Lyra Heartstrings. She was with a pony from Ponyville and his cousin. They didn’t have enough to afford a trip to Canterlot in order to visit his father.”

“I don’t suppose you have somepony who could-?”

Shining Armor was cut off by a voice calling from outside. “Clear Wings?”

“As a matter of fact Captain, I do.” Clear Wings replied with a smile. “Follow me sir.”

Shining Armor thought over the situation before beginning to follow the Pegasus out of the barracks. Outside was a mint green unicorn with gold eyes. “Clear Wings!” Lyra ran up to them. “I just wanted to thank you for letting me do this on such short notice and-” Lyra looked at Shining Armor. “Sorry… Is now a bad time?”

“No…No Lyra.” He motioned to Shining Armor. “Captain, this is one of the ponies I helped enter the city, Lyra.”

Lyra’s eyes widened. “Ohmygosh! Prince Armor!” Lyra rushed up happily and looked over Shining Armor. “I’ve been dying to meet you! Ever since the whole Brainwashing thing wore off and I was able to meet up with Bonnie again! I wanted to thank you for getting me out of that cave! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! I mean, I know you weren’t really involved in my rescue, and you didn’t stop me from mauling nearly Twilight and the Princess, but you were there!”

Clear Wings was laughing. “Lyra. I think he gets the point.”

“What?” Lyra asked, looking away from Shining Armor. “Oh yeah…sorry.” Lyra walked up towards Clear Wings. “So…Like I said. Thanks for helping me get them in here. I know it was a report disaster.”

“Oh…It was.” He said under his breath.

“Sorry about that.” Lyra replied. “But I just wanted you to tell you that I’m planning a get together tonight. Are you able to come? I’m sure that Tornado and Candy Floss would want to thank you personally.”

“I’m sorry Lyra,” Clear Wings replied. “I… Have an obligation to the Guard I need to handle tonight. So I’ll be up all night.”

“Well you can’t blame me for asking.” Lyra said with a shrug. “I’ll talk to you some other time Clear Wings.” Lyra said before walking away.

Shining Armor was still in a bit of shock about Lyra, she acted almost exactly like Twilight did when she was younger.

Clear Wings looked at his captain. “I believe that clears up my story.”

Shining Armor shook himself out of his surprise. “Yeah… I still expect a full report from you.”

“Been working on it all day.” Clear Wings said. “Now if that is all, I need to get back up to writing up that report I owe you.”

“Yes. That is it Private, you’re dismissed.” With that Clear Wings took off from the ground and headed back towards the barracks.

Meanwhile Lyra was still nearby. “Twat.” She mumbled to herself as she started to walk away from the castle. “Clear Wings, you could have warned me.”

“Sorry Blackout. I had no idea. Thanks for saving my flank. That entire situation could have ended poorly.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Just do your job. Make sure our meet up point is clear tonight around midnight. We are going to speak with the Changeling then.”

“Will do Ma’am.”

“You better…” Lyra mumbled. “If I get caught here, I will ensure Acari knows about it.”

“Of…Of course Ma’am.”

Perks of being on a mission like this, she could push around the soldier Changelings, granted all of them understood their missions were top priority, however a mission directly given by the Queen has top priority second only to the Queen herself.

“Darkblaze… You better be having an easier time than me.”

How long is this mare going to be on my tail?

Tornado had been flying away from the bright yellow signature he knew was Pinkie Pie. How does she know? While Tornado knew Pinkie had short bursts of predictions, more specifically her tail twitching, which signifies something will fall, but never was she able to use it to find ponies.

“Pinkie… How in the Hive are you following me?”

“Pinkie! Who are you chasing?” Rainbow Dash asked, flying a little behind Pinkie Pie.

“I’m not chasing anypony Dashie.” Pinkie Pie replied. “I’m just running after that cloud.” Pinkie pointed up at a dark gray color that looked like a pony. “It looks funny.”

“Pinkie…” Rainbow Dash slapped her forehead with her hoof. “I will never understand you…”

Damn it Pinkie! Stop! Following! Me! Tornado Dust turned around to see the cyan Pegasus he recognized as Rainbow Dash following behind Pinkie. “For the love of…” Tornado Dust stopped and landed on a nearby building, far enough away that he wouldn’t be seen, but close enough that he could still clearly make out the two.

Rainbow Dash had just facehoofed and few in front of Pinkie, stopping her. While he couldn’t make out what they were saying, he did clearly see that they were arguing.

After a few moments, the two of them began to move back towards where Tornado knew they were staying, no doubt going to talk to Twilight about something. Which signified two things, One: she hadn’t been following him, and Two: He needed to get to the hospital…quickly!

He took off and flew over to the building in question, the tall building had a red glowing cross on it. He flew down and landed in front of the sliding glass doors, which opened as he got close to them, and walked into the reception area.

He looked around the room, seeing a few families around that had foals being comforted by mothers, fathers, or other siblings. The sadness coming off them was very pronounced. The Guards must be starting to die off… Hiding a pang of guilt, Tornado walked up to the receptionist.

“I’m here to see Sapphire.” Tornado Dust said to the gray earth pony behind the desk.

“Name?” The mare asked.

“Tornado Dust.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Yes.”

“Credentials?”

“Really?” Tornado replied, looking at all the ponies around him. “We’re doing this here?”

“No credentials, no meeting.” The mare replied.

“Ugh…fine…” Tornado Dust’s eyes flashed green getting not even a startled reaction from the earth pony. “Now can we go… Preferably before I get caught.”

“Of course.” The Earth pony replied, getting up from the desk. “Follow me.” The Earth pony led him to one of the elevators in the building, walking in, she pulled out a small blue crystal and placed it into the small keyhole under the floor numbers. She pushed it in with her hoof while the elevator began to move down. A few seconds later, the doors reopened to show the hidden hive, the Changelings flying around were still just as hectic as before.

“Keep your disguise on,” The Earth Pony said, “You might rile up some of the patients.”

Tornado Dust nodded. “I only have one question. Have the Guards begun to die off?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I saw a few groups of ponies, all of them were radiating sadness, I want to know.”

The Pony sighed. “Yes, some of them have started to die. We are doing the best we can, but some are beyond help.”

The two of them walked past room after room, each one holding another Changeling, but one caught Tornado Dust’s attention.

He was a large Changeling, his backplate shattered with the pieces inside of a nearby dish, his carapace had cracks running all the way around it, and he seemed to be comatose, even if he was conscious, there was no way he was moving with the amount of cracks on his carapace.

“Is that Bloodpool?” Tornado asked surprised. “What the Hive happened to him?”

“Queen Ovi happened to him.” The Earth pony replied.

“Oh…” Tornado Dust replied. “He deserved it.”

The Two continued to walk until they reached a room marked “Holding Cocoons.”

“Is this where Cytes wanted me to meet her?” Tornado asked. “This doesn’t seem like a very welcoming chamber…”

“Regardless this is where she requested you.” The Earth pony replied, walking through the blue membrane, followed by Tornado Dust, when he stepped through the membrane, his disguise dropped.

“My Queen,” The Earth Pony called into the room. “The Infiltrator has arrived.”

“Thank you Callsign,” From the back of the chamber, a blue unicorn walked up to Darkblaze. Her red-rimmed glasses sat on her snout as she looked over the Changeling with her purple eyes. “So you’re the one Acari told me about?”

“Yes Queen Cytes.” Darkblaze replied bowing. “I’m still confused as to the nature of this meeting.”

“Please… Just Cytes, you aren’t one of my subjects.” Cytes motioned for him to follow her. “Now I’m sure you noticed where we are.”

“Holding Cells, yes I realized.” Darkblaze replied. “But why?”

“You saw the Assassin, he led us to a few other Changelings, and they have been…less than cooperative.”

“Makes sense.” Darkblaze replied.

“They are actually how I knew there was a Nymph in the city.” She stopped in front of two pods, one holding a female, the other a male, he couldn’t make out the pheromone trail, and so he had no idea what their jobs were. “Wake up!” She commanded to the female.

The female opened her eyes, saw Darkblaze, and slammed her hooves into the side of the chrysalis. “Where is she? I know you have her! Tell me where she is!”

“I have no idea who ‘she’ is.”

“Liar!” The changeling shouted. “What did you do to her? I can’t hear her anymore! What did you-?”

“He did nothing.” Cytes said, interrupting the Changeling. “The Nymph is fine, she is under the protection of a Changeling who has proven he wishes to protect her.”

The Changeling glared at Darkblaze. “Traitor.” It hissed at Darkblaze.

“Yeah. Sure, Whatever.” Darkblaze replied. “Why was I brought here?” He asked Cytes.

“I wanted you to reassure her that the child is safe,” Cytes replied. “And see if there is anything we can get out of her, such as the location of any other Nymphs in the city.”

“I’ve told you everything you needed to know.” The Changeling replied. “I told you the deal, let me see her to be sure she is safe, and then I’ll tell you more.”

“So…What do you think I’ll be able to do again?” Darkblaze asked, still confused on the reasons for him being here.

“I just want you two to talk for a while.” Cytes replied, lowering her glasses. “Try and get some kind of information out of her.”

“Forget it Cytes.” The Changeling replied, turning away from them while crossing her forelegs. “I have no intention of giving you any information.”

“Well it’s a good thing you won’t be giving it to me then.” She replied, adjusting her glasses to look at the Changeling. “You’ll be talking to Darkblaze here.” She turned back to Darkblaze. “Now I have some important matters to attend to up in the main Hospital, so I am going to just leave the two of you to talk for a while.” She gave a small smile before walking out of the room, “I’ll speak with you later.”

As Cytes walked through the blue membrane separating the room from the rest of the Hive, Darkblaze looked up at the pouting Changeling. “So…” Darkblaze said after the awkward silence filled the chamber. “What do I call you?”

The Changeling hissed at him before turning away again.

“This is going to be great….” Darkblaze said sarcastically.

Night fell quickly over Canterlot, the sun had set, and been replaced with the dark blue of the night sky. All the ponies lay asleep, almost all.

Shade hadn’t slept at all, he was worried. Worried about these strange ponies that wanted to meet him, worried about Meadow Song, worried about getting caught. But he had to know what they wanted, and how they had emotional gems with them.

He lifted his head to look at the clock, 11:45 PM. Time to go… He looked on his back, where the small changeling named Sunspot was sleeping, curled up on his backplate. He delicately lifted her up using his magic, and got up before placing her back down on the couch. He walked over to the counter and grabbed the knife belt that he hadn’t touched since it was given back to him, however now, it seemed like a good idea to carry something in case this meeting wasn’t so friendly.

He quietly walked over to the window in the room, pushing it open enough for him to squeeze through. Once he was outside, he clung onto the wall of the building and slowly eased the window closed, leaving just enough of an opening so that he could get back in, before a wisp of green fire surrounded him and he became Sunstreak.

This better not take long. Sunstreak thought as he let go of the building and began to fly across the city, he had to be careful though, getting spotted could be bad for him, so he stayed slightly above the small clouds that dotted the sky, using the night to his advantage.

Eventually he found where he was going, a Donut shop that Meadow had shown him on their first day back. It was strange to see it without any lights on, but that wasn’t important. He flew down into the dark back alley that laid behind the establishment. It was dark and dirty, contrasting against the beautiful white and gold of the rest of the city.

“Hey. I’m here!” Sunstreak said when he landed in the alleyway. Looking around him. “What did you want?” Sunstreak looked around the dark alleyway, not seeing anything of any real notice, until he heard hooves from behind him.

“Who’s there?” Sunstreak asked, turning to look towards the sound.

As the owner of the hooves stepped into the moonlight, Sunstreak couldn’t believe who it was. “Hey Snake Eye.” Tornado Dust said.

Sunstreak was shocked at first, but that was quickly changed to anger. He charged at Tornado Dust and pinned him to the wall with his hoof up to Tornado’s throat.

“Whoa! Whoa!” Tornado Dust said surprised.

“What the hell did you do to him?” Sunstreak asked angrily.

“Who?” Tornado Dust replied.

“Where the hell is Darkblaze?” Sunstreak nearly shouted.

“Snake Eye…” Tornado Dust sighed. “I am Darkblaze.”

“Don’t you fucking bullshit me!” Sunstreak grabbed the blade from his side and held it up to Tornado Dust’s throat with his spare hoof. “Now where is he?”

Tornado Dust looked scared. “Snake Eye! It’s me! I’m Darkblaze.”

“Prove it…” Sunstreak replied, there was a wisp of green flame and Darkblaze was standing with the knife right up to neck.

“It’s me Snake Eye!” Darkblaze said nervously.

“Darkblaze?” Sunstreak replied pulling away from the wall. “What the hell are you doing here?” He asked while placing the knife back into his belt.

Darkblaze transformed back into Tornado Dust. “Damn it Snake Eye, how many times are we going to meet with you threatening my life?”

“Sorry…” Sunstreak replied. “I just didn’t expect you to be here…Given… Yah know…”

“Yeah…I know…” Tornado Dust replied, steadying himself. “Listen…I’m not alone here.”

“What do you-?”

“Love moth.”

Sunstreak whirled around to see a mint green Unicorn. “Blackout?”

“Yes… Acari told me to keep an eye on him.” Lyra relied motioning to Tornado Dust. From behind her, a light blue unicorn with a curly pink mane walked up to him.

“Who are you?” Sunstreak asked, looking at the unicorn. Her Cutie mark was that of a purple child rattler, “I don’t recognize you.”

“Should I assume this is Shade?” She asked.

“Yeah… I guess I should properly introduce you two, Antenna, this is Shade. Shade, this is Antenna, or Candy Floss.”

“Sunstreak.” He corrected. “My name is Sunstreak, at least like this.”

“Where is the foal?” She asked.

“Uh…” Sunstreak was taken aback by the question, mostly because she said it so simply. “She’s… back at the apartment, sleeping.”

Tornado Dust spoke up. “Yeah… She was brought here to look after the Nymph.”

“Well… Then how did you guys get here?” Sunstreak asked, “The city is on full lockdown.”

“Friends in high places.” Lyra replied. “We were let in.”

“Um…yeah… Listen… I’m glad that you are here.” Sunstreak replied. “But…I’m not supposed to be out here…”

“What does that mean?” Lyra asked. “Aren’t you technically free?”

“No…” Sunstreak replied. “Technically I am being used for research into the physiology and magical capabilities of the Changeling race.” He said in an authoritive tone. “Or rather, I’m being watched by Twilight Sparkle and are currently breaking three of the rules set on me by Shining Armor. So I would prefer if I not get thrown back in a jail cell.”

“What rules did they put on you?” Tornado Dust asked.

“No going out by myself, No other disguises unless directed to, No leaving the city, No shady behavior, No combat magic, and Twilight has to report to Shining Armor everyday to make sure that I don’t screw something up.” Sunstreak replied. “And I’m fairly certain this is breaking a few of those.”

“Well what do you want to do then?” Tornado Dust replied. “We were told to keep ourselves off the Guards radar.”

“Ugh…” Sunstreak groaned. “That makes this a little more complicated…” He began thinking over the possible ways to break this to the others… and with Rarity coming around tomorrow…Oh Fuck. “Rarity is coming tomorrow…”

“Why?” Tornado Dust asked.

“Sunspot, the child, has taken to using my form a lot, so we are hoping Rarity can…modify it so that she looks more like my daughter than like… a smaller version of me.”

Tornado Dust was biting his lip. “She…She…She thinks you’re her…” He laughed, rolling on the ground. “That’s hilarious!”

“SHHH!” Lyra hissed at Tornado Dust, her horn glowed a golden color as a small bubble formed around Tornado Dust’s head, stopping the sound from waking everyone.

“Yes…She thinks I’m her father…” Sunstreak replied. “Now then….How should we handle breaking the news to the Element Bearers?”

“You aren’t really thinking of telling them about us are you?” Lyra asked.

“I…I don’t know…” Sunstreak replied. “This is…going to be difficult to explain otherwise.”

“How?”

“Well for one, how do I explain Candy Floss over here being cool with a changeling foal?”

Lyra opened her mouth before closing it again “Good point…”

“I honestly don’t care what you do.” Candy Floss replied. “I’m here to look after the foal, and that is all.”

Tornado Dust composed him, so Lyra dropped the bubble around him. “Snake Eye, they already know about you, so just try to think about how they could react to finding out about us.” Tornado Dust replied. “Remember, we are just across the hall.” He placed his hoof on Sunstreak’s shoulder, “Now…you have to think on it, and get back before one of them notice you left.”

“Yeah… You’re probably right…” Sunstreak replied. “I’ll think about it… Now I have to get going.” Sunstreak said, opening his wings.

“Any way you choose to handle this Snake Eye, I’ll understand.” Tornado Dust replied. “We’ll wait until then.”

Sunstreak waved back at him as he took off, flying back towards the Apartment he came from, now with a few more weights added onto his mind.

Report #3: Changeling Transformative Capabilities and Paternal Instincts
Today I tested the capabilities of Changelings to modify their disguises even slightly. As well as the Paternal Instincts. I have discovered that they have the ability to break through a magical shield by imbuing their forelegs with some kind of magical fire, allowing them to pierce through the barrier. I also found that when the foals are in danger, they have very quick reaction speeds, often during the tests only ever going above one second when Shade is placing his focus on something else.

Along with that, they can modify the disguises into any other race, however he refused to try and turn into an Alicorn, I don’t know why, but it seemed important. The foals cannot modify the appearance of their disguises, but they seem to require more energy to transform, probably from lack of experience.

From,

Twilight Sparkle

Chapter 32: Regret & Repression

Sunstreak flew back into the apartment, taking the knife belt off and placing it back on the counter where he found it, but that wasn’t the main thing he was focused on. Now his mind was swimming with a new issue, revealing one of his closest friends.

Darkblaze had been a close friend to him since he found out he was living in Ponyville, while they didn’t get along at first, eventually they did become friends, and he had taught him how to control his abilities. Now the biggest problem comes when he considered the repercussions.

If he didn’t show Twilight, Darkblaze may get caught at some point, then be treated almost the same way he was at first, and that could lead to Antenna and Blackout getting caught, and he could be held responsible for withholding information. Then what was he supposed to do?

On the other hand, if he told Twilight, she would have to tell Shining Armor. That could end better for him, but Darkblaze would be imprisoned. While Darkblaze wasn’t a soldier, he still had more information of the Hive than Shade did, and that gave him a greater strategic worth. But that could also bring a bunch of questions, such as ‘Why is that one pink?’ and ‘Where are the other Hives?’ Which would doom not only Acari’s hive, but Cytes’, Ovi’s, whoever Pupa is, and any other Hives that are in the city.

“Ugh…” Shade lightly groaned. “I need some sleep.” He walked slowly over to the couch, looking at the small filly that was still curled up asleep, she looked so peaceful… And Shade decided not to wake her.

I’ll just sleep on the floor… Shade thought to himself as he laid down next to the couch, “Maybe I can…” Shade yawned. “Get some sleep for once…”

A few minutes later and he was deep in sleep.

“Run!” Shade shouted, looking back at the large, pure black cloud moving towards the two of them.

“What is it doing here?” Razant asked, turning and following after his friend. “It shouldn’t be here!”

“No idea.” Shade replied, “But it’s here, and it’s gaining!” He looked back at the cloud, moving steadily towards the two dragons.

The two of them ran from the cloud, they jumped over lava flows and tried to stay ahead of the black cloud.

“Shade…Hold up…I need …” Razant gasped. “I… can’t….”

Shade stopped and grabbed his friend by the wrist. “You are not giving me any of that crap right now.” Razant had trouble with running long distances, but usually it didn’t affect him, and right now with the Nightmare Fog coming at them, it would be a bad idea to stop now.

Shade began to pull Razant, slowing both of them down.

“Shade…You know…How it works…” Razant replied. “It won’t stop… Unless…”

“You are not giving up on me now!” Shade replied, “Now come on. We’re almost back at the…”

Razant growled at him. “Shade… Neither of us will make it back with me weighing you down.”

“I don’t care!” Shade replied. “We can fight off-”

“No Shade!” Razant shouted. “You have to leave me!”

“Raz I…” Shade replied.

Razant didn’t listen; he grabbed Shade by the wrist and twisted it, forcing him to release his grip. Then he grabbed Shade and threw him away so that Shade couldn’t stop him.

“Raz!” Shade shouted, looking at his friend as he ran back towards the dark cloud. “You’ll kill yourself!”

Shade picked himself up in time for two other Dragons to grab a hold of him and pull him back. “There’s nothing you can do.” One of them said to the thrashing dragon.

“I don’t care!” Shade replied. “I need to stop him! He’s going to kill himself!”

“It’s too late for that I’m afraid…” The other dragon replied, pointing towards the dark cloud, which had begun to recede, leaving a single Dragon behind.

“Raz!” Shade shouted squirming out of the soldiers grasp, running towards his friend. “Raz! Are you okay? You-” he stopped when he saw his friend.

He was on the ground, on all fours, looking at Shade with pure black eyes.

“Raz…?” Shade asked, his heart falling as he looked at him. He was no longer the friend he once knew, now there was nothing but a shell. “Raz… Please…”

His old friend snarled at him, bending his legs to pounce.

“I’m sorry…” Shade said, a tear forming in his eyes as he pulled out the curved dagger he kept on him, fearing what he had to do.

Raz jumped at him, intent to kill in his eyes, Shade caught him in the jump and threw him to the ground, he pinned him by his neck, raising the dagger.

“I’m so sorry…” Shade said as he plunged the dagger into his old friend’s neck, piercing the tough scales. Raz screamed and squirmed as Shade held the knife in place, stopping his old friend from managing to get out, all the while he was fighting tears. The crimson blood flowed over Shade’s clenched hand, as the creature that used to be his friend began to slow its struggles.

When the Dragon stopped its struggles and was lying still, Shade pulled the dagger from its neck and looked at his old friend; the black orbs receded from his eyes. And Shade kneeled down next to his old friend.

“I’m so sorry Razant…” Shade said through tears. “Please… Forgive me…” He began to feel the tears running down his face, but he felt a strange sensation in the back of his neck, telling him he was not alone.

He wheeled around, and felt his heart drop.

In front of him stood a pitch black Alicorn, clad in dark blue armor, her teeth replaced with serrated blades and her blue cat eyes staring back at him. Her mane was the same pitch black color as the Nightmare Fog, and she was laughing.

“N-n-No…” Shade stammered falling backwards. “Y-Y-You can’t be here!” He was struggling to understand as the Alicorn in front of him bent down to pounce. “You- You were destroyed!”

The Alicorn slowly walked towards him, her every foot fall resonating in Shade’s ears. “No!” He said as he backed against a small cliff. “No! You can’t exist!”

The Alicorn stopped, and jumped at him, her mouth opening as if to swallow him whole.

“NO!” Shade shouted, jolting awake. He jumped up from where he was, clinging to the ceiling with his hooves transformed into long claws, each one digging into the dry wall. He was shaking from fear.

“Just a dream… Just a dream…” He repeated to himself, trying to calm himself down. “Just…a…dream…”

He eventually let go of the ceiling, seeing as it now had eight long claw marks dug into it, Shade looked down at Sunspot, still curled up on the couch, sleeping soundly. Phew…

Shade flew down from the ceiling, his heart pounding, his mind racing, he needed to think, he wanted to walk outside, but…

“Oh fuck it.” Shade said under his breath, he walked over to the counter and tore a piece of blank paper from Twilight’s notebook. He grabbed an inkwell and a Quill and began to write on the paper.
Dear friends,

Went to Roof.

- Shade.

Admittedly it was a short note, but since Shade was inexperienced with writing with his mouth, it took about the whole page; he placed the cork back on the inkwell and attached the note to the small fridge with one of the few magnets Pinkie brought with her.

When that was finished, he walked back over to the window, opened it up, and flew out of it. He turned into Sunstreak the instant he was outside and flew straight up the building to land on the flat roof. When he was there, he laid down overlooking the city, and began to think back to the dream.

“I’m so sorry Raz…” Sunstreak said, a tear forming in his eyes. “One hundred years and I still can’t get over it…” He said to himself, wiping the tear away with his hoof.

He looked up at the now clear sky, the black background giving way to the brilliantly twinkling stars, each one blinking back at him. “Korak Pol, A Zallkoruk Mul” He said to himself, something Razant always used to say. ‘Kids play, and Commanders act.’ It was his way of saying that he acts before thinking.

“Why did you have to do that?” Sunstreak said. “Why Razant…?” Sunstreak was fighting back his tears. “Why did you have to leave me like that? You were like a brother to me.”

After a few minutes of Sunstreak sitting there by himself, he heard the flapping of wings from behind him.

“I don’t want to talk about it Rainbow…” He said without even turning to look. “I just need some time to myself.”

“Rough day?”

Sunstreak’s eyes widened. That’s not Rainbow… He turned to look at the entrant, he was a dark blue Pegasus with yellow catlike eyes, he was clad in a dark armor, and his bat-like wings were folding into his side. It was a member of the Lunar Guard.

“Uh…” Sunstreak replied, not sure how he should react in this situation. “Night officer…”

He gave a little salute. “So what are you doing up here?” He asked as he walked up to Sunstreak.

“I’m… I’m just thinking…” Sunstreak replied, he decided to act like he normally would, but that would turn out to be difficult if the bat pony knew about him.

“So like I said, Rough day?” The Lunar Guard asked again.

“More like rough life…” Sunstreak relied. “I’ve been beaten, battered, broken, betrayed, thrown in jail, almost blown up, and in the past month, I’ve had three attempts on my life.” Sunstreak turned back around and looked at the city. “Not to mention the memory I just had to relive.”

“Meaning what?” The guard asked.

Sunstreak sighed. “I had to kill my best friend…”

“Why is that?” The Lunar Guard asked, walking up to him.

“You’d probably throw me in jail because of it…” Sunstreak mumbled. “Short version, he went completely crazy, I had to put him down, or he would have killed me.” Sunstreak began to tear up again. “He was…my best friend…and I slaughtered him…Like a pig…” Sunstreak buried his face in his hooves.

He heard the Lunar Guard sigh, and heard the sound of metal hitting the stone building. “I know what it feels like, to lose somepony close to you.”

“I doubt it’s the same…” Sunstreak replied. “I couldn’t even live with myself for weeks, I cut everyone out of my life, and all I remember from those days was the blood as it…” Sunstreak couldn’t finish that sentence, the lump in his throat was stopping it.

“I may not have had something that bad happen, but I’ve seen lots of soldiers torn apart by creatures…” Sunstreak looked up towards the Pegasus, his eyes had returned to normal, though they still glowed yellow, they were rounded, and the fangs had receded. “Many of them were friends of mine. I had to deliver the message to their families… Seeing their foals… that was always the worst part.”

“And in a more recent example, my brother was badly injured in the invasion, he was…”

“What was his name?” Sunstreak asked.

“His name is Sunglider.”

Sunstreak couldn’t stop himself, he grabbed the guard and embraced him. “I’m so sorry! I’m So Sorry!”

The Lunar Guard had no idea how to react, he was surprised by the sudden embrace from this pony. So he just patted him on the back. “Hey. It’s okay…you don’t need to be sorry, he’s fine. Just…can’t remember us…”

“I’m sorry…” Sunstreak let go. “I’m just… I miss him…”

“What was your friends name?” The Pegasus asked.

“Razant.” Sunstreak replied. “He was a childhood friend of mine… We used to get into so much trouble.” Sunstreak chuckled. “There was one time, we found an old ballista from the Discord Wars, and it launched into a building, taking down about half of it, no one was injured thankfully. But we did get an earful from his uncle.”

“You two sound pretty close.” The Lunar Guard replied. “Almost like brothers.”

“We were…” Sunstreak replied. “We were practically brothers, except…” Sunstreak wiped away the tears forming in his eyes. “He gave his life to protect me… and in return… I…”

He felt a warm hoof around him. “It’s okay… You don’t have to tell me.”

The two sat like that for a few moments. Before Sunstreak looked up at him. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Night Glider.” He replied. “Lieutenant of the Lunar Guard.”

“Sunstreak.”

“Hey…I know that name from somewhere…” Night Glider replied. “Aren’t you supposed to be with somepony?”

“Uh…” Sunstreak replied. “I… I didn’t want to wake them up. So I left a note… and climbed out the window…”

Sunstreak was worried that he would get thrown in a jail cell, until of course Night Glider laughed. “I’ll tell you what Changeling, I’ll let it slide just this once, and only because I can understand why you’re out here.” He grabbed his helmet and placed it back on his head, his eyes turned to slits and fangs jutted from his upper lip. “But don’t let me catch you out here again or I will report to Shining Armor. Got it?”

Sunstreak nodded. “Thank you Lieutenant.”

“No thank you Sunstreak,. You are honestly trying to help my brother out of his…condition.” He spread his bat-wings. “Silver would never admit it, but he’s happy you’re helping us out here. He’s kind of… A hot head sometimes.”

“Tell me about it.” Sunstreak replied. “I was the one who was nearly blown up by him.”

“Oh yeah…” Night Glider chuckled. “I forgot about that. Well I’ve got work to do.” With that he took off leaving Sunstreak to look out over the city again.

“Someone’s looking out for me…” Shade said to himself, he looked up at the starry sky. “Dazhe V Smerti, Raz.”

Russian was often spoken between the two when they were young, a pastime they picked up. He had just said “Even in Death”

“Thanks Raz…” He let out another tear as he turned to look at the rest of the city.

Author's Note

Repressed Memories HO!
Decided to take a look back on the repressed memory Shade had.

Also Any Russian Speakers or those knowledgeable in the language, please tell me that I did not screw up :twilightsheepish: I'm not even going to lie about my inexperience with the language.

Chapter 33: Releasing Guilt

As the sun began to rise over the city, Twilight Sparkle woke up. She walked out into the living room/kitchen room that connected the bedrooms, to the rest of the place.

“Morning Shade…” The instant she said that, she noticed that there wasn’t a large black pony laying on the couch. Only Sunspot, the smaller version was sleeping curled up.

“Oh no…” Twilight began to go into panic mode. Looking everywhere around the room, even in those places that are physically impossible for Shade to get to, and with every place she checked, her panic got worse.

Eventually her panic woke up Sunspot, who was now stretching on the couch. “Purple is acting funny.”

“Sunspot.” Twilight was panicking now, if she couldn’t find Shade, then he could be in danger, or anything else could have happened. “Have you seen your father?”

“Daddy’s not here.” Sunspot replied. “He was scared last night.”

“Scared?” Twilight was curious now…still panicking slightly, but more curious. “By what?”

“I donnow” She replied shrugging. “He was really scared about something.”

“Did you see where he went?” Twilight asked.

Sunspot shook her head. “He opened the window though.”

Twilight looked at the window on the other side of the room, where the window was indeed open. Only managing to increase her panic.

“Oh no… What if he was captured? What if he was-”

“Twilight…” Rainbow Dash said, rubbing her right eye “What are you freaking out about now?”

“Shade’s missing!” Twilight replied, going back into panic mode. “And I have no idea where he-”

“Uhh Twilight.” Rainbow Dash pointed at the fridge, where a note was placed. “I think that’s for you.”

Twilight levitated the note over to her and read through it. “Ah…”

“So?” Rainbow Dash replied, wanting information.

“He’s on the roof.”

Sunstreak was still on the roof, watching the sun as it rose over the city. It was only the second time he had done this, but it was still a beautiful sight. He hadn’t slept for the rest of the night, his mind was too clogged up in thought. Thought about Razant, thoughts about Tornado Dust, thoughts about Meadow. Nothing was really helping him. So there he lay, his mind swirling with problems and repressed memories, all of which were trying to well themselves back up to his mind.

Sunstreak sighed. “What was She doing there…” Out of everything that was on his mind, the one thing that kept breaking his concentration was Nightmare Moon showing up, in his memories no less. He had heard of the powers Nightmare Moon commanded, but he never heard of her being able to infiltrate a Dragon’s dream… Adding the fact that she was destroyed… “How…”

There was a flash of purple light from behind him and the sound of teleportation met his ears.

“So how long did she panic for?” Sunstreak asked without even turning around. “My bets were on five minutes.”

“Ha ha…” Twilight replied. “For your information it was only four minutes.”

“Whatever…” Sunstreak replied, watching the sky change from orange to blue.

“Sunny, what are you doing up here?” Rainbow Dash asked, flying over to him.

Sunstreak sighed. “I-I was…” He paused. “Terrible dream.”

Twilight walked over and sat down next to him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Sunstreak sighed. “Remember when I told you about the Nightmare Fog?”

Twilight nodded. While Rainbow Dash looked confused.

“The Nightmare Fog is essentially Nightmare Moon’s power after she was banished, it was a terrible thing…” A tear ran down his face. “I just…I just relived the memory of killing my best friend…”

“Oh…Sunny…I’m so sorry.” Twilight hugged him comfortingly.

“But that wasn’t all that happened…” Sunstreak replied. “Nightmare Moon was there…”

Twilight and Rainbow Dash looked at each other. “You’re sure it wasn’t just Princess Luna?”

“She tried to eat me… So yes.” Sunglider replied. “I just… I can’t figure out how.”

“With her mouth silly.”

Sunstreak leaned over the side of the building to see Pinkie attached to it with four plungers on her hooves, sticking her to the side of the building.

“Pinkie…” Shade said in a questioning yet accepting tone. “What are you doing?”

“I’m just copying you.” She said as she walked up the rest of the building, every time one of the plungers disconnected with the building, it made a Plop sound. “Why don’t you do it more often?”

“Because it freaks ponies out when they see a Pegasus walking up a wall without any gear on.” Sunstreak replied as the Plungers vanished into thin air.

“Oh yeah…” Pinkie replied. “But you should still do it.”

“Pinkie… Now is not a good time…” Sunstreak was not in a good enough mood for Pinkie’s antics.

“Oh come on Sunny…” Pinkie replied. Turn that-”

Sunstreak dropped his disguise. “I HAD TO REKILL MY BEST FRIEND!” Shade shouted his eyes briefly flashing red. “I’M NOT IN THE MOOD!” He put his disguise back on and flew up to a black cloud above him.

“I’ll talk to him.” Rainbow Dash replied, flying up to him, there was a crack of lightning, and she flew back down. “He uh… doesn’t want to talk right now.”

“Well he’s a grumpy Changeling.” Pinkie replied, looking up at the cloud.

“Pinkie… I think it would be a good idea if you…” Twilight began before stopping. “Huh…”

“What is it?” Pinkie asked.

“Rainbow can you keep an eye on him. I need to research something.”

Rainbow Dash saluted before taking off and flying above Sunstreak.

“Pinkie come with me,” Her horn began to glow. “You are going to help me plan a party for Sunny.”

“Oh Goodie!” Pinkie said happily, in a purple flash, both of them were gone.

“Brrr….” Tornado Dust said as he woke up. “You feel that?”

“What?” Lyra asked. “The anger? Probably just some rich pony getting mad about his eggs or something.” Lyra had much more experience in Canterlot than Tornado did, mostly because he stayed near the Cloudsdale/Ponyville area.

“No… It feels different…” Tornado walked over and pushed open the window, leaning out to try and find the source of the anger. He turned his head towards the sigh. “Whoa…”

“What is it?” Lyra asked slightly annoyed.

“Somepony’s in Greif. Anger, sadness, annoyance, everything you would expect.” Tornado focused on the source. “Snake Eye?”

Lyra became more interested. “You’re certain?”

“Yup…” Tornado replied. “How long till they open up the roof?”

Lyra looked at the clock on the wall. “An hour or so. What are you-”

Tornado Dust pushed the window open. “I’m going to talk to him.”

“Infiltra-” That is as far as she got before Tornado Dust jumped out the window and flew up towards the roof. “Acari Damn it…” She changed into her own Pegasus form, which she still hated, and flew after him.

Tornado Dust was aware that Rainbow Dash was nearby, but he honestly didn’t care. “Snake Eye.” Tornado Dust said as he landed next to Sunstreak.

“Go away.” Sunstreak replied.

“Snake Eye… You can’t just-”

“I said: go away.” Sunstreak replied.

“Snake Eye. What’s going on?” Tornado Dust asked. “You aren’t yourself.”

“Tornado.” Sunstreak said, looking up from the cloud. “I’m… I’m having a bad day…”

“How so?” Tornado Dust asked.

Sunstreak wiped his eye. “I had to relive a terrible memory…”

“Listen… Shade… if you don’t want to talk about it… I’ll understand.” Tornado Dust replied. Placing his hoof on Sunstreak’s shoulder. “But I can’t help if you don’t tell me what’s bothering you.”

Sunstreak sighed. “I suppose it’s only fair…” Sunstreak turned to him. “Remember when you told me about your sister? How much it hurt you to feel her pain.”

Tornado nodded.

“I once had a friend that could have been considered my brother. We did everything together, we got in trouble a lot, but we were always pushing each other to be the best we could be. So much so that we ended up joining the military together.”

Tornado Dust looked at him curiously. “You never told me you were a soldier.”

Sunstreak looked back out towards the city. “I was… one of the most skilled swordsman as a recruit from what I was told. My friend, Razant, wasn’t the same physically as me, he always preferred a little more…flashy method. Lots of throwing knives and smoke bombs. He was a trickster at heart.”

“One day, me and him were on a small patrol outside of a cities limits, looking for any sign of a possible threat…and we found it…”

Shade told Tornado Dust the story of him and Razant, how he came to see him, but before he told about what happened Tornado Dust hugged him.

“Shade… you don’t need to tell me more, I can tell it’s painful. Just…”

Sunstreak looked down at the city underneath him again. “I just miss him…” He said. “Three hundred years we were friends, then to suddenly lose him like that…”

“If you were friends for three hundred years, how old does that make you?” Tornado Dust asked.

“As of my last Hatch-day, I was four hundred and seven.” Sunstreak replied. “he…moved on about one hundred years ago, after the two of us rose through the ranks.”

“What happened after?” Tornado Dust asked. “When my sister died, I couldn’t look at anypony for a week without feeling heart broken.”

“I spent a few weeks in mourning, and then I spent a few months in the wilderness of the Fiords, training…” Sunstreak rose his head. “When I came back to the city, I became one of the best fighters, and I was still emotionally unstable.”

“Meaning what?” Tornado Dust asked.

“One of the standard bullies showed up, big buff dragon, never lost a fight in his life. He started being a dick, and I punched him straight through a wall. He was pretty beat up afterwards too.”

“I’m sure you did…” Tornado chuckled. “Listen…we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

Sunstreak rose his head. “Thanks buddy.”

A bright pink flash from behind them made both of them turn.

“You two need to get a room.” The White Pinkie Pie said as she flew down next to them. “Rainbow Dash was watching the whole thing. Remember Love Moth we’re supposed to be keeping our presence low.”

“Right.” Tornado Dust said before turning to Sunstreak. “Got to go Snake Eye. Don’t go jumping off any cliffs or anything.”

Sunstreak cracked a smile and gave a small salute to him. “No problem. By the way, you never taught me how to make the Love crystals.”

“Just focus your emotions through your horn, it’s that easy.” Tornado Dust replied before flying off the cloud and heading back down to the building below.

“Right…That easy…” Sunstreak looked back out to the city. If I’m supposed to have gotten over it, then why can’t I get rid of this feeling?

“Pinkie!” Twilight shouted at the Pink Earth pony. “I told you to help, not be a hindrance.”

Pinkie was using her plungers to walk up the various bookcases and on the ceiling, continually interrupting Twilight’s concentration.

“Sorry Twilight.” Pinkie said for the tenth time. “But you said you needed me to help plan a party.”

“Yes I remember Pinkie… But something is up… I can’t put my hoof on it.” Twilight had noticed the small spark that flashed in Shade’s eye, but she had no idea what it was. “But before we can do that, we need to find out what was wrong with him…”

“Maybe it has to do with Nightmare Moon?” Pinkie replied. “Oo! Maybe she’s in Sunny!”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Pinkie, that’s ridiculous.” She levitated another few books in front of her. “We destroyed Nightmare Moon. Her power was completely destroyed.”

“You’re right Twilight…so what do you think is going on with Sunny?”

Twilight levitated one of the books in front of her and started to read it, “At my best guess, he is having a relapse. That event must have been traumatizing for him. So it only makes sense he wants to be alone.”

“But he was so angry…” Pinkie replied. “almost like he was…”

“Corrupted?” Twilight offered.

“Yeah…that’ll work.” Pinkie replied, stroking her chin.

“Pinkie… We don’t know anything about Shade’s race, the main reason I wanted you was so that you could check-”

Pinkie had ran off in a pink blur, rushing around the library. She returned a few seconds later, with a number of books balanced perfectly on her head. “Burning Fiords stuff.”

Twilight blinked. “Pinkie…How did you?”

“Sunny wrote in my Party planner in these weird rune thingies.” Pinkie pulled her Party Planner out and flipped to a back page. “I just looked for other ones on the books.”

Twilight was surprised at how good Shade drew the runes in the back of the notebook, given how he could barely write. But the runes on the books were interesting; they seemed to be magically etched onto the books, keeping them from withering from age.

“Ooo…” Twilight said excitedly grabbing one of the books in her magic and flipping through it. But her expression changed as she looked through it.

All of the pages were covered in the runic symbols, some had drawings, pony biology and anatomy, a few on Griffins and Minotaurs, but nothing else really jumped out.

Twilight sighed. “Wonderful. It’s going to take me a few days to translate this out…” She flipped to the back of the book where the writing changed, instead of runic symbols, basic sentences were written, very poorly.

Today, Soldiers trained. Celestia wants practiced swordplay. Writing this makes head sore.

“Hmm…” Twilight replied looking into the next book. The Roman number two was slashed into the cover with what looked like claws. She skimmed through it to find where the sentence structure improved above basic levels.
Day 147,

Luna called me personally to her chamber. She seemed quite serious about something, and I am afraid to write about what we spoke of, in case these journals are discovered. Ever since the sealing of Discord, she has been more and more distant, sealing herself into her chamber during the long nights.

In case this book is ever found, inscribed is a spell to see the memories of the event, it is not safe to write the events in this book, however, I fear what will happen to the Dream Walker, as does Celestia, however I must focus on my duties.

Celestia still insists I write in this accursed manner, teeth were not made for writing, however lacking claws I have no way to recreate the old symbols without my magic.

~ Drak-ill, General of the Celestial Guard.

Underneath the journal was a small glowing rune, one that Twilight remembered. It was an old spell but one that was still used.

“Hmmm… I’m curious…” Twilight’s horn glowed purple as the Rune on the paper began to mimic the glow. After a few seconds, the rune flashed.

A white Unicorn walked through the halls of the old castle, each wall lined with tapestries and marble columns. The daylight was beginning to fade and give way to the gray of night.

The Unicorn was clad in a strange dark armor, like that of the Lunar Guard, except, it wasn’t like their armor, it covered more of the skin, and seemed to be made to defend against strong blows. The ebony sword strapped to his side looked too large for him to wield effectively.

He walked up to a door in the hall, the symbol of a moon etched into its design. He stood outside the door and released a long breath.

He pushed the door open, removing his armored helmet with his magic. “You requested my presence Princess.” He said, looking up to the dark blue Alicorn, her mane looking like a piece of the night sky, blowing in the non-existent wind.

“Yes, Drak-ill, I did.” Luna replied. “I am sorry to request an audience on such short notice.”

“No harm done Princess,” Drak-ill replied, “I chose to protect Equestria after the Tyrant fell. I am a loyal soldier to both you and your sister.” He bowed slightly. “I am also thankful to both of you for allowing me solace.”

Luna nodded. “You have always been a loyal ally to us, as well as a willing confident.”

“You listened to my concerns during the Rebuild, it was the least I could do.”

Luna nodded and looked out towards the window. “You were a creature of the night correct?”

Drak-ill looked up at the lunar princess. “Luna… We- They… Are neither Nocturnal nor Diurnal, we are both. We do not require as much sleep as you do.”

“However you know the beauty of the night?” Luna asked.

Drak-ill walked up to her, placing his helmet on the ground. “Princess, the night is glorious; I could not imagine a world without it.”

“Then why do they ignore it?” Luna asked, looking out towards the small village nearby. “They cower from the night, shielding them from its beauty.”

Drak-ill looked out towards the village. “They require solace.” Drak-ill replied. “They work all day in rebuilding; the Last Battle of Discord took its toll on the village.”

“Then why do they not marvel at the beauty of the night?” Luna asked. “They may sleep whenever they like, why must they sleep in the night?”

Drak-ill looked up at the Princess; her gaze was much different from the calming look she normally held. “Princess, How long have you thought of this?” Drak-ill asked, looking towards her. “You do not seem to be yourself.”

Luna looked down towards the Unicorn. “If you were to choose between me and my sister, which would you save?”

Drak-ill paused for a moment; he had not expected a question to come from either of them, “It will be a Cold Day in Hell before I choose to save but one of you.”

“If the choice presented itself, who would you choose?”

Drak-ill looked out at the village, watching the candles glow in the night, thinking the problem through. “I owe my life to Celestia, she saved me from the Fiords, but I owe allegiance to both of you. You did not make this question easy for me.” Drak-ill looked up to the Alicorn. “I would attempt to save Celestia first, but I would not give up on saving you until the end.”

“I see…” Luna replied. “Leave me.”

“Princess… Is there something…?” Drak-ill began.

“LEAVE!” Luna repeated, using her Canterlot voice, or rather, projecting her voice so that anyone in the near vicinity doesn’t have eardrums anymore, right into Drak’s face.

“Very well, Princess.” He replied with a bow,

Twilight was forced from the memory, the book in front of her closing in the process.

“Pinkie?” Twilight asked, looking around the room. She looked over to see Pinkie had her party planner out along with another of the old books.

“Twilight! You’re back!” Pinkie replied. “When your eyes went all googly I decided to start planning the party. I found some drawings in this book and started my planning around it.”

“Pinkie what are you talking about?” Twilight asked, rubbing her eye.

Pinkie turned the book so that Twilight could see it. Inside the book was a drawing of an Alicorn and a Dragon, behind them was a city and what looked like pegasi and Dragons were flying around and building.

“The Rebuild” Was written underneath the picture.

It pains me that I cannot assist my home country in its rebuild, however I understand why. Any excursion to the Fiords will kill me, and the split from Equestria was sudden. Both sides agreed to separate from one another after the rebuild was complete. My son still sends me letters about the Fiords. I find peace in knowing his condition is improving.

Twilight looked away from the book. “Pinkie, I don’t think these will help us, at least not unless they can tell us how Shade would react to losing somepony.”

Pinkie gasped. “I have an idea!”

Twilight raised her eyebrow. “Well what is it?”

“I think I know how to throw a party for him.” Pinkie replied, grabbing her party planner. “Follow me!”

Sunstreak was still lying on his cloud, looking out over the city. He watched as the ponies below began to go about their lives, walking through the streets, some selling their wares in the street, and some of them just walking aimlessly around.

Sunstreak couldn’t help but feel a little sad when he saw some of them talking amongst themselves, laughing about whatever it is they laugh about, while he was just being that one person that seemed to be bringing everyone else down. He regretted having to yell at Pinkie, she was just trying to cheer him up. In return, he shouted at them.

Sunstreak slammed his face into the cloud. “I’m a terrible friend…” he said to himself. “I can’t keep my promises, I yell at my friends, the only thing I can do right is screw with my own life…” He stood up on the cloud. “That changes right now.”

He hopped off the cloud and began to fly back down towards the room. When he flew in through the window, he saw Sunspot hopping with joy.

“Daddy’s back!” Sunspot said happily.

“Yes I am Spot.” Sunstreak replied. “And I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“What is it?” Sunspot asked.

“We’re going to the park.” Sunstreak replied, turning back into Shade.

“Park! Park! Park!” Sunspot repeated happily.

“But we need to set some rules.” Shade replied, walking up to the filly. “First, no transforming. Second, no running off, you are to stay near me. Third, let me handle any talking.”

“Okay Daddy.” Sunspot replied.

“Alright kiddo.” Shade said lowering his head. “Eat up.”

After Sunspot had had her fill, and Shade had recharged himself with a love crystal, Sunspot grabbed onto Sunstreak’s back and he flew back out the window.

“Look at all the ponies.” Sunspot said, looking down at the ground.

“Yes lots of ponies Sunspot.” Shade replied. “Now don’t let go.” Sunstreak said as he aimed himself to fly towards the park. It was essentially a small bit of grassland that wasn’t overtaken by the city. It was focused around the waterfall, so it was more secluded near the running water.

For Shade, the sight was covered with a light pink flame, almost like the ghost of a fire, he lowered himself down to the ground, and let Sunspot hop off.

“Now remember, no running off.” Sunstreak said as the filly hopped happily on the ground.

“Okay Daddy.” Sunspot replied, she looked rapidly around the small area. Her attention snapping to every pony nearby. “Look at all the ponies daddy.”

“Yup.” Sunstreak replied. “There’s a lot of them.”

“Can I go play with them Daddy?” Sunspot asked, pointing at a small group of foals, from what Sunstreak could tell, they were playing tag.

“Sure Spot. Just be careful alright.”

Sunspot nodded and ran off to go and play with the other foals. Sunstreak walked over to a nearby clear patch in the grass and laid down. He let out a relaxed sigh as his body touched the slightly wet grass. He watched as the foals ran back and forth, chasing each other.

“First time?”

The voice made Sunstreak look away from the small group to find a young looking lime green mare, her purple mane seemed to be curled up in a way that made Sunstreak think about Sweetie Belle. Her orange eyes somehow comforted him.

“What?” Sunstreak asked confused.

The mare pointed at Sunspot, who was chasing a small white colt with a golden mane. “First time father?”

“Uh… Yeah.” Sunstreak replied. “I’m still wrapping my head around it.”

“How old?”

“Uh… She’s around three.” Sunstreak replied.

“Are you sure that she should be playing with those colts?”

“She’s a tough filly.” Sunstreak replied. “She can handle herself.”

As if to illustrate the point, Sunspot rolled down a small hill, ran into a tree trunk, and got right back up, seemingly unaffected. “See?”

The mare looked concerned. “Are you sure she’s alright?”

“Yup.” Sunstreak replied. “Her father has a thick skull.”

The mare chuckled at this. “Gold Dust! Play nice!”

The small white colt had just tackled one of the other foals.

“Look at you two.” Rainbow Dash said as she flew down next to Sunstreak. “I was wondering if you two would get together.”

Sunstreak shot her a death glare. Before it curled into a wicked smile. “Getting jealous Rainbow?”

Rainbow Dash’s mouth hung open as Sunstreak smirked at her. “I-You-Ugh”

Sunstreak laughed. “Don’t worry Rainbow. After I officially divorce Sunspot’s mother, I’ll be yours.”

The mare next to him suppressed a laugh.

“You aren’t even close to my standards.” Rainbow Dash replied.

Sunstreak rose an eyebrow. “You have standards now?” He asked. “That’s not what you said a few days ago when you were telling me about –” Rainbow Dash shoved her hoof into Sunstreak’s mouth.

“We are never… Speaking of that.” Rainbow Dash said. “EVER again.”

Sunstreak nodded and Rainbow Dash pulled her hoof out of his mouth.

“Are you two a couple?” The mare asked them. Sunstreak had to stop himself from laughing.

“No…we are not.” Rainbow Dash replied. “And we never will be.”

Sunspot ran over to the three of them. “Daddy!” She launched herself at Sunstreak. “Park Fun!”

Sunstreak fell over when the filly hugged him. “I’m glad you’re happy Spot.” Sunstreak pulled the filly off of him and placed her on the ground. “So how did you get along?”

“Great!” Sunspot replied. “Can we come back tomorrow?” She asked happily.

Sunstreak smiled. “Only if your new Foalsitter allows it.”

Rainbow Dash looked at him confused. “New Foalsitter?”

Sunstreak leaned in. “I’ll explain later.”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Well whatever that’s about, Twilight has something to show you.”

Sunstreak bent down to let Sunspot on his back. “What’s it about?”

“Something about cheering you up.” Rainbow Dash replied. “That’s all they told me.”

Sunstreak remembered the main reason he had come to the park in the first place, to fulfill a promise he made to Sunspot, and to clear his mind, as well as recharge himself, which was very quick. He even managed to gain enough to try and condense into crystals later.

“Alright, might as well not keep them waiting.” Sunstreak replied as Sunspot wrapped her forelegs around Sunstreak.

“Just follow me.” Rainbow Dash said as she took off from the ground.

Sunstreak turned to look at the mare. “Thanks for the talk.” He waved at her before catching up to Rainbow Dash.

“I’ve found him…” The mare said, her eyes flashing green.

“Rainbow… This is a museum.” Sunstreak said, standing outside the large museum building, it was quite a fancy building, marble columns, statues of royal guards in front, essentially what you would expect from a city like Canterlot.

“This is where Twilight told me to meet them.” Rainbow Dash replied. “She said something about Pinkie planning something”

Sunstreak rolled his eyes. “Inside of a museum? This can only end well.”

“Twilight would pull Pinkie back before she did anything too… Pinkie…”

“That does not comfort me…” Sunstreak replied. “Especially with Sunspot here.” The filly in question was napping on his back, tired out from her running around. “I just… I don’t want her to get spotted. She’s too young.”

“We won’t let anything happen to her Sunny. We’ll make sure of it.”

“Thanks Rainbow…” Sunstreak replied. “Promise me you will hold me back before I bite down on someone’s neck.”

“No problem Sunny.” Rainbow Dash replied. “Now let’s get going, you know how Pinkie will react.”

They walked up the marble staircase, they had to stop at the reception desk, and just as Sunstreak thought, the Museum was mostly empty… Wonder why? It’s a weekday.

The receptionist pointed them to an old exhibit that apparently fell out of use nearly two hundred years ago, but they kept around at the request of Celestia, something about an old friend.

“Wow… this place is old.” Sunstreak said, wiping his hoof across the wall, only to find that it was now covered in a thick layer of dust. Which he wiped on his chest. “They were not kidding about it never being used.”

“How did Twilight manage to get them to open this?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Celestia’s personal student. Must have benefits.”

“Yeah…” Rainbow Dash replied looking at a few of the remaining exhibits. Nothing really caught their eyes, it was mostly just old Equestrian military gear, and the rest…was empty space.

“I’m starting to think this place was shut down for a reason.” Sunstreak said, looking at a very old set of crystalline armor that looked like it impeded movement far too much to be useful. “Most of this stuff dates back to the Discord Wars.”

“Well… we don’t get into many wars around here.” Rainbow Dash replied. “Live and let live ya know?”

“Yeah… I know…” Sunstreak replied. “So why are…”

Twilight teleported in front of them. Catching both of them off guard.

“Hey Sunstreak.” Twilight said. “I’m glad to see that you came so quickly. Pinkie was getting kind of-”

Sunstreak cut her off. “Twilight, why am I here?”

“Well...” Twilight began. “Pinkie and I were looking up anything about the Fiords in the Royal library, trying to find someway to cheer you up… And then Pinkie came up with an idea.”

“What would that be?” Sunstreak asked. He didn’t want to think about Razant again, he had been working on getting better at it, the next idea he had was to talk to Candy Floss about Sunspot, but that didn’t seem possible right now.

“Pinkie wouldn’t tell me. She just insisted I get access to this section of the museum. By the way you aren’t going to get spotted back here, you can drop your disguise.”

Sunstreak turned into Shade in a wisp of green fire, while Sunspot remained curled on his back, still in her Pegasus form. “So what-?”

“Sunny!” Pinkie threw open the door to the section and hopped around Shade. “Oo! You’re going to be so excited! I found something that will make you so happy!” Pinkie grabbed Shade and pulled him into the room.

Inside, there was a bunch of exhibits covered up by what looked like various colors of curtains, in the middle, there was a single red curtain over some kind of display.

“Pinkie what is this?” Shade said looking around the room. “I don’t see anything that would cheer me up.”

“Remember how you said you were sad that you missed your friend and you had nothing to remember him by?”

“No…” Shade replied. “I explicitly remember not telling any of you that.”

“Well it got me thinking.” Pinkie continued regardless. “How can I recreate the feeling of home when we don’t have any lava, poison gas, really big dark clouds, killer flying rays, rocks, or dragons…”

“I get it Pinkie.”

“So Me and Twilight found some old books and then I found something I think you’re going to liiiike” She finished with a sing song voice.

“Well?” Shade asked. “What is it?”

Pinkie stopped hopping and pointed towards a small plaque near the door. Shade walked over and read it.
In Memory of:

General Dragon Dust, 1st Celestial General.

The loyal General and dear friend.

“I still don’t understand Pinkie.” Shade replied after reading the plaque, he turned around to see Pinkie holding the curtain in the middle of the room.

Pinkie pulled off the curtain to show a set of dark armor, similar in shade to the Lunar Guard armor, but it covered nearly the entire body of the mannequin. Shade looked at it wide eyed.

“That…” Shade said, walking up to the armor. He looked closely at it, walking around it in surprise. The detail on the armor was too precise to be made by a pony’s hooves, but they were too intricate to be produced in a large amount, and the material was…

“This is… This is Dragon Armor…” Shade said, flying up to look at the helmet. “But… How is it...” Shade noticed the engraving into the armor, as if etched into it by a claw, it was the Dragon Rune meaning Remembrance. It was a common sign of…

“Drak-ill…” Shade whispered. His right eye widened. “How… I mean…” Shade looked back between Pinkie and the armor. “How did you find it?”

“Well I found a bunch of old books with the runes on it that you drew in the back of my party planner, so me and Twilight started to look through it and I found this!”

She pulled a book out of nowhere and placed it in front of Shade.
Year 398,

I fear my time in this world is coming to a close, the last few centuries have been saddening for me. I’ve seen many soldiers die on the battlefield, or die of old age, I trained their sons, grandsons, and so on. Many of them were friends of mine, having to bury them and see their families… They remind me of my son.

I only have a couple of years left, the doctors say I should be dead in a few weeks, for the dragons, that translates to two years. I have spoken with Celestia, and she has allowed a traditional Dragon burial, while I have insisted Jal’medjeec not be buried with me, I refuse to allow her to be treated as another piece of military hardware.

Celestia has allowed for my armor and equipment to be stored in the Royal Canterlot museum, it is the least I can do to protect her… even if it means that she will be gawped at…

I’m sorry my love…

If any Dragons find this. Take care of her. I beg of you.

~Drak-ill, General of the Dragon Offensive.

~Dragon Dust, General of the Celestial Guards

“This…” Shade looked at the armor. “Drak-ill.” Shade sat down in front of the armor. “So…he did survive…” Shade felt a tear coming to his eye. Not one of sadness, but one of slight appreciation. “Thank you…” Shade said looking at Pinkie. “This means so much…”

Pinkie brought Shade into a hug. “Any way I can cheer up a friend. I will.”

Shade looked at the armor again. “Thanks Pinkie… I just… I want to check something really quick… on my own…”

Pinkie nodded, as Shade placed Sunspot on Pinkie’s back. She walked out of the room, and Shade looked at the armor, it was designed to fit his body, handcrafted by the Dragons of the fiords, but that wasn’t what Shade wanted to check.

He flew up to the side of the armor, near where the Cutie mark was supposed to be placed. After he made sure that no one else was watching him, he turned his hoof into a claw, and ran it across the section.

After a few seconds, his claw came to a stop, getting caught on a small crevice in the armor. “Got ya…” Shade said to himself, he pried open the small compartment and found a six-pointed gem perfectly fitted into the compartment.

He let out a small sigh. “Good… That’s still there…” Shade said to himself. He needed to remember it… just in case… “Through Brimstone and Fire, we die, so others may live…”

He placed the cover back on the gem and flew back down to the ground. “You will never be forgotten Dragon Dust.” He gave a salute, and headed back towards the door.

Chapter 34: Day of Relief

Sunstreak felt much better about the day, his mind taken off of everything else, he had just proven one of the greatest mysteries of his village had just been solved! He was still sad about his friend, but he wasn’t going to let that hold him back.

“So when is she supposed to arrive?” Sunstreak asked, standing at the train station, he was a bit antsy about all of the Guards positioned everywhere. “I’m not exactly comfortable here…”

“Just relax.” Twilight replied. “Getting nervous whenever a guard walks by is going to arouse suspicion.”

“I can’t help it.” Sunstreak whispered. “I don’t want to get thrown back in a jail cell.” Anytime a Royal Guard walked by the two of them, Sunstreak couldn’t help but shiver slightly. Especially with Unicorns, one spell and Sunstreak could kiss freedom goodbye.

“Just… answer the question…”

“A few minutes. Just calm down…” Twilight said. “You’ll draw somepony’s attention.”

“Sorry…” Sunstreak replied. “I’m just glad we got Sunspot back before this… I don’t want her to get caught up in this…”

“You’ll be fine Sunny.” Twilight said calmly. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“yet…” Sunstreak mumbled, earning him a punch in the side from Twilight.

“Don’t give me that attitude. You know full well you wouldn’t do anything like that.” Twilight replied.

“yeah… but again…do the guards know that?” Sunstreak asked. “To them I’m just another insect…”

“As long as my brother is Captain of the Royal Guard, they’ll listen.” Twilight said, smiling reassuringly.

Sunstreak sighed. “You’re right Twilight…” He looked up at the lavender unicorn. “No point in focusing on the bad…” He looked up to the sky. “Although… that is disconcerting…”

Twilight looked up and saw a few Pegasus Guards flying above, looking for any kind of disturbances. A few of them flew off from the group and held positions around the station.

“Probably just a safety precaution.” Twilight replied. “After all, Celestia is very serious about checking everypony that comes into Canterlot.”

“Makes sense…” Doesn’t work… Three of them got past with little opposition. “So how long has it been on lockdown?”

“It was like this when we got here.” Twilight replied. “So I’m not sure exactly…”

The trains whistle echoed through the station, drawing both of their attentions towards the tracks. The steel behemoth was beginning to pull into the station. It spewed the gray smoke into the sky as it began to screech to a halt, sending small sparks into the air.

“11:30 from Ponyville!” A brown Earth pony shouted as the train slowed. “All off for Canterlot! All aboard for Manehatten!”

The ponies on the train began to walk off, which was a large minority given how many were getting in.

“How are we going to find Rarity in this mess?” Sunstreak asked, all of these fancy ponies looked the same to him, both in normal and via emotion, all of them had a small spark of fear, and a lot of some weird gold color that Shade just thought was Pretension.

“Just look for the tower of bags.” Twilight replied.

“Say What?” Sunstreak asked confused. “Tower of bags?” Sunstreak took off from the ground to see above some of the ponies’ heads and top hats. “Ah… I see what you mean…”

By the train there was a rather large pile of suitcases and bags, looking like someone had packed the entire Carousal Boutique in as many bags as possible. Some of which were actually bulging.

Before he could fly over, Twilight pulled him down to the ground with her magic. “Rules… no flying right now. You will draw attention to yourself. Stay on the ground and wait.” She hissed.

“Yes my Queen…” Sunstreak replied, mumbling it so that nobody else but Twilight heard it.

“I’ll hit you for that one later.” Twilight said as Sunstreak picked himself up.

“All ponies entering the city must submit to a disillusionment spell!” One of the Royal Guards called over the crowd. “Pegasi will ensure that everypony is checked. Any attempt to avoid a check will be seen as an act of aggression!”

“They are taking this far too seriously…” Sunstreak mumbled. “This is almost like when they told me to stand up and face the wall with a broken leg and a giant stab wound.”

“It can’t have been that bad.” Twilight replied. To which Sunstreak gave her a look saying ‘Oh really?’ and she replied. “Alright so maybe it was.”

Sunstreak watched as the Unicorns all scanned the ponies walking through. A few of them were using small illusion spells, such as color changing spells and the like, but no Changelings yet.

Sunstreak let out a bored sigh. “I don’t know why they are bothering with this.”

“Why is that?” Twilight asked, the two of them looking on the ponies and sometimes guessing which one was going to have an illusion spell on. “Third row.”

“I’m going with five.” The mare in the fifth row’s hair changed from a luscious green to a grey color. “Called it. Anyway… Acari would have sent the word out to the other Hive's by now… and they have a few ways around it from what I’ve heard.”

“Such as?” Twilight asked. “Number four.”

“Going with one.” Sunstreak replied. “I don’t know exactly… but I’ve heard tell of another few factions inside Canterlot. I’m not sure how they got here, or how they avoided the searches, but they did.”

The stallion in the third row’s coat changed to green. “Should I inform-”

“No. You shouldn’t.” Sunstreak said. “From what I know… none of them are militant. One’s a doctor, one saved me, and I don’t know about the other.” Sunstreak watched one of the other unicorns. “As far as I know all three of them have no intention of doing anything rash. So there is no reason to tell anyone about it.”

Twilight looked suspicious. “I…I’ll trust you. I won’t tell Shining Armor… For now… Anything else you want to tell me?”

“Nothing that you need to know.” Sunstreak replied. Twilight opened her mouth to retort, but Sunstreak was faster. “Rarity’s been cleared.”

Twilight looked over, Rarity had just been checked by a Guard and was now walking over to the two of them.

“Twilight, darling it’s simply wonderful to see you again.” The white unicorn said walking up to them.

“Same to you Rarity.” Twilight replied. “How’s Spike been?”

“Oh he’s been an angel. He’s been keeping the Library from bursting into flames. Less about me darling, how have you been?”

“Fine… We have a lot to talk discuss.”

“Hey Sunstreak!”

“Sweetie Belle?” Sunstreak said, looking away from the two mares to see the small filly running up to them. “What are you doing here?”

“She’s here with me.” Rarity replied. “She insisted on coming to see you.”

“Not that I’m not flattered… But uh…” He leaned into Rarity. “Does she now about me and…you know?”

“Well… Not fully…” Rarity replied. “I told her what she needed to know. That is the main reason she wanted to come with me.”

“Wonderful… I hope that you told her how important it is that it remain secret.”

Sweetie Belle nodded. “My mouth is sealed.”

“Now we simply need to bring my things to the room.” Rarity replied turning back to the large tower of bags.

“Ugh…” Sunstreak groaned, “I predict pain…”

Sunstreak was correct, there was much pain focused on him, coming mainly from him carrying a majority of the tower of bags, he luckily had figured out how to use minor magic by creating a small horn, so he could take off some of the weight, but he didn’t get to use it very much, as ponies would probably freak out at a Pegasus using magic. So he had to deal with the tower of bags until they got to the same floor as the apartment.

“You can stop now Sunny.” Twilight said.

“Oh thank God!” In a wisp of green flame, Shade lifted the bags off his back. “What the hell are you keeping in these? Cement blocks?”

“Don’t be ridiculous darling.” Rarity replied. “I had to bring my-”

“I don’t care…” Shade replied transforming into Comet. “I really don’t…” Comet followed behind Twilight, carrying the bags in his magic. When they got to the apartment, Comet placed the bags in a side room, and turned back into Shade.

“I would hate to see you on camping trips…” Shade said after placing the bags in the side room and closing the door. He then proceeded to fall onto the floor.

“Daddy!” Sunspot started to run over, but saw Rarity and Sweetie Belle and ducked into a side room with a small squeak.

“Oh… and who was that?” Rarity asked.

“That was Sunspot.” Twilight replied.

“I’ll explain.” Shade replied. “Just let me…get my legs to work again…” Shade tried to push himself up, but fell a few times. “Screw it…” Shade buzzed his wings and lifted himself up.

“Sunspot…” Shade said, trying to open the door. “It’s alright…”

“Daddy. They want to hurt me!” Sunspot said through the door, Shade could tell she was scared. “They were there!”

“No…” Shade replied. “They wouldn’t do that…”

“I-I saw them Daddy!” Sunspot said through a sob. “They-They wanted to hurt me!”

“Sunspot…” Shade said softly. “Sunspot… please open the door, I’ll tell them to go… Please Sunspot…”

There was a pause from behind the door. “okay Daddy…”

“Rarity… could you and Sweetie Belle wait outside for me?” Shade asked. “Twilight…please.”

Twilight nodded. “Come on you two. Give them a little space.”

When all three of them left, Sunspot unlocked the door. Shade pushed open the door and hovered in to see Sunspot underneath the bed.

“Daddy?”

“I’m here Sunspot…” Shade said as he laid down next to the bed. “What’s the matter?”

“The-They wanted to hurt me!” Sunspot said.

“No… No they didn’t…” Shade replied. “They’re friends of mine.”

“Friends?” Sunspot repeated. “They don’t look like your friends.”

Shade had to agree, out of all of them, Rarity was probably the odd one out. She was the only one that basically thrived off Canterlot culture, the others looked more fit for Ponyville, and given Sunspot’s first impression with Canterlot society, he didn’t blame her.

“Well…the older one is an acquaintance. I think you would like Sweetie Belle… she reminds me of you.”

“Are you sure they won’t hurt me?” Sunspot asked, Shade leaned down to look under the bed.

“Sunspot… let me tell you a secret ritual I know about.” Shade replied. “Come out from under the bed and I’ll show you.”

Sunspot looked at the older Changeling, before crawling out of the small space.

“This is known as a ‘Pinkie Promise’ it is the ultimate promise. To break the Pinkie Promise, is to unleash a demon that should never be tampered with.” Sunspot’s eyes widened. “And I’m going to teach it to you. First, raise your right hoof.”

Sunspot did.

“Now…follow my motions.” He placed his hoof across his chest, pulled it away, and raised it to his eye.

Sunspot followed.

“Now repeat after me.” Shade repeated the motions. “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a Cupcake in my eye.”

Sunspot copied him.

“Now I Pinkie Promise, Rarity and Sweetie Belle won’t hurt you.”

“Really?”

Shade nodded. “All they want to do, is help us make it safer for both of us to go out in public. So promise me you’ll give them a chance.”

Sunspot nodded. “How are they going to help?”

“I’ll let them explain.”

A few minutes, and a lot of shyness later, and Sunspot was sitting in a chair, Rarity behind her looking at what she had to work with.

“Are you quite certain you want me to do this?” Rarity asked. “After all, Twilight did say that you would be quite violent towards any harm.”

“I have faith in you Rarity. Which is a lot more than I can say after the first time I met you.”

“Oh yes that… By the way, I have been working on that outfit for you, but it may take a while longer to get a hold of more Rubies. I used my last ones for Sapphire Shore.” Rarity began.

“Yes…that thing…” Shade replied. “Listen…just tell me if you can do it or not.”

Rarity flipped her mane. “I can handle anything darling.”

“Great… I need some time to think about something…” Shade said, walking into one of the bedrooms.

“So how long has Sunstreak been a Changeling?” Sweetie Belle asked.

Meadow… Where the hell are you?

Shade’s mind went back into planning mode. He had three different Queens helping him search for the Hive, yet none of them had managed to find out anything! Meadow was still missing, he was determined to find her, but these stupid distractions kept getting in the way.

He used his magic to levitate a map of Canterlot over to him, unrolling it, he placed it on the floor.
Okay… So accounting for locations where Ovi has been searching, and taking out the possibility of them being in the Castle, Hospital, Docks, or Park. That still leaves huge spaces. Not to mention the possibility they are underground. With the whole Mountain being carved out, they could be planning a second invasion and no one would know before it’s too late.

But they wouldn’t try something like that, the guard are still on lockdown, the brute of their forces are here, and not to mention the freaking Sun Goddess that lives right here.

Shade rubbed his face with his hooves. “What I would do to have a Tracer right now…”

Shade looked over the map again, the city was huge, far too big for him to check by himself, and even if somehow the entire Royal Guard were on his side, it would still take days before he found anything of any real use.

“Come on Shade… Use that brain of yours.” He mumbled to himself. “What would you do in this situation?”

Behind enemy lines, needing to stay out of sight, and away from any kind of magical detection. I have a platoon of soldiers, possible civilians, and the only way to gather food is to replace somebody.

“Think. Think. Think.” Shade hit his head with his hoof. “What would I do…?”

Find the biggest threat, neutralize it, and then work on funneling civilians out of the city before a war broke out. Now what is the biggest threat to…

Shade looked out the window at the castle. “Biggest threat… That would be them…”

The first challenge would be Celestia, but she needs to keep running the day, if she vanished, it would send Equestria into a panic, they don’t want a panic, so how would they deal with it? Replace someone close to the biggest contender, Shining Armor… they need him and Cadence to do that bullshit repulsion thing…

“No… No that wouldn’t work…”

After the first time, they would be looking into Cadence far too much for her to be useful, any slip up could get the insurgent captured. Shining Armor would be the next obvious choice, but he needs to lead the Guard, and they are still probably looking into him…

“A base of operations… They need it… So where?”

Shade pulled the map closer, looking at all strategic points on the map, cross referencing distances from where he knew the hives were, to patrol routes, to where he traveled, distance from Castle, distance from Park, nearest wall location.

Shade rubbed his head again. “What if they aren’t in the city?”

The best strategic point is the hospital, infinite love from those families, close to the castle, nobody would think to check the wounded soldiers for being changelings… But Cytes would…

“Okay…Okay…” Shade said to himself. “Remove the possibilities of staying hidden. If I put a hit out on Celestia, how would I-?”

With the change in gears from occupation to Assassination, Shade began to think more openly.

Good distance… Thin glass… Direct line of sight to the throne… Quick exit… But the Guards…

Direct approach is too risky… The power of the Sun would easily destroy any single man strike teams… Even a squadron would have trouble. You would need to neutralize her powers… But how do you turn off the sun?

His mind played through all possible scenarios, a single man strike team would get obliterated before they even came close to her, and if they did, then Luna would be a new contender.

Neutralizing their powers is the only way I can see it working… But how? With Polar opposites, you cannot hope to neutralize one without strengthening the other… So how would they try and…

Shade’s eyes widened. “A mass… Overthrow…”

Shade took apart the plans. “If they don’t go after Celestia and Luna… then who is next in power… Not Cadence, that’s for sure…”

The Queens! They wouldn’t be that stupid… would they?

“No… They’re desperate… Not suicidal…”

Shade rubbed both sides of his head.

Maybe I’m looking too deep into this… Ceymi is a new Queen, so how would she…?

A knock on the door broke his concentration.

“Shade? Are you alright in there?”

Shade shook his head vigorously. “I’m fine… Just… Thinking about what the hive is planning…”

Shade opened the door.

“You come up with anything?” Twilight asked.

“No…” Shade replied, through a sigh. “I can’t think of anything that makes sense from a strategic standpoint, either through Assassination or Occupational standards, anything the Hive attempts is insane.”

“Did you say assassination?” Twilight asked.

Shade nodded. “I’m trying to look at it from every angle. Everything is telling me their plans are crazy. I even went into the thought of ‘what if they try and attack the other hives?’.”

“Well what did you come up with?” Twilight asked curiously.

“The Hospital would be the first target, but after that, the Hives would converge and destroy the Swarm, there is no way for them to handle it stealthily… And a brute force attack will end with every Changeling getting incinerated or something…” He let out a deep breath. “And I still don’t know where Meadow is. I don’t have a clue! And that’s what ticks me off!”

Twilight put her hoof on his shoulder. “We’ll find her.”

“I just hope we can do it before something happens to her…” Shade’s tone became serious. “And if I am too late, I will personally snap their Queen’s horn, tear her wings off, and drown her in a pool of her subjects blood.”

Twilight backed away from him.

“Sorry… Too graphic… I’m just…”

“Stressed is what you are.” Rarity pointed out, still working with Sunspot. “What you need is to take your mind off the whole situation for a while. Stress doesn’t get you anywhere.”

“You’re probably right…” Shade replied. “I have been kind of stressed out the past few days…”

“Oh I completely understand darling, now you have not only Meadow to look after, but this little gem here. Parenthood is never an easy thing to suddenly have happen, many of the most prepared parents I’ve seen don’t get it right until the second foal.”

“Well…Technically this is the second one.” Shade replied. “I’ve got no idea where Meadow is, and I have no idea how to find out…”

“What about these other Hives you were talking about?” Rarity asked. “Surely they could lend some assistance.”

Shade sighed. “All of them are busy handling their own situations.”

“Such as?” Rarity asked.

“Dealing with wounded, watching over their Princess or something, and Acari is helping me handle the Sunglider issue…”

“Sounds as though you have your work cut out for you.” Rarity replied. “Well I simply must help you with this stress problem of yours. A relaxing day is all you need.”

“That would be wonderful… Maybe I could figure out some other reason to originally invade, besides food?” Shade said to himself. “There didn’t seem to be a lack of it at the Hive…”

“So why do you think they attacked?” Twilight asked.

Shade shrugged. “Could have been for any number of reasons. My knowledge of Changelings is still limited, but it could have been for territory, power, economic purposes, a reputation thing, maybe Chrysalis just felt like it… I mean… She doesn’t seem to be the most stable ruler now does she?”

“Not going to argue with you on that…” Twilight replied. “Her plan wasn’t too good to be honest.”

“Oh come on now…” Shade replied. “You’re a smart girl Twilight. Admire the plan a little.”

“Are you siding with her?” Twilight asked.

“What? Why would you even ask that?” Shade asked getting aggravated, but he stopped himself by taking a deep breath. “Okay… listen, from what I’ve worked out, the plan was for you to kill Cadence in rage. Instead of save her, if that had happened, then there was no way they would have lost. A slight miscalculation. No idea why she even kept Cadence alive… But then it… I’m gonna shut up now.” Shade said as Twilight stared at him, her horn beginning to glow.

“I second that motion.” She replied, her horn dying down a bit.

“If you two are going to be firing magical beams at one another, could you please do it in the next room,” Rarity asked. “I would prefer I not injure Sunspot while I work.”

“Sorry Rarity…I… I really need that day off…”

Rarity smiled. “Of course darling. We all need a day off once in a while. If you could get a foalsitter for Sunspot here, I can take you out for a relaxing day.”

Shade smiled. “I have just the mare for the job…”

“Darkblaze, we need to change your disguise.” Blackout said, looking at the newspaper. “You are going to get yourself caught by somepony.”

“Your exaggerating.” Darkblaze replied. “We haven’t been caught yet, and even if we are, what are they going to do? Acari is one of Celestia’s most trusted advisors, she can vouch for us.”

Blackout lowered the paper. “Really? For me, there are reasons why I could be released, but you were there, we have no way to know what you did and didn’t do, Acari has been respectful, but will these nobles really be that happy about it?”

“Oh come on…” Darkblaze replied. “I’ve had worse than anything these nobles could throw at me.”

Blackout raised her eyebrow. “Like what?”

“Spitfire’s Hell Week during Wonderbolt training.” Darkblaze replied with a shiver. “Worst… Infiltration… Ever…”

Blackout smirked. “Maybe that will teach you before trying to join a military force.”

“Queen Chrysalis demanded it, and I couldn’t feel my wings for weeks…”

“So how is Antenna doing?” Blackout asked, raising the paper again. She was looking at the recent claims of Changeling sightings around the city.

“I don’t know how much longer we’re going to-”

There came a knock on the door. Causing both of them to transform into their disguises.

“It’s Sunstreak…open up.”

“Snake Eye?”

“Yeah…open up… I need to talk to Candy Floss.”

Tornado Dust walked up and opened the door, stepping aside to let the red Pegasus in. “What is this about?”

“Well… Rarity has come up with the idea that I need to relax for a day… and I have to agree, as I just sent about half an hour looking into any possible way that Ceymi could kill Celestia…” Seeing Lyra’s expression, he added, “None of them worked out in the end…”

“Well what else made you freak out?” Tornado asked.

“Meadow going missing, I have no idea what Spine is planning, and I have no idea where either of them are… It’s just…”

“Well I think it’s a good idea for you to calm down a bit.” Tornado replied. “So why do you need Candy Floss?”

“I need her to watch over Sunspot while I relax for a while… I figured she would enjoy that.”

Tornado Dust looked back at Lyra. “You want to tell her or should I?”

Sunstreak looked between the two of them confused.

“She’s currently strapped to the bed…” Tornado Dust replied. “We… didn’t want her to… Kill somepony to get to Sunspot.”

Sunstreak looked at him confused. “Oh right…from yesterday’s tests… Sorry about that… Twilight was curious about Paternal Protection responses. She just picked up Sunspot with her magic as a test…”

“That explains the Caretaker instincts.” Tornado replied he pointed at the bedroom door. “She’s just in there if you want to tell her.”

“Anything I should know?” Sunstreak asked.

“She goes for the neck.” Tornado Dust replied. Making Sunstreak stare at him for a second, before he walked up to the door.

“Antenna?” Sunstreak asked through the door, not wanting to intrude on anything, or get shot by magic. “I need to speak with you…”

“Well then come in… I’m not going anywhere.”

Sunstreak pushed the door open to see the changeling tied to the bed with what looked like several lengths of rope. “Hello Antenna.”

“What do you want?” Antenna asked.

“I want you to look after Sunspot…” Sunstreak replied.

“About time.” Antenna replied. “Where is she?”

“She’s just across the hall, Rarity is helping me modify her disguise a bit so that she looks more like my daughter than like me…”

“You left her alone!” Antenna shouted. “With a pony!”

“She won’t hurt her.” Sunstreak replied, seeing Antenna’s scared look. “She’s just gong to change up Spot’s mane a little. Nothing too big.”

Antenna calmed down a bit. “I don’t like this…”

“She’s a dressmaker. What is she really going to do?” Sunstreak asked, “Are you willing to help or not?”

“Yes I am… I just…” Antenna looked sad. “I don’t want my only remaining job to fail…”

“Remaining job?” Sunstreak asked.

“My job was to look after the Queen, and care for the Nymphs…” A tear rolled down her chitin. “I was with her… She told me to live… I don’t want to disappoint her…”

Sunstreak walked up next to her. “It’s alright. You’ll make her proud… I know you will.” Sunstreak was sure that she meant the Queen had told her to live, but that made him think, Is she truly that evil… To tell a servant to live free, instead of watch their leader slowly die? Another thing for him to think about later. “Here let me help you out of there.”

Sunstreak led Candy Floss across the hall, and introduced her to the other two mares in the room.

“So Candy Floss, do you know how special Sunspot is?” Twilight asked.

“Every foal is special, I’ve been a foalsitter for years.” Candy Floss replied. “Won’t be worse than when I took care of Filthy Rich’s daughter.”

“Yes but are you aware of…”

“Yes… I am.” Candy Floss replied. “I can handle it.”

“Aaaaand… Done!” Rarity announced. She moved away from the chair, and Sunspot looked back at them. Her mane was no longer as unkempt as Sunstreak’s, it was now sleek and looked like it had been well cared for, it was slightly longer now too, but in front it had been styled after Sweetie Belle, while in the back it seemed to be more poufy.

“How do I look Daddy?” Sunspot asked Sunstreak.

“You look perfect Spot.” Sunstreak said hugging the little filly. “Now just remember, this is what I want your base form to look like now okay.”

“Okay Daddy.”

After Sunstreak let go of the hug he let the filly look at Candy Floss. “Now Sunspot, this is Candy Floss, she’s going to look after you for the day.”

Unlike every other time she met a new pony, she didn’t try to hide from Candy Floss, instead she ran up and hugged her. “Hello Miss Candy Floss.”

“Hello Sunspot… Aren’t you just a cute little filly.” Candy Floss replied. “How long do you need me to look after her?”

“Probably the rest of the day, if that’s no trouble…”

“None at all.” Candy Floss replied, she looked over at Sweetie Belle. “Do you need me to watch her as well?”

“No, Sweetie will be coming with us.” Rarity replied. “Now if we don’t want for it to be cut short, I suggest we leave now. Otherwise this will have been for not.”

“Alright Rarity.” Sunstreak replied. “Let’s go.”

Sunstreak had been following both Rarity and Twilight while they caught up with each other, Rarity telling Twilight all about what was going on in Ponyville, and Twilight filling Rarity in on her research. Meanwhile Sweetie Belle had been asking Sunstreak questions all the way.

Sunstreak didn’t mind answering the questions, he even managed to apologize for kicking her in the chest before his horn exploded. So that was another weight off his mind.

“So if not all Changelings are bad, does that mean that some of them would want to join in pony lives?”

“Well one of my closest friends before the attack actually told me that he wanted a life away from the hive.”

“Cool… hey do you think they would want to be a Crusader with us?” Sweetie Belle asked, her eyes wide.

“Huh…” Sunstreak replied. “I’m sure a few of them would… but the problem is we don’t exactly… gain Cutie marks… Maybe a Hybrid could…” Sunstreak began thinking about what a Hybrid Changeling would look like, which brought back memories of his first meeting with Acari. “We’ll just have to see when I finally settle down.”

Sweetie Belle gasped. “Do you have somepony in mind?”

Sunstreak looked at the eager little filly. “That’s for me to know, and you to find out later. In other words, no. I might eventually though.”

“We’re here.” Rarity called.

Sunstreak looked up at the building, it was a light comforting blue color, with a variety of flowers designed on a wide sign in front of it reading; The Lotus Garden: Spa and Hair Styling. Sunstreak had seen the building a few times, but he never thought it was a spa it always looked much more like a pool to him, then again, usually he was flying very quickly in one direction.

“Huh… I should have known it would be a spa…” Sunstreak said as he looked at the building. “I’ve never had a spa day… To busy with other stuff out in the Fiords…”

“Like what?” Twilight asked.

“Hunting Phoenix Rays, tracking down the Nightmare Fog, Mourning, having military duties. All that jazz.” Sunstreak replied as the group stepped into the Spa. Almost instantly, Shade was hit with the pleasant aroma of lotus and jasmine.

Rarity walked up to the counter and talked to the spa pony for a bit, before motioning for them to come over.

“Now Sunstreak, I’m not sure what you would enjoy…” Rarity said. “Do you have any-?”

“I just need a day to unwind… whatever you recommend.”

Rarity nodded and pointed to one of the options with her hoof. “Give him this one.”

The Spa pony nodded. “If you could follow me please.” She led the four of them through a set of gilded doors, behind which, Sunstreak could see all the rich ponies who could afford this kind of thing daily, it wasn’t too difficult to pick them out, they were the few who didn’t look the least bit calmed. When the Spa pony was leading them to the back of the room, she stopped Sunstreak from going into the back room.

“I’m sorry, but we need for you to go somewhere else.” Sunstreak opened his mouth is surprise. “Just follow Ortho here.” She motioned to another Spa pony that Sunstreak could have sworn he remembered her from Ponyville.

“Follow me please.” Ortho said, leading him to a separate back room, that was locked with three different keys for some reason….

When the two of them walked in, Ortho closed and locked the door before turning to Sunstreak. “You are safe here. You can drop your disguise.”

Sunstreak turned to her in surprise. “Wha-What disguise?”

There was a flash of blue light and a Changeling was standing where Ortho was. “Therapy Drone 59, Ortho. Nice to meet you.”

Sunstreak was surprised at first, but loosened up slightly. “Hi…”

“Welcome to the Changeling section,” Ortho said. “This is where we can relax without fear of getting caught. The herbal bath is ready.” She pointed to a large tub that reminded Sunstreak of what he saw in the Ponyville Spa.

“Are you from Ponyville?” Sunstreak asked Ortho.

“Yes…well I was… I got pulled back for an incident that occurred earlier this week. Cytes pulled me back here until Ponyville is cleared out.” Ortho led Sunstreak to the tub, where he smelt the various aromas of the bath.

He lowered himself in, as the warm water washed over him. He could feel the warmth from it, almost as his muscles instantly relaxed from the combination of the herbs and the water. He let out a relaxed, “Ahh…” Before feeling his disguise melt away.

“I could get used to this…” Shade said as he sunk into the bath, closing his eyes and letting the warmth and pleasant smells lull him into a state of relaxation. All of his troubles just seemed to wash away.

Meanwhile, under the Hospital, Cytes walked through her Hive, looking into the various chambers that held a few still recovering Changelings. They had managed to clear enough space in the Hive to get the Changelings out of the halls and into their own chambers, which was both a good and bad thing, half of them had survived, while the other half, including all of Chrysalis Changelings they had from the original invasion, had died.

They made sure to keep the assassin alive, he was still in a coma and was only given enough Love to remain alive. Cytes wanted to find out everything she could about him, and about Ceymi.

She was looking over a red-eyed Changeling soldier, whose horn had been snapped off from landing into the outer walls.

“How do you feel today?” She asked the Changeling.

“Still can’t feel the Hive Ma’am.” He replied, his horn had been reconnected using a layer of hardened emotional gel, meant to help with deep damage.

“And how does the rest of you feel?” She asked.

“I can walk, but I’m not sure if I can continue to use magic.” He replied. “My horn is still disconnected from the main base. I cannot even hear my brother.”

“Hmm…” Cytes replied. “Why don’t you try and levitate something for me?”

“Ma’am… I’m not sure that is smart.” He replied as Cytes was pulling a small sphere out of the wall. “It could harm you.”

“Nonsense.” Cytes said, placing the sphere on a small table. “Try to levitate it for me.”

“Of course Ma’am…” He replied. Focusing on the sphere as his horn began to glow a deep red color. The orb was surrounded by it and wobbled slightly while Cytes watched.

Before it could lift off the table, one of the Changeling doctors flew through the blue membrane. “Queen Cytes!”

The Sudden switch in attention caused the Changeling’s horn to fire a beam that rebounded around the room, causing all three Changelings to duck and cover their heads. Once the magic had hit the small sphere, the sphere exploded.

“Eh heh… Sorry…” The recent entrant said nervously as both his Queen and the other soldier glared at him.

“What was the reason you had for barging in here without first consulting me?” Cytes asked pushing herself off the ground.

“Apologies my Queen…” The Changeling replied bowing. “But… The Love Moth we hold wants to make a deal.”

Queen Cytes looked over the damages the magical outburst caused, before looking back at the Changeling. “What kind of deal?”

“She… She says she has information on a large group of captured ponies.”

“And?”

“She didn’t say what she wanted,” The Changeling replied. “She said she would only speak with you…”

Cytes sighed. “I’m sorry Commander, we are going to have to cut today’s meeting short.”

“I understand Queen Cytes. Do what you must.”

Cytes followed the Changeling out of the room. “This better not be a waste of my time.” She said as she walked alongside the Changeling. “I want Celestia on the line as soon as I find out the location.”

“Of course My Queen.”

“And I want Pupa to search it before then so that we can be certain there is no deception going on.”

“Of course your majesty.”

Cytes passed through the thick blue membrane separating the prison from the rest of the hospital.

She walked up to where the female Changeling was floating with her back turned to Cytes.

“What do you want?” Cytes asked. “I thought we had a deal.”

“I’m not the one with the deal.” She said, not turning around. She pointed her hoof at the other Changeling. “He is.”

Cytes looked at him. “Is this true?”

“Y-Yes Cytes…” He replied.

“Well?” Cytes replied. “What do you want?”

“I-I-I”

“Chrysalis damn it…” The female Changeling said turning to Cytes. “He has information on a group of ponies that we foalnapped before the invasion. But he’s too much of a timidly Nymph to say it.”

The male nodded.

“Since we already had a deal Cytes, he wanted to try and get Bloodpool out, they were old friends or something, but since I know that isn’t going to happen, let me tweak my deal a bit.”

“I’m listening.” Cytes replied.

“Let me see my daughter, tomorrow, and I’ll tell you everything you need to know about the storage location” She switched to an almost venomous tone. “And tell whoever is looking after her that I want to see them too.”

Cytes thought over it for a moment, she had planned to reconnect with Shade later that week when Rose Petal was fully recuperated, as she had a lot of trouble sustaining her energy, so Bloodpool must have taken some of her energy for his attack…

“Very well…” Cytes replied. “I will see that it is prepared.” She removed her glasses and pulled the pod off the wall with her magic. “But if I find out you are lying to me, about any of it, I will ensure it is the last time you see her before you are tried by Equestria.”

“I will hold up my end of the deal, just let me see my daughter.”

“If you answer me one thing,” Cytes said. “Who is he?” Cytes looked at the other Changeling.

“To me? Nothing. To Bloodpool? Everything. Ask Bloodpool yourself if you don’t believe me.”

Cytes placed the Changeling back on the wall, picking up her glasses. “Once he wakes, I will. Now I have an operation to get approval for…” She walked out of the room, thinking through her options, it was fully possible that both of them were lying, trying to work out a deal. But the possibility of a stockade of ponies was too big of a risk to take…

“Lifeline!” Cytes shouted through the hive. A small caretaker flew up to her. “Yes Queen?”

“Get in contact with the scout watching Shade, we need him.”

Shade felt monumentally better when he woke up, his muscles felt fresh and all of the stress he never even noticed was gone from them. His carapace now had a nice sheen to it, so whatever was in that bath, was really good at what it did.

The rest of the Spa visit was nothing really spectacular, he was given the standard treatment, most of which Shade paid no attention to, mostly because his mind felt like it was a better idea to just accept it until it was over.

When they were done, Sunstreak walked out of the backroom with his normally unkempt mane combed back, his singed feathers cleaned, and while no one would hopefully see it, his fangs had been sharpened, so that was interesting in case he needed to bite down on something.

“So Sunny,” Twilight said as he walked into the lobby. “How was your first spa day?”

“I can’t believe I never did this before.” He replied. “I see why you enjoy it, I haven’t felt this good in a long time.” Sunstreak flapped his wings. “I feel… so refreshed.”

“Well that is the point darling.” Rarity replied, flipping her mane. “To leave you refreshed and rejuvenated.”

“Like the mighty Phoenix rising from the ashes.” Sunstreak replied. “Only…probably with less fire…”

“Something like that, yes.” Rarity replied. “Now may I suggest we get back before dark. I am not a particular fan of wandering Canterlot at night, beautiful as it is.”

“I’m with Rarity. I still need to write the report for today, and Sweetie Belle still needs her sleep.” Twilight said.

“Alright then. Let’s get going.” Sunstreak ran a hoof through his mane, losing the combed look. “God I hate when my hair is combed… feels like I should keep it like that… Aw well. Live and let live.”

The group walked out of the Spa, the sun was beginning to set, casting an orange glow through the sky. They walked back towards the apartment, when Sunstreak heard something that caught his ears by surprise.

“Fish for Sale!”

Hmmm….. Sunstreak stopped to look towards the source of the call, it seemed to be coming from a Griffin. His head was that of a seagull, while his body reminded Sunstreak of a Snow Leopard. His eagle talons were tipped red and Sunstreak saw the cat-like tail he had.

Sweetie Belle noticed that Sunstreak had stopped. “What are you looking at?”

“FISH! Get your fish here!”

Sunstreak noticed Sweetie Belle’s nose turned up from an unpleasant smell.

“Don’t like fish?” Sunstreak asked. “I can understand it… Just tell me.”

“Why are you looking at that fish?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Well… I think I’m going to have to buy some…” Sunstreak looked at Sweetie Belle’s expression before he turned to make sure that no other ponies were around. He ducked down and let his fangs pierce through his disguise. “You think these are just for show?” His fangs vanished. “Not that I hate vegetation, I was just raised on meat.”

“Sweetie darling, what are you two doing?” Rarity asked.

“I’m thinking of buying some fish.” Sunstreak said, looking at all three ponies expressions, it was clear none of them liked the idea. “For personal reasons. I’ve gained quite a taste for fish since it stopped me from ravenously biting everything.”

“Are you sure?” Twilight asked. “I don’t know if we can really explain why you have it…”

Sunstreak rolled his eyes. “Well…then it’s a good thing we have a window… and a creature whose wings double as fan blades. I’ll make sure the smell is gone.”

“Well… If you’re sure…” Twilight replied. “Here…” She gave him a small bag of bits.

Sunstreak walked up to the Seagull-Griffin’s stand. “Hello there little pony.” He said in an accent that Sunstreak could have sworn was from the north. “How can I help you today?”

“Actually, I was hoping I could procure some of your wares.”

The Griffin was clearly unprepared for this response. He blinked a few times before staring at Sunstreak. “Who put you up to this?”

“Pardon?”

“I know you ponies don’t eat fish, so why are you doing this?”

Sunstreak looked right up at the Griffin, he looked to make sure that no other ponies were around. “Well… It’s kind of a secret… But uh…” Sunstreak motioned for him to come near. Once the Griffin was close enough, Sunstreak whispered. “I’m not a pony…” He flashed his fangs again.

“Oh…Well then…”

“Scream and lose your one…” Sunstreak looked around the street. “And only customer.” He flashed a friendly smile. “I just want some fish…”

“Well… I’ve never been one to turn down a customer. What suites your fancy?”

“It doesn’t smell that bad.” Shade said as he took the bag into the apartment, to more ponies over reacting, except Pinkie… That mare is the strangest out of all of them…

“How can you say that?” Rainbow Dash replied. “It smells terrible.”

“Well to you maybe…” Shade replied, grabbing a pan from out of the cupboard, “but to me it is nowhere near as bad as That” he pointed to the cupboard that held the first containment crystal, “compared to that, this thing is a bouquet of roses.”

“Alright… Just get rid of it as soon as possible alright.” Rainbow Dash replied. “I never understood Gilda’s love for that stuff…”

“She was a griffin, they eat fish, deal with it.” Shade said as he lit a small fire with his horn on the counter. “I’ll be done in fifteen minutes. Then I’ll deal with the smell.”

“I don’t think fish cooks that fast.” Twilight pointed out.

“It does if you have a hot enough flame.” Shade replied, “And since I prefer manipulated fire methods, this won’t take too long.”

In all fairness, it didn’t. Shade was finished in just under fifteen minutes, and the smell was gone in less than twenty.

When he was asked as to why he had to do that by Sweetie Belle, Shade simply replied. “Fish gotta swim, Dragons gotta eat.”

The remainder of the day crawled by, switching quickly from Sunset to night. Shade had a check with Sunspot to make sure she could hold onto her new form, luckily she could, and was able to switch to that one just as effortlessly as before.

Now, Shade lay on the couch, with the small Changeling filly sleeping on his backplate. The two of them slept there, unaware of the shadow watching them from the window. His black wings buzzed silently as he flew towards the window, but instead of ramming into it, he phased through the window without making a sound.

He walked over to where both Shade and the filly were located, his horn glowed black as he lifted the filly off of Shade’s back and placed her on the other side of the room, before he placed his hoof over Shade’s mouth.

“Shhh….” He hissed as Shade woke up from the strange changeling covering his mouth. “I bring a message from Cytes. Nod if you understand.”

Shade nodded his head. And the Changeling removed his hoof.

“The queen has an urgent request for you. She wants you to bring the Nymph to her tomorrow. Nod if you understand.”

Shade nodded again.

“Good.” The Changeling’s horn glowed black as he pulled a small blue crystal out of a small bag on his side. “You will need this.” He placed it in front of Shade. “Once you enter the Hospital, head to the receptionist and tell her who you are. Once you do that, head to the elevator and place the crystal into a small port near the floor buttons. Nod if you understand.”

Exactly what you expect.

“Once the crystal has been placed, touch it with your horn to activate it. You will find yourself inside of the Hive, you are to go to throne room, it is a straight shot from the elevators. Nod if you understand.”

Ditto Mark.

“The Queen has allowed for you to tell one of your allies about this, they are to come with you. If any attempt is made by them to interfere with the inner workings of the Hive, they will be punished. Nod if you understand.”

…..

“Excellent. Now Cytes will speak with you tomorrow.” The Changeling replied, walking away. Shade followed him with his eyes, and saw him stop at the window. “Enjoy your night.” He stepped through the window, phasing through it in a cloud of smoke.

How the fuck?

Shade looked out the window, but couldn’t see any sign of the Changeling. I have to learn to do that…

Shade looked around the room, now fully awake from the sudden burst of adrenaline he got when the Changeling woke him up. He saw Sunspot laying on the other side of the room, so he picked her up and placed her back down on the couch.

Damn it… now I’m awake… What am I going to do now?

Shade looked around the room, looking for anything he could do, and his mind fell on a book on the table, Shade walked over to it, and read the title. “Magic for Dummies: Foals First Spells.”

If I were anybody else…I would feel insulted…

Shade picked up the book and started to look through the table of contents. One spell caught his eye though.

“Lie Spell”

So that is a thing….

Dear Shining Armor,

This morning, Shade was sitting up on the roof of the apartment building, he had a bad dream where he relived the killing of his best friend, it hit him really hard. We spent half of the day trying to cheer him up, and along the way we discovered that General Dragon Dust was a Dragon from the Burning Fiords before he joined with Equestria.

Aside from that, Rarity came for a visit today and helped Sunspot, the Changeling Filly, tweak her disguise a bit. Nothing else really to report today, as it was much more focused on relaxing Shade’s mind.

From,

Twilight Sparkle.

Author's Note

Fun fact: That inner monologue with Shade was me actually trying to figure out where I was going with this. :twilightblush: Don't know why I decided to keep it in...

Chapter 35: Family Meeting

Shade spent most of the night awake, reading through the spell book, it had things like Levitation, Heating spells, Defensive shields, and the one Shade was interested in, Teleportation. He didn’t really keep track of when he fell asleep, all he knew was that the book dropped onto the floor.

When Shade woke up, his eyes had to adjust briefly to the sun’s rays that were shining directly at his face. He let out a small yawn before picking the book off the ground and placing it on the small coffee table. He walked over to the couch to look at the small crystal the Changeling gave him, it was a dark blue, and was only the size of a key. What does Cytes want?

Shade shook away these ideas. She probably just wants to check up on her, nothing big. He took picked up the crystal and placed it into one of the holes in his right foreleg, before closing it in a wisp of green flame.

Shade picked up the book he had been reading and flipped to the page on Teleportation spells. “Now where was I…” Shade scanned the page. “Ah there we are.”

“Enjoying the book?” Twilight asked as she walked into the room.

Shade looked up at her. “Decently… I’m looking into Teleportation spells right now. I figured it would be good to get me out of sticky situations…”

“You sure you know enough about magic for that?” Twilight asked. “It’s a pretty difficult spell to get right.”

“I just want to get familiar with the concept, I won’t use it for long range, probably just to get me out of bad places… A few feet is all I need.”

“Well I can help if you want to practice it.” Twilight replied. “But we are going to need to try and find some more of those stockpiles of emotions from before.”

Shade looked up and remembered the one sided conversation from last night. “Twilight?”

“Yeah?”

“Would you be interested in seeing a Changeling hive?” He asked with a pleasant smile.

Twilight, who had been writing in her notebook, stabbed through a few sheets of paper and looked up. “I…Go…Change…Hive…Wha?” She stuttered quickly.

“Would you be interested in visiting a Changeling Hive?” Shade repeated.

“Would I…Changeling…Huh…” She fell onto the floor.

“uh….” Shade walked over to her. “Twilight?”

Shade looked at her for a second before grabbing a cup of water and tossing it on her.

“Yes!” She said excitedly grabbing Shade and spinning him around. “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!”

“Twilight… I’m going to puke…” Shade said as he was spun around a few more times.

“Sorry.” Twilight said as she let go of Shade. “This could be an amazing experience! Think about how much we could learn! Architecture, building materials, Class systems! Oo! It’s going to be so exciting!” She started levitating supplies into her saddlebag.

“Twilight…”

“Maybe I can get an interview with the Queen? That would be excellent for my research.”

“Twilight…” Shade repeated.

“Celestia would be so…”

“TWILIGHT!” Shade shouted trying to get her attention.

“Yes Shade?” Twilight said, snapping out of her trance.

“Please….calm down. This is not a field trip, and you are a grown mare.” Shade said.

“Sorry…I get carried away sometimes.” Twilight blushed slightly. “So… What made you decide to travel to a Changeling Hive, and why tell me?”

“Well… I was contacted by a fully black Changeling, and he told me that Cytes, one of the Queens, wanted to speak with me. The Changeling told me to bring Sunspot and one of you.” Shade took a deep breath. “And it was between you, Pinkie, and Rainbow. And since he told me not to interfere in the Hive’s business, I figured Pinkie would be a problem, and Rainbow might hurt someone.”

“Why does the Queen want Sunspot?” Twilight asked.

“No idea…” Shade replied. “But I don’t think she will do anything. I mean if she wanted to forcefully take Sunspot, she could have had me killed right there and take her.”

“So… You want me to come with you?” Twilight asked, calmly.

“Yes… As is part of the rules, I must bring you with me. So, are you in?”

“Can I-?”

“Yes…” Shade replied. With that Twilight continued to place Quills, Inkwells, a tape recorder, several tapes, and a lot of paper into her bag.

“Celestia is going to be so proud…” She said to herself. “So when are we leaving?”

“Once Sunspot wakes up.” Shade replied looking towards the small changeling. “Then once she is fed, we can head out.”

Twilight nodded and looked back at the book Shade had been reading. “Do you need any help with anything?”

Shade looked back at the open book. “Well… I could use some help with these defense spells…”

Twilight smiled. “I think I could manage that…”

The first few shields Shade created were barely able to stop a single spell from Twilight, but over the next hour, his shield was capable of blocking out a single spell before shattering.

“You okay Shade?” Twilight asked as Shade was launched into the wall again.

“Yeah…Yeah… Just…” He picked himself up and cracked his neck. “That one hurt…”

“Sorry… But you did tell me to give it my best shot.”

“Yeah… I deserved that…” Shade said, rubbing his backplate.

“What are you two doing out here?” Rainbow Dash asked as she walked out of her room.

“Practicing Shield spells.” Shade replied. “With…mixed results…”

“Well it woke me up.” Rainbow Dash replied, yawning. “So you two should cut it out before Rarity wakes up. You know how she is about beauty sleep.” She looked towards the couch. “Where’s Sunspot?”

Shade pointed to the ceiling. Rainbow followed his hoof to see Sunspot sitting on a fan blade. “Daddy and Purple woke me up.”

“Then she just…walked up the wall.” Shade replied. “Next thing I saw, she was sitting up there.”

“It’s safe up here.” Sunspot replied. “Away from Magic.”

“Yes you are Sunspot. You ready to go?” Shade asked the filly. Who outstretched her hooves.

“Daddy, I don’t know how to get down.” Sunspot replied.

Shade rolled his eyes. “I’m coming Spot.” Shade buzzed his wings and flew up to the little filly. “Hop on Spot.”

Sunspot jumped onto his back as he flew back down to the ground. “Daddy, can I have some food?”

Shade lowered his head to let Sunspot absorb some Love from him before she took her disguise. “Ready Twilight?”

Twilight nodded and grabbed her saddlebags. “Rainbow, can you and Pinkie check around for any possible locations to look for emotional containment gems for when we get back.”

“Where are you three going?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“To the hospital.” Shade replied. “I want to check up on Rose and Sunglider, and maybe we’ll walk through the park on the way back.” At this Sunspot hopped on Shade’s back. “Only if you behave yourself missy.” Sunspot calmed down.

“Well, let’s go then. We’re burning daylight.” Twilight replied. Shade turned into Sunstreak and walked after Twilight. When they were out of earshot Twilight turned to him. “Why didn’t you tell her the truth?”

“The Changeling said I could only tell one of you, I chose to tell you, so I don’t want to mess with a Changeling that can phase through solid matter with ease.” Sunstreak told her about the meeting last night, much to her surprise. “Then he just left.”

“Strange… I’ve never heard of a spell like that before.” Twilight said as the two of them walked out of the apartment building. “That’s impressive magic, to be able to phase through windows…”

“Think about it later.” Sunstreak replied. “You were the one who was so excited about where we’re going.”

“Yes but… That magic is high-level stuff, to think a Changeling could do that…”

“Is it really that surprising?” Sunstreak asked. “I mean…Chrysalis showed you that she was highly skilled with it.”

“Yes but she had also been gorging for weeks.” Twilight retorted. “She had enough to use as much power as she liked.”

“Alright…Alright… Let’s not talk about this again. Especially in front of Sunspot.”

“Agreed.” Twilight replied, looking at the filly. “Instead let’s talk about how you plan on getting us there.”

Sunstreak rose his right foreleg. “I have it right here. We can get in using a small crystal I was given. I was told the instructions. We just need to get there without any…”

“Complications?” Twilight finished.

“Exactly.” Sunstreak replied. “And… it should be just over here…”

The two of them walked for a few more minutes before coming up to the tall hospital building, the white building shining brilliantly with the sun’s rays hitting it. The red Cross acting like a beacon.

Sunstreak took a deep breath before stepping through the see through doors. He could feel the mixtures of happiness, Sadness, and mostly love. “The guards… They aren’t making it…” He mumbled. “Korak Malok…”

She walked up to the receptionist, a gray earth pony. “Name?”

“Sunstreak.”

The Earth pony looked up at him. “Identification?”

Sunstreak’s left eye flashed green.

“Glad to see you are doing all right.” The Earth Pony replied, pushing on the intercom. “Sapphire, Sunstreak is here to see you. He is with a Lavender Unicorn.”

“Send them to me.” Came from the small speaker on the desk.

The Earth Pony looked at them. “Elevators are on the right, you know what to do.”

“Thank you.” Sunstreak replied before following where the receptionist had pointed. They came to a set of two smaller elevators and a larger sized one meant for beds.

Sunstreak pushed the call button, and a few seconds later, a light Ding and the doors slid open.

When both of them were in the Elevator, Sunstreak lifted his right foreleg, in a flash of green fire, a small blue crystal fell unto the ground.

“So how will that help us?” Twilight asked as Sunstreak picked it up with his teeth.

“Just watch Sparkle.” Sunstreak said, placing the blue crystal into the small slot. It began glowing a bright red. Sunstreak dropped his disguise and touched the crystal with his horn, causing it to vanish into the slot.

Sunstreak put his disguise back on as he watched the elevator’s floor indicator switch to say Under Center. When it did, the blue crystal shot out of the slot, and landed on the floor.

Sunstreak bent down and placed it back in his leg as the doors opened. All three of them were surprised by the sight…

The Hive looked almost exactly like the halls inside the Hospital, granted the white walls were replaced by some blue and black rock-like substance, but structurally, it looked the same. Clusters of blue crystals hung on the ceiling, casting light across the underground cavern. A few light blue eyed Changeling’s with dusty purple carapaces flew above them or walked through some kind of blue membrane into separate rooms.

“Wow…” Twilight said, her eyes widened with curiosity. “This place looks amazing…”

“No touching.” Sunstreak said. “Don’t interfere with anything you see going on. That was part of the deal.”

“Yeah…Yeah…” Twilight levitated a notebook and pen out of her saddlebag and began writing in it as they walked.

Sunstreak was interested in the Changelings, some of them were clearly from Ovi’s Hive, with orange eyes and wings, but a few of them reminded Sunstreak of Silver, bright red eyes with red wings and a red backplate. While they walked, one caught Sunstreak’s eye.

“Sunny?” Twilight said noticing him stopping to stare through one of the membranes. “What is it?”

“Why are they taking care of this bastard.” Sunstreak said. In the room he was looking at, lay the assassin who tried to kill him, his backplate lay in pieces next to him, and his chitin still had many cracks through it. “After all he’s done…”

“Who is it?” Twilight asked.

“This is the assassin who tried to kill me…” Sunstreak said, hatred clear in his voice. “I swear… If he tries anything…”

“Sunny… Don’t… He won’t try anything like that again.”

“He nearly killed me, Queen Ovi, Silver, Dr. Rose, Carrie, and everyone else in that building, he wouldn’t have thought twice about it… So why are they caring for him?”

Twilight looked at him. Sunstreak glared into the room, watching the Changeling. “When I find Ceymi, I’m going to make her pay… For everything she’s done… To everyone.”

“I’m here if you want to talk about it.” Twilight said. “Don’t keep it bottled up.”

Sunstreak sighed. “I can’t talk about this… He got what he deserved…” He turned back down the hall. “Come on, we have a Queen to meet.”

Twilight looked back at the Assassin, before following after Sunstreak.

A few minutes later, they found themselves in front of an intricately designed door, blue crystals etched into it, forming the shape of a cross with a syringe across the center of it. Two large Changelings stood in front of it, spears in their hooves and a dark blue armor over their bodies. When Sunstreak walked up, the two of them ignited their horns and opened the door.

The inner chamber was tall, looking like something inside the Castle, it was a long room, the walls decorated with images of certain Changelings, filled with some blue liquid. In the far side of the room, Sapphire was sitting in a large throne, looking over medical documents.

When the door opened, she looked up from the stack of papers at the two of them. “So… You came.”

“Sapphire?” Twilight said surprised. “What are you…?” Her eyes widened. “No…”

“Hello Twilight.” Sapphire said with a smile. “It’s good to see you again.”

“You’re a changeling…” Twilight asked completely surprised.

The documents Sapphire was looking at vanished as she stood up and walked down the hall. “Yes, I have always been a Changeling. Queen Cytes, Ruler of the Medical Hive.”

Sunstreak bowed. “An honor to meet you Your Majesty.”

“You don’t need to do that Shade. You are not one of mine. Sapphire will be fine.”

Twilight looked on in shock. “You’re a…Change…Wha…I”

Sunstreak waved his hoof in front of her face. “Earth to Twilight, are you still with us?”

“Yeah…Yeah…just… Does…does Celestia know?”

“Oh yes…” Sapphire replied. “She knows full well about us. For our own safety, we prefer to stay hidden. Regardless of the good deeds we have done.”

“Can I…See you?” Twilight asked, not sure how to phrase the question.

Sapphire looked over her glasses. “You wish to see my natural form?”

Twilight nodded excitedly.

Sapphire shrugged. “I suppose.” Sapphire adjusted her glasses before there was a large flash of blue fire, and Cytes stood before them. Her horn was curved, but just as long as any other Queen’s, however her body had no holes through it even in her wings, her sky blue mane was pinned up in a bun behind her. Her backplate was a dusty shade of purple. “Impressed?”

“Wow…” Twilight replied, looking at the Queen. “Fascinating…”

“Not to sound rude…” Sunstreak said before Twilight could ask any more questions. “But why did you summon me here?”

Cytes adjusted her glasses. “Well… It is actually a rather important reason. We have the Nymph’s mother.”

“Mommy?” Sunspot asked, looking at the Queen. “Mommy’s here?”

“Yes young one.” Cytes replied. “She has information that is imperative to good relations with Equestria.”

“What kind of information?” Twilight asked.

“The location of captured ponies from the Invasion, she has promised us their location if her daughter is brought to her. If you would follow me, I will lead you there.”

Cytes walked out of the throne room, quickly followed by the three others.

“Umm…Queen Cytes…” Twilight started.

“Please, just Cytes.”

“Um…okay…Cytes, are all of the Doctors in the Hospital Changelings?” Twilight asked.

“Of course not.” Cytes replied. “My Changelings study in the medical field on their own, I employ plenty of ponies as doctors, most of my Changelings travel Equestria on their own, returning here to help when I need it, or traveling to my Daughter.”

“Your Daughter? Where does she work?” Twilight asked.

Cytes looked back at her. “I hope you don’t plan on using this information. I would prefer my Daughter be left out of this. For her own protection. ”

“Alright… Well I was wondering, what Emotions do you mostly feed off of?”

Cytes opened her mouth to speak, but another Changeling flew up to them.

“My Queen, the Emotional reserves sent by the Princess have arrived.”

Cytes turned to the Changeling. “Excellent, get those stockpiles to the patients in critical condition. Spread it out among the rest for sustenance.”

“Of course my Queen.” The Changeling flew off down the hall.

“About time…” Cytes mumbled. “A few more days and it would be too late… ”

“Too late for what?” Twilight asked.

“The Royal guards weren’t the only soldiers fighting against Chrysalis.” Cytes explained. “Many of our own were hurt not only in the fight, but from that repulsion spell.” Cytes motioned to one of the membranes, inside which was an orange eyed Changeling, her horn and wings gone. “They’ve been dying off… either from shock or internal wounds… I asked for support from my Daughter, but this increase in security made it slow.”

Twilight looked at her. “How man-?”

“Fifty seven.” Cytes replied coldly. “Fifty Seven Changelings, twelve Ponies. None of my own luckily… we are understaffed as is…” she sighed before looking back. “However we can stop worrying now. The reserve Emotions should keep them alive, now we just need to focus on the ponies.”

Twilight asked a few more questions before the four of them came to a rather large version of the blue membrane doors; it looked thicker than the other doors, and seemed to mimic the appearance of a crystal.

“She is through here.” Cytes said. “This is the holding area. We had to restrain her.”

Cytes walked through the membrane, as easily as if it wasn’t there, followed by Sunstreak and Sunspot, but when they stepped through, their disguises burned off in a blue fire. “What…just?” Sunstreak said.

“Security measure, the Membrane disables any disguises for a while. You will feel a slight tingling sensation in the back of your throat for a while. Completely normal.”

When Twilight stepped through, her horn was covered in a thin layer of the membrane.

“Oh Twilight, don’t use any magic.” Cytes said as Twilight looked up at her horn. “The membrane will redirect the energy to slowly eat away your horn.”

Twilight’s eyes widened when she heard that. “I-I uh… Got it.” She leaned in to Shade. “It won’t do that will it?”

Shade shrugged. “I never found out.” He whispered back.

The two of them followed Cytes through the holding pods, none of them talking until they came up to two that held other Changelings in them, one had their back facing them, the other looked like it was asleep.

“I already told you Cytes,” The Changeling said as they walked up to her. “I’m not saying anything until I-”

“Mommy?” Sunspot asked, looking at the Changeling.

The Changeling whirled around in the cocoon to look at them. “Echo!”

“Mommy!” Sunspot said happily, jumping on Shade’s back.

“Oh Echo. Are you alright?” The Changeling asked.

“I’m fine mommy.” Sunspot replied as Shade lowered himself down so that she could hop off. She ran up to the cocoon and wrapped her hooves around it.

“I was so worried about you.” The Changeling replied, a tear forming in her eye. “I thought I had lost you.”

“It’s alright Mommy.” Sunspot or Echo replied. “Daddy took care of me.”

The Changeling looked shocked. “Daddy? But…Your father…”

Shade waved at her. “That’d be me.” He said. “I’ve been taking care of her ever since I found her.”

The Changeling blinked at him. “You…You were…Thank you.”

Shade smiled back. “I couldn’t just sit by and watch. I was happy to help.”

“Mommy,” Echo said looking up at the Changeling. “Why are you in a shell?”

The Changeling looked down at her daughter, “Because Mommy helped that mean Changeling my little caterpillar.”

“But… He almost-”

“Shh… I know Echo.” A few tears rolled down her chitin. “I know…”

Shade looked up at Cytes. “Is it possible for you to…let her out for a bit? If not for me, then for her?” He pointed towards Echo, still happily clinging to the pod.

Cytes looked down at Shade. “I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm… So long as neither of you leave this chamber.”

Shade nodded. “I understand and you have my word that she won’t do anything.”

Cytes’ horn began to glow sky blue as she lightly pulled Echo’s mother from the pod, before placing her on the ground where she hugged her daughter.

“Echo… I missed you.” She said, hugging the little filly.

“I think we should give these three sometime alone.” Cytes said to Twilight. “I believe you have questions for me.”

“Yes I do.” Twilight said as the two of them walked towards the exit.

“Mommy, I missed you.” Echo said hugging her mother.

“I know Echo… I know….” She looked up towards Shade. “Where did you find her?”

Shade told her all about how he saved Echo from the group of ponies and took care of her, talking about Twilight’s short experiments using both of them.

“I’m glad to hear you took care of her.” She said when Shade finished. “And…I’m sorry for helping Bloodpool, he threatened Echo…and… I-”

“It’s alright.” Shade interrupted. “We’ve all done things we aren’t proud of. So what’s your name?”

“Mirror…I’m Mirror.” She replied, hugging Echo. “What are you doing in Canterlot?”

“Looking for a filly.” Shade replied. “Her name is Meadow Song, she was taken from me by Commander Spine almost two weeks ago…”

“I’m sorry… I wish there was some way for me to help…”

“Well… I need to find her… I promised her, but what are you doing here is the real question.”

“I’m… I’m raising Echo right.” Mirror replied. “her father… Her father died protecting us when she was still an egg, ever since… I moved to Canterlot and raised her here…”

“Look Mommy!” Echo transformed into Sunspot. “Daddy helped me change!”

Mirror nuzzled her daughter. “I’m so proud of you Caterpillar.”

Shade smiled at the display of affection between the two of them. “You make a good mother.”

“I was taught by the best.” She said proudly. “Five generations of Brood Mothers. What about you?”

Shade looked around the room. “I’m not from a Changeling heritage. I was born a dragon, my mother was… Well… To save time, I’ll put it into pony terms. My mom was a unicorn, magic was her bread and butter, best defensive shields and offensive spells you would find, my father was an Earth pony, strong and durable, but a bit stubborn. I have a cousin too, He would probably be a Pegasus, his wife would definitely be one, loved her long range shots.”

“And you?” Mirror asked.

“I was what was known as a Berserker,” Shade explained. “Skilled in dual wielding, quick slashes, and stealth. We were trained to use crossbows and a bit of magic. Nothing too big.” Shade thought about his first battle. “I was one of the best… Dual long swords and crossbows, I chose a Pegasus.”

“Do you ever miss them?” Echo asked.

“All the time…” Shade replied. “But nothing I can do about it… I’m stuck like this.”

“I’m sorry for you.” Mirror replied. “If someone took my little Echo away, I wouldn’t stop looking.” She nuzzled the filly.

“I’ve gotten over it.” Shade replied. “So how have you been doing in Equestria?”

Deep underground in Everfree, a changeling Queen looks over a pool of foggy blue swirls. Each swirl a separate section of a specific pony’s life, his brother’s birth, enlisting into the Royal Guard, his brothers’ joining him, his wife, his foal, the invasion.

Inside the pool, lay multiple black swirls, each one from the memories of a Changeling, waking up, the Invasion, fighting, a small filly, a Timber wolf, a pink Changeling, a changeling with a cracked chest, Capture.

The Queen in question gazed into the pool, moving her hoof around it, separating the memories, however, no matter how much magic she used, the memories continued to meld, mixing certain characteristics of each, furthering her frustration.

She slammed her hoof into the watery pool. “Curse this wretched pool!”

Her frustration caused a small changeling to fly from a small tunnel above and hover up to her. “Are you in need of some assistance my Queen?”

Acari let out a sigh. “Biome, I doubt you could help me with this.” She said rubbing the side of her head. “There is something you could do for me, check up on Squad K’s progress with finding me that memory gem.”

The Changeling nodded. “Of course My Queen.” She turned and flew off back through the tunnel. Leaving her monarch alone.

Acari looked back into the pool. “This should be working…” She tried to push the memories apart using her magic, but they resisted yet again. “Celestia damn it!” She slapped the pool, causing ripples to disturb the mirror-like surface. “Why is this not working!” The blue and black swirls began to interlock.

The interlocking swirls mixed together, changing and turning into new memories, mixing them together, showing neither perspective clearly and switching between them. “Ugh…” Acari sighed, rubbing her face with her hooves. “Shade…what did you do?”

After she watched the memories swirling together, she pulled the blue crystal from the bottom of the shallow pool. Just as she did, Biome flew back through the tunnel’s entrance, a small purple crystal clasped in between her hooves.

“Squad K found it!” She announced, depositing the crystal on the ground.

Acari quickly grabbed the crystal. “Excellent!” She placed the crystal into the small pool. “Biome. Alert Communications. I will need a direct link to Cytes up when I am done here.”

Biome flew back up through the small tunnel. Acari took a look into the pool as the water changed to a thick purple smoke. On which, writing began to form.

“Reports on Progress for Queen’s Archives.

It has been Twenty-Five weeks since the scout absorbed the pony’s memories. We have tried everything, we thought available. Until we attempted something never attempted before. As the memories of both were stored into a singular Changeling, the Queen used her as a main conduit. Using two other Changelings to help search through the memories to separate them before placing them into their original owners.”

Acari’s eyes widened.
“It took Three hours of uninterrupted focus for the Queen to finish. Using one Changeling close to the absorber, and one close to the victim. This way, the memories could be compared to those closest to them. The three Changelings reported having a severe lack of emotional energy remaining, specifically on the two who the memories were extracted and placed into, they were recorded to be unconscious for over three additional hours before beginning to recover. The Queen is ensuring that this never happens again by enforcing Nymph training.”

As Acari finished reading the report, she grabbed the purple crystal from the water and placed it inside of a glass box on the wall. “BIOME!”

Cytes had been answering a few of Twilight’s questions, while completing the medical forms she needed to fill out, until one of her drones flew through the Emergency access tunnel above her.

“My Queen!” He said with an air of regret. “Acari has just contacted us.”

Cytes looked over the documents at the Changeling. “And?”

“She knows how to fix the Exile!” The Changeling replied. “But…It is dangerous…”

“Sunny?” Twilight said.

“Well out with it…” Cytes replied. “What do I need to do?”

“She needs you to get Darkblaze… And a changeling who is very close to Sunglider.” The Changeling panted slightly.

“Did she say why?” Cytes asked.

“No… She said it was urgent… She also explained that we need Love stockpiles before she can begin in order to avoid any possible repercussions on the three of them.”

“When will she…?”

“Six hours…” The Changeling stated before his Queen could finish. “She said she needed a separate chamber, sealed off from everything else… And that she not be disturbed.”

“Well what are you waiting for?” Cytes asked. “Get everything ready! Go!”

The Changeling bowed before rushing out of the room. Leaving Cytes with Twilight.

“What’s wrong with Shade?” Twilight asked. “And who is Darkblaze?”

Cytes sighed. “I believe Shade is the only one who can answer that.”

Shade had been pleasantly playing around with Echo for a while when Cytes rushed into the chamber. “I’m sorry to cut this short.” She said. “But we need to.”

“Aww…” Echo said. “But I wanted to stay with Mommy more.”

“I’m sorry Echo…” Cytes replied. “But this is urgent. Mirror where is the stockpile?”

Mirror let a small tear roll down her cheek. “They… They’re in a small cave, a mile or so away from Canterlot’s front gate. Bearing East.”

Cytes nodded. “Thank you for your cooperation. I am sorry to have to split up the two of you again so soon, but we need to prep for a raid on that location, and prepare for an operation.” Cytes turned to Shade. “On you.”

“Me?” Shade replied. “What do you…”

“Later.” Cytes replied. “Say your farewells you two.”

“Bye Mommy.” Echo said hugging her mother.

“Goodbye Echo…” She hugged her back. Then she looked towards Shade. “Take care of her for me.”

Shade did the motions for a Pinkie Promise. “Of course.”

Cytes picked up Mirror and placed her back in the cocoon, where she went limp. “She is sleeping. But I need to prep you for the operation.”

“What is this operation?” Shade asked.

“We are planning to save Lieutenant Sunglider using you as a conduit.” Cytes explained. “To do that, we need to get you ready.”

Echo jumped onto Shade’s back. “Daddy. Can I see Mommy again soon?”

“I don’t know Sp- Echo.” Shade replied. “I’m more worried about this operation.”

“You should be fine. Although this hasn’t been done in nearly One Thousand five hundred years. So nopony knows what to do in this situation…”

“Well…This should be interesting…”

When the three of them walked out of the membrane, Twilight walked up to Shade. “So who is this Darkblaze pony?”

“Oh… You uh… You found out…” Shade scratched the back of his neck. “Okay but first…promise you won’t hurt me…”

Author's Note

OH MY GOD! I almost forgot to upload something! :pinkiegasp:

Sorry about that... I've been working on the other story I've been writing and I lost track of time... Again... :facehoof: May not be able to upload the next piece tonight.... If I do... There will likely be Grammar issues galore... So I'll most likely read through it tomorrow and edit it if need be.

Chapter 36: Raid & Recover

Celestia had called an emergency meeting of her military advisors, including Captain Shining Armor, The Lunar Guard Captain, and Spitfire of the Wonderbolts. All of them gathered around a circular table with a map of Canterlot and the surrounding area.

“You are no doubt wondering the nature of this meeting.” Celestia said. “One of our scouting patrols found a small Changeling cave, full of captured ponies.”

“What?” Shining Armor replied. “How many?”

“We aren’t sure.” Celestia replied. “The scouts couldn’t get too far into the cave without meeting resistance.”

“So what’s the plan Princess?” Darkstar asked. “We could easily send in a platoon to…”

“I’m just wondering what I’m doing here?” Spitfire asked. “It’s inside a cave. My Wonderbolts won’t be too effective in there.”

“I need you to support the main strike team that-” She was cut off by a red flame condensing into a scroll. She unrolled it and looked in it. “The main strike team has arrived.”

“Main strike team?” Shining Armor repeated. “What main…”

“That would be me Dented Armor.”

Shining Armor turned at the sound of his old nickname, walking through the door was a bright red Unicorn mare, her armor matching the color of her coat. Flanking her on either side were two red Pegasus, each held a lance in their war saddles pointing up towards the ceiling.

“I leave for one month to handle a situation in the Griffin Kingdom, and I miss not only a Princess’ wedding, but the first attack on Canterlot in nearly one thousand years.” She removed her helmet. “And all I got to do was help quell a rebellion.”

“Crimson Lance,” Shining Armor said, “Wonderful to see you again.”

“How have you been Armor?” She asked, her short orange mane perfectly fitting the shape of her helmet. “Been on a honeymoon with her yet?”

“Commander Crimson Lance,” Celestia said. “I’m glad to hear that the rebellion has been dealt with, but we have more pressing matters.”

Crimson Lance nodded. “The Captured ponies, I was briefed on the way.”

“So you are aware of the plan?” Celestia asked.

“Of course Princess.” She replied, the two Pegasus standing at attention. “My Lancers will get them out. Just tell me when and where.”

“Wouldn’t they want rest?” Darkstar asked. “They just came back from a month long campaign.”

“My Lancers are always ready.” She replied. “Half of them didn’t even see any action, and hearing about what happened in Canterlot, we’re craving for some action. Isn’t that right boys!”

The Two Pegasus saluted. “Yes Ma’am!”

“Well there we go.” Crimson said with a smile. “My team is ready no matter what we have to do.”

Celestia nodded. “I’m impressed Commander, the loyalty you get from your men can be inspiring.”

“I’m just a good leader Your Highness.” Crimson Lance said with a bow, “Just following in my Mother’s hoofsteps.” She walked up to the table, placing her helmet on it. “Now… Let’s go over the battle plans.”

Silver Shield was speaking to his old friend in the recently returned Lancers, Scarlet Dawn inside of the barracks, catching up with him.

“So how’s Sunny been?” Scarlet Dawn asked. “I haven’t seen him around lately.”

Silver looked down at his silvery coat. “He’s in the hospital.”

“What?” Scarlet replied. “What happened?”

“He was hurt by a Changeling during the invasion.” Silver replied. “Can’t remember anything…”

“Damn… I’m sorry Silver.” Scarlet replied, leaning his lance against the wall. “They make any progress on him?”

Silver shook his head. “They aren’t sure when he’ll remember anything, or even if he will…”

“Listen… Silver, is there anything I can…”

“Hey Wingless!”

Both of them looked up to see Night Glider flying above them. “You hear about Sunny?”

“Hey Bat Brain,” Scarlet said. “Long time no see.”

“Hey Crimson.” Night Glider replied, landing next to his brother. “Silver, they think they figured out what’s wrong with him.”

Silver’s eyes widened. “Well what is it? Don’t keep me waiting.”

“They didn’t tell me.” Night Glider replied. “But they said they needed to see you right away.”

“Then what in Tartarus are we waiting for?” Silver asked, grabbing his helmet in his magic. “Did they at least mention why?”

“Something about you being close to him or something.” Night Glider replied. “They kept most of it hidden from me for some reason, all I know is they took him from his room.”

“Sorry Scarlet.” Silver said back to him. “I’ve got a brother to see.”

“Go on you crazy colts.” Scarlet said. “Go save your brother.”

Silver nodded at Night Glider, and the two of them ran from the barracks, heading towards the tall structure of the Hospital. They ran through the streets as the Sun was beginning to set, the few ponies in the streets were either Lunar Guards or Lancers, a few civilians here and there, but for the most part the streets were clear of ponies.

When they made it to the Hospital, the receptionist looked up at them. “Ah, Silver Shield, here for business or a family visit?” Callsign asked.

“I was told to come here.” Silver replied.

“Show me the appointment.” Callsign said at which Night Glider pulled a scroll from underneath his armor and showed it to her.

“Follow me.” Callsign replied, leading them towards the elevators. When all three of them were inside, she pulled a small blue crystal out of her mane. “What you see will surprise you at first. But do not do anything rash.”

Silver looked at her. “Like what?”

“Magic.” She said, placing the crystal into a small slot near the floor buttons, where the crystal began to glow bright blue, and the elevator began to move down.

“Aren’t we on the bottom floor?” Night Glider asked.

“We were.” Callsign replied. “But we need to go underground for this.”

Silver and Night Glider looked at each other as the elevator continued to move down, when the elevator dinged, Callsign placed the crystal back in her mane. “Now please stay calm.”

The door opened, and within a second, Silver had his horn glowing bright red. They were in some kind of Changeling hive. The Changelings didn’t pay them any attention and flew around the caves carrying clip boards, pens, a few carrying clear crystals.

“What did you do to my brother?” Silver hissed, looking at Callsign.

“Please. Calm yourself.” Callsign replied. “Your brother is safe. We needed to bring him down here for his, your own, and Queen Acari’s safety.”

“Give me one reason why I should trust you.” Silver said through his teeth. “Go on.”

“I took the Hippocratic Oath, I would never cause harm to a possible patient. However since you insist.” She turned to look at Silver. “My name is Callsign, I am twenty three years old, Communication Drone 45, and I have served Queen Cytes loyally for all those years and would never think to harm a pony.” She stepped out of the elevator. “Now please, follow me. The Queen has requested your presence.”

Night Glider walks after her, followed shortly by Silver, who kept his horn charged in case of attack.

They walked for a few minutes down the corridors, looking like the hospital above, but full of Changelings instead of ponies. When they began to slow, Silver could hear shouting coming from one of the rooms.

“You never thought to tell me about something like this!”

“Twilight… please I don’t want to…”

“I don’t even know if I can trust you anymore!”

When Silver walked up to the membrane, he saw two Unicorns and three changelings inside. A lavender unicorn was yelling at one of the Changelings while a small changeling played with the other. As he stepped through the membrane, he felt his horn’s magic cut off.

“How many more are you protecting?” Twilight asked the Changeling. “Well Shade?”

“None… Well… That’s not entirely true… Five…but they-” The Changeling turned to look at Silver with an orange lizard-like eye. “Silver?”

“Shade,” Silver replied, “Should have known this had something to do with you.”

“Who are they?” Twilight asked, looking Shade dead in his eyes. “Who!”

“One is a Queen, one is a Caretaker, one you already met, Him,” Shade pointed at the other Changeling. “And then him…” Shade pointed at Silver.

“I’m not a Changeling Shade.” Silver replied, removing his helmet. “What are we doing here?”

“Oh… It’s you…” The other Changeling said when he saw Silver. “From…Ponyville…”

“Wait… What happened in Ponyville?” Shade asked. “Darkblaze?”

The small Changeling ran up to Night Glider. “Ooo…” it said curiously, looking at his yellow eyes. “Shiny…”

“Echo,” Shade said. “Leave the nice Guard alone.”

“But Daddy… He looks funny.” Echo replied, pointing a small hoof at Night Glider. “He looks like a bat.”

Sapphire walked into the room. “Oh good, you’re all here.” She said, looking around the room. “Now… I need you three to leave.” She said pointing between Night Glider, Echo, and Twilight. “I need to be alone with them for a moment.”

Twilight looked at Shade. “This conversation isn’t over.”

“Yeah… Yeah…” He replied. “Just make sure Echo is safe.”

“Fine…” Twilight said. “Just don’t get yourself killed.”

“I’ll try not to.”

Night Glider looked at his brother. “Wingless. Don’t do anything stupid.” Before he could reply Night Glider added. “This is for Sunglider. Remember that.”

Silver nodded at his brother, before Night Glider walked out of the blue membrane wall and down the hall, leaving Silver with the two Changelings.

“So…” Shade said, breaking the silence. “Who here knows what’s going on?”

Darkblaze shrugged, Silver shook his head, but Sapphire looked over all three of them. “You are all here to help fix Lieutenant Sunglider.” She replied.

“How?” Darkblaze asked. “I never met the stallion.”

“Sapphire, with all due respect,” Silver replied. “What is it doing here?”

“He Silver, What is HE doing here? To answer that question, I need to explain this as simply as possible.” Sapphire walked in between them.

“Sunglider’s memories are all trapped inside of Shade’s mind, a side effect of the full emotional drain he did during the invasion.” Shade looked embarrassed at the statement. “And from what Acari has researched, the only way to fix it is to gather two Changelings, each one a close friend to either Shade or Sunglider.”

“Darkblaze, you have known Shade longer than anypony else, and he has confided more in you than anypony could hope to pull from him forcefully, making you the obvious candidate.”

Darkblaze bowed. “I’m always happy to help Snake Eye.”

“And Silver Shield, you have been his brother for as long as you could remember, he protected you, and you protected him. You have been very close to him for as long as you’ve been alive. With the added bonus of being his brother, you were the obvious candidate.”

“I’m always willing to help Sunny.” Silver replied. “But…I’m not a Changeling.”

Sapphire walked up to him. “Yes… Silver, yes you are.” The look of shock on his face is impossible to put into words. “You have always been a Changeling, ever since your birth… You were adopted by your family and we had to place multiple enchantments on you to ensure you never found out… According to everypony, you are just a normal Unicorn Stallion. But to Changelings, you are a fuzzy patch. You have emotions, but they cannot be seen by another Changeling, a side effect of the spells.”

Silver backed away. “That…That’s impossible…” His eyes darted around, looking for something to convince himself that they were lying. “I remember everything…How can I be a Changeling?”

“She is telling the truth Silver.” Shade replied. “I found out you were a Changeling during the assassination attempt, he removed your disguise and you were ready to give up. I helped you.”

“Are you telling me,” Silver began. “That my entire life is nothing more than a lie? That everything that has happened in my life is just some…some…Cover!”

“Of course not Silver.” Sapphire replied. “Only you’re birth, birth certificate, real family, and name are lies. However you had none of those before your adoption, so no harm done.”

“No harm!” Silver replied angrily. “Why would you do something like that?”

“Because your parents couldn’t take care of you.” Sapphire explained. “They wanted for you to live a life where you could be whatever you wanted. Your Queen allowed it, and your foster family didn’t mind.”

“You don’t think this screws with my life?” Silver asked. “How am I supposed to be a Royal Guard, when I’m an enemy of my home?”

“Technically only we are enemies of your home.” Darkblaze replied, to which Shade elbowed him in the side.

“I know this is hard for you,” Sapphire replied, “But we need your help to save your brother. Afterwards, I will remove your memories of this meeting if you wish.”

Silver looked between the blue unicorn and the Changelings. “I’m only doing this to save my brother. Whatever I have to do, I will. I don’t give a damn if I am a Changeling or not. So long as my brother remembers me.”

Sapphire nodded. “Now… I am going to have to remove your disguise for this to work. Are you prepared to see your real form?”

Silver sighed. “Let’s get this over with…” There was a bright blue flash, and Silver looked down at himself. His silver coat replaced with black chitin, Holes in his hooves. Looking on his back, he saw a pair of red insect wings and a red backplate. “This… This is going to take some getting used to…”

“I had the same problem.” Shade replied. “Take baby steps.”

“If you three could follow me.” Sapphire said, levitating Silver’s helmet back to him. “We need to go somewhere more secluded. Acari needs somewhere she will not be disturbed.”

The three of them nodded to Sapphire and Silver placed his helmet back on, which seemed to perfectly fit even in his changeling form.

“I’ve been curious about something…” Darkblaze said, looking back at Silver, “How come only some of the Royal Guards armor change their colors and other remain how they are?”

Silver, who had been looking at the new wings on his back, turned towards Darkblaze. “Ranks and preference. Low ranking Guards wear the fully enchanted armor. That variant changes the magic color, eye color, coat color, some even change the voice.”

“Once you rise up a bit, the armor enchantment can be modified, most of those I know of prefer wearing an enchanted helmet, myself included. Shows a bit of uniformity, unless you join a special force division. The Wonderbolts don’t have any kind of kind of enchantment, only really a lightning rod spell to keep them safe in storms. The Lancers are all required to wear the enchanted armor, and then the only time the Lunar Guard armor isn’t enchanted is when the Guards have the enchantment infused into them.”

“They can do that?” Shade asked. “Isn’t that kind of… Dangerous?”

“They dedicate their life to the force, the enchantment lets them stay awake during the night, but those who get the body enchantment become fully nocturnal. Usually only the Captains get that kind of enchantment though.”

“So what about Mares on the force?” Shade asked. “I mean in the Fiords, Females were usually on the battlefield as much as males were.”

“They aren’t as prevalent. Spitfire and Crimson Lance are the only Mares I know of who lead a squadron. Crimson leads the Lancers, and Spitfire leads the Wonderbolts.”

“Well… I guess when your main leaders are both females and are also gods, you don’t exactly need much else.” Shade replied. “This world has a lot of Female leaders…”

Sapphire looked back at him. “Is that a problem?”

“Uh… No. I just… Uh…” Shade looked surprised but calmed down quickly. “In the Fiords we had a council. Both males and Females were prevalent in the group. I’m just.... Stating an observation. Between all the Changeling Queens and the Princesses. There’s a lot of female monarchs… Just sayin’…”

Sapphire chuckled. “I understand Shade. The last male leaders of Equestria turned into either Crazed emperors or chaotic spirits. So… Maybe it’s for the best.”

Shade shrugged.

“Here we are.” Sapphire said as they came to a blue membrane, inside of which seemed to be a smaller crystal room in which were four separate gurneys, with their own IVs next to them. “I need you three to lay down on the gurneys. Acari will be here shortly to begin the procedure. After that… Well… We’ll monitor your vitals and make sure nothing goes wrong.”

“Like what?” Silver asked.

“No idea…” Sapphire said honestly. “Well… Get ready.”

“So we’re all agreed then?” Crimson Lance asked. “Shining Armor will keep them locked in, Spitfire, your Wonderbolts will stop any of them from getting out, from any possible location. Darkstar, you will help Armor stop the Changelings from getting out. While my Lancers and I enter the cave and clear it of Changelings.”

“How many Changelings do you expect will be in there?” Shining Armor asked. “Maybe we can get some information out of them.”

“We’ll try to keep as many alive as we can.” Crimson replied. “But if they attack, I’m not promising anything.”

“How come you’re the only one to get any action?” Darkstar asked aggressively.

“Oh…I’m sorry.” Crimson said staring him down. “I thought I was the only one with no members in the hospital right now. But I suppose if you want to risk more of your soldiers. Be my guest.”

“No comment…” Darkstar replied.

“Bat brain…” Crimson mumbled. “Now then… Get what soldiers you want to bring or those that are able. We’ll be mobilizing in an hour.” She pushed off the table, grabbing her helmet with her magic and walking towards the door. “Anypony not present is being left behind.”

She walked out of the room, her two Lancers following her. “Ensure that they don’t try anything. If she is in there, the Monarchy wants her first.”

One of the Pegasus saluted before taking off from the ground and flying through a window.

“You.” She said to the other. “Check on the hospital. I want to know how many we lost.”

The other Pegasus saluted and flew out of the open doors towards the hospital.

“Chrysalis… What in Tartarus were you planning? Pulling that stunt…”

Crimson Lance walked out of the castle, looking into the night sky. “So much wasted… Was it worth it…?”

“Are they ready?” Acari asked, walking down the halls of the hive.

“Yes Acari, I got them all settled in.” Sapphire replied. “Silver is still getting used to his new form, but I don’t think we should remove his memories again.”

Acari looked at her. “You want him to know?” She sighed. “You know how scarring that would be to him. He thinks he’s a Unicorn.”

Sapphire sighed. “I know… But it is his choice now.”

Acari nodded. “He will decide… After the operation, he will decide to live as a pony or as a Changeling.” She looked back at Sapphire. “Contact his family. I want their input on his decision.”

“So how long will you be working?” Sapphire asked.

“The crystal mentions three hours, aside from that, I’m unsure.” Acari replied. “Just prepare enough emotional energy for each of them, and once I am finished, make sure that you activate their disguises before bringing them back up to the main hospital, we don’t need anypony freaking out.”

The two of them walked into the chamber, the mini crystal chamber inside covered the three unconscious Changelings and single Pegasus were laying around in a cross sign, with a single space between them for Acari.

“The crystal prevents all sound correct?”

Sapphire’s disguise vanished as she stepped through the membrane. “Yes. The outside is coated with a membrane to stop any sound from entering via vibrations on its outer surface.”

“Nice work Cytes.” Acari replied. “When is the Raid on the Pony stockpile supposed to be?”

“It should be starting soon.” Cytes replied.

“Remember… I must not be disturbed. So keep it quiet after the attack.”

“Be careful Acari.” Cytes said. “I don’t want to bury two Queens in one month.”

“I’m not who you should be worrying about.” Acari replied, before stepping through the crystal, at which the entire structure hardened.

Cytes looked on as Acari took her place in the middle of the unconscious patients. Her horn began to glow, as four thin pink tendrils snaked from the tip of her horn and seemed to pierce through the skulls of each of them. Leaving a small pink ripple where they pierced. Acari’s eyes began to glow pure pink, as though a spot light replaced her eyes.

Cytes walked out of the chamber. “I need two guards on Acari, Nopony is allowed to enter that chamber. Understood?”

Cytes felt a collection of affirmative messages sent back to her by her Hive.

“Acari… I hope you know what you’re doing…”

“LANCERS READY!” Crimson shouted back at her company of soldiers.

“READY!”

“Pegasi in front! Clear the aerial threats. Earth Ponies and Unicorns, follow after. Detain as many as you can! No revenge schemes! If I catch one of you doing something like that, I’ll have your Flank!” Crimson lowered her helmet’s visor.

“Wait for the signal from Spitfire!”

There was a large fork of lightning into the clear night sky.

“LANCERS! MOVE IN!”

The Pegasus opened their wings and flew into the cave’s entrance, their lances attached to their war saddles, helping them keep their hooves free as they flew through the cave, knocking the sparse Changelings to the ground.

As Crimson followed after the Pegasus, she made sure her soldiers didn’t do anything rash. They listened to her orders, so she had very little to worry about.

“How many?” She asked one of her lieutenants.

“So far, we have twenty three Changelings detained.”

“Any casualties?” She asked flipping up her visor.

“So far we have only three Changelings killed, however they attempted to bite into their necks.”

“So it was unavoidable…” She let out a sigh. “It’s better than I thought we would have…”

“Commander!” One of the unicorns ran up to her.

“What is it Private?”

“We’re having trouble getting into one of the chambers. We believe there to be Changelings inside.”

Crimson sighed. “Must I do everything for you recruits?” She mumbled. “Lead the way private.”

Crimson was led to a cave entrance that appeared to be blocked by a large rock, held in place by some kind of green crystal material. “Please tell me you at least attempted to move it before dragging me down here.”

“Of course Ma’am. But the crystal seems to absorb magic and it’s sticking it to the wall making it too strong to move.”

“Then break through it.”

“The rock is reinforced by some kind of spell, we can’t break it.”

Crimson rolled her eyes. “Join up with the rest of your squad. I’ll handle this rock.”

The Private saluted before running back down the cavern, leaving Crimson alone with the rock. “Clever Caretaker aren’t you….”

She removed her helmet, placing it next to her. Before turning her attention to the rock. It perfectly fit into the hole, almost as though someone had cut the chamber out recently. She aimed her horn at the green crystal surrounding the stone, and with a red beam from her horn, began to cut through it. “Not clever enough…”

Once the crystal around the stone was cut, she replaced her helmet and moved the stone using her magic.

The chamber beyond was oddly quiet, not a sound was emanating from it. Crimson lowered her lance and walked into the room, heightening her senses for any sign of movement. The dark chamber made it difficult, so she sent a hovering orb of light into the center of the chamber, casting the white light along the walls.

Her ears picked up a clanking sound, like something dropping onto the stone floor. She turned towards it and walked nearer, lowering her lance in case of a fight.

As she got nearer to the source of the sound, something new hit her ears, a slight crumbling from behind. She whipped around to see a Changeling preparing to bite into her.

She quickly took her lance and hit the changeling with the side of it, sending it flying into a wall. Before it could steady itself, she pointed the lance’s tip up to its throat.

“Yield.” Crimson said to her. “And I will spare your life.”

The Changeling hissed at her.

“Is that anyway to treat a Queen?” Crimson asked. To which the Changeling’s eyes widened.

“Pupa….”

Crimson moved the lance’s tip. “Now explain why you attempted to kill me.”

“I-I was only following orders.”

“What order is that?”

“Emergency Plan Thirty Five.”

Crimson raised the lance’s tip to point at the ceiling. “Evacuate the children… How many?”

The Changeling got up from the floor. “I’ve been looking over twelve of them for the past three weeks.”

“Three weeks?” Pupa repeated. “You’ve been here since the invasion?”

The Changeling nodded. “I’ve been doing my part to ensure the safety of the Hives.”

“Show me.” Pupa replied.

“Children! It’s safe to come out.”

From where the sound resonated originally, a few small Changelings walked out of a small cave, perfectly hiding them. Each one was from a separate Hive.

“Where do you work?”

“I-I work at the orphanage.”

“A love moth? Working at a place like that?”

The Changeling was comforting one of the Nymphs. “It’s not much, but I take care of those whose families either cannot effectively take care of them, or die. Do you have any water?”

Crimson pulled her canteen out of her war saddle and levitated it over to her. She quickly grabbed it and greedily drank it. “Thank you…”

“How long have you been here?” Crimson asked.

“Two weeks…” She replied. “When I came here… My hive threw me and the Nymphs in here. They’ve been giving us barely enough to survive… So I gave my rations to the Nymphs.”

Crimson looked surprised. “You’ve gone two weeks without food?”

The Changeling nodded. “When you began your attack, my Hive sealed us in here… and I was worried about them getting killed, so I…”

“You don’t need to tell me.” Crimson said. “I’ll ensure they aren’t harmed. CAPTAIN!”

A red Pegasus flew into the chamber. “Yes My Queen?”

“Get a squad to help this Caretaker and the Nymphs.” She said. “They are not to be harmed, and they are in desperate need of food and water. Ensure they get it.”

“Yes Ma’am!” The Pegasus said with a salute. “Squad three, Report!”

“Keep an eye on them Captain.” Crimson Lance said, lowering her lance and walking towards the cave entrance. “I want those Nymphs unharmed. Anypony who does is getting Court Marshaled.”

The Pegasus bowed. “You have my word Commander. They will not be harmed.”

“Good. I’ll have your Carapace otherwise.” Crimson replied, walking out of the chamber.

“Report!”

“Ma’am, we have fifty Changeling prisoners.”

“And the ponies?”

“Fifty-nine prisoners have been located.”

“One for each Changeling…” Crimson stated. “Which one has the highest rank?”

“A Captain.”

“And the Caretaker?”

“They’re safe.”

Crimson Lance looked at the Changeling prisoners, each one contained inside of a magical cell. “Casualties?”

“We lost three, they lost seven.” The unicorn replied. “We’ve made an estimate that the Commander escaped before the attack, along with one of the pods.”

Crimson cursed under her breath. “Any ideas where they went?”

The Unicorn shook his head. “No idea Ma’am. There’s no trace of them. We only know two of them escaped before the shield was placed due to the missing pod and information from the prisoners.”

“You will never find them!” One of the Changelings shouted. “We will die before we betray our Queen!”

Crimson lowered her Lance to the Changeling’s throat. “I can help with that.”

“You might as well traitor.” The Changeling replied.

“Traitor?” Crimson repeated. “I am a Queen. You have no room to speak to me like one of your lowly Workers.”

“Commander,” Her lieutenant walked up to her. “We’ve cleared the cave, there’s no sign of any other Changelings.”

“Then get Shining Armor and Darkstar in here. We are going to need help getting everypony out.”

The Pegasus saluted. “At once Ma’am.”

“Now… Tell me,” She said to the Changeling, inching the tip of the Lance closer. “Who did they take?”

Author's Note

Quick upload... Next Chapter is long... Figured I would get this one up before I hit the metaphorical hay. So I hope you guys enjoy.

Chapter 37: The Past

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Silver Shield began to slowly open his eyes. He found a very bright light shining in his face.

What happened? He thought to himself. Last thing I remember was…

He raised his foreleg to block out the light, it was whole, perfectly blocking out the light.

He let out a sigh. Just some crazy dream. As his eyes adjusted, he began to take note of his surroundings.

He was inside of the hospital, laying on one of the hospital beds, the sound of the heart beat monitor pounding in his ears. His golden armor lay on a nearby table. As he pushed himself up, he began to look himself over. His silver coat was a welcoming sight after the strange dream he had.

He checked over the rest of him, everything seemed in order; nothing was out of place, his legs didn’t have any holes in them.

What am I doing here? He thought to himself, producing a pounding headache.

He raised his hoof up to his forehead, steadying himself, before his eye caught something on the side table. It was a small crystal, no bigger than a jaw breaker, but I sat in front of a small folded card saying:

Silver, when you wake up, eat this. It will help with the Headache.

~ Sapphire

Silver looked over the letter with a bit of trouble, his eyes refused to focus on anything, but he managed to get a feel for the note pretty quickly. He picked up the crystal and placed it into his mouth. As he broke the skin of the crystal, he felt the headache recede and the weak feeling vanish. His eyes began to focus, and he was definitely inside of a hospital.

“Hey Wingless.” Silver looked towards the door and saw Night Glider, his brother wasn’t wearing any of his armor, returning his coat to its normal dark blue and his wings to return to their normal form. “How are you feeling?”

“My head feels terrible…” Silver replied. “Shouldn’t you be on duty right now?”

“I took the day off.” He replied. “Apparently I have over five weeks of stored up personal days, who knew?”

“What happened?” Silver asked, pushing himself up. “How did I get here?”

“You helped Sunglider.” Night Glider replied. “You and two others, you’re the first to wake up.”

“I had the weirdest dream…” Silver said. “I was… Underground… in some kind of hive… And… I was a Changeling…”

Night Glider looked at him in surprise. “Weird…”

“You said two others helped Sunglider.” Silver said. “Where are they?”

“In the next few rooms.” Night Glider replied. “One of them is being looked over by his mother, the other by his foal.”

Silver began to try and get up from the bed, but was eased back down by his brother. “No Silver. You need to rest. Sapphire wants to make sure you’re fine before you leave.”

Silver eased himself back down. “How’s Sunny?”

“He’s still unconscious.” Night Glider replied. “They say he’ll be out for another few hours. Just take it easy… I’ll get Sapphire.” Night Glider walked out of the room.
He walked a little down the hall before letting out a sigh. “Dream… Yeah…” He looked into one of the next rooms, where a light blue unicorn mare was hugging a gray Pegasus, tears running down her face.

“I’m wondering whether we can ever be like that again…” Night Glider mumbled. “After you know the truth… Can you forgive us?”

“Antenna…I’m fine. Really.” Tornado Dust said to the crying form of Candy Floss.

“I was so worried.” She cried. “I-I-I thought I was going to lose you too. I-I-I couldn’t handle that. I’ve lost so much already!”

“Mom… Come on…” Tornado replied. “I would never leave you.”

“It-it’s just been so hard…” She said. “After your Father and your Sister, I-I couldn’t do anything.” She looked up at her son. “And then…To lose the Queen. I-I… I didn’t know what to do… And to think that I lost you…” She cried back into his coat. “I can’t lose you! I just can’t!”

Tornado Dust hugged his mother, wrapping his wings around her. “I know mom… I know…”

“There-There’s… I couldn’t…I can’t lose all of you…” She said. “When you got called by those Changelings, I got so worried… You were gone for hours… I got so scared. I couldn’t feel you… and I… I…I was afraid that you got captured…Or beaten…or…that you…” She sobbed for a bit. “I just…I had to check… And seeing you here… I just…I couldn’t control myself and…”

Tornado Dust hugged Candy Floss tighter. “It’s alright mom…” He said, comforting her. “I’ll never leave you.”

“I just… I miss them…”

“Me too mom…” Tornado Dust said, a tear rolling down his cheek. “I miss them too…”

The Two of them stayed there, Tornado Dust comforting the unicorn and Candy Floss crying into his coat.

“You’re certain?”

“Positive.” Crimson replied. “She was there.”

Just Sentence sat behind her wooden desk. “This is distressing news…” She replied, the cup of tea in front of her turning cold. “To think we were so close to cornering her…”

“She slipped through… But the signs were there.” Crimson replied, removing her helmet. “This Queen Ceymi was there, and she escaped.”

“Have you managed to identify the pony they took with them?”

“Not by name…” Crimson replied. “Sweetheart mentioned that it was a brown filly. That Spine character brought her in almost two weeks ago.” Crimson had pulled the combat knife from her war saddle and began flipping it in the air, catching it in her magic. “This Spine must be a real piece of work if the Monarchy is considering putting a hit out on him.”

“I looked through his records after we checked through the hive. 25 counts of friendly fire, 17 counts of brainwashing, Abuse, subordination, murder…”

“Public indecency, wearing a pot on his head, I get it.” Crimson replied catching the knife in her magic and holding it. “He’s a criminal, but why is the Monarchy after him?”

“Right… I keep forgetting you sever your link to the monarchy when you take on military campaigns…” Just sentence sipped her tea, trying to clear the slight headache she had. “Spine was one of Chrysalis’ military advisors, and we think he is working alongside the new Queen.”

“Alright… So I can see a strategic advantage… But why is Ovi Okaying this?” Crimson asked, tossing the knife back into the air. “She’s usually against this type of thing.”

“Well… Her daughter was…”

“Wait… Daughter?”

“Yes… she has a Daughter, she was never meant to become a Queen, and she was injured in a recent assassination attempt, approved by the new Queen. So she has bit of a personal vendetta.”

“Bloodpool?”

“Yes… He was involved.”

“Is he alive?”

“Yes.”

Crimson stopped flipping the knife and placed it on the table. “I’ll deal with that later, right now… you wanted to hear about the ponies captured.”

“Yes… I did.” Just Sentence placed the tea cup down and picked up a folder. “Was this filly one of those inside the cocoons?”

Crimson picked up the folder and opened it. Inside was a picture of a small brown unicorn filly, with a green mane and tail.

“No… Not in any of the ones we released.” Crimson replied. “However… Sweetheart did mention a filly that matched her description…”

“Really?” Just Sentence replied. “What happened to her?”

“If I had to guess…” Crimson replied, picking up the knife and flipping it in the air again. “She was taken by Spine when he and Ceymi left. I just can’t figure out why.”

“A personal matter between Spine and a failed conversion named Shade.” Just Sentence replied. “The filly’s name is Meadow Song, Shade protected her from a group of Changelings during the invasion, and the two of them were blasted out of the city together, ever since he has been trying to protect her, even going so far as to reenter Canterlot merely a week after the invasion.”

“Interesting… You think they formed a bond?” Crimson asked.

“I believe it is more like a friendship than anything. He doesn’t wish any harm to come to Meadow, he even risked his own safety to ensure she would remain unharmed.”

“Hmm…” Crimson said. “Do you think he would be open to joining the Lancers?”

Just Sentence caught the combat knife in her own magic. “Do pay attention Pupa; it makes this so much easier.” She levitated the knife back down to her. “He was in the military, but he knows very little about combat in his new body.”

Crimson laughed. “And he is trying to go up against a Commander? Does he have a death wish?”

“What do you propose we do?” Sentence asked. “You wish to train him while he is still under surveillance by the Royal Guard?”

Crimson smiled. “Come on Acari,” She replied. “Think of it less as me training him and more as me… helping him achieve his goals.”

Just Sentence looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “You just want to see how much of a beating he can take don’t you?”

Crimson leaned back. “Your words not mine. Just one day, that’s all I’m asking for. I’ll see how much he knows, teach him a few things, then send him on his way.”

“Pupa… There is no way Shining Armor will approve of this.”

“Who said he needs to know?”

Just Sentence rubbed her temples. “Pupa… We should be focusing all of our efforts on finding Ceymi. After we know where she is, then I’ll think about letting you draft Shade into your regiment.”

“Fine…” Crimson replied. “I’m just asking.”

“Pupa… Have you made any progress with interrogations yet?” Just Sentence asked.

“Nope.” She replied. “They’re being really quiet. We have them all locked in the Castle Dungeons, just waiting to be pulled in for Questioning.”

“What about Sweetheart?” Just Sentence asked. “She may be able to answer a few questions.”

Crimson shook her head. “She is in no condition to talk. Dehydrated, malnourished, sleep deprived, I had some of my soldiers take her to Cytes’ secret entrance at the Docks, her and the Nymphs are expected to make a full recovery.”

Acari looked up at the clock. “It has been good catching up with you Pupa; however I have to head to the hospital to check up on the condition of the others.”

“Mind if I come with?” Crimson asked. “I’ve been meaning to check up on my scouts and their recovery.”

“Not at all Pupa.” She replied. “Just…Try to be discreet.”

“I make no promises.” Crimson replied, grabbing her helmet. “This is me we’re talking about remember.”

Just Sentence rolled her eyes. “At least make an attempt.”

“Alright Acari, I’ll try.” Crimson said, putting on her helmet. “But my previous statement still stands.”

“Just don’t get caught.”

“Now that I can do.”

Just sentence rolled her eyes. “If I never saw you on the battlefield, I would have sworn you were joking about being a Commander.”

Crimson’s smile dropped. “Would you prefer me to be like my mother?”

“No…” Pupa’s mother was the strictest general she had ever seen…and she never wanted to relive the nightmares of dealing with her during peace negotiations ever again.

“Then you have to deal with me.” Crimson said with a smile.

“Just my luck…”

Tornado Dust had still been comforting his mother when the door opened and Twilight and Rainbow Dash entered the room.

Tornado Dust sighed. “Candy… Can you wait outside for a minute.” Candy Floss looked up at him, then at Twilight and Rainbow.

“Stay safe…” She said before wiping her eyes and walking out of the room. When she left, Twilight and Rainbow walked up to him.

“Where’s Tornado?” Twilight asked calmly.

“Dead.” Tornado Dust said instantly. “He’s been dead for nearly fifteen years.”

“What did you do to him?” Rainbow Dash asked aggressively.

“He did it to himself.” Tornado Dust replied. “I did nothing but bury him. Is that a crime?”

“Prove it.” Rainbow Dash said.

“Alright. What do you want to know?” Tornado Dust asked.

“What is your real name?” Twilight asked.

“I am Infiltrator 75, Darkblaze.”

“What does the number symbolize?” Twilight asked.

“It’s just a way for quick deployment, select which numbers go, and they do.” Tornado Dust replied.

“Who is Candy Floss?” Rainbow Dash asked, “And where’s the real one?”

“That was my mother, and the real one is probably dead by now, she was captured around twenty years ago.”

“How long have you been Tornado Dust?” Twilight asked.

“fifteen years.” Tornado replied. “Ever since you met him, I’ve been him.”

“Give me one reason to believe you.” Rainbow Dash said.

Tornado Dust looked between the two of them. “Sit down.” The two of them looked at each other before obliging.

“I was born with a twin sister, her name was Gamma, we were very close, even by pony standards.” He tapped the side of his head. “We were linked telepathically, no matter how far away we were, we could always hear each other, even feel what the other felt. One day, she decided to show herself to a young pony by the name of Evergreen.

“Our Queen found out, and had the village raided, everypony’s memories gone, and Evergreen captured. Later, she forced Gamma to watch while she drained the one she considered a friend. Evergreen was nothing but a husk, and Gamma was distraught.”

Twilight and Rainbow Dash looked at each other.

“But she wasn’t done…” Tornado continued, wiping away a tear. “She… She had a public execution, and I was there…” Tornado Dust cringed. “I heard her cries for help, felt her pain, I…I could hear her dying… But I couldn’t do anything…” He took a deep breath. “She…She needed me…and I…I just watched…” He took a moment to compose himself.

“Executions were painful, they involved forcefully draining the energy from a changeling, and making them burn themselves up. It’s painful, it’s cruel, and I felt every part of it…”

“Ever since then I began trying to do what she did, I wanted to have a life outside the hive, so for fifteen years, I made a life for myself, all in her honor. My father died before then… He was clawed to death by a griffin… and now… Me and Antenna are the only two left…”

He looked out the window into Silver’s room. “Since Gamma died, she’s been having trouble with loss. She was placed on the Queen’s personal Caretakers, a job that required you to give your life for the Queen, but since she was never in any real danger, nothing happened. She was left to mourn the loss of my sister, and I was thinking of killing myself.”

“Well… What stopped you?” Twilight asked.

“My sister. Whenever we came back from a mission, she always told me about how friendly Evergreen was, how much love she gathered whenever she was there, how much she enjoyed it there. I decided that before I dropped off the nearest cloud, I would at least try to make a life for myself. So imagine my surprise when I saw a single Pegasus flying towards an F5 tornado. I’ll spare you the details, but I took his place after I buried him.”

“I took his place, an almost perfect disguise, injuries made up for personality changes, so I could just… Be myself. And nopony figured it out. I just fit into his life, I took his life, his job, his family never realized, and I got to follow my sister. Scared my mom though, so we kept up letters every week, I tried after the invasion, but the letter didn’t go through, just….burned up.”

Rainbow Dash wasn’t buying it. “How do we know that this isn’t just some sob story? You could be trying to get us to think that you won’t do anything. You could just be lying about this whole thing.”

Tornado Dust looked directly at Rainbow. “If you don’t believe me, then ask Candy Floss, or ask Snake-Eye when he wakes up. Otherwise, keep your nose out of my family’s business, you stubborn Pegasus. We’re done here.”

“What? You can’t just-” Rainbow began.

Tornado’s eyes glowed venomous green as he picked Rainbow up in a magic field. “I said…” His fangs poked through. “We’re done!” He dropped Rainbow Dash on the ground. “I’m done talking to both of you. Leave me alone.”

“Hey Shade!”

Shade was lying on a twisted, black barked tree, completely adapted to the Fiords deadly climate. He looked down from the branch to see Razant looking up at him. “S’up?”

Razant looked impatiently at him. “We’re supposed to be helping clear out the Rays in the well.”

“That’s today?” Shade asked.

“How long have you been up there Shade?”

Shade looked up towards the sky. “Three hours… Give or take?”

Razant rolled his eyes. “Come on sleepy. Let’s get going.”

“I’ll catch up. Just give me a second.”

Razant rolled his eyes. “Usually I’m the lazy one.” He mumbled walking away

“Still are!” Shade shouted back. Continuing to look up at the sky, he looked down at his wrist, and moved the top layer off the armor, showing a small orange crystal.

Shade tapped it with his claw. “Stupid thing is malfunctioning again…” The crystal began to glow, projecting a small map, with a cross over where he was. “Distress signal my scaly ass.” He replaced the cover before taking a final look around the tree.

“Need to replace this piece of-” Before he finished a small orange glint caught his eye. He moved to look at it and found a shard of a small orange crystal. He picked it up and placed it into his gauntlet.

Got to get this to a Cipher… They’ll tell me what happened.

Shade turned back towards the city, the red buildings creating an almost natural appearance from it. He opened his bat like wings and flew to catch up with Razant.

“What were you doing back there?” Razant asked, looking at his wrist-mounted crossbows.

“My locator Crystal was acting up.” Shade relied. “It said there was a distress signal from up there.”

“It’s nothing to worry about, we’ve been getting those everywhere.” Razant replied, his crossbow’s limbs closed as it shrank into the armor. “Just get your crystal replaced. That’s what I did, and it stopped being an issue.”

“I would… But the strange thing is, I found a crystal shard inside the tree.”

“Any-”

“No. I have no idea.”

“Well nothing to worry about,” Razant replied. “We have a well to clear out.”

“Yeah…Yeah… Let’s go.”

After about half an hour, Shade and Razant walked into the center of the village.

“Cadets! You’re late!”

Both Dragons saluted as the Lieutenant walked up to them. “I hope you two didn’t just think this was a standard procedure.”

“No Sir!” Shade replied. “I was just checking a lead from my locator Crystal!”

“Explain.”

“I found a piece of a Locator Crystal, sending out a distress signal.” Shade explained. “I have the piece I found, I was hoping a Cipher could explain what happened.”

The Lieutenant walked up to him. “When you two lazy little shit stains are done here, get your crystal replaced.”

“Of course Sir!” Shade replied.

“And since you two thought this was such a small problem. You two get to deal with it yourself.”

Razant glared at Shade.

“Don’t give me that Raz. The number of times I’ve had to cover your ass. You owe me.”

Raz rolled his eyes. “So how do you want to handle this?”

“Flares and arrows?” Shade asked.

Razant’s crossbows flipped out of his gauntlets. “You want to handle the air?”

“Course I will Asthma boy.”

Shade took the air, as Razant pulled out a red crystal and breathed fire on it, before dropping it down the well. But instead of the expected flapping of wings, they were met with an odd buzzing.

“Raz?” Shade asked. “Those aren’t rays…”

The Lieutenant’s eyes widened. “GET OUT OF THE AIR!”

Shade bolted towards the ground before the well exploded into a swarm of small red wasps. “HELL BEETLES! Everyone stay down!”

The Hornets flew through the sky, tearing through everything that isn’t attached to the ground, when they finally flew out of the city, bones fell from the sky.

“I guess we know what happened to the patrol now…”

“Patrol?” Razant asked. “What patrol?”

The Lieutenant sighed. “We lost a patrol out to the west, we thought they just went out of connection range, but now…” He leaned down to look at the bones. “I guess we don’t need to send that search party…”

“A search party?” Shade said, pulling himself from the ground. “I almost died you Korzan! You call that a good thing? Years of service were about to be worth nothing because you couldn’t be assed to figure out what the hell we were up against!”

“Don’t you talk back to me Private!” The Lieutenant replied. “I’ve got years of…”

“Listen to me you self-entitled pile of shit.” Shade replied pulling out his swords. “I have never met a man so stupidly blind, he would forget to check before sending two of his best to their deaths making a stupid command.” He held the blades up to the Lieutenant’s throat. “I’m done serving under an officer as thick headed as you.” He pulled the blades away and walked out. “Do your job next time ‘Lieutenant.’ Or I’ll inform the council of your ineptitude.”

“Shade…” Raz said. “Oh God Damn it…” He ran after Shade. “Shade! Hold up!”

Shade whipped around. “Raz, are you really defending him?” Shade said unbelievingly. “He almost got both of us killed, and he’s making no effort to fix it. Remember the ‘Incident’ last week, where the dummy bombs were switched with Live rounds?”

“Yeah… But we…”

“No Raz! He’s been doing all of this shit! The Bombs, the lava Flows, now these stupid Hell beetles! He knew about all of it!”

“Whoa Shade.” Raz said. “What’s gotten into you?”

Shade sighed. “This crystal shard, it synthesized itself, I managed to get a small reading from it, and I found his name in the records, under ‘Killer’. He killed the patrol.”

Raz’s eyes shot open. “You’re kidding?”

“I wish I was…” Shade looked down at his claw. “The entire thing makes sense if you think about it… he’s the only one with access to those weapons, he just never planned on us being a good team.”

“You mean how you watch my ass?”

“Essentially. You’re welcome by the way.”

“So what’s the next plan of action?”

“Get this crystal to the council… After that let them decide…” Shade saw a really bright light in his right eye, despite there being nothing to cast the light, he felt it entering his eye.

“How long is he going to be out?” Twilight asked as Dr. Rose shined a light into Sunstreak’s eye.

“I’m not sure…” Rose replied. “I’m not exactly an expert on Changelings, even though he was my patient for quite a while.” Rose opened his other eye and flashed the light in it, causing it to dilate. “The good news is he’s responsive… Just out cold.”

“Yeah but how long will it be before he wakes up?” Rainbow Dash asked, Sunspot laying curled up on her head.

“If I had to make a guess… I’d say it would be another five hours…” Rose replied. “So… Who's the filly?”

“This is Sunspot… His…Daughter…” Rainbow Dash replied.

Rose looked at her. “Funny… He never mentioned having a daughter…”

“She isn’t really his daughter…” Twilight replied. “At least I hope not… But Sunny saved her and she keeps calling him ‘Daddy’.”

Sunspot twitched slightly in her sleep. “Daddy…Bat…Lizard…” She flipped over. “No…Daddy…Don’t go…” Her hind leg twitched a little.

“She’s cute.” Rose replied, looking at the filly. “Changeling?”

“Yeah…” Twilight replied. “So you’re sure about the estimate?”

“Not fully…” Rose replied. “Could be a little less, a little more, but Sapphire thinks it should only take about that long.”

Rainbow Dash flew over and lightly placed Sunspot on Sunstreak’s chest. “Then why are the other two awake already?” She asked.

Rose shrugged. “Maybe the spell they used affects Changelings differently than ponies. Again, I’m no expert on them.”

Twilight looked at the machine monitoring Sunstreak’s vitals; his heart rate was slowly increasing as his brain waves began to fluctuate rapidly. “What’s going on with him?” She asked. “Why is his brain activity so high?”

Rose took a look at the machine. “If I had to guess… He’s dreaming about something that’s got his body worked up. I can’t be sure though…”

“You know this whole thing was your fault right?” Shade said as the two of them stood up inside the black chamber. A single hole in the roof from where they fell through.

“How was I supposed to know there were Rays in that cave?” Raz replied, pulling a bit of rock out of his crossbow.

“By NOT firing into a cave with an explosive!” Shade replied. “Come on… Let’s go bomber man.”

Raz looked up. “There’s no way we’re flying back there, the Rays are still circling…”

“So we go through the cave… Where are we anyway?”

Raz’s Locator Crystal projected a map into the air. “According to the crystal, we are half a mile away from Jok-Khao.

“Hey that’s where Carver is.” Shade replied. “In fact… This cave should lead right to…”

A buzzing echoed through the cave, and both of the dragons looked at each other. “This is a…”

“Hive…” Raz finished. “Hopefully they haven’t realized we’re…”

The buzzing grew louder.

“Throw a flare and Run!” Shade shouted. Razant lit one of the flares and threw it back towards the buzzing and ran after Shade.

“I…Can’t… Run… That…”

Shade grabbed onto him. “Go! You Asthmatic Fuck!” Shade threw him ahead of him. He turned to look back down the corridor, and saw the glowing red wasps flying towards him. Quickly, he grabbed two of his bombs, small steel grenades with crystal's inside that detonated when collided, they were designed to send shards of metal everywhere, and activated the detonator before throwing them back towards the swarm and running away.

There was a loud explosion, causing the cave to rumble, as rocks fell on top of the swarm, cutting them off from the Dragons. When Shade caught back up with Raz, he had composed himself, but was still breathing heavy. “Oh come on Raz,” Shade said. “That wasn’t that bad.”

“For you…Maybe not… Adrenaline… Doesn’t help me…” Raz said. “Just… Tell me the plan…”

“We talk to my cousin, he helps us get into the Council room, then we reveal the Lieutenant.”

“This is the same Cousin that kicked us out last time?”

“Only because you touched his prototype.” Shade replied. “I warned you about that… But NO! I wanted to touch the strange looking wing prosthetic.”

“I get it…” Raz replied. “Let’s just… Get this over with…”

Shade and Raz climbed out of the Cave and walked through the streets, coming up to a small warehouse. “This time… Don’t touch anything.” Shade hissed to Raz.

Shade and Razant stepped inside, hearing the sounds of a blowtorch cutting into metal they walked through the warehouse.

“Whoever you are. GO Away! I’m busy.” Came a low voice from the back of the room.

“Carver! It’s me!”

The Blowtorch stopped and shut down. “Shade? What the hell are you doing here?”

“Stuff…” Shade replied. “I need to talk to you.”

There was a mumbling from the back of the room, as a metal door was opened and a rather strong looking Dragon walked in, a welding mask lifted on his head and a steel sword strapped on his back. “Oh great…It’s you.” He said when he saw Raz. “Here to break something else?”

“It was an accident!” Razant retorted.

“I don’t care… That ‘Accident’ cost me months of work!”

“Both of you! Shut Up!” Shade shouted. “God… I never thought I’d have to be the voice of reason between you two.” Shade turned to Carver. “Carver, we need to get to the council.”

“Good luck with that.” Carver replied. “Apparently they're meeting with some important Dignitary from outside the Fiords.”

“Really?” Shade asked surprised. “Someone else can breathe this stuff?” Shade motioned to the air around them.

“I don’t know… They said something about a filtering charm, I don’t care. But she seemed pretty important, so unless you have the location of the Controller for these Hell Beetles, they aren’t going to let you in.”

“Come on Carver…” Shade said. “Can’t you pull just a few strings to…”

“What is this about Shade?” Carver asked seriously. “You haven’t been making Blood Molotov’s again have you?”

“What? No!” Shade replied. “I haven’t done that in over a hundred years.”

“So what is it then?”

Shade pulled the crystal Shard out of his gauntlet. “This… It’s part of a distress signal. I think the Lieutenant in command is responsible for a whole bunch of incidents…”

“Any proof?” Carver asked.

“Well… I have this crystal that says he’s the killer of the patrol.”

Carver raised his eye-spike… “You know that is flimsy evidence. Unless you’ve seen him…”

“I have… I saw him replace some of the dummy bombs for live ones during training.”

Carver looked at him. “Any deaths?”

“A few…The bombs destroyed any possible evidence.”

Carver lowered his welding mask and turned back into the room. “I’m not sure how much help I can be here Shade.” The Sound of welding met their ears. “I mean… I’m one of the top in the Specters, but I hardly think that is enough clearance to get you two into the Council Chamber.”

“Come on Cousin.” Shade said. “I just need this one thing. What is it going to take?”

The Welding cut out and Carver walked through the door again. “What are you willing to do?”

“Please… Carver… Just this once?”

Carver flipped up his welding mask, a smile played across his face. “Help me test the new prototype.”

“Deal.” Shade replied. “So… How much is it fixed?”

Carver smiled. “Oh… It’s nowhere near being ready for development, but since you asked, I think that the landing jets still need some calibration.”

Shade sighed. “I’m going to regret this later…”

Raz nodded. “Yes… Yes you are”

Carver turned back to the room, removing his welding gear. “Let’s go and see about that appointment. Before I strap you to a death machine.”

Shade smiled weakly. I am going to die…

Sapphire looked over Sunglider, who was noticeably better, his brain activity was normal; heart rate was standard, nothing out of the ordinary. Using her magic, she also saw that his Emotional levels had stabilized; meaning whatever they did at least made him conscious about having a life before.

When the door opened, Sapphire glanced over to see Acari’s Pegasus form, the dusty pink pony with a gray mane and brown eyes walked in along with Crimson Lance.

“How have you two been holding up?” Sapphire asked, still paying attention to her patient. “I haven’t seen you around in a while Crimson.”

“I thought I might as well come and say ‘Hi’ to my favorite Doctor.” She replied.

“Flattery does not suit you Pupa.” Sapphire replied, looking away from Sunglider. “He’ll be fine, whatever you did Acari, it normalized his Emotional levels, so at least he isn’t completely brain dead anymore.”

“That’s excellent.” Acari replied. “However this headache is still as obnoxious as ever.”

Sapphire looked towards her. “You may want to take the day off from dealing with the Nobles that will do wonders for your stress levels.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” Acari replied, “Now onto the purpose of this meeting.”

Sapphire adjusted her glasses. “Yes…Silver…”

“Have you talked to him yet?” Crimson asked. “I mean… we all agreed that it would be his choice in the end.”

“Yes but… What about the mental complications?” Sapphire asked. “There’s no telling how he will react to this. Then there’s the problem of him being new to transformations.”

“Yeah… That could cause a problem…” Crimson replied ruffling her mane. “But… My hive is ready to serve the greater good of Equestria no matter what happens. How are they by the way?” She asked to Sapphire.

“We lost around thirty of them…” Sapphire replied. “We couldn’t sustain them for long, Ovi’s Changeling were being…Problematic.”

“Speaking of the Sexual Queen,” Crimson said, “How has she been?”

“Bad…” Sapphire replied. “She refuses to leave her daughter’s side, only when I have to run tests on her does Ovi leave the hospital, and even then, she’s back within the hour.”

“That bad huh?” Crimson replied. “You see, that’s why I don’t have a daughter yet.”

“I thought it was because you couldn’t make a commitment to a man without first beating their chitin in?” Acari replied.

“Well you can’t just be any drone to get with a Queen. You have to have standards.”

“How is Carrie’s condition?” Acari asked.

“She’s recovering… But I’m not sure if there will be any after effects, she may never be able to use her hind right leg again… It’s too early to tell.”

“How much longer until these two wake up?” Crimson asked, looking between the two rooms, the one next to them holding Sunstreak. “And how do we want to handle this?”

“Sunglider should come around in an hour or so, but Shade… He seems to be in a much worse state… It may take twice as long at this rate…”

“So onto my next Question,” Crimson replied. “How do we handle this?”

Silver was surprised to see not only Sapphire, but the leader of the Lancers enter his room. They had a dusty pink Pegasus with them that Silver didn’t recognize.

“Good Evening Silver.” Sapphire said. “How are you feeling?”

“Better than when I woke up.” Silver replied. “My head was killing me and I could barely see straight. What was in that pill thing?”

“This is going to sound weird… But condensed emotions.” Sapphire replied. “The process we used to help Sunglider was initiated by a Changeling, leaving everypony involved drained.”

“So how’s Sunny?” Silver asked.

“He’s fine. He’s just going to be out for a little longer.” Sapphire motioned to the other two mares. “I’d like for you to meet two of my friends. You know Crimson Lance already, and this is Dawnflower.” The Pink Pegasus waved.

“Who is she?” Silver asked, trying not to be rude.

“She is a close friend of mine…and she is going to help you with a very difficult decision…”

Silver looked at her confused. “What decision?”

Sapphire walked up to him. “Do you remember what happened before you lost consciousness? It should have felt like a distant dream…”

“Well… I remember there being Changelings and…” His eyes widened. “That… That wasn’t a dream?”

Sapphire shook her head. “All of it was real.”

Silver looked down at his hooves. “All of it? The Hive? The Changelings? Me? None of it was fake?”

Sapphire shook her head. “All of it was real… These are actually other Queens inside of Canterlot.” She motioned to Crimson and Acari. “I am Cytes, Queen of the Medical Hive.”

“Pupa, Warrior Hive.” Crimson replied.

“I am Queen Acari, Ruler of the Just Hive.” Acari replied. “We are here to see if you made a choice.”

Silver looked at the three of them. “You’re… You’re…I…”

“I think we broke him.” Crimson replied. “I got it!” She walked up and slapped Silver with her hoof.

“How are you here? The repulsion spell-! ”

“It was highly concentrated love, enough to cause any other Changelings to lift of the ground slightly, but not enough to send us flying much more than a few feet.” Sapphire replied. “And at the time, only myself and Queen Ovi were in the city, Ovi’s emotions were close enough that it pushed her back without any of the lift, causing severe fractures and lacerations, I was thrown lightly into a wall…”

“But…I wasn’t…” Silver began.

“That would be our doing.” Acari replied.

“In short,” Crimson replied. “We placed layers of spells on you to make you…well…a pony. You couldn’t see emotions, you released them like anypony else, were severed from My Hive.”

“Wait! I’m…”

Crimson smiled. “Yup… I’m your Queen Silver.” She replied. “I was the one who allowed you to leave the hive. Although… You were only a Nymph at the time…”

“Pupa… Focus.”

“Oh right…” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, those spells made you into a pony, in every possible way. The only ponies that knew the truth were the three of us, your parents; I think your brothers… and Celestia of course.”

“They…I…”

“Listen Silver, this is important.” Sapphire replied. “We need you to decide on how you want to live your own life.” She adjusted her glasses. “You can either live the rest of your life with the Hive, and we will give you back the memories we removed from last time. Alternatively, Acari can remove your memories of this meeting, of the hive, and we can replace all of the enchantments.”

“That’s a hell of a choice…” Silver replied. “I… I need to think about it…”

Sapphire nodded. “Would it help to speak with your family about it?”

“Yeah… I…That will help…”

Sapphire motioned at the door, and Silver saw his family walk in. Dusk, his father, a light blue Pegasus with a darker mane, which looked as though he had been constantly running his hooves through it, his green eyes looking as though he hadn’t rested in quite a while. While Dawn, his mother, a grass green Pegasus with a golden mane, had clearly been crying for a while, her calm magenta eyes were red and the slight discoloration of her coat proved that.

Behind them, Night Glider walked in, a small brown book held under his wing.

“We’ll just leave you four alone.” Sapphire said as the here Queens left the room.

“Mom, Dad… Night. You… You all knew…?” Silver asked.

“Yes honey… We knew.” Dawn replied. “We’ve known since you came to us…”

“But… Why didn’t you tell me?” Silver asked.

Dusk walked up to him. “We couldn’t.” He replied. “We had a contract with Queen Cytes, we couldn’t tell you what you truly were or you would be taken away from us.”

“You were still just as much of a problem when you couldn’t transform though.” Night Glider replied. “We have the records to prove it.” Night Glider opened the book, inside was pictures of a small red-eyed Changeling alongside the colts he recognized as his brothers.

“This was taken a few weeks after your first birthday.” Dawn replied. “You were so full of energy, we thought you were going to rip through the walls.”

Silver picked up the book in his magic and flipped to the beginning. He saw an image of a black egg, across its surface were small circular spots, through which Silver could see a curled up Changeling. Underneath the picture, it read: New Family Member.

Silver looked through the pages, some of the pictures had dates under them, but the next one that Silver saw was when he hatched. It looked the same as the birth picture he saw before, only… it was inside of the hive he saw earlier, and the egg shell was shattered, a Changeling Queen with blue eyes was next to Dawn in the picture.

“That’s when you hatched.” Dawn said. “You were so small back then, you didn’t even have fangs yet.”

Silver flipped through the pictures and found one where he was his normal coat color. “That’s after you first transformed. We were hoping you would be a Pegasus, but we were happy with a Unicorn.”

Silver looked at the pictures, finding all of the memories he had that were replaced.

“I… I recognize these moments… Why are they…?”

“Queen Acari had to change some of your memories,” Dusk replied. “When you began transforming all the time, we brought you here, and they made the choice to seal you in that disguise.”

Silver flipped through the book. “When we did… They made us swear to never tell you.”

“Why?” Silver asked.

“We wanted you to have a normal life…” Dawn replied tears forming in her eyes. “We didn’t want you to be separated from us… You may have been a changeling, but you were still our little Shield.” She hugged him. “We had to remove your memories a lot when you were younger.”

“But now that you’re older.” Dusk said walking up to him. “You can choose for yourself. We won’t think any less of you if you want to rejoin your Hive.”

“I…I don’t…” Silver replied. “You’re my family I don’t want to leave you guys. But… This is something… I need to know… I just… I don’t want to leave you guys.”

“Wingless… You’re just as much our family as we are yours.” Night Glider replied. “We don’t want you to be taken from us…”

Silver was tearing up. “I don’t want to leave you guys… You’re my family. I can’t just… Leave”

“Silver… We want you to know. We shouldn’t have-” She was cut off by shouting from outside.

All of the ponies listened to it. “I don’t give a damn!”

“You relinquish-”

“I don’t care Pupa! He’s just as much my son as theirs!”

“Star… You can’t have a-”

“Look me in the eye! Do I look like I care what you think?”

“Star… If you really must see him, go ahead.”

“Sapphire!”

“Lance… Let him in.”

The door opened and a white unicorn walked into the room, he was clad in Royal Guard armor. He used his hind leg to slam the door shut. “Silver…”

“Lieutenant?” Silver said surprised.

“Yes Silver… I’m your lieutenant… I’m also your biological father…”

Silver’s eyes widened. “You’re my…”

The Lieutenant grabbed the blinds with his magic and pulled them down, blocking out the rest of the hospital. There was a wisp of red flame, and Silver saw his father for the first time.

“My name is Star Dust. I gave you up so that you could live away from the stress of Changeling life, needing to feed on your comrades, those you help, we wanted you to be away from this. We gave you to Dusk and Dawn so you could live the life of a pony…” He sighed. “I think that was the wrong choice.”

“What do you mean Star?” Dawn asked.

“I shouldn’t have left you alone for so long… You should have known since the beginning… I just want you to live the best life you can…” He took off his helmet. “You came of age a long time ago, you can decided your own course of life. Regardless of what the Queen thinks. You should be able to live how you want.”

He walked over to Silver. “If you really want to stay with them, I won’t stop you. If the Queen tries to bring you back to the hive, I’ll get you back to them… So here is what I want from you. Never think of me as your father. I’m just your lieutenant, I want you to treat me no differently, and don’t expect any special treatment. Got it?”

Silver saluted. “Yes Sir.”

Star smiled. “That’s the Unicorn I know. I’ll talk with the Queens.” Star walked out, leaving the family to embrace each other. “You sure this is smart my Queen?”

“Yes… I believe it is high time he knew.” Crimson replied. “Twenty-five years he’s been living a lie, time that he learned the truth. He did recently come to the age where he is allowed to decide his own life. So let him decide.”

“What if he reveals us?” Star asked.

Crimson sighed. “Face the facts Lieutenant, we can’t remain hidden for long, Chrysalis proved that… Eventually we will have to come out of the shadows… It’s only a matter of when…”

“Should we not try to extend our time in the shadows?”

“No… Once Ceymi has been captured, I plan to reveal a few of my own… Let the ponies know that we fought for them during the invasion. That we died… They need to know…”

“Of course My Queen… You have always known what’s best.” He looked back in at Silver.

“That ‘Impromptu’ outburst, you really felt that way didn’t you?”

Star nodded. “I haven’t been able to talk to him like that for… Twenty years now… Sometimes I regret giving him up… But he’s in a better place than he would have had at the Hive.” He looked back at Crimson. “So long as he’s happy.”

Crimson walked over and put her hoof on his shoulder. “Most Changelings never understand that… Good job old timer.” She patted him on the back. “Now we have some paperwork to fill out.”

The two of them began heading towards the offices while the family of ponies hugged their Changeling sibling.

“So who’s this special Dignitary?” Shade asked as the three of them stepped into the magical elevator, which was little more than a steel room with two magical runes on either side to stop it from slamming into anything.

“I already told you…” Carver said. “Some kind of princess or something… It seemed important.”

“A Princess?” Razant replied. “What kind of country would send a princess here?”

Carver shrugged. “They just… Sent her here for a talk. Something about a rogue agent…”

“If their out here their dead already…” Raz replied.

“Oh come on… We’ve been cut off for centuries, you don’t think someone found a way to breathe in this stuff?”

“It’s always a possibility but I just don’t see it…” Raz replied.

Shade and Carver looked at each other. “He’s never met your mother has he?”

“Well… Not… Informally… Usually she is on duty…so we…” Shade began.

“Regardless… She travelled around the outer lands for a while, I’m sure she found some race that could…” He cut himself off as the elevator slowed. “Attention.”

The two doors slid open as the three of them walked into the circular chamber. Shade had been in similar chambers, every village had one, but this was the main Council Chamber, so even Shade and Raz were impressed by it.

What they hadn’t expected to see was a rather tall unicorn talking to the council. Her prismatic mane was flowing in the non-existent breeze.

“Ah Carver!” The High Councilor said. “I heard you have some very urgent news for us.”

“Yes Councilor.” Carver replied. “My cousin Shade believes he has important information on a string of killings near his home.”

“Well?”

Shade stepped forward. “Your… Councillliness… I believe that my commanding officer, Lieutenant Ko’ral, has been attempting to kill me and my ally Razant for quite some time now.”

The Tall Unicorn seemed unaffected by the claim, but Shade was wondering how she was even breathing.

“Those are heavy accusations… Do you have any proof?”

“Earlier today, I followed my Locator crystal to a recently grown Obsidian Tree, it detected the distress signal from a patrol that left the village that day. I found a shard of the crystal that was producing the signal, I allowed it to begin a small synthesis with my own Locator, it revealed that the killer was my CO.”

The Councilors looked at each other. “Do you have this crystal shard?”

“Of course Councilor.” Shade pulled out the crystal and tossed it to the councilor. Who caught it and placed it into his desk.

After a few moment, the Councilor looked back at Shade. “It appears as though you are correct… Lieutenant Ko’ral is indeed the killer of this Dragon… That is disconcerting… What do you suppose we should do Princess?”

It was then that Shade noticed the wings on the Unicorns side. “I’m not sure…” She replied. Shade was impressed by her voice, authoritive yet compassionate. “Equestria has never had to deal with something like this… However I recommend that he be brought in for questioning.”

“That may be complicated…” Shade replied. “If I know my CO, he is never without something to kill anyone who stands in his way. Magic shield cancelling daggers, Smoke bombs, paralysis darts, I don’t think I’ve seen him without them before. Sending anyone after him would only end badly.”

“Okay… This is bothering me.” Razant said. “How the hell are you breathing?” He asked the Princess, getting stared down by both Shade and Carver. “I’m sorry okay! It’s bothering me!”

The Princess raised a hoof to her mouth and laughed. “You must be Razant. The Councilor has told me a lot about you, most of it bad. My name is Princess Celestia of Equestria. And I’m breathing because of a spell I made years ago when the Fiords were first destroyed.” At that moment a yellow bubble became visible around her head.

“Oh… Okay… Next What are you?”

“An Alicorn. I thought you knew that.”

“Isn’t that what Unicorn horns are made from?” Razant asked.

Carver rolled his eyes. “God damn it… Razant… Just shut up. You’re only making it worse.”

Raz looked at him surprised. “Well excuse me for being curious! I didn’t know that was a…”

Shade lifted his claw and Raz’s mouth slammed shut. “Thank God for Mom being a mage…” Shade looked back at Raz. “Please be quiet… I’m sorry for him Princess… He’s a bit of an idiot.”

“Hey!” Raz replied.

“If it isn’t too much to ask Princess, what are you doing here?”

“I’m here to check up on progress. Nothing big. Now however…”

The Councilor waved his hand dismissively. “Princess, You have your own nation to deal with allow us to handle this. I’ll send a small squadron of Specters to make sure you make it out of the Fiords alright… We have been having problems with the local Hell Beetle population, and they will not hesitate to devour a Princess.”

The Councilor turned to Shade. “We’ll deal with this problem swiftly, I will not have a Commanding Officer killing off his soldiers. We will keep you informed. Now if that is all, you can go. And Razant.”

Raz turned at hearing his name. “No blowing anything up this time.”

Razant turned around. “It was one time!”

“No… It wasn’t…” Shade said as the elevator descended. “By my count it was fifteen.”

“I only used one grenade!”

“But it took out half the block.” Carver replied. “AND my Prototype!”

“By the way… I still need to test that for you don’t I…” Shade didn’t like that smile…

About an hour later, Shade’s right wing was placed inside of a mechanical exoskeleton. The gears and cogs inside very much visible, it traced over the fingers in his wing and up the main bone, but it did have a small jet attached to it behind the wing.

“So… You did test the safety restraints right?” Shade asked unsure about the mechanical wing.

“Mostly on a few Phoenix Rays I had. The only thing you have to worry about is it crushing your wing.”

“Oh is that all?” Shade said sarcastically.

“Just use that armor spell Your mom taught you.” Raz replied. “You showed me it once.”

“I’m still getting the hang of it… and It isn’t designed to stop my wing, it’s body armor.” Shade said. It was true his mom taught him a small spell to create corporeal armor, but it was a last defense type thing, and it was really effective against Magic, but less so against physical damage.

“So she finally taught you that spell?” Carver asked. “I was wondering when she would get around to it.”

“Being mothered by the best combat mage in the Fiords has it’s perks.” Shade said proudly. “As well as it’s downsides…” Shade shivered at the thought of his mother’s rage, nothing was worse than a pissed off mage.

“Alright… so I think it should have calibrated to your wing… SO try and take off.”

Shade gulped as he opened his left wing and the mechanical wing began to open alongside it. He testily flapped his wing as the prosthetic’s jets opened. “Here goes nothing…”

Shade pushed off from the ground, and at once, the small jet burst into life, pushing him up into the air, he started slow, only hovering a little above the ground.

Carver looked on with interest. “Good… Now try and do some basic maneuvers…”

Shade had to keep his right wing completely still for this, which wasn’t easy, but he managed to do a few basic tricks, spinning in the air, diving, barrel rolls. With each trick, the mechanics of the wing began to become more natural, adjusting to the lift and push needed to keep up with Shade’s left wing.

“Alright.” Carver said, pleased with the results. “Now… Try to get as much altitude as you can.”

Shade nodded and headed straight up, the jet powering up every second he flew up, but as he began to reach towards the dark clouds, he felt something start to slow.

He turned to look at the prosthetic, it was sparking wildly, and the jet was…

Shade’s eyes shot open before the jet began to randomly fire off at faster and slower speeds, sending him flying around the sky in dangerously unpredictable patterns. The Jet eventually started to sputter and fail, but not before collapsing in on his wing.

Shade let out a roar of pain before he was sent into a nosedive he tried to modify his trajectory, but the jet reactivated and sent him hurtling towards a building.

With a loud Crash, Shade smashed through the small hut, landing on the ground. He tried to get up, but when he tried to close his wing, the prosthetic began to dig into his wing.

“AHH WHAT THE FUCK!”

“Shade! You alright?” Razant shouted, flying up to him.

“NO YOU ASS!” Shade shouted. Grasping at his wing as he felt the prosthetic stab through the skin. “DO I LOOK ALRIGHT?”

“Shade!” Carver said surprised, pushing Razant out of the way. “Stop squirming so I can get it off.”

“EASIER SAID THAN DONE!” Shade replied, feeling another stab of pain.

“Razant be useful for once and calm him down!” Carver said to the dragon moving to get next to Shade.

“How the hell do I-?” Razant asked before Carver threw a piece of rubble at him.

“Distract him from the pain! Talk to him.” Carver replied. “Use that big mouth of yours!”

Raz made a motion of disbelief before looking at Shade and smiling nervously. “So… How has your magic research been going?”

“ARE YOU REALLY ASKING ME THAT?” Shade replied. Carver shook his head a little.

“Well why not… I’m curious.”

“Magical Gems… Shade said calming down a bit, “Locator gems are circular, enhancement gems are six pointed stars, and… FUCK!”

“Sorry…Sorry…” Carver said. “One of the safety pins collapsed. My bad…”

“VARASH KAL JOT KALLOS FRA’NAS!”

“Language!” Carver replied. “Damn Shade…”

“YOU’RE THE FUCKER WHO DECIDED TO PLACE A DEATH TRAP ON MY WING!” Shade shouted.

“Okay… That was my fault… I should have checked the fuel reserves.” Carver replied, pulling the spike out of Shade’s wing. “I’ll take the hit for this one.”

“IF BY HIT YOU MEAN I’M GOING TO BREAK YOUR LEG!”

“Okay… hold up… I’m fixing it… Just give me a…” There was a snap and Shade’s tail came up and slapped Carver across the face. “HEY! Cut that out Shade!”

“THEN WATCH WHAT YOU’RE DOING!” Shade said as he looked at his now broken wing.

“Okay… That was my fault…”

“Okay…” Raz said. “This is going to be difficult to explain later, but it will save all three of us time.”

“What are you…” Carver began. But Razant had pulled out one of his small crossbows, the bolt tip covered in a yellow chalky substance, and held it up to Shade’s leg. He fired it and Shade fell over unconscious.

“Tranquilizer Bolt. He’ll be fine in about a half an hour.”

Author's Note

Who decided to try and wrap up multiple plot threads in one Chapter
*Raises Hand*

And I regret it... :facehoof: This chapter was actually longer... I had to cut out parts of it near the end, so that should be up soon.

Chapter 38: Family Bonds

Silver had been talking with his family, looking over the pictures of his first few years without a disguise when Star Dust walked in.

“They listened to me.” He said, levitating a pile of documents. “You are now technically unaffiliated with the Hive.”

“Meaning?” Silver asked.

“You are free to choose your own path.” Star relied. “They can give you your memories back, and then all you need to do is learn to transform, and you’ll be ready to live your life like anypony else.”

“Why do I have to-?”

“Because those spells the Queens put on you won’t last forever, and then you’ll just revert to your natural form in times of either extreme shock, sadness, fear, all that stuff.” Star replied, levitating the papers over to a side table. “Besides, even if you never transform into anypony else, it’s always good to know how to change, just in case.”

“What about staying in the Guard?” Night Glider asked. “I mean… Wingless is going tell somepony about it.”

“He won’t need to hide it for long…” Star replied. “My Queen has a plan to reveal some of us once this war against Ceymi is over.”

“Ceymi?” All of the Pegasus asked. “Who?” Night Glider asked.

“She is the new Queen of Chrysalis’ Hive and she is being hunted.” Star replied. “We haven’t managed to find her yet, but now, we have prisoners to interrogate. We’ll be starting tomorrow. Now I need you to fill these out, in your own time. There’s no rush.” Star smiled as he walked out of the room.

When he did, the family hugged each other tighter, and Dawn began crying again.

“My little Silver! All Grown up!” Dawn cried.

“Mom… Come on… I would never leave you guys.”

“I promise I won’t lie to you about anything again!” Dawn cried. “I’m so sorry we had to lie to you all these years!”

“Mom… It’s okay… I understand why you-” Silver looked up at the sound of someone clearing their throat loudly.

Looking over he saw Sapphire standing in the doorway. “Sorry to interrupt… Whatever this is… But Sunglider is waking up.”

Sunglider felt terrible, everything was hurting, and the fact that he could hear rather loud beeping didn’t help with that fact. As he began to wake up, he heard slurred voices that sounded like he was in a fish bowl.

“Sunny?” He heard through the fishbowl throng.

Sunglider tried to open his eyes, but recoiled instantly at how bright everything was. He let out a groan as his eyes slowly began to adjust. “Where am I?” Sunglider pushed himself up, and could tell there were a few ponies in the room, but he couldn’t make them out.

“Sunglider?”

“Yeah?” Sunglider replied. “Who are you?”

“Don’t you recognize your family?”

Sunglider’s eyes widened, and instantly closed again at how bright everything was. “Mom, Dad, Silver? Bat Brain?”

“Hi son.” Dusk said.

Sunglider looked around the room as his eyes finally adjusted to the light, he was inside of a hospital room, an IV placed in his foreleg, and the heartbeat monitor was the source of that beeping. “What happened to me?”

Silver walked up to him. “You mean you don’t remember when the Changeling-?”

Sunglider’s eyes widened. “The Invasion! What happened? Is Celestia alright? Where are…”

Silver looked at him. “Well… First things first… I know what I am now.”

Sunglider looked down. “Oh… So you know now…” Sunglider looked up. “Wingless… I’m really sorry about this. We didn’t want to-”

“It’s fine Sunny. My Biological father cleared everything up. I just have some paper work to fill out and I’ll be a free…Changeling… I guess.”

“That’s great!” Sunglider replied. “But… What happened? Specifically to the Changeling that did whatever it was to me.” He looked up at the clock. “How long was I out?”

Silver’s ears dropped. “Um… This is going to be hard to explain. Almost Three weeks.”

“THREE WEEKS!” Sunglider replied startled. “What?”

Silver and Night Glider began to explain the events that transpired in the past few weeks, from Sunglider’s near death state, to his memory loss, but they both stopped at the prospect of telling them exactly how they had gotten Sunglider’s memories back.

“Well… That’s great Wingless. But, what about the Changeling that originally did this to me?”

Silver rubbed the back of his neck. “He’s… Next door…” Silver pulled the curtains back with his magic to show Sunstreak laying in the bed next door, the small form of Sunspot curled up on top of him, sleeping.

“If we know he’s an enemy changeling, then why is he here?” Sunglider asked slight anger rising from him.

“Because he saved you…” Silver replied. He began to explain how Shade had worked to try to help Sunglider, and the condition that Shade was in when inside the hospital. He then explained what he remembered from the assassination attempt and the process as he understood it for how Shade had saved Sunglider.

“But… Who is he right now?”

“Sunstreak… His own identity. As to who the foal is, I don’t know.” Silver replied. “How are you feeling Sunny?”

Sunglider looked down at his wings, they looked healed, and given how he was slammed into the ground, he figured there should be some kind of damage. “I feel fine, just drained… Like… I haven’t…”

“Oh Yeah!” Silver said. “Here,” He levitated a small glass bottle with a pink liquid inside of it. “Drink this.”

Sunglider eyed the bottle. “What is it?”

Silver placed it next to Sunglider. “Sapphire said it was an… Emotional Supplicant… Should clear up anything that arose from the operation.”

“You are taking this whole ‘Being a Changeling’ thing really well all things considered.” Sunglider said, grabbing the bottle and twisting the top off with his teeth.

“It… Came as a bit of a shock…” Silver replied. “But… Knowing it happened before… and actually being braced for it helped. I’d hate to see what I was like when it happened before…”

Sunglider pulled the top off the bottle and spat it out, looking at the pink liquid, it had the viscosity of orange juice and smelt like flowers. “Damn this stuff is strong…”

“Well… They needed to make up for all the love Shade drained from you before. So drink up.”

Sunglider shrugged and downed the bottle quickly. When he had drank it, he shivered slightly as he felt a sudden flux of energy. “This feels really weird…”

“Well… How do you think I feel?” Silver replied. “I found out that my Father is my Commanding officer and the Leader of the Lancers is my Queen. So now I’ve got more questions than…”

“DADDY!”

The family looked into the room next to them, where the small filly was being restrained by a doctor while Sunstreak was convulsing.

“What’s going on?” Sunglider asked, looking at the Pegasus. “Why is he… Silver?”

Silver was holding his head as if in pain. “What the hell is this!”

“DADDY! STOP IT!” Sunspot shouted. “DADDY!”

Shade was being electrocuted. The Wing prosthetic had been removed long ago by his cousin, but now he had a worse problem. His CO wasn’t just going to lay down and take his punishment.

“You think you can stop me?” The Lieutenant asked, holding the gem up to Shade. “You’ve been a thorn in my side for too long Shade, and I’m not about to let you stop me again!”

Shade was writhing on the ground from the electricity, but he could focus enough to say something. “I-i-i-i-m not…. He is.”

A bolt flew and stuck the gem, piercing right through it. “Wanker!”

“I’ll have your head for that Razant!”

Shade was still shaking slightly, but it had mostly subsided. “If you ever get the chance.”

“I am not going to stop that easily!” He shouted as he pointed a crossbow at Shade’s head. “One more move and I kill him. So come out! All of you!”

“Alright…” Raz replied. “I’m putting down my crossbow. And I’m coming out…”

Ko’ral smiled. “I know you’re here Carver. Come out!”

Carver walked out, his hands in the air, “You got me… Just let him go Ko’ral.”

“I’ll gladly let you go Specter, but that is because you’re team would never let me rest.”

“AND I WON’T LET YOU HURT MY SON!”

Ko’ral quickly squeezed the trigger but the bolt floated two inches away from the opening in the barrel.

“Now you’re fucked…” Shade said, looking above them. “Hey mom.”

Above them, a dragon was floating, her wings were open fully but not flapping, as her eyes were on fire glaring down at the two of them. Her claws were glowing bright pink and her wings were sparking with electricity.

Ko’ral was lifted into the air by a pink aura around him and snapped around to face the angry dragon. “I am going to make this very painful for you….” Shade’s mother said, her claw glowing with electricity.

“You won’t get the chance.” Ko’ral jammed a glowing green knife into her arm, causing her to drop Ko’ral and fly on her own.

“AH!” She said as she fell to the ground.

Ko’ral walked up to her, pulling a dagger from his belt, “You mages don’t know how to fight like a soldier, one nullification rune and you’re down for the count.” He grabbed the mage by her head and held the knife up to her throat.

“I wouldn’t if I were you.” Raz said, walking out of the shadows.

“And why not?” Ko’ral asked. “I could just as easily…”

“Because there are two things you need to know about Shade.” Razant replied. “One, when he gets pissed off enough, he becomes a brutal fighter. And two, the only real way to get him like that is to threaten his family.” Raz gained a very wicked smile. “Oh, and when Shade is like that, Pain is irrelevant. Bye.”

Ko’ral looked back at Shade, who was now standing up, and staring death at him. “Put…Her…Down…”

Ko’ral raised the dagger to jam into her throat, but found his arm stopped. “Bad move…” There was a rather bad cracking sound and Ko’ral dropped the dagger and Shades mother, before finding himself being kneed in the face.

Shade used all of his weight and punched him directly in the face, sending Ko’ral flying. Shade snapped his fingers and teleported in his path before kicking him into the air and taking flight.

“I am going to KILL YOU!” Shade said, ignoring the bleeding pain in his wing, and grabbing Ko’ral with his claws and ground his face into the rocky earth. Picking him back up, Shade pulled his foot up and pushed Ko’ral as far back as he could.

Shade grabbed two large daggers and threw them quickly at Ko’ral, stabbing into his wings and pinning him against a wall.

“You filthy little-.”

Ko’ral didn’t get a chance to finish as Shade quickly flew up to him, again throwing all of his power into his punch and breaking straight through the rock. “I WILL RIP THOSE WINGS OFF MYSELF!” Shade rushed up and grabbed Ko’ral’s wings, before unceremoniously pulling up very hard and hearing the bones inside snap as the wings came off.

Shade leaned in to Ko’ral. “Now the real fun begins…” Shade turned Ko’ral around and stared him in the eyes, with that Shade’s eyes changed to small slits as Ko’ral’s widened.

“No! NO! STAY AWAY!” He shouted trying to get away from Shade. “STAY BACK!”

“What’s the matter Lieutenant?” Shade asked innocently, his smile creeping across his face. “You’re not afraid of little old me are you?”

“ST-St-STAY BACK! I-I KILLED YOU!”

Shade laughed. “This is much more fun than I thought it would be. And that’s not even the best part…” Shade’s eyes turned pitch black. “Do you fear death?”

Ko’ral back away clawing at anything he could. “NO STAY BACK! I CAN’T! YOU! I!”

Shade walked up to Ko’ral and ran a sharpened claw along his neck. “It’s been a pleasure Lieutenant. I don’t often get to use this trick. Thanks for the stress relief. Now remember this moment. Because I’ll be speaking to you again, very soon.” Shade slammed his fist into the Lieutenants face, knocking him out.

“Damn Shade…” Razant said, walking into the building’s new doorframe. “I thought you were going to kill him.”

“A pathetic waste of flesh like him doesn’t deserve death.” Shade replied standing up. “At least not yet.” He turned to see Raz looking at him with a concerned expression. Shade’s eyes readjusted to look more normal than black sphere. “What?”

“You um…. Have a knife in your gut.” Raz said.

Shade touched the spot with his hand and pulled it away, noticing the crimson substance on it, he looked down, there was indeed a blade lodged into his stomach. “Sneaky bastard…” Shade said, before falling over from loss of blood.

“DADDY! STOP IT! DADDY!” Sunspot shouted, still being held back by the Nurse, a small team of them had entered the room and were trying to stop his convulsions

“Get that Foal out of here!” One of the doctors said.

Just as Sunspot was pulled from the room, Tornado Dust ran up to her. “What’s going on?”

“We’re not sure, he just started to shake like that. Can you hold onto her for me?” The nurse asked as Tornado Dust placed Sunspot under his wing and the nurse walked back into the room.

“It’s okay, they’re going to help him.” Tornado Dust said.

“Is he going to be okay?” Sunspot asked. “Please tell me!”

“I don’t know Sunspot… I don’t know…” Tornado Dust replied, walking her away from the room. Come on Snake Eye… Don’t do this to us…

As Tornado led Sunspot away from the room, he met up with Twilight and Rainbow Dash on their way to the room. “Where do you think you’re going?” Rainbow asked.

“I don’t know…” Tornado replied. “Away from Snake Eye…”

“So you’re taking her back to that Hive of-” Tornado stuffed his hoof into Rainbow’s mouth.

“SHHHH!” Tornado hissed. “I’m not like that.” He moved his hoof. “I’m taking her to the lobby, Snake Eye is having a convulsive fit, so I’m taking the young one away so she doesn’t have to watch.” He turned and walked back towards the lobby.

“How do we know that’s all you’ll be doing?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Like what?” Tornado asked. “I’ve been helping Snake Eye since he barreled into me in Ponyville.”

“When was that?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“A few minutes after I told you not to slack off on my first day back!” Tornado said aggressively. “Listen… If you want to keep up this argument, fine. But at least do it when Candy Floss can help comfort Sunspot. She’s having a tough time right now…”

Sunspot let a tear roll down her face. “Daddy… He’s going to be fine right? Twilight… Right?”

“Um… Yes I’m sure he’ll be fine…” Twilight replied. “You have a lot of explaining to do. I expect a lot of information before I trust you.”

Tornado nodded. “Whatever you need.”

After they were in the lobby, Candy Floss rocking Sunspot to comfort her, Twilight and Tornado Dust began talking.

“What was your job?” She asked. They had chosen a spot in the farthest corner of the building, so they wouldn’t be interrupted, and just as a precaution, she put up a small Bubble of Silence.

“I was an Infiltrator, we are sent to various cities, integrate into the society, and gather love and intelligence for the Queen.” Tornado Dust explained. “And on some occasions, we act as Captors, finding ponies who are widely loved and having them replaced.”

“Where did you fit into that spectrum?”

“I was an Infiltrator, I served every role, some more than others.” Tornado Dust knew he would need more explanation. “I was always a scout, looking into a town and trying to find the hotspots for love, usually with another Infiltrator as a new couple. I also had to help find info for the Invasion, but my job was about disabling Equestrian relations. Stopping them from getting help. I rejected the role after causing a small disturbance.”

“What kind of-?”

“I lit a fire in the scroll containment area.” Tornado Dust replied.

Twilight blinked for a moment. “So no pony was harmed?”

“No… I made sure of it.”

“Alright so next… Where is the Hive?”

Tornado Dust feared this question. “I know where the Hive is, but it’s empty. The Queen evacuated it after the invasion… I have no idea where the Swarm is though…”

“That is disheartening… But at least you are being honest.” Twilight replied. “Now this is about the Queens… How do they decide their heirs?”

“Biology mostly.” Tornado Dust replied. “Whichever Changeling manages to get into the Queen’s Chitin, if you get my drift…” Tornado Dust cleared his throat. “Anyway… barring that, the Queen can pass her crown onto another female Changeling, usually one of her best generals or most trusted advisors. If the Queen dies without an Heir and without passing it on, then the Hive just descends into complete anarchy.”

Tornado Dust sat up a bit. “The Generals will fight one another for the right to rule, and then once it is decided, that Changeling reigns until they have a child, which is then fed upon a specific diet so that they will grow into a true Queen, by the time the Queen is ready to rule, the General dies, and the Queen ascends to the throne.”

“Is that common?” Twilight asked.

“Not really… Most Hives keep their Queen out of the fray… I think Pupa’s had it happen once, but aside from that every Queen I know of has an Heir, Except for Ovi…”

“Ovi?”

“Lust Hive…” Tornado explained. “They feed on the desires of ponies…more accurately, sexual desires…”

Twilight’s jaw dropped.

“They feed on it during…procreation… Most of them are just nameless drones, they just feed, and…another strange thing… They can feed off of… Reproductive materials...It’s… very strange…” Tornado looked up at Twilight’s jaw, still hanging there. “My hive has a very bad relation with them.”

“Why’s that?” Twilight asked getting over her shock.

“The emotions we feed on are very similar, so often a power struggle forms. Brothels are very common places for these fights to break out, specifically in Los Pegasus.” Tornado looked up. “But don’t think for a moment, that we are anything like them. We don’t feed on love during procreation, we feed on the love one feels between friends and family, but in the bed is where it is usually concentrated, so the-”

Twilight held up a hoof. “No more… I don’t want to think about it…”

“Fair enough…” Tornado Dust replied. He didn’t want to talk about it, so that suited him just fine.

“So… What about Changeling/Pony family relations?” Twilight asked. “Any you know of?”

Tornado tapped his chin. “Huh… I never really thought about that before…” He hadn’t, he had been taught it would be a very bad thing, but his sister always told him how much love was to be had in a full relationship. “I guess there are bound to be a few… I mean we have been living alongside ponies for over one thousand years.”

“Any you know of?” Twilight asked.

“There was my sister… but it was more of a platonic relationship… They were just friends… She was never interested in her beyond that…”

“How can you be sure?”

Tornado looked at her as if she forgot something basic. “We were twins… the mental connection we shared basically made us one and the same, very difficult to hide sexual feelings when both of us can feel it…” Tornado looked away for a moment. “It was really awkward during Seduction missions…”

“Okay… Enough with the Sexual talk.” Twilight said.

“You asked.” Tornado replied. “Mind if I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.”

“If it turned out that me and Antenna were just trying to get Sunspot back to the Queen, what would you have done?”

“Probably stopped you, then interrogated you with the rest.” Twilight replied with a smile. “Now what did you really want to ask?”

Tornado Dust sighed. “Are we doing the right thing here?”

“What do you mean?”

“With all of this.” Tornado replied, waving his hooves around. “The Hospital, the Queens… Is there any way for Changelings to fully integrate without fear… I just… After this attack, I can’t see it happening.” Tornado looked over at his mother as she played with the small filly. “I mean…look at my mom.”

Twilight looked over.

“She loves children. The way they act, how they play, she loves them. One of her biggest aspirations was always to try to open a day care or orphanage for them. She was so close too…" He sighed and shook his head. "Then Dad died… And then Gamma… Then I left, and she… She had a rough time… I can’t see her returning to the hive, there’s nothing left for her there. But I can’t see her getting very much work…”

Tornado ruffled his mane. “All I’ve wanted to do since the Invasion was fix it… but can it be fixed?” He asked. “With all the bad things that Changelings have done, do we really deserve it? I mean…look at Snake Eye. He has a Foal who trusts him, a Mare who believes in him, not to mention the fact that he’s so determined to find Meadow… He even has the Queens on his side.”

Twilight listened to the talk and looked at Tornado Dust. “I don’t know Tornado. I want to believe that not all Changelings are monsters, but too many of the ones I’ve heard about are monsters. I know there are exceptions… but I don’t know…”

Tornado looked disheartened. “I understand… Just a foal dream…”

“I think it could work. But not soon, we need to get rid of this evil queen. Then we can start thinking about adjoining Changelings.” She looked back up. “Now… Because of the fact that we may soon be fighting against them, what should we expect of the Changeling military?”

Tornado Dust sighed. “In open engagement, we won’t take prisoners however the first in the fray, are usually the dregs, sent to die. Then we send in some of the actual soldiers, trained to kill, then if they fail, the generals with magical assistance. If things get really bad, the Queen will enter and lay waste to everything.” He looked up. “Essentially, the weakest are led by generals, who will kill them if they don’t follow orders, then magical users get thrown in, along with some warriors, and then the full military force will enter.”

“This is… Very good news… This should help when we find the Swarm.” Twilight replied. “Now for a final question here. Would you ever return to the Queen?” Twilight’s horn glowed as a lie detection spell was placed on him.

“Honestly, only if she gave me back my sister. Which she can’t do. So never.”

Twilight looked at him for a second. “Alright…” She said. “I believe you.”

“Really?” Tornado asked. “Nothing else? No test of trust. No strange spells. No trying to get the information out of me?”

“No. I trust you.” Twilight replied. “The only thing is that if you give me cause to doubt you, I will.” She said, but it was good enough for Tornado.

“Does this mean you’ll help me if I get caught?” Tornado asked.

“I’ll think about it.” She replied as the bubble of Silence popped. “Now. You have a friend to see.”

An hour later, Tornado Dust, Twilight, Rainbow, and Pinkie were sitting around the room, Sunspot was laying onto of Pinkie’s hair. Sunstreak had a breathing mask over his snout, and he had since normalized his vitals, but the doctors were still heavily monitoring him until he woke up.

Twilight was looking out the window as the Sun began to rise over the city’s walls, casting an orange glow around the room. “He should be waking up soon…”

“I wonder what he’s thinking about?” Pinkie Pie asked no one in particular. “I wonder if he’s having fun?”

“Probably not…” Tornado Dust replied. “His mixture of inner emotions are too strong to be fun… I just can’t figure it out… It’s almost like he has so many memories all at once.”

Sunstreak began to open his eyes, groaning as he did so.

“Daddy!” Sunspot wanted to run up, but was stopped by Pinkie.

“Not right now… In a minute.” Pinkie said winking.

“Ugh…” Sunstreak said, as his right eye opened fully while he kept his left one closed. “What happened?”

“We did it Sunny.” Tornado said. “Sunglider is going to be fine.”

“Well… At least that’s great… Now my brain is equated to an egg falling from a cloud. We got any aspirin or something?” Sunstreak asked, pulling the breathing mask off of his face.

“Sapphire gave you something for that.” Tornado replied.

Sunstreak looked over at the table Tornado was gesturing to, where a large crystal was placed, Sunstreak grabbed it and threw it into his mouth. Feeling almost instantly better once the crystal was broken.

However what he did not expect was a sudden explosion of confetti, a bunch of balloons, and a bone-crushing hug from both Pinkie and Sunspot.

“SURPRISE!” Pinkie and Sunspot said loudly as Sunstreak quickly transformed to his natural form and teleported himself onto the ceiling before he felt his lungs start to struggle for oxygen.

“Christ… Give a man some warning before you pull that kind of stuff…” Shade said, looking up at them. “Especially when that man has a crippling fear of Pinkie Pie hugs.”

“How did you do that?” Twilight asked, “I never taught you to teleport.”

“You didn't have to." Shade replied. "My mom taught me a long time ago. She always said, think about where you want to be, charge up a spell, poof. I’ll admit, I meant to be on the floor, but this works too.” Shade turned back into Sunstreak and floated back down to the ground. “So… What did you two have planned for me?”

“Daddy!” Sunspot launched herself at Sunstreak who fell over from the force of the young Changeling. “You were shaking really bad, I wanted to stay with you but the nurses pulled me out, and then I spent time with Candy Floss. Then Pinkie wanted me to help with a party. So I did!”

Sunstreak was surprised by the filly’s energy. “Well… What is this party?”

Pinkie pulled out a cake box, inside which the cake said: “Congratulations On Getting That Royal Guard Out Of Your Head!” Surprisingly it actually fit on the circular cake.

“That must have been an interesting discussion…” Sunstreak replied. Reading the cake icing. “You will have to tell it to me some time.”

“How do you know I didn’t decorate it?” Pinkie asked.

Sunstreak raised his eyebrow. “I’ve seen your writing Pinkie… This is much to precise for your work.”

Pinkie smiled. “You were right! But that was mean.”

“Still better than mine Pinkie.” Sunstreak replied. “At least you can say you gave a Changeling a heart attack.”

“Oh…” Twilight said suddenly remembering something. “This came for you last night from Shining Armor.” She pulled out a scroll.

“What is it?” Sunstreak asked. Pulling the letter out of the magical grasp and opening it. “Oh…” He said looking at the name at the bottom of the scroll. “This is a little higher up than Shining Armor…”

Sunstreak turned the letter around and pointed to the seal at the bottom, next to it was the name “Princess Celestia.”
“By order of Princess Celestia of Equestria,

Shade/Sunstreak, you are required to attend a Royal Summit to discuss new terms on free roaming and handling of exterior Changeling threats. Report to the castle at 7:00 Am in your natural form. You will be escorted to the Throne Room by a group of Royal Guards.”

Under the seal, another note was placed, one that seemed much less formal.

“We look forward to meeting you.

~Princess Celestia and Luna”

“This is great!” Twilight replied. “Maybe they want to make you a full time citizen.”

Sunstreak however was busy thinking but something else. “If that’s true… Then Why do I have the worst feeling about this…” Sunstreak looked up at the clock. 6:45 “Oh crap!” Sunstreak said. “No time for the Party, Rainbow race you to the castle!”

Rainbow looked at the clock and then back to Sunstreak. “You’re on, Sunny.”

Without another word the two of them rushed from the room and down the halls, the instant they were outside, the two of them took to the air heading towards the castle as fast as they could manage.

Back at the Hospital, Pinkie was looking at the cake. “Now what am I going to do with this?”

Twilight walked over and placed her hoof on Pinkie’s shoulder. “I’m sure he’ll be done soon. Then maybe Celestia will let us have the party at the Castle.”

“You think so?” Pinkie asked.

“Well… Let’s see how this meeting goes before we decide on anything.”

Sunspot was rubbing against Twilight’s leg. “I’m hungry…”

“I’ll get Candy Floss…” Tornado replied, walking towards the door.

Author's Note

I did it again....:facehoof:
I forgot to look at the time... Little did I realize I had been typing the next Chapter of my other story "Pen Pals" for that long... Subliminal messaging Anyway.... Sorry for the long wait. I'll try to be better about it. :twilightblush:

Chapter 39: Interrogations

Shade was proud of himself, not only did he manage to sprint his way to the castle and make it right on time, but he also managed to keep pace with Rainbow Dash the whole time. What was less pleasant was when Shining Armor told him that this was not exactly a private meeting.

“The Press is going to be there.” He said as Shade was led down the halls with his wings strapped to his back. “So try not to do or say anything they could use against you.”

“Oh… This is going to go wonderfully…” Shade said sarcastically, “They are going to tear me apart the instant they see me…”

“Can’t argue with you there.” Shade looked towards the familiar voice. “Just try not to screw it up…” Silver said.

“Oh… Yeah…welp… I‘m screwed…” Shade said to himself.

“Just don’t do anything stupid…”

“Have you met me, Armor?” Shade replied. “I attacked your wife because I thought she was Chrysalis, forethought isn’t my forte.”

“Yeah… You’re right about that.” Shining Armor replied as the group came up to two large doors that Shade recognized from one of his first dreams… and the thought of that fear filled journey was not one he wanted to confront again. He was happy to see the doors open and show a crowd not made of shadows designed to scare him and rip him apart, instead, it was a bunch of ponies with cameras, notebooks pens, and way too many fedoras.

The Guards stopped and let him walk down the long hall himself.

“Break a leg.” Shining Armor said to which Shade smiled nervously and walked down the hall, only mildly aware of the stares by the newsponies. But he was more focused on the Alicorns at the far end. Celestia, Luna, and Cadence. Two he had met before, the third he didn’t really pay much attention to at first, and continued not to in favor of eyeing the comforting eyes of Cadence… And hope that she would be a voice of reason to stop him from being executed…

When he walked up to the three Princesses, he decided to salute to them as he would have before, because he didn’t want to take his eyes off of them. “You requested my presence, Princess?”

“Yes I did.” Celestia replied, her voice calm, but authoritive, she sounded innocent, but if Shade’s past dreams were anything to go on, he was not going to judge her for that. “You are Shade correct?”

Shade nodded. “That’s my name Princess. Ever since I was hatched over four hundred years ago.”

“Four hundred years?” Celestia repeated curiously. “That seems like an extraordinarily long life span for a Changeling.”

“I mean no disrespect when I say that I can understand the confusion.” Shade replied. “As I understand it, I am indeed a Changeling, but I was created through a process in which I was transformed into a Changeling against my will.”

None of the Princesses gave even a hint of their emotions, their faces remained blank.

“Do you know why we summoned you here today?” Celestia asked.

Shade shook his head. “I am unsure of the purpose Princess… However… You did mention my freedom.”

Celestia nodded. “I called this meeting to judge the legitimacy of your stories and determine the best course of action. Whether it be through Banishment or Freedom.”

“I understand Your Highness.” Shade replied with a bow. “You of course have my full cooperation. I will answer any and all questions that I am able to, however, my knowledge of Changelings is limited to what I have been taught.”

“Very well.” Celestia replied. “Firstly, this process by which you were transformed into a Changeling, when did you awake?”

“While time was difficult to tell, I suppose I awoke almost sixteen hours before the Invasion began. I was to be part of the main attack force against the city. However I was unsure.”

“You were present during the Invasion, could you tell us what transpired in that time?”

“Of course Princess.” Shade replied. “I was merely a standard Soldier… probably… Anyway, my mission was to attack the citizens, as the others began attacking the shield, I took the time to look around the city, I noticed the battle between you and Chrysalis, and when I saw her again, my blood boiled.”

“Is she not your Monarch?” Luna asked, almost like she was from the past, speaking with an accent that made Shade think about old plays.

“She was never my Monarch, she is the reason I am like this now. While my memories of the event that caused this are limited, I was defending my village, and failed, Chrysalis placed me in one of her cocoons and waited. I have no intention of following her. Though it seems I am forced to it.”

“What doth thou mean Changeling?” Luna asked.

“Once the shield shattered, I was pulled in by a command from Chrysalis, and during that time, I tried to locate and assist Twilight Sparkle and the others, in a way to stop the same fate as me from happening to another. However, a guard attacked me, so I defended myself. I am not proud of what I did that day. As I nearly killed the guard after draining him of any emotions he had.”

There was a collective gasp from the press at this.

“However I did not leave him.” Shade continued. “I used one of the spells my mother had taught me to attempt and heal his wounds, when the spell was complete, I left to try and find the Bearers, however I slowly lost hope for them as I watched the others.”

“In her reports, Twilight Sparkle mentions a filly accompanying you. What became of her?” Celestia asked.

Shade sighed. “Princess, the filly’s name is Meadow Song, I met her during the Invasion, where I helped save her from a changeling known as Spine, my Commanding officer. I managed to get us away, but not before I crashed through a building and injured my leg, I then walked out of the building with Meadow and came across Guards, then I was hit by the repulsion spell, sending both of us hurtling towards the Everfree Forest.”

Cadence looked at him. “Were either of you injured?”

“Yes Princess.” Shade replied. “I was badly injured, my leg appeared to have a crack in the Chitin, however, Meadow appeared fine. We spent the night in Everfree before entering the town of Ponyville, where I donned the Identity of Sunstreak.”

“Could you show us?” Celestia asked.

“Of course Princess.” Shade replied, in a flash of green fire, Sunstreak stood where Shade once had. “I created this form only a few hours before the invasion began, and it has served me well since then.” Shade looked up at the princesses. “The Filly known as Meadow became a friend of mine, I swore to get her back to her Mother, Candlelight, back in Canterlot. I spent the week in Ponyville, before bringing her here.”

“Why did thou wait such a long stretch of time?” Luna asked.

“I did not wish to compromise my own identity, I was fearful of what would have happened, I had to wait for the main bolster of defense to stop before attempting to return Meadow while keeping myself from any possible consequences of the Swarm. I am not like them Princess. I may be a Changeling, but I am no Monster.”

“Would you care to tell us why you have not left?” Celestia said. “After all, the Filly has gone missing…”

Sunstreak’s ears dropped. “I… Regret to say I was not on guard when I should have been. As I took Meadow to her home, I felt a small shiver, a warning sign I had developed to warn me of any unseen threats, I neglected it, and she was taken by Spine. However Spine insured that I could not follow, He broke my leg, my wing, and stabbed me through my other leg, then he left me for the Guards.” Sunstreak’s hatred was rising slowly, not only for his own stupidity, but for frustration.

“After… I woke up in a cell, was transferred to a hospital, and met my old friends, however, I was always looking for a sign of Spine, and I began looking at the problem from any angle I could…” Sunstreak looked up. “Even the possibility of… An assassination attempt on you Princess.”

The gasp was largely expected, what was not was the blue glow that lifted him into the air. “You planned an attack on Our Sister?”

“What? I…No!” Sunstreak said, looking at the Lunar Alicorn. “I…None of them worked… I was-”

“SILENCE WENCH!” Luna shouted at him and that word was the only thing Sunstreak could explain it as. Due to the force of the shout, Sunstreak turned back into Shade. “YOU HAVE JUST ADMITED TO PLANNING AN ATTEMPT ON OUR SISTER!”

Shade looked at the pure white eyes of the Alicorn. “Princess…I…I was merely looking at every possible angle… Including the thought that it was a ploy to get to Celestia.”

“Luna.” Celestia said to her sister. “Hear him out, we are not bound to the old ways.”

Shade felt the field holding him dissipate, which would have been good, if he was able to use his wings, instead of flying he slammed into the ground.

“You are right Tia, We still have trouble with these new ideas.” Luna replied.

“Shade. Please continue.” Celestia replied.

Shade picked himself off the ground, looking back up at the Princesses. “What do you want to know Princess?”

“Have you met any other Changelings since the invasion?”

Oh shit… Shade thought. “Um… I…” Shade began. He took a deep breath. “Before I answer, what will happen to them?”

Cadence let her stony exterior drop for a second to show concern. Celestia and Luna however remained as they were. “It depends on if they are a threat.”

Shade sighed. “Yes… I have met other Changelings from my hive.” Crowd gasp, “However… Since the Invasion, I have come to think of him as a close friend, he has done nothing to suggest he has any affiliation with the Swarm.”

“Who is this Agent?” Luna asked.

“I prefer to leave him out of this, he has no reason to attack Equestria. He prefers it here than to the Hive.”

Celestia nodded. “My final Question for you Shade, do you have any intention of returning to the Hive?”

Shade looked directly up at the Princess. “I would rather have myself impaled than return to the Hive, it is not my home, and it never will be. I would rather live my life in the dungeons of this very castle than go back to it.”

Celestia looked down at him. “Then I believe this will work out wonderfully. If you would please follow me. I would like to discuss this in private.”

Shade was shocked by the offer for a moment before nodding his head and following the Princess out of the hall and into a room with an image of a Sun on the door. Once the two of them were inside the room, Celestia closed the doors.

“I am sorry to have to subject you to that Shade.” Celestia said. “But the Nobles needed to know what you were truly like before I suggested this alternative.”

“Princess… What do you mean? What alternative?”

“Working for the Guard.” Celestia replied.

Shade’s eyes widened. “Princess… I … I can’t…”

“Not as a full time guard.” Celestia replied. “I merely require some assistance from a Changeling I can trust.” Celestia sat down behind her desk. “We conducted a raid last night on a Changeling outpost, we have fifty prisoners, and I would like for you to assist in Interrogations.”

Shade looked at the Princess surprised. “Princess… I haven’t conducted Interrogations in years and I…”

The Princess held up her hoof. “I do not wish for you to conduct them, I merely wish for you to be present. I wish for you to tell me if you recognize any of the Changelings, or in case they are fearful about revealing information of their hive.”

“Princess… I…” Shade thought about it. “I will do it… Under two conditions.”

Celestia nodded. “Very well, what would you like?”

“I want to make it so that my friends, are not held responsible for the Swarm. For the pure purpose of three of them are not affiliated with Chrysalis.”

“I will allow it, so long as they come and speak to me, so that I can confirm their intentions.”

“Second. I want to be able to walk freely around the city, none of this walking with somebody thing, I want to be able to take one of these friends of mine who wishes to see her daughter, who I have in my care, and I wish for it to be allowed for me to show her the city at night.”

Celestia eyed him. “This wouldn’t happen to be the Changeling that Cytes has in her care would it?”

“It is Celestia… And I believe she could help us.”

Celestia thought it over. “Very well… I will speak with Cytes about it. In the meantime, please follow me to the Interrogation room.”

Celestia pulled the restraints off of Shade’s wings, allowing him to walk around without drawing too much attention. Celestia led him to a small dark room, where there was a pane of glass between them and another room consisting of a few chairs, a steel table, and currently, a Changeling.

The Changeling looked nervous, not simply because it was inside of a blank sterile room, but it was fidgeting around a lot, mostly with a small portion on it’s forehoof like it had something to hide.

The door opened and Shining Armor walked in, along with the Captain of the Lunar Guard.

“So this is the bug that’s going to be helping us?” The Lunar Captain asked looking over Sunstreak. “Looks kind of small to knock Sunglider around.”

“You know I get that a lot.” Sunstreak said turning back into Shade. “Although when you have as much experience in the field as me, you learn to fight with more than brawn.”

“Really?” The Lunar Guard replied. “Prove it.”

Shade looked over the captain. “You have a bad wing, a few good hits to it could ground you, then it’s just a matter of hitting your kneecaps to leave you crippled.” Shade gave him a second look. “Then again… A swift uppercut to your jaw may just leave you crippled… Judging from that chipped fang, it hasn’t healed fully.”

The Lunar captain looked surprised. “What did you say his job used to be?”

“Berserker class warrior.” Shade replied with a smile. “Slight skill at magic, adept at long range attacks, and well read on dark magical arts, even if they are blocked off to me.” Shade looked back at the Guard. “I’d be happy to demonstrate my skills for you sometime.”

Shade looked back at the Changeling. “He’s nervous. He knows something… Maybe has a family… I can’t be too sure… But it has something to do with his front right leg, he’s been glancing at it frequently.”

“You got all that just from watching him?” Shining Armor asked impressed. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“Probing the subconscious mind is a skill most Berserkers have, after all, fear is the best weapon of an assassin.”

“Alright… Let’s go Darkstar.” Shining Armor said to the Lunar Guard, they both exited the room and turned up in the other room, looking at the Changeling. Shade watched with interest.

“Captain.” The Changeling said.

“Enough of the pleasantries, we want information on your hive.” Shining Armor said. “Come clean now, and maybe we can look to lessen your sentence.”

“I’m not going to talk to any Royal Guard filth like you.” He turned away from Shining Armor, rubbing at a small engraving on it's fore hoof. Hm… Interesting…

“Listen…We are trying to be nice here, show you some equality.”

“I don’t need your help!” The Changeling replied. “We would rather die than reveal anything to the Guard.”

“If you just tell us where you’re swarm is we can-”

“We will never reveal the location of…” A tapping sound stopped him from continuing. It came from behind the glass, as Shade hit it with his hoof.

“Excuse me.” Shining Armor said walking out the door, he re-entered into the backroom. “What?”

“He’s acting differently now… the only problem is… Something personal is stopping him. Let me talk to him.”

Shining Armor tapped Morse code on the glass and Darkstar exited. “You’re up Changeling.”

Shade walked into the small room. “Wow... This place is crappy.” Shade said as he walked into the room. “I expected better from the Royal Guard.”

The Changeling looked at Shade with surprise. “You…You’re a Changeling.”

“Ah… So you are intelligent. That’s good. I was afraid I would just be talking to a brick wall.”

“Why are you working with them?” The Changeling asked.

“Ah yes… this … Well they gave me a reason to live really.” Shade explained. “You see… Not all of us cleared that wall of theirs, I was launched right into it, left to die, no way out, and I was found by a Guard. I thought I was dead. But, I didn’t expect them to heal me. But they did, and it was surprising.”

“They…Helped…You…”

“Yes actually. They really do care, even if at first they are essentially Caretakers if you know what I mean. Nag. Nag. Nag. Even if I had almost no memory from my head slamming into a wall, they still tried.”

“But the Queen… She said they wanted us dead.” The Changeling glanced behind Shade.

“Well… Maybe… but our Queen isn’t the sharpest stick on the tree. Also… I doubt she cares for your family.”

The Changing looked at Shade. “How did you-?”

“Body language.” Shade replied. “You keep glancing at that carving on your foreleg and rubbing it, a wedding crest if I’m not mistaken. They can help.” Shade looked at the Changeling. “Please… They’ll help them, just tell us what you know about Ceymi and her Hive.”

“I… I don’t know anything…” The Changeling replied. “I was… I was warned she would kill them if we didn’t follow her. We had no choice…I’m just a Worker Class, I’m not meant to fight…”

Shade looked at the Changeling. “Tell me… Were any of the Changelings from Spine’s regiment?”

The Changeling looked up at him. “You mean the General… Yeah… Sergeant Shifter. He’s down there, he was there trying to capture a small filly they were eyeing for a while.”

“Thanks buddy.” Shade replied. “I’ll put in a good word for you.” He pushed off the table and walked towards the door. “What’s your name?”

“Rubble.”

“Thank you for your help Rubble. I’ll make sure they are taken care of. All I need from you is to lead these kind colts to Sergeant Shifter.” The two Royal Guards walked in.

“Wait…” Rubble said. “What’s your name?”

Shade turned around. “Just call me Nymph.” Shade said walking out of the room to the back room. “Say one word and I punch you.”

“Nymph?” Shining Armor repeated.

“It was what Spine always called me. I figured I might as well use it as a cover here. But it is not my name, so don’t use it unless we need to remain in cover.” Shade looked in the room. “Where’d Celestia go?”

“Important business. Who is Spine?” Darkstar asked.

“Old CO, jack ass, One who foalnapped Meadow, and a general, apparently.” Shade replied. “He was only a commander last I saw him…”

“Maybe he proved something to this Queen you despise so much to warrant a promotion.”

“Well… I am being accused of killing Chrysa-”

“YOU DID WHAT?” Shining Armor said surprised.

Shade flinched at the shout. “Okay… So… This is going to be complicated… But apparently Queen Chrysalis died at the hands of you and your wife’s repulsion spell, or something… And her daughter, Ceymi, used that to try and kill me for…some reason… Maybe I beat her in a past life or something. She now leads the Swarm.”

Darkstar whistled. “Nice going, Armor, maybe you aren’t worthless against Changelings after all.”

Shining Armor glared at him. “So, Chrysalis is dead?”

“Yup.” Shade replied.

“Anything else you would like to tell us?” Shining Armor asked.

Shade tapped his chin. “Love tastes like cotton candy.” Shade suppressed a laugh at the confused expression of the Captain.

A few minutes later, a second Changeling was brought up from the cells, he looked both more confident and in much better nourishment than the last Changeling.

“You’re up, Captain.” Shade said. “I’ll tap if I see anything important.”

The two captains walked into the room, where the Changeling was currently sitting, the suppression ring on his horn glowing green. “Ah… The Captains of Equestria.” He said lifting his hind legs onto the table. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Darkstar spoke first. “This is what you Changelings call a Sergeant?” He looked over the Changeling. “Looks more like a private to me.”

“Oo. Real clever.” Shifter replied. “What’s next? Calling me Bug, Insect, Changeling, well Bat brain?”

Darkstar was obviously insulted. “Bat brain! You little-!”

“Darkstar!” Shining Armor said. “A little professionalism please?” He looked back at the Changeling. “I don’t suppose you would be willing to tell us where your Queen is?”

“You’re right about that soldier boy.” Shifter replied. “I’m not telling you anything.” Shifter looked into the back room. “Him however…”

Shade was surprised. Then he remembered that spell Darkblaze told him about. He cursed under his breath before focusing back on the talk.

“Who are you talking about?” Shining Armor asked.

“That Changeling you’ve got behind the one way mirror. I can see him ya know.” The Changeling replied. “At least the higher ups can. None of these workers I was given as soldiers can.”

Shining Armor and Darkstar looked at each other. “How do we know you won’t try to use this Hive mind you have?”

Shifter modified his position. “Oh… I’m sure he’ll tell you either way. I’m not talking otherwise. What do you have to lose?”

“Cocky little shit…” Shade said before tapping on the glass. Shining Armor and Darkstar got up and walked out. They reentered the backroom and Darkstar was visibly angry.

“Bat brain my ass…”

“How do you want to handle this Shade?” Shining Armor asked.

“I’ll talk to him.” Shade replied. “Hopefully I can get some information out of him…” Shade watched the Changeling gain a smug smile. “If he really was with Spine, then he is my best chance to find Meadow… Then I can finally be sure she’s safe…”

“Then go ahead.” Shining Armor said.

Shade entered the interrogation room calmly.

“If my eyes don’t deceive me,” Shifter said. “Hello Nymph. Long time no see.”

Shade sat down. “My name is not Nymph, it’s Shade.”

“You can call yourself Queen Morphi for all I care.” Shifter replied. “I’m still gonna call you Nymph.”

“Who are you? And How do you know me?” Shade asked bluntly, not in the mood for tiptoeing around the situation.

“Oh yeah… Spine said you might lose your memory again. So how much do you remember from your most recent encounter with the General?”

“Everything.” Shade replied.

“Oh…Well… Maybe you can’t remember our Pheromones. But I was the one that grabbed that little filly.”

Shade’s eye twitched. “What did you do to her?”

Shifter smiled. “Oh… You really want to know?”

Shade slammed his hoof on the ground. “Tell me!”

“If you insist.” Shifter replied. He leaned in. “Well… After Spine dealt with you, he ordered the foal to be instantly fed on. Not enough to cause harm, just enough to stop her from crying.” Shifter leaned back, placing his hind legs on the table.

“You should have heard her, she just kept on wailing, crying for you to get up, she just kept screaming. So we drained her to knock her out so that we could pull her out. After that we dragged her back to the outpost in that cave. Then we started to have a bit a fun…”

Shade’s horn began to glow dimly as his eye twitched more frequently.

“We started a little small, just making her watch as she was drained, standard stuff. Then, Spine had a good idea, he saw your little disguise that the filly grew to know you by, so he decided to use it. He fed on the filly, and she screamed.”

Shade closed his eyes, turning his head away.

“She screamed and begged for you to stop. It was hilarious, she screamed, and screamed. Then she cried. She kept crying for hours. It was amazing, how quickly he shattered the friendship you made with her. He took that innocent little filly, and turned her into a cold, emotionless…”

Shade turned his horn towards Shifter, intending to fire a magical blast at him, but instead of a green glow, it was covered with a purple glow, and Shade got electrocuted. He slammed his hooves on the table and walked out. Slamming the door closed with his hind legs. “Vash’shalla Vak lirtala” Shade mumbled.

Shining Armor opened the door and came up to him. “Hey Shade! Where are you going?”

“I’m going to speak with Celestia!” Shade replied. “And then I’m going to light fire to something.”

“Hold on!” Shining Armor said. Shade stopped walking and turned to glare at him, even though Shining Armor was larger than him, the death glare still made him stop for a second.

“Hold up? HOLD UP! Do you understand what the Urpalok just said? They hurt her! They Drained her! For all I know, they killed her! I have the right to be angry right now! And I want nothing more than to slam that Fucker’s face into the wall!” Shade dragged his horn across the ground, causing a large wall of green fire to spout up. It quickly shrank though leaving Shade breathing heavily on the other side.

“Feel better?” Shining Armor asked.

“Yes…” Shade replied. “But I still want to talk to Celestia. I don’t think I can handle any more of these… Not today anyway…”

“I understand Shade. I do. Just… Do what you have to, you’ve been through so much already, and this can’t have been easy.” He looked at Shade. “Do you even know where Celestia’s Chamber is?”

Shade thought about it for a moment. “Honestly… I was just going to the throne room to hang out on the ceiling until she came back…”

Shining Armor rolled his eyes. “Come on, I’ll show you the way.” He looked at Shade’s wing. “You may want to get your wing under control first.”

Shade looked towards the appendage in question, to see it buzzing rapidly, and glowing slightly. Shade let out an annoyed sigh and transformed into Comet Trail. “Problem solved.”

“And who is this?” Shining Armor asked.

“Comet Trail.” Comet replied. “He… He should actually be here in the city, at least that’s what Tornado Dust told me…” Comet moved the blue mane from his eye. “I forgot about the hair… Anyway, Celestia?”

Shining Armor led Comet through the castle to where Celestia’s chamber was, Comet didn’t get a chance to look at it before, on the door was the symbol that resembled Celestia’s Mark, a sun with strangely wavy rays coming off it, Comet had to admire it for a minute before the door opened and he was motioned in by Shining Armor.

Comet let his disguise drop once he was inside.

“Ah Shade, have you learned anything?” Celestia asked, then saw the expression on his face. “Is something wrong?”

“You could say that…” Shade sighed. “I tried to kill him…”

Celestia looked at him concerned. “What did you learn?”

“I learned that Meadow is practically being tortured by them…” Shade replied. “They…They’ve been feeding on her… Using…Using this FUCKING FORM!” He turned into Sunstreak, a tear working its way down his coat. “They used it! They drained her using it!” Sunstreak looked at a mirror nearby and punched his hoof straight through it, right where his head should be. “I can’t even look at this form without feeling ashamed!” He changed to his natural form.

“I… I can’t… She…” Shade tried to say, but the words got mixed in his mouth. He was a mess, he was angry at Spine, Sad about Meadow, Disappointed in himself, and ashamed at what had been done using HIS identity. “Maybe I am just a monster…” He said falling to the floor. “She won’t even want to look at me for this… She must think I’m just another one of them…”

Shade looked over to the shattered mirror, seeing his own reflection, a crack straight through where his right eye should be, reflecting his blue eye over both sides. “How can I look her in the face after this?” Shade levitated one of the shards of glass and threw it at the reflection, smashing the remaining glass.

He looked down to the floor. “I can’t even… She… How did you do it?” He looked up at Celestia. “To see Luna turn into Nightmare Moon? To banish her like that? How did you ever manage to look at her again? How did she forgive you after what you did?”

Celestia got up and placed her wing over Shade. “When I banished my Sister, it hurt me deeply. I thought there wasn’t any way to get my sister back. For those many long years, I felt there was no way for her to forgive me. Much as you feel now, I wanted to give up more times than I am willing to admit.”

Shade looked up at the Princess. Surprised to hear her saying something like this, whenever he heard about Celestia, she seemed infallible, nothing seemed to get her into any fully emotional states, so hearing this from her caught him off guard.

“However, I never gave up on her. I knew she would return, whether she forgave me was up to fate. I was frightened of that day, I was even more frightened when the Elements were nowhere to be found, in case I had to repeat that day.” She looked down at Shade. “I know you will make the correct decision, do what you need to. While the Changelings that follow this new Queen may have used your form, do not forget who the original is. They may have used it, but they can never take your personality. I am sure Meadow will understand.”

Shade was still unsure, but one thing that would help, was a way to contact Shining Armor. “Do you have any of that Enchanted parchment I keep seeing Twilight use to contact Shining Armor?”

“Yes I believe I do. What is this for?” She asked levitating a scroll to him.

Shade grabbed it in his magic and placed it in one of the holes in his leg. “Just in case… I can’t be sure that Spine is truly gone, especially if he tried anything, I would rather have a direct line of contact with him, it’s as simple as lighting it on fire right?”

Celestia nodded. “And something else I’m sure will interest you, Cytes has allowed you to escort Miss Mirror around the city for the day, provided you have the filly with you.”

Shade wanted to ask questions, such as how she knew about Echo, but then remembered that she also knew about Cytes, Acari, probably Pupa, and Meadow before him ever telling her, so he didn’t ask. “Thank you Princess.”

“You are going to need to return to your disguise however.” Celestia replied. “That is Shining Armor’s order for you, so I won’t interfere with it. Besides, I think you did a rather good job for your first attempt.”

Shade was once again happy that Chitin didn’t blush.

Chapter 40: Family Day

Shade had only once before gone down into a Changeling Hive, and while it was fascinating to look around, it was by far one of the creepiest places he had been in a long time, even though he knew this was a medical Hive.

“Alright Shade,” Cytes said, levitating a document across the table to Shade. “All you need to do is sign at the bottom, and you take full responsibility for Mirror for the remainder of the day.”

Shade nodded and grabbed the quill in his magic, and shakily wrote his name. “I still need to work on it…” Shade said under his breath.

Cytes looked over the document. “Everything seems to be in order,” She lowered her glasses to look over the document. “I’m expecting her back here by eight o’ Clock tomorrow morning, otherwise I’ll contact the Royal Guard.”

Shade nodded. “I understand Cytes.” Shade replied. “I only intend to show her around for the day, let her spend it with Echo.”

“Didn’t Celestia ask you to help with something?” Cytes asked, levitating the document back to Shade.

“She did,” Shade replied. “I helped with the interrogations a bit, but then one of them started talking about Meadow… I couldn’t control myself.”

Cytes nodded. “I understand. I am going to put a scout on you for a while, just to be safe, if any Royal Guards try anything, just show them the document. Aside from that, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.”

Shade nodded, placing the document in the saddle bags he borrowed from Twilight for the day. “Anything else Cytes?” He asked.

“Nothing else comes to mind,” Cytes replied. “Just make sure that she comes back.”

Shade nodded before getting off the chair and walking towards the door.

“Where is the Nymph by the way?” Cytes asked. “I didn’t hear tell of her arrival.”

“She is back at the apartment.” Shade replied. “I left her in the care of Antenna, I didn’t want her to get involved with whatever was going on at the castle.”

“Understandable,” Cytes replied. “Mirror will be waiting for you outside the holding cells.”

Shade nodded to her before walking out of the room and heading towards the holding cells. His mind busily buzzing with thoughts about Meadow, but he shook these away, No matter what they did… I can fix it… So instead he thought about the day he hoped to have. It was much less a day for him, he was hoping to give Mirror some more time with Echo, because of just how happy the filly was around her.

When he made it to the holding cells, two Changeling Guards were leading Mirror to him.

Shade held the document up to them, and they looked over it before nodding. “Everything is in order.” The Guard said raising their spears. “Don’t make us regret this.”

Shade motioned for Mirror to follow him before turning back to the Guards. “Don’t worry boys, I won’t.”

Mirror looked at him. “Why did you do this?” She asked. “I’m still a convict for helping Bloodpool…”

“Yeah… but you make Echo happy.” Shade replied. “Plus, you’ve shown me that I can trust you, I don’t think you would do anything to hurt her chances of a normal life. Or as normal as she can get, being a Changeling and all.” Shade looked at Mirror to see her surprised.

“I-I don’t know what to say…”

“Thank you works fine.” Shade said with a slight smile.

“Thank you.” Mirror replied. “My name is Midnight Glint in my disguise.”

“Sunstreak,” Shade replied. “I can take you to Echo; she’s being looked after by a caretaker back where we’ve been staying.”

“How long do I get to see her for?”

Shade smiled. “For the rest of the day.” He said, and looked to his side to see Mirror’s shocked face.

“How the Hive did you pull that off?” She asked surprised.

“Well I talked to Princess Celestia, and she Okayed it, provided that I help with the interrogations of the prisoners from the raid last night.”

Mirror glanced up at him. “You find out anything?”

Shade shook his head. “Nothing useful… I really don’t want to talk about it.” Shade replied. “So… How have you been?”

Midnight Glint turned out to be a nearly pitch black unicorn, with green eyes that matched the color of her magic, so there would be no strange questions about the odd magic color. Her mark was that of a silver star, contrasting the near total darkness of her mane and coat. Which would have been good were the buildings not white and gold, making the two of them stick out rather badly. Sunstreak had been on guard making sure that nobody around even thought it possible for her to be a Changeling, luckily though they all seemed too busy with their daily lives.

Sunstreak led her right to the Apartment, taking none of the side streets and just talking about the weather or what the venders had. When they both got to the apartment complex, Sunstreak turned to Midnight.

“Alright… so I haven’t exactly told the others about this…” Shade admitted. “So expect there to be a few questions before we are allowed to just go…”

Midnight nodded. “So long as I get to see my daughter.”

“Whatever happened to her father?” Shade asked. “I mean…you mentioned that he died, but how?”

Midnight looked at the ground. “We were in Everfree, and a Timber wolf found us… He told me to run, so I did. I found Canterlot, and waited outside the cities gate for him…” She sighed. “Echo was only a few weeks old at the time… She never met him… After a few hours, I gave up, and I managed to get a place from Cytes, and I made my life with Echo.”

Sunstreak nodded in understanding. “You don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

Midnight sighed. “Thanks… I don’t want to remember what I found after…”

Sunstreak looked at her curiously. “Don’t Changeling bodies burn up?”

Midnight looked up. “Normally, yes. But his horn was broken off in the fight. Without that, the magic can’t get to a focal point, so it just…dissipates. A strong enough magical surge could cause a jumpstart, but usually the horn needs to remain intact. Many Changelings also believe it is a bridge to the afterlife, keeping it intact means you get to go on after death.”

“Huh… Interesting…” Sunstreak said, walking up to the apartment door. “Alright we’re here.” Sunstreak pulled out the key to the apartment from the saddlebag and opened the door.

Inside, Twilight was talking to Candy Floss while she was taking care of Sunspot. Sunstreak walked in first. “Hey Sunspot. I have a surprise for you.”

The filly looked up from Candy Floss’ forelegs. “Daddy?” She said. “What is it?”

Sunstreak stepped to the side, letting Midnight walk in. Sunspot took a look at the Unicorn, before jumping out of Candy’s hooves and running up to Midnight, hugging her. “Mommy!”

Midnight hugged Sunspot. “Hi Echo…” She said. “Has Daddy been taking good care of you?”

“Uh-huh.” Sunspot replied, removing her disguise. “I missed you Mommy.”

“I missed you too Echo…” Midnight replied.

“Shade…” Twilight said, surprised before getting angry. “What is she doing here?”

“Twilight… I know this looks bad… But I came to an agreement with Celestia. She allowed me to take Midnight Glint here into my custody for the day. Before you say anything, I did it so that they could spend some time together.” Sunstreak pointed at Echo and Mirror. “They haven’t had a chance at a long reunion in a while, so I wanted to give them some family time. I’ve taken full responsibility for them.”

Twilight was about to say something, but Sunstreak took out the document Cytes gave him and held it up to her. “I took full responsibility, Celestia has approved it, and I signed it, until eight o’ clock tomorrow morning she is under my protection.”

Twilight looked stunned. “What…She… I… Okay. If Celestia thinks it’s a good Idea, then I’ll listen.” Shade put the document back in the saddlebag. “So what is your plan?”

Shade looked at her. “I…Honestly don’t have one. At least not until sunrise… I just plan on walking around the city with them, give them a chance to catch up.” He leaned in to whisper in her ear. “Plus… I need to clear my head, I almost killed another Changeling…”

“You-”

Shade shook his head. “I don’t want them to freak out, he was talking about Meadow, I got angry, if that suppression spell wasn’t on me, I would have killed him.”

Twilight’s eyes widened. “What did he say?”

“They drained Meadow using my Sunstreak form.” Shade replied. “They… Essentially tortured her. Using MY form… It made me angry… I need to clear my head…”

Twilight nodded. “Just… Make sure they don’t start a panic.”

“Mirror has been living here for almost three years, she should be fine, and Echo has both of us to protect her, we should be fine.”

“I would feel better if you waited for Rainbow to…”

“No. I want them to have some time together, we need to get going, I promised her that I wouldn’t take too long here.”

“Daddy! Are we going to the park today?” Echo asked.

“Maybe Echo… Maybe later. Right now we need to get going. Unless you would rather spend less time with Mirror?”

“Alright Daddy!” Echo said before turning into Sunspot. “I’m ready Daddy!”

Shade transformed back into Sunstreak. “Alright then, Midnight?”

“I’m ready.” She lifted Sunspot onto her back with her magic.

“I’ll talk to you later Twilight.” Sunstreak said walking back out of the room.

Sunstreak honestly had no idea where to take them, he had seen enough of the locations around with Twilight and Rainbow Dash, but he had never really seen any appeal to go back to them. So he decided to ask Midnight if she recommended anything.

“To be honest… I spent most of my time either at the house or at the park…” Midnight replied. “Caring for Sunspot while you were off hunting treasure or whatever.”

“Magical Artifacts.” Sunstreak replied annoyed, they had to keep the appearance of a couple, including all the bickering. “And I didn’t know you were pregnant. I spent three years out of the city. If you had sent one letter to me I would have come over on my own.”

“Okay… I’d admit… that was my fault… I thought you would call it off if you knew…”

Sunstreak placed his wing over her body. “I would never leave you…”

A few minutes later, they were in a more bustling section of the city, allowing them to be drowned out by the rest of the ponies, meaning they could drop the couple act for a bit.

“So in all seriousness… Do either of us know anything about this city?”

“I know plenty… I just know nothing about touring it.” Midnight replied. “I lived here for three years after all. Mostly I just stayed in the house or headed to the park to gather some love… Sunspot couldn’t transform for the first few years, so I had to keep a close eye on her.”

“Understandable…” Sunstreak replied. “What about you Spot?” He said to the small Pegasus. “Where do you think we should go?”

The filly looked around, trying to see over the heads of all the ponies. “How about that?”

Sunstreak followed where she was pointing, it looked like some kind of tower. “Hm…” Sunstreak replied. “Maybe… I suppose we have nothing better to do.”

“Yay!” Sunspot replied happily “Can we go now?”

Both Sunstreak and Midnight rolled their eyes. “Alright. Sunspot… Let’s go.”

The tower was an interesting building, the inner architecture was winding and elaborate, however compared to the inner workings of the castle, it was clearly nowhere near it. However compared to the other buildings, it was impressive.

Up at the top of the tower, the sun had begun to climb down from its pinnacle; the three of them could see nearly the entirety of Canterlot, including the surrounding forest and valley.

“Look at that view…” Sunstreak said. “I haven’t seen something this good since watching the sun rise over the city.”

“I have to agree…” Midnight replied. “It is beautiful.”

Sunspot had climbed onto the ledge and was looking at the sky and surrounding area. “Wow…” She said, watching some Pegasus fly around. “Daddy, can I fly like them?”

“Maybe Spot. Just not right now. You’ll learn eventually.” Sunstreak ruffled the little filly’s mane.

“Sunspot… don’t stand too close to the edge.” Midnight cautioned. “We don’t want you to fall.”

“Okay Mommy.” Sunspot replied.

“Oh don’t be so nervous.” Sunstreak replied. “If she does fall, I’ll catch her.”

Midnight didn’t looked pleased. “I don’t know, it’s not that long of a fall…”

“Have some faith in me.” Sunstreak replied. “I’m pretty quick.”

“I don’t want her to…” Midnight’s eyes shot open. “ECHO!”

Sunstreak turned around and saw Sunspot walking along the ledge of the tower, when her hoof landed on a slightly crumbling section of the tower, causing her to lose her footing and slip.

Sunstreak wasted no time in acting, he hurled himself off the building and dashed towards the filly, flapping his wings as fast as they would allow, when he caught up to the filly, he turned himself in the air to slow himself enough to avoid whiplash, before heading straight back up.

“HELP!” Shade’s eye twitched at how loud the signal was.

“I got you Spot.” Sunstreak said, flying up to the top of the tower. When he placed her down, he found Midnight hugging him. “Okay… You can stop crying now…”

“Thank you!” Midnight said, grabbing Sunspot in her magic. “We are going to have a long talk about this Echo.”

Sunstreak wormed his way out of Midnight’s grip, Pinkie Pie’s Death grips finally helped for once. He then looked at Midnight and Sunspot, Sunspot looked sorry for what she did.

“Midnight… I think she understands.” Sunstreak said. “Sunspot, are you going to try that again?”

Sunspot shook her head.

“Midnight… She isn’t in the Hive anymore… Don’t treat her like she still is.” Sunstreak walked up to her. “Midnight… She’s scared.”

Midnight looked at Sunstreak then back at Sunspot, and sighed. She let her magical grip on Sunspot drop and pulled her into a hug. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again Echo.”

“Okay Mommy I promise.” Sunspot replied. “I won’t do it again.”

“I would hope not,” Sunstreak replied. “Remind me to teach you to use those wings on your back when we get back.”

Sunspot looked happily at him. “Really?”

“Unless Midnight here would be against it?” Sunstreak said, looking towards the pitch black Unicorn.

Midnight smiled. “No… I think it would be a wonderful idea.”

“YAY!” Sunspot replied happily, her small wings flapping quickly.

“Now, I think that’s plenty of excitement for the day.” Sunstreak said. “How about the park?”

Sunspot jumped happily at this, “Park! Park! Park!”

Sunstreak chuckled at the small Pegasus’ joy. “Alright Spot, I know you’re happy, but try to contain it until we get to the park.”

“You clearly don’t know your own daughter.” Midnight replied. “Asking her to contain excitement is like asking an egg not to hatch.”

Sunspot smiled at her mother before bouncing around the two of them. “I’m going to fly!” She said happily flapping her small wings quickly.

Sunstreak laughed at the small filly’s excitement. “I see what you mean.” He said. “Let’s get going before she explodes with excitement.”

Sunspot was too excited to sit still; she hopped up and down next to the two of them as they walked down the streets, drawing a few odd looks from some of the ponies around the streets. Sunstreak managed to calm her down by promising to start teaching her to fly when they got to the park.

The park was less crowded than the last time Sunstreak was there, he just chalked it down to being a weekday. “So Sunspot,” Sunstreak said to the little Pegasus, “You ready to fly?”

The Pegasus continued to hop happily. “Yes!”

“Alright Spot.” Sunstreak said. “Calm down a bit. I need to give you a starter course.”

Sunspot stopped hopping and sat down on the grass. “Alright Daddy. I’m ready.”

Sunstreak stood in front of her, opening up his wings. “First things first, staying airborne.”

Sunstreak began to explain how to fly to Sunspot, mentioning the wing speed she would need to use, and even helping her steady herself in the air, and after a few hours of training, Sunstreak decided to let her try and at least stay hovering on her own.

“Remember Spot,” Sunstreak said, watching the filly concentrate. “Keep those wings flapping.”

Sunspot nodded, and looked at Sunstreak, she let out a small breath, closed her eyes, and lightly pushed off the ground. Flapping her small wings quickly.

Sunspot kept her eyes closed as she thought she should feel her hooves connecting to the ground, she didn’t. Slowly, she opened one of her eyes to see Sunstreak smiling at her.

“You’re flying Echo.” Midnight said. “I’m so proud of you.”

Sunspot looked down at the ground, to see she was hovering a foot off the ground. A smile quickly reached over her face. “I’m flying Daddy!”

“Good job Spot, now try to fly over to Midnight.” Sunstreak said. “Don’t go too fast though, keep your balance.”

Sunspot turned and slowly flew over to Midnight, keeping herself steady before wrapping her hooves around her mother. “Mommy, can you teach me magic? Like how Daddy is teaching me to fly?”

Midnight let a tear roll down her face. “Of course Echo… I’d be happy to, but we are going to have to do it in private. Don’t want your father learning any of it.”

Sunstreak chuckled. “Afraid I’ll leave you once I find out how you use magic?”

“No.” Midnight replied. “I just don’t want you making your life any easier.”

“Oo… That one stung.” Sunstreak replied. “Alright Sunspot, I think that’s enough training for today. Just go and enjoy yourself, but stay close. Don’t want your mother to have a heart attack.”

Sunspot landed easily before nodding at Sunstreak and running off towards a field.

“Thank you for teaching her.” Midnight said. “I’m not one for flying.”

“Is that why you chose a Unicorn?” Sunstreak asked.

“Well… that and two other reasons.” Midnight replied. “Having my magic helped me keep a hold of Echo, and whenever I was in trouble, I prefer being able to use my magic in combat.”

“You ever have to?” Sunstreak asked. “Use it on combat I mean.”

“Once…” She replied. “A couple of stallions tried to make their move on me in an alleyway. They wouldn’t be trying that again for a while.”

Sunstreak whistled. “I hope that they recovered.”

“Eventually.” Midnight replied. “Last I heard they still had the burn marks.”

“Okay… Don’t want to hear about that anymore.”

“Why did you choose a Pegasus?” Midnight asked. “You work at Cloudsdale?”

Sunstreak shook his head. “I chose it because I couldn’t do magic, and I always preferred flying anyway. My eye drew some attention at first, but eventually the ponies understood.”

Midnight and Sunstreak just kept talking while watching Sunspot play with a few of the other foals, eventually the sun began to set and the other foals started to leave.

“Mommy,” Sunspot said. “Are you going to have to leave again?”

Midnight hugged the filly. “Yes Sunspot. I’m sorry; I’m still in trouble for helping that mean Changeling.”

Sunstreak looked up towards the moon, rising into the sky, and then he looked back over towards the waterfall. “Come on you two, I want to show you something.”

Sunstreak led the two of them through the small tree line, and emerged in front of the waterfall, the moon perfectly reflecting off the waters, casting a light glow over the clearing.

“Wow…” Midnight said. “This looks beautiful…” She looked around the clearing, looking at the way the trees happily accepted the light.

“Shiny…” Sunspot said, looking at the waterfall, the perfect reflection of the moon in it. “So pretty…”

“It is, isn’t it.”

Sunstreak looked over towards the voice, and saw the young lime green mare he saw a few days before walking out of the tree line. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No… No it’s fine.” Sunstreak replied.

“Is this your wife?” She asked, looking at Midnight.

“Yes I am.” Midnight said. “Do you know her?”

Sunstreak was going to answer, but he looked back at Sunspot, who seemed to be worried about something. “Sunspot, what’s wrong?”

Sunspot pointed at the lime green mare, and Sunstreak felt a shiver down his back.

“Mirror.” Sunstreak said. “Stay behind me.”

“So you know?” The mare asked, looking between the two. “Well there is no point in hiding it then.” The mare motioned for someone to come out of the tree line, and Sunstreak heard Sunspot screech in fright.

Sunstreak turned around to see a couple of Changeling walk out, they fired beams of magic at both Midnight and Sunspot, but Sunstreak shed his disguise and put up a shield spell.

“Mirror! I need some help!” Shade said, before a third beam hit him in his side.

He heard Mirror scream and looked up to see Echo being held up in a magical field. “Let her go!”

Shade pushed himself up, but before he could move to help, he felt himself being pushed into a tree and held there. “Well isn’t this a familiar meeting?”

YOU! “SPINE!”

Echo was levitated over to the grip of two Changelings, one of which held a bladed foreleg up to Echo’s throat. “Let Echo GO!” Mirror shouted, her horn beginning to glow.

“Put that magic away.” Spine said, stepping out of the tree line, “Or I order my men to kill her.”

Mirror ground her teeth before her magic died down. “Now let her go!”

“I don’t think so.” Spine replied. “You see, the Changeling you are in the company of is a wanted criminal. And you are addressing a General.” Spine walked up to Shade. “Hello again Nymph, I must say you have been doing spectacular work.”

“GO TO HELL!”

“Oh come now…” Spine replied. “I’m complimenting you. After all, you did help us capture that filly, and now, now you’ve brought us a deserter.”

“I’m no deserter!” Mirror replied angrily. “I was allowed to leave!”

“Not according to the new Queen.” Spine replied. “And now I see why Nymph here was so defensive of that filly, he has his own.”

“I swear to god Spine, if you hurt them!” Shade said, trying to teleport, but whatever was holding him prevented him from using magic.

“Oh… I will. You know, when I heard from my spy that you had grown attached to another young one, I was thrilled. When I heard it was a Changeling, a wanted Changeling no less, I decided to come myself.”

“Don’t you dare!” Shade said.

“Oh… I will. She will make a wonderful addition to our little collection.” Spine replied. “However her,” Spine looked towards Mirror. “You are wanted dead, so I will be happy to oblige.”

“No!” Shade shouted.

Mirror was knocked down by a large Changeling, which held her in place; his foreleg shifted into a blade and stabbed her right through her stomach.

Echo screamed before being silenced by one of the Changelings holding her.

“I believe we’re done here.” Spine said, “Torch, deal with him.” In a flash the rest of the Changelings vanished, leaving only Shade, a bleeding Mirror, and another Large Changeling.

Shade fell to the ground and ran over to Mirror. “Come on Mirror. Stay with me.”

“E-Echo…” She said weakly. “I-I need…”

“Mirror, stay with me… I’ll get help.”

“No…” Mirror replied. “I-I’m too far gone…”

“Don’t say that… Come on, Echo needs you.”

“Sha-”She cringed “Ade… please… Break it…” She leaned her head towards Shade. “Please… I-I don’t want to be alone in the afterlife…”

“No… Mirror I’m going to get you out of here, just hold on.” Shade said.

“No… Shade… Please… Respect a dying…Changeling’s last wish…” Mirror’s eyes began to dim. “Break it…”

Shade nodded, and reached up, placing it in one of the holes on his leg.

“Do it…” Shade pulled down hard on the horn, snapping it off. “Thank…You… Please… Take…Care of… Her…”

“I need you to stay with me… Come on, don’t give up. Echo needs you.”

“I-I-I’m…cold…so…cold…I…” Shade felt her go limp.

“Mirror? Mirror! Come on!” Shade shook her, though he already knew it was too late. “I can’t do this alone!”

The Changeling from behind Shade laughed. “Oh… This is going to be great.” He began to walk up to Shade.

Shade began shaking, looking down at the body of Mirror. When the Changeling got close, Shade stopped. “That was the last one…”

“What in Ceymi’s name are you talking about?” Torch replied, his forelegs sharpening. “But you are right, that will be the last thing you see.”

“That was the LAST FUCKING ONE!”

Shade whipped around punching Torch in his face sending him back. His eyes had turned red, and he was not playing around anymore. He jumped on the Changeling pinning him to the ground. “I am going to have some fun with you.” His forelegs became blades, each one burning with green fire. “THIS IS FOR EVERYONE YOU’VE HURT YOU FUCKER!”

The screams echoed into the night, puncturing the stony silence, the green flames broke through the canopy. Some say that they even saw a spout of fire come from the park.

Author's Note

Shit's getting bad now...

What will Shade do now? How will he handle himself? How did Spine get in there? :derpyderp1:

Chapter 41: Snap

As the Sun rose over the Castle, Shining Armor was preparing for another day of useless Interrogations. After Shade had left from his near murderous outburst, the interrogations went mostly the same, none of them wanted to tell them anything, and the same rehearsed answers were starting to make it difficult to tell if they already talked to one Changeling or not.

“Ugh… Today is going to be a long day…” He said to Cadence.

“I’m sure it won’t be that bad.” She replied. “I have to deal with Prince Blueblood today. All you have is some stubborn Changelings.”

“Yeah… You definitely got the short end of the stick on that one.” Shining Armor joked. “Well I better-”

He was cut off by a wisp of smoke appearing in front of him that condensed into a scroll.

“That’s funny.” He said looking at the scroll. “I wasn’t expecting a report from Twilight this early.”

Shining Armor levitated the scroll and unraveled it, it was sloppily written with some kind of light blue ink.
Shining Armor,

This is Shade; I will be coming to the Castle as quickly as possible. I would like to speak with Sergeant Shifter in the interrogation room when I arrive.

This has become personal to me, and I will not wait to speak with him. Make sure he is there Captain.

Shining Armor looked over the letter, surprised at first to see Shade’s name on it, but he didn’t dwell on it too long, instead he began thinking about how the matter became personal.

“What is it Shiny?” Cadence asked.

“It’s a letter from Shade… He says something happened that made the problem personal to him.”

“Maybe he found some way to get information from them?” Cadence suggested.

“Maybe but that-” Shining Armor was cut off by another Guard coming into the room.

“Captain Armor!” The guard said with a salute. “We have a Changeling sighting inside of Canterlot.”

Out in the city of Canterlot, Shade walked down the streets, not bothering to disguise himself or caring about the scared looks from the ponies. The saddlebag on his side was bulging strangely, and his usually black carapace was spattered with blue and green blood, hardened overnight.

He had only one goal in mind, get to the castle, after that, he had a Changeling to talk to. He was well aware of the few ponies getting out their various tools to try and chase him off, ranging from pitch forks to candle sticks.

By the time he got to the castle, he was leading probably a fourth of the city behind him. The two Royal Guards in front of the castle closed ranks.

“Move!” Shade ordered.

“Are you Shade?” One of the Guards asked.

“Yes.” Shade replied. “Now move! I have a prisoner to interrogate.”

The two stallions moved out of the way of Shade, who quickly walked into the castle and then started to head towards the Interrogation room. As he got closer, his mind began to fill with pure hatred and anger. By the time he got to the room, he kicked the door open with enough force to shake the room.

“Where the hell are they?” He shouted at the Changeling in the room.

“Ah Nymph how are you doing today?” Shifter asked, innocently.

“Where the fuck are they you little insect shit!” Shade shouted, slamming the door closed.

“You are going to need to be more specific than that.” Shifter replied.

“Where. Is. Echo!” Shade asked.

“Echo… Echo… Sorry not ringing any bells.”

“Then let me ask you in a different way.” Shade said the anger in his voice still present. “Where is Ceymi?”

“Oh… Nymph. Nymph. Nymph.” Shifter said mockingly, as Shade began to open the saddle bag. “You know that I can’t just.”

Shade slammed the contents of the bag on the table; inside there was a skull, a shattered horn, and a blue backplate.

“Holy Chrysalis!”

“I’ll ask again.” Shade said, pushing the objects toward Shifter. “These are what happened to Spine’s little murderer buddy, after I was done with him.” Shade slammed his hoof on the table. “Where is SPINE?”

Shifter looked startled at first, but quickly retained his calm look. “Really? You think just because you get a Changeling’s Skull and Backplate I’m going to tell you everything. You are going to need to do a lot more than that.”

Shade smirked. “I figured you would say that.”

Shifter looked at him curiously. “Then why did you-?”

“Tell me… What do you know about history?” Shade asked. “Specifically over one thousand years ago.”

Shifter looked confused. “Um… I don’t.”

“Let me be more specific.” Shade replied. “Ever heard of a place called the Crystal Empire?”

Shifter shook his head.

“Understandable…” Shade replied. “Most think that it is just a story, even the Elders knowledge of it is limited, and they’ve lived for well over one thousand years. It goes something like this.”

“Over one thousand years ago there was this city, big as Canterlot I’d say, that was made entirely out of crystals, the streets shone bright, the castle was a brilliant diamond, and even the ponies themselves were crystal. Now it is believed that inside this Empire, there was an artifact, some kind of…gem thing. It could use the power of the crystal ponies to spread happiness and light all across Equestria.”

“However… there was a dark side to the magic. While it ran on love and good will, the artifact could be corrupted. Reaching a dark magical art, spells fueled by Anger, Hatred, Sadness, Fear, all that good stuff. Now of course the place has never been found, vanished clean off the map, almost like it never existed at all. However the books of these spells remained.”

Shade got up and walked around the table, circling it, never taking his eyes off the Changeling. “Now… Most of these tomes were lost in the Discord Wars, but a few remained, safe in the Burning Fiords’ libraries. Now… These spells were very finicky, they only worked for ponies.”

“Now why is that? You may be asking yourself; well it is all rather simple really. You see, the dragons rely on a pool of their own natural energy, and cast spells by pulling from the pool at any time they wish. The spells are all related directly to the Dragon culture, and use an ancient text that allows for use of this pool. However ponies, even Changelings, their magic works just a tiny bit different.”

"While Unicorns and Changelings do rely on an energy pool, it can be negated through constant study and training. However the spells aren't only reliant on training and knowledge. See this horn, protruding from atop my head? Well, it links directly to the mental pathway, so the emotions we feel directly influences the spells we cast. If we are angrier, the spell becomes more dangerous and less focused, if we are sad, the spell becomes weaker, if we are too energetic, the spell could backfire.”

“Now knowing this,” Shade sat back down opposite the Changeling. “What do you think would happen if a Dragon from the Fiords read up on this ancient magical type? They couldn’t cast the spells; the magic just doesn’t work for them, because the two magic types don’t coincide.” Shade paused. “But…What would happen if that Dragon was transformed into a pony? They would know how to use the spells, they would understand the theory and how to cast them, but there is one thing they are missing, the emotion.”

“Now… I just witnessed the death of someone I hold up as a friend. That made me pretty fucking mad; she bled out in my hooves and asked not to be alone. I mean… I’m just so angry at that. And now, the same Changeling who kidnapped someone I trust, and that I promised to get home safely, has just kidnapped someone who I consider to be my own Daughter. And you! You know where they are, so I wonder how much I’d have to make you squirm before you told the truth.” A wicked smile formed on his face.

Shifter was shocked, and visibly frightened. “You can’t do that… Equestrian Law forbids the use of torture on-”

Shade chuckled and shook his head. “Oh… Sergeant, Sergeant, Sergeant. That might be true. But you forgot one…VERY important fact.”

“What was that?”

“I’m not from Equestria.”

Shade lowered his horn, which began bubbling with green and purple magic, like before, the purple aura formed around his horn, but as Shade aimed down at Shifter’s leg, the purple aura shattered and a black beam fired, hitting Shifter in his leg. From where the beam hit, Shifter’s leg began to transform into a solid crystal.

“DO YOU THINK I’M JOKING NOW?” Shade shouted flipping the steel table to the side. Shifter was screaming at the sight of the gray crystals sprouting up over his leg, preventing him from moving. “TELL ME WHERE THEY ARE!”

“GUARDS!” Shifter shouted.

Shade turned aiming his horn at the door, another black beam fired from it, as he traced along the door frame, gray crystals sprouted up, sealing the door. “THEY CAN’T FUCKING SAVE YOU!”

“I will never betray my hive!”

“Oh… You will.” Shade replied, very sure of that fact. “I don’t care what I have to do, or how long it takes. Neither one of us is leaving this room until I get some answers!” Shade was fully willing to wait as long as it took, even if he had to slowly pull every one of Shifter’s teeth out himself, he would.

“I will never betray Queen Ceymi!”

“You think she CARES for you? You think she will honestly care if I kill every last one of you? NO! She won’t! Now tell me where the fuck she is!”

“NEVER!”

Shade aimed his horn at Shifter’s wing, and the membrane changed to a near glass like quartz. “Just tell me and I can end this!”

“NEVER! You might as well kill me now! Because Spine will have already killed the little- URK!” Shade had rammed into Shifter, holding him up against a wall, his hoof pressed tightly on Shifter’s Windpipe. His eye's beginning to turn red.

“You have ten seconds to tell me everything I want to know, or I start ripping off body parts.”

“NE…VER!” Shifter said with difficulty.

Shade glared at him for a few seconds, listening as he struggled for breath. His eyes slowly changed back to their natural colors before he let out a breath and moved his hoof, making Shifter collapse to the ground.

“You know what… I just figured something out.” Shade said. “I found out why my Dragon Fear ability hasn’t been working as it should.” Shade landed on the ground his back turned to Shifter. “You see, every creature I’ve tried it on so far, be it a bird, rabbit, fish, bear, all of them have some ingrained fear already. They are prey, meant to run from predators. But the Dragon Fear implants a primal fear into you, but since Rabbits and the like already have that fear it is less effective. But on a sapient creature, that fear was stored away. So the Dragon Fear pries it out of you.”

Shifter stared at Shade gasping for breath and visibly frightened by this changeling standing over him.

“So… This is going to be a learning experience for both of us.” Shade turned around, a wicked smile playing across his face. His right eye snapped to a slit, and Shifter fell to the floor, cowering.

Behind the one way mirror, Shining Armor, Darkstar, Celestia, and Luna were watching the scene unfold.

“We should stop this. He’s going to kill him!” Shining Armor said.

“Captain Armor, wait. I want to see where this is going.” Celestia replied.

Shade’s eye had just snapped to a slit, and Shifter had begun to cower.

“Luna,” Celestia said to her sister. “Can you tell me what is going on in there?”

“Of course dear Sister.” Luna replied her eyes shot open, glowing white as she entered Shifter’s dream scape.

Shifter was in the middle of a dark room, nothing around him, Shade had vanished, and all that remained in the void was him.

“He-Hello?” He said, rising to his hooves. “Is…Anypony there?”

“TRAITOR!”

Shifter whipped around at the voice of his monarch. “Chry- Chry- Chrysalis…”

The Tall Changeling barred down on him, her eyes blazing. “You pathetic Larva! How dare you challenge my authority!”

“No! No! Ceymi said it... You... She said... You-You-you were dead!”

“Do you honestly think a pathetic blast of love could kill me that easily? I’ve been hit by flyswatters more dangerous than that!” Chrysalis replied. “Yet you abandoned me. Left me to die. With your knife in my back!”

Shifter’s eyes shot open. “My Queen. I would never-”

“SILENCE!” The power of her voice made Shifter freeze. “You will fall like the rest of your revolutionaries. I have led the Swarm for over Seven hundred years, and I am not about to let myself be killed by two love birds!”

“May I suggest something Your Majesty?”

Shifter looked at the source of the voice, Shade was standing there. “I suggest we end this insignificant Gnats life, slowly and painfully. He has already given up on divulging any secrets.”

“No! My Queen! I would never!”

“Then prove it to me worm!” Shifter was picked up in Chrysalis’ magic. “Tell me where my Daughter is, so that I may crush this pathetic Revolution she is building once and for all!”

“I-I can’t they!”

“Tell me…Do you fear Death?”

Shifter’s eyes widened even further, when the form of Chrysalis morphed, giving way to the skeletal structure underneath, the stench that hit his nose was a mixture of rotting flesh and decay. He heard a bone-chilling screech as the Skeletal Chrysalis opened its mouth.

“No! No! Please! I’ll tell you whatever you want! Keep It Away!”

The skeletal Chrysalis screeched, and an army of undead changelings rose from the darkness, each one with eyes as red as blood, their mouth nothing but rows of sharp teeth, their wings sharpened, and their legs all morphed into claws.

“NO NO! PLEASE NO!”

The Skeletal Chrysalis spoke. “Then Tell Me Where They Are.”

“PONYVILLE!” He shouted. “THEY’RE ATTACKING PONYVILLE!”

The Skeletal Chrysalis smiled, and hissed at him, all at once, the Changelings pounced on him.

“NO!”

Shade’s pitch black eyes changed back into their normal look, as Shifter was pulled out of the nightmare.

“I thank you for your cooperation.” Shade replied. “Your reward is you get to live.” He walked over to where the door was still attached to crystals and kicked it open, launching it off its hinges.

“Wait! What about my leg?” Shifter shouted back.

“What about it?” Shade asked walking out of the room. “I already got what I want. And I’m not in a good enough mood to fix it. Maybe if I find Meadow and Echo unharmed, I’ll think about it.” Shade walked down the hall, only stopping when he was far enough away for sound not to reach the now broken room, before he went up to a nearby wall and puked.

He had been holding it in for as long as he could, since he watched Mirror die in his arms, since he eviscerated the Changeling, the worst was what he just did. He was too inexperienced with the Dragon Fear, and now… He couldn’t keep it in.

I over exerted myself there. Any longer and I wouldn’t have been able to keep that up.

He felt drained, emotionally, physically and mentally. He had used far too much of his energy killing the Changeling from before, even with all the ambient energy from the park, he used far too much. He had buried Mirror’s body in a small cave behind the waterfall, hoping it would go unnoticed until he returned, planning to give her a proper burial.

He reached into the other side of the saddlebags, pulling out a curved black horn, he let out a sigh. “I’m so sorry Mirror… I… I couldn’t protect you…” He said, a tear coming to his eye. “I’ll make sure that Echo is safe… I promise you that…”

“Come on BB! Don’t you dare give up yet.” The Guard said

“I…I’m trying…It hurts…” An Earth Pony mare replied, draped across the Guard’s back

“The city is just over the tree line. Stay awake for just a few more minutes.”

“I…I’m…Trying…”

“What are you doing up there bird Brain!”

“The city is just up there!” The Pegasus pointed in the direction they were running. “You sure this is a good idea?”

“It’s the only thing we have!”

“Honey…I’m… I’m just gonna…shut my eyes… for a minute…”

“BB don’t you dare close your eyes!” The Guard said. “Just another minute.”

“I…I’m so tired… I…”

“Keep talking to me. Don’t you dare close your eyes! Think of the foals.”

“You’re right…I need…to…Stay…awake…”

The three of them broke through the Tree line, looking at the main gates of the white and gold city. “We made it BB. Just another moment.”

The Guard began to rush down the small hill. “GET THOSE GATES OPEN!” He shouted while running towards it. The city guards raised their weapons.

“Who are you?”

“Honey…I…I’m sorry…”

“What are you talking about BB? You’re doing great.”

“Honey…I…Can’t…” She fell off the Guards back, in a burst of pink flame was replaced with a Changeling.

“BB!” The Guard picked her up. “Come on! Wake up! Haze! Don’t you dare die on me!”

The two guards looked at the Changeling, and moved their spears towards it. “Stand back.”

“DON’T YOU DARE HURT HER!” The Guard stepped in front of her. “That is my wife!”

“Your wife is a Changeling!” One of the guards shouted.

The Unicorn of the group raised his horn over the guard and the Pegasus. The Guard burst into pink flame, his armor still fitting on him due to his lack of wings and a curved horn. The Pegasus was surrounded by yellow flame and instantly moved behind the guard.

“Wait! Don’t shoot!” The Yellow Changeling said. “We’re here to warn you about an attack!”

The Changeling Guard grabbed his wife in his hooves, checking her vitals before letting out a sigh. “She’s alive… Thank Acari… She’s alive…” He turned to the other two guards. “We’re not here to cause trouble, but if my wife doesn’t get medical attention, she’s going to die.” He leaned in to the Unicorn Guard. “And if she dies, I’ll let that city burn.”

“What is going on out here?” Crimson Lance walked out of the gate. “Lockup? What the Hive are-?” She looked at the Unconscious Changeling. “What in Tartarus happened?”

“Chrysalis happened!” Lockup replied. “We need to tell Celestia! The Hive is gone!”

“Gone?” Crimson repeated, her eyes shot open. “CODE RED! GET CYTES ON THE LINE RIGHT NOW!” She shouted back at one of the Pegasi. “Get in here you three. You have a lot of explaining to do.”

Lyra was busily taking care of a few documents Acari sent her to do when she felt a pang in her mental connection, one that meant…

“HAZE!” She shouted and began to run down the streets, running towards the main gates. Please be okay…Please be okay… She thought to herself as she ran down the streets, pushing her way through anyone stupid enough to stand in her way.

“Why couldn’t I be a Pegasus?” Lyra said to herself. Oh… Forget it… She ran down an alleyway, in a wisp of pink flame she took to the sky. Flying as quick as possible towards the gate, Hopefully nopony recognizes me like this…

When she got to where she wanted to be, she recognized the ponies, and she dove down to the ground. “Is she okay?” She asked the red Unicorn. “Tell me she’s fine!”

Crimson Lance looked at the Pegasus. “Um… Who are you?”

“Blackout! I’m her sister!” Blackout replied.

Haze was strapped to a gurney and was fully unconscious, Lockup was looking down at her and Tornado Dust…

“Darkblaze?”

Tornado Dust shook his head. “No…I’m the… uh… Other one…”

“Well… this will be confusing for me. Take this form… I don’t want it.”

The Changeling looked happy about that, before the two of them changed appearance, So Lyra and the White and yellow Pinkie were looking at the strapped in Changeling. “Now…Is she going to be okay?”

“She’s alive…” Lockup replied. “I…I was so worried… I thought she was dead…”

“What happened?” Lyra asked. “Why are you three here?”

“The Hive was lost…” Lockup replied. “Ceymi and her Changelings took the Hive… We didn’t expect it… We just barely managed to get the Bearers out…”

“They’re here?” Lyra asked.

Lockup shook his head. “They’re back in a cave, we had to get Haze to the city, she got out of the Hive in time to warn us, but not before she was almost killed.”

A blue unicorn ran up to them. “Pupa… I got your signal. What is…” She looked at Haze. “Oh… This is bad.” She said looking over Haze. “We need to get her back to the Hive right now.”

“Cytes… What’s wrong with her?”

“Blunt force trauma… Fractures… Possible concussion…” Sapphire replied. “You’re lucky she got here now, we have enough Supplicants to have her back up in a day or two.” Sapphire charged up her horn. “I recommend that you three handle the rest of this, perhaps tell Shade and Darkblaze, I’m sure they’ll help.” Her, Crimson, and Haze vanished in a blue flash.

Lyra turned and grabbed the Earth pony Guard. “Two things. One, you wiped the guards memories right?”

Lockup nodded.

“Second, where the hell are the Bearers, I’m going to get them.”

“No Blackout, you need to tell Acari, we’ll find Shade and Darkblaze, I can get into the castle, He can find Darkblaze.”

Lyra looked at them. “Meet up in the Castle Gardens in one hour. Got it?”

The Yellow Pinkie Pie nodded and took to the sky.

“If she dies… I call dibs on Ceymi’s left foreleg.”

“I got her Ribs.” Lockup replied.

“Deal.” Lyra said, her horn charging up. “See you in an hour Exile.” She vanished in a yellow flash.

Lockup smiled at the name, before running back towards the Castle.

Deep inside Acari’s Hive, the interior has changed completely, instead of the normal pink crystal design, everything was covered with green and black, and all of the normal residents are either trapped in cocoons, or enslaved by the conquerors.

“Your Excellency Queen Ceymi…” Biome said, flying into her ‘new’ Queen’s chamber. The normal elegant purple crystals replaced with what looked like tar stretched along the walls and throne. It made Biome sick to see Ceymi disgracing Acari this way.

“What do you want Slave?” Ceymi demanded.

“General Spine has returned from Canterlot.”

“And?” Ceymi demanded, twirling one of the many memory crystals in her hoof, threatening to damage the fragile memories inside.

“They brought a prisoner…” Biome replied. “A young Nymph.”

“Put her alongside the other. I think she could use some company.”

“As you wish…My Queen…” Biome said with disgust.

As Biome left, Ceymi looked into the crystal. “Forty Years of planning, coming together perfectly.”

Deeper in the Hive, away from the other prisoners and slaves, a single green pod lays, inside of it, a small brown filly lay suspended. She had been there for three weeks, not that she could tell, she had been woken up, fed on, betrayed, and then put back to sleep so many times she gave up on keeping track.

Ever since she was placed inside this strange new cave, where everything was pink, she had been allowed to stay awake. She had seen more of those pink Changelings, but most of them looked sad to her. Especially when they brought another green chrysalis down.

“And don’t even think about damaging the pod!” The mean Changeling shouted at the other two. “If I find even a bruise on that Chrysalis, you’ll be thrown right back in your cocoons.”

The two pink Changelings had their ears dropped down against their heads. “We’re so sorry for this Young one…”

“If it were up to us… We would break both these pods open and strangle him with these stupid chains.”

“Forgive us…”

Meadow looked at them. “I don’t blame you. You were good changelings.”

One of them smiled at her, before placing the pod on the wall. Meadow leaned forward to look into the pod.

Inside was another filly, which looked a lot like Sunstreak, but her eyes were fine and her hair looked like Sweetie Belle.

“Queen Ceymi wants you two to socialize a bit.” The pink Changeling said. “She thinks you two have something in common.”

“NO SOCIALIZING!” The mean Changeling said.

“Go to Tartarus!” The Changeling shouted back. “She’ll be up in a few hours.” The Two Changelings turned around. “WE’RE COMING YOU CRAZY NYMPH! KEEP YOUR CARAPACE ON!”

The two Changelings flew out of the room, leaving Meadow and the other small filly alone.

“Bye.” Meadow said. Looking over at the small filly. “I guess I have some time by myself… Again…”

Shade was looking through maps of Ponyville, he had been doing it ever since he found out where Ceymi was, and it was not helping his brain, Energy, or his focus… His head was pounding, but he needed to get a strategy down. While he trusted the ponies, this was too important to him to not have some kind of backup.

However after a while, he had to admit, writing anything down was akin to trying to fly while both your wings were strapped to your body while a ten ton block was tied to your chest.

“Ugh…” He rubbed his head. “I need some aspirin…” Shade tried to focus on his work, but a combination of headaches, blurry vision, and sleep deprivation made it rather difficult, however, he did hear some commotion from outside.

“Hey Lockup. Shouldn’t you be in Ponyville?”

“No… There was an issue, I’m supposed to get the Changeling.”

“Wait. What happened in Ponyville?”

“It’s classified. You said he was in here?”

“Yeah… He hasn’t left that I’ve seen.”

“Thanks Bolt.”

The door opened to the circular room and an Earth pony guard that Shade recognized from Ponyville walked in.

“If you aren’t here from Celestia, or have information about Ponyville, I don’t care.”

“Actually I brought you something.” The Guard pulled out a small crystal that glowed like a beacon to Shade. He tossed it towards Shade, who caught it with his magic and threw it in his mouth. He felt the warm love instantly flow through him, it wasn’t a lot, but it did help, at least he could see now.

“So who are you?” Shade asked. “I mean, clearly you knew what that was.”

“Lockup. I came from Acari’s hive.” He said. “I came here to get you.”

“Why?” Shade asked. “Also…What happened in Ponyville?”

Lockup sighed. “Ceymi took over Acari’s hive.”

Shade’s eyes widened, and more hatred flowed through him. “That’s where that Cunt is!” He said slamming his hoof on the ground.

“Don’t even think about it.” Lockup said. “The entire Hive is under her control, I only got out because I’m an Exile.” He transformed, and Shade saw he had no horn or wings. “Only a Queen can heal it… And since Acari used magic… She’s the only one. Anyway… the only free Changelings from our Hive are those who weren’t in the Hive or Ponyville. So none of our Soldiers.”

“What about Fluttershy, Applejack and Rarity?” Shade asked.

“I managed to get them out, right before Ceymi attacked. They are out in the forest, inside a sealed cave.”

Shade grabbed Lockup. “Then why the fuck didn’t you bring them with you?” He hissed.

“I had to care for Haze! She was badly injured and she would have died if we waited any longer.” Lockup replied pushing Shade off of him. “Applejack and Fluttershy can handle whatever comes near them. And I thought you should at least be told. Cytes said we should tell you and Darkblaze. We need to meet up with Blackout and this Yellow Changeling…”

“Yellow Changeling?” Shade repeated. “What the hell did I miss?”

“If there’s time I’ll try to explain. Granted I’m not exactly connected to the Hive anymore.” That made him think back to Acari. “I wonder how Blackout is doing…”

“THAT LOVE SUCKING CUR!” Acari shouted slamming her hoof down on her wooden desk creating a rather large crack straight through it. “SHE DARES TO ATTACK MY HIVE!”

Blackout had shed her disguise and was staying as far away from her Queen as possible.

“SHE WILL PAY FOR THIS!” Acari said angrily. “SHE WILL NEVER BE SAFE AS LONG AS SHE IS WITHIN EQUESTRIAN SOIL!”

Blackout was making herself as small as possible, just in case her Queen’s anger caused any spells to fire off.

“TO ATTACK A PEACEFUL HIVE IS PROHIBITED!” Acari’s anger caused the very room to shake. “I WILL NEVER LET HER HAVE A CHANCE TO LEAVE THE HIVE!”

“Acari… What has gotten you so wound up?” Celestia asked, walking into the room.

Acari’s flaming mane settled. “Ceymi has just attacked and Enslaved my Hive! She has broken one of the longest running laws in Changeling culture!”

“Perhaps it is part of her plan?” Celestia replied. “Causing you to act irrationally, and I see you shattered the desk I had made for you since the last one.”

Acari let out an aggravated sigh. “You’re right… I cannot let myself succumb to anger. The last thing we want is Ceymi having more soldiers under her control. It is better my Changelings work as servants than soldiers…”

Celestia looked down at Blackout. “I think you paralyzed your own Scout.”

Acari looked at Blackout. “I do not lose my temper often… So when I do… They are rightfully fearful.”

Blackout eased up. “My Queen… How many do we have out of the Hive?”

Acari sighed. “Not enough… a hundred at the most, compared to the thousand Ceymi has, we would be crushed in an instant…”

Blackout walked up to her. “What if… We weren’t to use conventional strategies?”

“What are you implying Blackout?” Acari asked a curious look on her face.

“Well… Ceymi knows about Pony battle strategies, and Changeling strategies, I think that we need a new strategist?”

Celestia thought about it. “I think I know exactly the pony for the job.”

Author's Note

"Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons,
For you are Crunchy, and good with Ketchup."
---- All I could think about when posting this... I'm not ashamed :ajsmug:

Chapter 42: Friendly Meet Up

“So you are telling me,” Sunstreak said as he and Lockup walked out of the castle, and into the courtyards. “That while I was gone, the Royal Guard led a surprise investigation, which succeeded but because of Darkblaze’s mother, they broke out and managed to keep themselves hidden.”

“Pretty much.” Lockup replied. “I’d been working there for nearly two years now.”

“So how did Ceymi take over your Hive?” Sunstreak asked. “I always figured that Ceymi had a small group…a battalion or two… I never expected the entire Swarm.”

“They attacked during the night, swarmed into the Hive, taking everypony by surprise. Haze managed to get out, but not before getting roughed up. Last I heard she had the entire thing enslaved to her.”

“Damn… They aren’t…They aren’t…Loyal to her are they?” Sunstreak asked.

“What? No. We would never turn our backs on Acari.” Lockup replied. “The only way we would turn our backs is if both Acari and the Princess were to die.”

“oh… Phew…” Sunstreak said, wiping his forehead. “I thought I was going to have fight through them too. That’s a load off my plans.”

Lockup looked at the saddlebags, they had maps and charts placed inside them, various quills, and notepads. “What plans are these?”

Sunstreak placed his wings over the bags. “Just… a backup plan…just in case…”

“In case what?”

Sunstreak looked at him with a small smile across his face. “That’s for me to know, and you to hopefully never find out.”

Lockup rolled his eyes as they came to a table that they agreed would be the meet up point, it was out of earshot of any possible guard patrols, and if any did come near, they could plan for it.

“Looks like we’re the first ones.” Lockup said, as they walked over.

“Good thing too.” Sunstreak said, pulling out one of the maps with his wing. He placed it on the table and unfurled it. “Now…Where was I?” He muttered to himself.

Lockup looked at the map, and to him, it looked like a detailed map of Ponyville and the surrounding area. “What are you doing?”

“Again… Plans...” Sunstreak replied, pulling out a notebook and a pencil. “Shut up for a minute. I need to focus.”

Lockup would argue, but he was too busy trying to figure out what Sunstreak was writing, it wasn’t Equestrian writing, it looked more like claw marks drawn onto the paper, but there was some kind of pattern to them.

“Do you mind?” Sunstreak asked, noticing Lockup looking. “It’s difficult to focus with someone looking over your work.”

Lockup rolled his eyes and looked away, focusing instead on the Royal Guards flying overhead. They remained that way for a few minutes before a bright yellow flash brought Lockup’s attention to the other side of the table.

“Well…” Lyra said as she teleported in. “That was rather…interesting.”

“You told Acari?” Lockup asked. “That can’t have gone well.”

“It didn’t.” Lyra stated. “I was afraid she would kill me.” Lyra looked over at Sunstreak. “What is he working on?”

“Plans…” Lockup said. “He won’t say for what.”

Lyra looked over the map, but Sunstreak pulled it away and rolled it up, and pulled out another chart of weather patterns. “If they go here…”

“What are you-?”

“Shh…” Sunstreak said , placing his free hoof over Lyra’s mouth. “Focusing…”

“On weather maps?” Lyra asked. “What in Acari’s name are you…”

Two pegasi landed on the other side of the table. “What is this about?” Tornado Dust asked. “Mustard only told me…” He looked at Sunstreak. “What’s he doing?”

“Tornado!” Sunstreak said happily surprised. “Just the Pegasus I need. Now if a storm cloud were to be carrying say… seventeen lightning bursts, how long would it take to move a few miles?”

Tornado tapped his chin. “Well… probably depends on who you get to move it… Though that is a pretty big cloud… Why?”

“Planning stuff.” Sunstreak said, moving back to his work. “That’s out of the question…” He mumbled.

Tornado Dust looked confused at Sunstreak for a moment. “So… Why was I brought to the castle?”

“Our hive was attacked.” Lockup said. “By Ceymi.”

“You’re kidding me!” Tornado Dust said surprised. “She didn’t.”

“She did.” Lyra replied. “And now Haze is in the hospital.”

“Damn… That’s… That’s irresponsible…” Tornado Dust said. “There… Okay… Chrysalis was a bit power hungry, but she would never do something this stupid.”

“Well, her daughter didn’t get the memo.” Lyra hissed. “And now Acari is trying to get a hold of a new general to help with the attack.”

“Alright… so now I’m still confused. Why was I needed here?”

Sunstreak looked up from the charts. “We’re going to get the Bearers.” He rolled up the chart and placed it back in the saddlebag.

Tornado Dust stared with his mouth hanging open. “In Ponyville?”

“No…” Lockup replied. “They’re inside a cave a few miles from Canterlot, we managed to get them out of the village. We need to get them.”

“Wait…” Tornado Dust said. “Why didn’t you…”

“We’ll explain on the way!” Lyra said. “Sunstreak, I hope you have another form to use.”

Meadow began to stir again, when she heard a small groan from next to her. Looking to the side, she saw the small filly beginning to wake up.

“daddy…?” The filly said weakly.

Meadow watched the filly open her eyes and look around. “Ooo…” She said looking at the purple crystals. She turned to Meadow. “Hi.”

“Hi…” Meadow replied. “What’s your name?”

“My Daddy calls me Sunspot.” The filly replied. “Mommy calls me Echo,” Her ears drooped “well… Used to.”

“I’m Meadow.” Meadow replied.

“Oo! Are you Meadow Song?” The filly asked happily.

“Yes.” Meadow replied. “Do I know you?”

“No…” Sunspot replied. “But you know my Daddy!”

“Who?” Meadow asked.

“Sunstreak!”

Hearing the name, Meadow’s ears dropped. “So… He just… Forgot about me…”

Sunspot looked at Meadow. “No.” She said. “Daddy saved me from some ponies. But I kept hearing him talk about you.”

Meadow hung her head. “Maybe talking about how he tricked me…”

Sunspot tilted her head. “I don’t think Daddy would do that.” Sunspot replied. “He seemed worried whenever they talked about you… I think he was scared for what happened.”

Meadow looked up at the filly. “How do you know?” Meadow asked curiously.

Sunspot was covered in a green flame, and was replaced by a small Changeling. “Daddy showed me. When he fed me, I saw how nervous he was.” Echo looked around the room. “I’m sure Daddy wouldn’t forget about you.”

Meadow was still unsure.

“Hey… Don’t look so sad…” Echo said. “I’m sure Daddy is coming up with some way to rescue us.”

“I hope so…” Meadow replied. “I don’t know how much longer I can stay here…”

“Rarity would ya stop fussin’?” Applejack said. “There ain’t nothin’ we can do but wait.”

The white unicorn in question was complaining about having to be left in the ‘Dark icky Cave’ instead of follow Lockup and Tornado Dust to Canterlot. “Well I still don’t see why they had to leave us here.”

“I don’t know Rarity…” Fluttershy replied. “BonBon looked pretty bad…”

“And you heard ‘im, the Mare needed to get to Canterlot. They’ll be back faster than a Rattler from Winona.”

“I hope she’s alright…” Fluttershy said.

“I’m sure she’s fine darling.” Rarity replied. “I’m still trying to figure out why we were dragged from Ponyville.”

“Ah reckon it had to do with whatever happened to BonBon.” Applejack replied. “Probably nothin’ good.”

“Do you think something lives in this cave?” Fluttershy asked, looking around.

“Consarn it… I wasn’t thinkin’ bout that!” Applejack replied. “Let’s just hope whatever does live in here ain’t hungry.”

A growl from the cave entrance made all three of them look towards it, they backed away from the entrance, which was a far enough that they couldn’t see the light coming through it.

“Timber wolves…” Applejack whispered, not wanting to get their attention.

“I suppose this would be a bad time to point out we have nothing here to help.” Rarity replied.

“Oh…Where is Lockup?” Fluttershy said. “I don’t think I can…”

There was a loud thud from the front of the cave and muffled shouting could be heard. A couple explosions were heard before the sound of hoof steps reached their ears.

“I think I found them!”

The group looked up to see a shadow running towards them, as it stepped into the light, they could see its sleek black carapace.

“Changeling!” Applejack said, bucking the insect.

“OW!” The Changeling replied. “I try to help and get kicked in the face!”

“Oh suck it up.” An Earth pony guard walked into the light. “I told you to keep your disguise on.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.” The Changeling said, rubbing his face. “If Snake-Eye hadn’t riled up the Timber wolves, it would have been easier to get through.”

“Are you two done complaining in here?” Lyra walked up to them. “If so, than we need some help out here.”

The three ponies looked towards the new entrants. “What in Tarnation is goin’ on here?”

Lyra looked at the three of them. “We’ll explain in a minute. Just help us out here.”

Applejack eyed the Changeling suspiciously as it rubbed it’s jaw. “Alright then, but I’m keepin’ mah eye on you.”

“Noted…” The Changeling replied.

The group moved back towards the entrance to see Shade riding on the neck of one of the Timber wolves, while it shook and jumped, trying to toss him off. While a second Timber wolf was bearing down on a white and yellow Pegasus.

“Oh no you don’t!” Shade said, firing a bolt of magic into the Timber wolf he was riding, causing it to break apart. His horn blew bright green as a green gas flowed from the shattered pieces into his horn. When it was absorbed, he aimed his horn at the second Timber Wolf and fired a large green beam at the wooden wolf.

He looked up at his smoking horn and breathed the smoke away with a sustained breath. “That felt good… You okay?” He asked the Pegasus.

“Yeah…Yeah….Just shaken…” The Pegasus replied. “I’ve never had a Timber Wolf that close to me before…”

“Hopefully you won’t ever again.” Shade replied, helping her up. He turned to look at the Changeling. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Applejack happened…” The Changeling replied. “At least I know that my cover is secure…”

“Oh… Wow… I warned you about that.”

“Shut up Snake Eye.” The Changeling said. “I see you dealt with them alone.”

Shade shrugged. “I wanted to kill something, cleared my head too.” He looked at the three mares. “So… What’s up with you three?”

“What the hay are you doin’ with a Changeling?” Applejack asked pointing at the one she kicked.

Shade walked up to her. “Okay… to spare some time. Darkblaze, Blackout, Lockup, he has no name.” Shade said pointing to the ponies in question. “Darkblaze is Tornado Dust, he’s a friend.”

Darkblaze flew out of Applejack’s reach, so as not to get hit again.

“Yah’ve been keepin’ a Changeling with yah!” Applejack said.

“Applejack, I know you’re mad.” Shade began. “But stick with me here, they aren’t against Equestria, they want to help.”

“How in Equestria can I trust somepony that tried to kill us twice!”

“Hey! I never tried to kill you!” Darkblaze retorted. “I was on the other side of the city during the invasion, and I’ve been in Canterlot for the past week.”

“Shut up you two!” Shade said. “My headache is bad enough already, I don’t need you two making it worse.” Shade turned to Applejack. “Again… Short version, Darkblaze is a friend, he’s been helping me find Spine, and now I need your help back at the city.”

“Why?” Fluttershy asked.

“Well… for one, you are three of the few that actually saw what we are up against in Ponyville, secondly you are my friends, and C. I need some more level heads before I kill someone…again…”

“Say what?” Applejack asked.

“I’ll explain later, we need to get back to Canterlot. So… Let’s get going.” Shade said, turning into Sunstreak. “I’ve got plans to make.”

The group began to walk through the forest, Lockup in the lead; Lyra following behind him, with the white and yellow Pegasus flying above the tree line, Sunstreak was hanging back a little, with Darkblaze flying above them to stay out of reach of Applejack.

“You sure we can trust this varmint?” Applejack asked Sunstreak. “Ah’m still not too keen on seein’ yah in yer normal body. No offense.”

“None taken,” Sunstreak replied. “And I’m sure we can trust him. He hasn’t shown any signs of lying to me.” He looked at Applejack. “He’s taught me to control my powers, told me everything I needed to know, and never once made me question whether he would return to Chrysalis. He wants to stay here, and so does his mother. I’m not asking you to trust him, just… don’t put him in the same place as the rest of them.” Sunstreak looked back forward. “Besides… It’s not like you ponies haven’t had a few bad apples.”

Applejack thought it over, and she still wasn’t too keen on trusting Darkblaze, but she would at least give him a chance. “Fine… But if he gives me a reason, Ah’m gonna make sure it’s his last.”

“You hear that Darkblaze?” Sunstreak asked. “Don’t give her a reason.”

“I haven’t yet have I?” Darkblaze asked, transforming into Tornado Dust.

“Now hold on.” Applejack said. “How can you be Dusty, if he’s been in Ponyville fer the past week?”

“That was our mutual acquaintance.” Tornado said, pointing up at the white and yellow Pegasus. “He helped cover for me so that I wouldn’t lose any more of my off days.”

“Um… Tornado…” Fluttershy said. “If you don’t mind me asking, how long have you been living in Ponyville?”

“Five years.” Tornado replied. “I’ve been living on and off in Equestria for nearly fifteen years. I took the identity of Tornado Dust when he killed himself trying to stop a Tornado by himself.”

“Well that is rather morbid.” Rarity replied. “You took his life after he passed.”

“He wasn’t using it.” Tornado replied. “Besides, I spared his family a lot of grief.”

“But… it can’t be right to use it…” Fluttershy replied. “Shouldn’t his family know?”

Tornado sighed. “I’ll tell them… Eventually…”

“Does Twilight know ‘bout this?” Applejack asked.

“Yes.” Sunstreak replied. “She knows, so does Rainbow I think… Pinkie… I’m never sure about her. I got called by Princess Celestia before I could talk to any of them.”

“What did Celestia call you for?” Fluttershy asked.

“A Royal Summit, she wanted to ask me some questions about what happened since the Invasion. She also wanted to make it so that the Nobles weren’t afraid of me, but I think it was more so she could ask for my help with interrogations.”

“Interrogations?” Rarity repeated. “On what?”

“They had a raid two days ago on a Changeling outpost,” Sunstreak explained. “They captured a bunch of Changelings and I was supposed to help with interrogating them. Then I met one of those from Spine’s group, and lost my temper.”

“Well, what’d yah do?” Apple jack asked.

“Well… I used an ancient dark form of magic that I read about in the Fiords, then I just began a psychological terror show for him, and he told me where Meadow is.”

“That’s wonderful darling.” Rarity replied. “Not the dark magic part of course.”

“It would be…” Sunstreak replied. “Except that they attacked Ponyville, took over Queen Acari’s hive, and killed Sunspot’s mom.”

“Sunspot?” Applejack repeated.

“A small Changeling filly I saved from some ponies,” Sunstreak explained. “Rarity knows her, and when they took Echo and killed her mom, I just…Snapped. That’s when I used that dark magic I told you about.”

“So is this a mission to save Meadow or this Echo?” Applejack asked.

“Both of them.” Sunstreak replied. “I limited my ways of getting information so that I could keep myself out of trouble, but after what Spine did, I didn’t care about my own wellbeing anymore. I’m here to save Meadow, and I’m not going to let some wannabe Changeling Queen stop me, but Echo wasn’t involved, so now it just pushed me over the edge.”

“So what?” Tornado asked, “You giving up on rules now?”

“All’s fair in love and war.” Sunstreak replied. “And this is definitely war.”

“General Spine!” A Changeling soldier called, flying up to his commanding officer. “We have news from Torch.”

Spine turned to look at his soldier. “Is that Nymph finally dead?”

“No sir.” The Changeling replied. “Torch is dead.”

Spine looked down at the soldier. “What?” He said angrily. “How?”

The Soldier shook slightly. “We are unsure, but he hasn’t returned, and any attempt to contact him isn’t working. We received word from Sergeant Shifter that he was killed by the target.”

Spine stood up. “What do you mean, ‘he was killed by his target’? Nymph is nowhere near as strong as Torch.”

“Sir… He… Completely destroyed him…”

“Show me!” Spine ordered. “Show me the scout’s memory.”

The Changeling’s horn glowed, and a nearby crystal cluster burst into life, displaying an aerial image of the waterfall’s clearing.

Torch was walking up to Shade, before getting punched backwards, where the smaller Changeling jumped on top of him, and began slicing through the Carapace, the green flames along Shade’s forelegs turning to a blood red, as the grass was stained blue.

Spine watched, his anger rising. “How long does this continue?”

“Quite a While.”

“Leave.” Spine ordered. “I have much to plan.”

The Changeling saluted before flying out of the chamber.

“It appears as though I underestimated you Nymph.” Spine said to himself. “However, that won’t be enough to save you.”

As the group of ponies began to exit out of the tree line, they walked up to the cities gate.

“You sure we can’t just fly over the wall?” Tornado Dust asked. “I mean… They are still checking everypony that comes into the city.”

“We’ll just have to tell them the truth.” Lockup replied. “We are here to warn of an attack, and we helped escort civilians out.”

“That work last time?” Sunstreak asked.

“Well… No…” Lockup admitted. “It only worked because Pupa came by…”

“So… We’re screwed?” Tornado asked.

“No… if things get bad I’ll just wipe their memories.” Lyra replied. “Although… If it is the same guards as before… that might not be possible… Over exposure to memory spells can have very bad reactions…”

“Well then I guess we let Celestia decide what happens to us.” Lockup replied. “You three should be fine though.” He said to Applejack. “Unless one of you is secretly a Changeling.”

“Can there be a third option here?” The still unnamed changeling asked, “One that involves no chance of getting caught preferably…”

“Worried about something?” Sunstreak joked. “You aren’t from any hive, period. So they can’t exactly do much with you.”

“I still don’t like getting caught…”

“None of us do.” Lyra replied. “But it’s the only way for them to trust us, if we fly in, we could be seen as hostile.”

“I don’t like this…”

“Don’t worry,” Fluttershy replied. “We’ll stand up for you. Won’t we girls?”

“Of course darling.”

“Ah suppose so.” Applejack replied.

“Well… Let’s get this over with.” Sunstreak said. “Come what may and all that.”

The group began to walk towards the gate, Sunstreak slightly more confident than some of the others, especially ‘Mustard’ who was currently in the back of the group, trying to make herself as small as possible.

“Afternoon gentlemen,” Sunstreak said as they walked up to the gate, “I don’t suppose you would let us through without a pointless check?”

The Guards shook their heads.

“Well it was worth a shot.” Sunstreak replied. “Let’s just speed this up for all of our convenience. Me and four of my compatriots here are Changelings, we have no intention of causing any kind of trouble, and only wish to warn the Princesses of an attack against their nation.”

“What are you doing Exile?” Lyra hissed at Sunstreak.

“Expediting the inevitable,” Sunstreak replied. “Don’t do anything aggressive, and we should be fine.”

The Guards lowered their spears.

“Still sure about that?” Tornado Dust hissed.

A unicorn guard lowered his horn, and in two wisps of green flame, two of pink, and one of yellow, all of the Changelings were revealed, with ‘Mustard’ rushing behind Fluttershy.

The Guards held their spears up to the Changeling’s throats. “Hey now!” Shade said. “Is that anyway to treat Prisoners of War?”

“What in Tartarus are you doing Snake Eye?” Darkblaze asked through gritted teeth.

“Well…Getting us into the city… What does it look like?”

“Quiet Changelings!” One of the Guards shouted.

“Fine. Fine.” Shade said. “At the very least can you let me give back all the maps and charts I borrowed from the library.”

“No.”

“Well then…” Shade replied. “Ass.”

“Hold up you two.” The Unicorn Guard said. “I recognize this Changeling from somewhere…”

“Is it the eye?” Shade asked. “It’s probably the eye…”

“What in Tartarus are you talking about Scepter?” One of the guards asked.

“Didn’t you two get the notice from Celestia?” Scepter asked.

The two guards looked at each other. “What notice?”

The Unicorn rolled his eyes and pulled out a rolled up parchment, levitating it up to the other guards. They looked at the parchment, then up at Shade, then back to the parchment, then did that a few more times. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Nope, official seal of Celestia, magically enchanted. It’s legit.”

“This is insane.” One of the guards said. “Are we sure that nothing happened to Celestia during the invasion?”

Shade and the other Changelings looked between each other, each one equally confused.

“The seal can only be used by Celestia, and she is far too powerful to have a mind control spell placed on her.” Scepter replied. “This is an order directly from Celestia. So…” He motioned to the Changelings.

The Guard sighed before saluting to Shade. “Sir.”

“Hold up! What?” Shade blurted out.

“Captain,” Scepter said. “Celestia needs to see you at the Castle.”

Shade stood there for a moment as his brain was still comprehending what he had just been told. “Captain?”

Chapter 43: Promotion

Shade was still blankly staring at the unicorn, his jaw hanging open, he was still trying to figure out what he had just said.

“Equestria to Snake Eye.” Darkblaze said, waving his hoof in front of Shade’s eyes. “Anypony home?” He looked at the Unicorn. “I think you broke him.”

Shade sat down, his brain working full speed to try and process what was going on, until a rather sharp stinging sensation in his face pulled him out of it. “OW!”

“Sorry.” Darkblaze replied. “You were starting to drool.”

Shade quickly closed his mouth. “Excuse me, I think I misheard you.” Shade said to the guard. “Did you just call me ‘Captain’?”

Scepter nodded. “Yes, and Celestia needs you at the Castle, your friends are free to enter the city alongside you.”

Shade’s brain was prepared for the shock this time, so he instantly replied with, “What?”

Scepter rolled his eyes and levitated the parchment so Shade could see it. On top was a portrait of himself, which was easy to tell, because it was just a Changeling with an orange slit eye instead of two solid blue ones.
Notice to all Royal Guards:
The Changeling known as Shade (Depicted above) has been given the temporary post of Captain of the Royal Guard by order of Princess Celestia. If he is seen, he is to be brought to the castle immediately.

Shining Armor, Captain of Celestia’s Royal Guard.

Underneath the notice was a fancy looking rainbow colored seal, which had an image of a Sun surrounding a crown.

“Hey good job Snake Eye.” Darkblaze said, giving him a light punch in his side. “Met her once and now you have one of the highest… Snake Eye?”

Shade tipped over and fell stiff against the ground, like a statue.

“Umm… Snake Eye?” Darkblaze said.

“What a drama Queen.” Rarity said. Getting looks by both Fluttershy and Applejack. “What?”

“I think he’s paralyzed.” Darkblaze said.

Shade shook his head. “I’m good… I’m good…” He said. “My brain is good… Really…I’m good.”

“If so, then please follow me sir. Oh… And re-disguise yourselves.” Scepter added. “We don’t want to cause a panic.”

All of the Changelings disguised themselves as they normally would, except for ‘Mustard’ who turned himself into a small bunny.

“Oh! You’re so cute!” Fluttershy said, picking up the rabbit. “I wish you could stay like that forever!”

“Then you better feed him, A lot.” Darkblaze said. “Otherwise he’ll just burn himself out. Literally.”

“Oh… Well… I wouldn’t want him to hurt himself…” Fluttershy said.

“Don’t worry.” Lyra replied. “It’s very difficult for Changelings to kill themselves that way, it’s painful, it’s slow, and usually you run out of energy before you try and burn through your body’s supply. And it only really works for huge changes, a rabbit shouldn’t take too much energy.”

“But remember, he was never taught how to transform like that. He was raised without a hive. What do you think Snake-?” Sunstreak was busily looking at the ground, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. “Shade?”

“What?” He replied loudly. Startling Tornado Dust. “Sorry… I’m just…”

“Not getting cold hooves are you?” Scepter joked.

“no… well…yes… But…I…”

Scepter laughed. “I’ve never seen such an easily intimidated Captain before. Usually they have some kind of nerve.”

“Back off!” Sunstreak said. “I just found out that I’m on the Royal Guard, let alone a Captain! Give me a few minutes…”

“Well you better start by acting like a Captain.” Scepter replied. “Nopony is going to follow a Captain that acts like you’ve been.”

Sunstreak looked up at him. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I’m just saying.” Scepter replied. “Might want to work out that little blanking out problem.”

“Well I’m sorry if I take suddenly becoming a Royal Guard Captain when little over a week ago I was still considered a prisoner like that.”

“True. True. I guess I can understand your surprise now.” Scepter replied. “After all, aren’t too many Changelings in the guard.” He shot a look at Lockup.

“Yeah…” Lockup replied. “Listen. I have some duties I need to deal with. See you all later.” He turned and headed away from the castle.

“I’ve got to check on my sister.” Lyra said, walking towards the hospital.

“The rest of you should probably go see Twilight, Pinkie, and Rainbow. I’m sure they’ll be glad to see you safe.” Sunstreak said. “I’ll meet up with you guys when I’m done with… Whatever this is…”

“Alright Sunny. Come on Bug boy.” Applejack said to Tornado. “Ah’ve got plenty of questions fer yah.”

“Yay… More questions…” Tornado said as he followed the orange Earth pony.

“So um… What did Celestia want from me?”

Sunstreak was led into the Castle with no real incidents, inside the castle was a totally different story.

He was told to drop his disguise upon entering the castle, to which there were three reactions, the Guards either saluted to him, raised their weapons, and on one occasion, the Night Guard did a spit take with his coffee before chocking on it for a few seconds. So that was entertaining.

Shade was led to a large rounded room, where he was met by Shining Armor, some red Unicorn, an orange Pegasus with a fiery mane that had a pair of sunglasses on, and both princesses.

“Greetings Captain.” Luna said. “We hope that thy new post is treating thee well.”

“‘Well’ might be the wrong term,” Shade replied. “I come back into the city from finding my friends, almost get stabbed, then get told I’m not only a member of the guard, but a Captain.”

“And?” Shining Armor replied.

“Well… It’s surprising to say the least.”

“I suppose you should introduce you to our other leaders.” Shining Armor said leading Shade over to the orange Pegasus. “This is Spitfire, leader of the Wonderbolts flight team.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you from Rainbow Dash.” Shade said extending his hoof.

“Don’t think I’m going to make this easy for you Changeling.” Spitfire replied. “But since the Princesses are fine with you, I’ll make an exception.”

“Thanks…I think…”

Shining Armor led him over to the unicorn. “This is Crimson Lance, leader of the Lancers.”

“So you’re the Changeling everypony’s been talking about.” Crimson replied. “You’ve been stirring up the Nobles quite a bit. I haven’t seen them swarm Celestia that much since the Discord incident.”

“Nice to finally meet you.” Shade replied. “You were the one that conducted the raid last night weren’t you?”

“Yup.” She replied. “Me and my Lancers are the best around, no matter what anypony else says to the contrary.”

“Now that introductions have been made,” Celestia said. “We must return to the matter at hoof.”

“Of course Princess.” Shining Armor replied.

“Umm… What matter is this?” Shade asked.

“The Changelings in Ponyville.” Shining Armor replied. “We need to get rid of them.”

“Okay…” Shade replied. “Why am I here?”

“He’s pretty thick for a Changeling isn’t he?” Spitfire retorted.

Shade glared at Spitfire.

“Listen, we have been given information that this Queen we’re after knows about Pony battle strategies.” Shining Armor said. “And… We can’t use any of the prisoners for information, since they could be lying to us. We needed somepony that didn’t rely on any strategies we could come up with.”

“So… You need me to help plan the attack?” Shade replied.

“Short version, yes.” Crimson replied.

Shade smiled. “Well. You’re in luck.” Shade pulled the maps and charts out of the saddlebags. “Because for the past few hours, that’s all I’ve been doing.”

Spitfire looked over the charts. “Where did you get a hold of these?” She asked. “This is a blueprint for the weather factory.”

“Is it?” Shade asked looking over it. “I couldn’t make out about ninety percent of it, I just needed it for the electro-Stasis calculations.”

“The what now?” Crimson Lance asked.

“Well… I don’t know what you call it.” Shade said. “It’s the duration of electronic storage inside of an area made almost fully out of liquid.” Shade looked over the blueprint. “I think it’s that big lightning symbol thingy, but I could be wrong…”

Spitfire looked over her sunglasses. “You mean the cloud storage?”

“Probably.” Shade admitted. “I didn’t get there yet, I was still busy with strategic placement of lighting blasts.”

Shade was only half aware of the blank stares he was getting. “You have any emeralds?” He asked Celestia.

“I believe so.” She replied. “Why?”

Shade reached into the saddlebag and pulled out an old looking book, he started flipping through it. “Ah…There it is…” Shade morphed his hoof into a claw. “Let’s see… Incantation… Ah!” Shade cleared his throat. “If we could get that Emerald, this entire planning stage thing could go much quicker.”

Celestia teleported out of the room.

“Alright… Let’s see if I can still do this…” Shade said before focusing on a point in the middle of the table, he hovered above the center and looked over the incantation again. “You…uh…might want to back up…a bit…”

Shade’s claw glowed green as he dragged it across the table, leaving an etching in the wooden surface, all the while, he was growling an ancient enchantment, causing the etching to glow faintly.

After he finished the etching began to glow stronger, and Shade looked between the book and the etching. “Eh… Good enough.” He said tossing the book behind him.

Celestia teleported back into the room, a large emerald held in her magic. “Was this what you…”

“Perfect!” Shade said grabbing it in his claws. He flew back to the center of the table and carefully lowered the crystal onto the marking, where it seemed to float suspended above it. “Now… let me see that map of Ponyville.”

Shade grabbed the map and carefully and slowly placed it between the gem and the etching. Please don’t blow up.

Once Shade placed the map between the crystal and the table, he backed away quickly. The gem radiated a bright green before the light encompassed the table, and as they watched, the light began to rise up from the table, before dimming to create a scale replica of Ponyville.

“Alright good.” Shade said looking around the room. “No scorch marks, no fires, excellent.” He flew over the table looking over it.

“What…” Shining Armor began.

“Projection rune.” Shade replied. “Allows for a near perfect scale model of the map… provided someone in the room know the layout. Luckily I still do.”

“How…?”

“A mixture of Magic and a process known as Crystalline Focalization essentially it runs the spell through the gems very flow of-” Shade blinked for a moment. “Right…Later.” Shade landed back at the side of the table. “Now then… Battle plans.”

Luna chuckled. “We have not seen such enchantments since Discord’s Rule. We are pleased to see some things remain the same.”

Shade rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s… Very out of date… It’s the lowest grade projection spell… This is the first time I managed to cast it without it… exploding…”

Luna didn’t seem bothered. “As the Ponies of today say, ‘Tis not a problem!’”

Does anybody honestly say that? Shade asked himself, he shook away the thought and pulled out his notebook he had been using to write in. “Anyway… Here is what I have so far.”

A few hours later, Shade had managed to translate his plans from draconic so that the others could understand, and they had been planning since then.

“So we know where they are coming from, but not their-” Shining Armor said as there was a knock on the door.

“I got it.” Crimson replied as Shade transformed instinctively.

Crimson looked out the door, and quickly slammed it shut. “Uh… Princess…” She said. “It’s um…It’s for you.”

Celestia got up and teleported out of the room.

“What was that about?” Sunstreak asked.

“Nobles… So many Nobles.” She replied. “I think they found out about you.”

Sunstreak transformed back. “Well… Can I stay here until this clears up?” Shade asked. “I’m willing to bet that Nobles aren’t the easiest bunch to convince.”

Luna nodded. “Tis not a problem, Captain.” Shade was still getting used to being called that, “We will ensure thou art safe while thou are within these walls.”

“Awesome… now to just sleep with one eye open, and a hand on a knife.” Shade replied. “For my own nerves of course.”

“We will post our Guards outside thine room, they shall protect thee.”

“Kay…” Shade replied. Not noticing how tired he was until Luna brought it up, maybe staying awake the whole night while slashing a Changeling, then using an ancient forbidden spell type fueled by his anger then going on an adventure in the forest wasn’t a smart idea.

“That would actually be a good idea… I’m feeling kind of tired after… everything that happened.” Shade replied. “Anyway… How did the Nobles find out?”

“If I had to guess…” Crimson Lance replied. “It was Prince Blueblood.”

“He an ass?” Shade asked.

“Oh big time.” Shining Armor replied. “He thinks his relation with Celestia makes him the center of the world.”

“So… I guess I’ll deal with it later.” Shade replied. “Might as well get back to-”

Celestia opened the door with her magic. “Shade, could you join me out here for a moment.”

A few moments earlier

Celestia teleported outside of the room in a bright yellow flash, her wings in a half opened state with a small smile across her face. “You asked to see me?”

A white stallion with luscious blond hair was standing in front of Celestia, the group of Nobles behind him, obviously they were annoyed by something, Celestia spent enough time around them to know from the way they tilted their heads.

“Auntie, some of the Guards have been telling me that a Changeling is being allowed to roam freely around the Castle?”

Celestia hated when her nephew acted this way. Thinking he knew what was best, no matter how many times she had denied him.

“Is this true Auntie?” Blueblood asked.

“Yes.” Celestia admitted. “There is a Changeling inside of the castle.”

“Then why is it not in the dungeon?” Blueblood asked. “Have you forgotten what they did?”

“No and this particular Changeling is helping us plan and hopefully execute an attack on the current location of his hive.”

“How can you possibly trust him Auntie? What if he is just tricking us?”

Celestia smirked. “I think you should ask him yourself.” Her horn glowed, and the door behind her opened. “Shade, could you join me out here for a moment.”

“Of course Princess.” Shade said from the room, mumbling something about needing to get a dagger from somewhere. “Yes Celestia?”

The result of seeing the Changeling was exactly what Celestia expected, the gasp was almost physical, and Shade’s muscles were tensed, ready to run if he needed to.

“I would like to introduce you to my nephew, Prince Blueblood.”

Shade looked the unicorn over, and he mentally was sizing him up, the conclusion? This guy’s a prick. He put on the most genuine smile he could manage, making sure his fangs were showing this time. “Pleasure to meet you Prince.”

Blueblood looked frightened. “Auntie?” How the hell are these two related? “What is it doing?”

“It?” Shade retorted angrily. “I’m a male.” Yup…definitely a prick…

“Captain.” Celestia said calmly.

“Sorry…” Shade replied. “Still getting used to this… My name is Shade.”

Celestia looked back at her nephew. “Shade has been living in Equestria for almost three weeks, and in that time has shown no attempt to harm ponies.”

“Changelings are a totally different story.” Shade added, looking at his right foreleg, it still had a few traces of the blue blood on it. “I am fully willing to kill in the defense of Equestria.”

“Captain?” Blueblood repeated. “That…Thing is a Captain?”

Shade repressed the urge to argue, instead letting Celestia talk Blueblood down.

“Yes Prince.” Celestia replied. “This is the newest Captain in the Royal Guard, by my order, he has proven to me that he has no intention of following any Changeling Queen, he has even done something I would be unwilling to do to his own.”

Shade shied away after the comment. “I did what I had to…” He said looking up at Celestia. “I’m still working off the debts I owe you…”

Celestia smiled. “We’ll discuss it more after the planning.”

“Speaking of which.” Shade interjected. “I should really be getting back, after all, you didn’t make me a Captain to just stand outside the planning room.”

“Of course.” Celestia replied. “That is all Captain.”

Shade saluted before turning back into the war room.

“Now I should not state the importance that he remain Unharmed Blueblood.” Celestia said looking at all of the nobles. “I expect him to remain that way.”

Inside the war room, Shade let out a deep breath. “I’m not sleeping tonight….”

“So it went well then?” Crimson asked sarcastically. “My first encounter with the Prince ended with me wanting to impale his head on a pike.”

“I’ve dealt with worse…” Shade admitted. “He’s nowhere near the worst…”

“Remind me never to go to these Burning Fiords then.” Shining Armor joked.

“Noo problem.” Shade replied. “Let’s get back to work before something else happens.”

“Like what?” Spitfire asked.

“I don’t know…” Shade replied. “A cockatrice attack?” He rubbed his right eye. “Ugh…Days without sleep are beginning to pile up…” He blinked a few times before setting his sights back on the holographic display on the table. “Now where were we?”

“Weather placement.” Spitfire replied.

“Oh yeah.” Shade said. “So how quickly could we move a storm to Ponyville?”

“My Wonderbolts could move those clouds in a jiffy.” Spitfire replied.

“Yeah but we need a huge storm, same level as tropical, at least in terms of lightning.”

“How big we talkin’ here?” Spitfire asked.

Shade flew over the map. Tapping his hoof to his chin. “I’m going to put it in terms of uncontrolled destruction.” Shade landed on the table. “It has to be big enough to crack a mountain.”

“Damn.” Spitfire replied.

“That’s an awful lot of lightning.” Crimson said. “It’s going to be uncontrollable in the field, the pegasi will be-”

“Controlling it.” Shade stated. “Listen, back in the Fiords, we had three different yet equally important ‘divisions’. One close range brawlers, meant to overwhelm and destroy, another long range support in the form of arrows, bombs, anything. The final is magical support, mixture of combat mages, healing mages, and defense mages.”

“The main strike team is like the first division, taking on the enemy in a ground and air war. A division of Pegasus and Unicorns will provide long range tactical fire, while a third group of Unicorns helps get as many civilians out as possible, while covering for key strategic weak points.”

Shade pulled a few quills and empty inkpots out and laid them against the table. “The main target we should go for is the Town Hall, the scrolls there should help us contact the Princesses, and we should try to set up a one-way front, stop them from getting around and flanking us. That’s where the pegasi come it.”

“The Pegasus that aren’t part of the main attack force will be controlling the lightning strikes, taking out any changelings that try to flank us, or any Changelings that seem to be causing a problem.”

“What about if the Queen steps in?” Shining Armor asked.

Shade sighed. “Then we will call in the heavy artillery.” He motioned to Luna. “From what I have been told, the Queen could easily obliterate our forces… The Sisters are the only ones that can stand a chance.”

“Then why are we not part of this main force?” Luna asked.

“Again… in case all of this is just a plan to get to you, I need you two to stay back in case we need you.”

“What about the Hive’s location?” Shining Armor asked. “We should…”

Shade shook his head. “I suppose hiding it is a stupid idea… This particular hive is friendly, they have been living alongside ponies working in law enforcement and judiciary locations. From what I’ve been told, they aren’t loyal to Ceymi, but that doesn’t mean that-”

A loud screech stopped all of them as they looked out the windows. “PHOENX RAY!” Shade shouted ducking under the table.

“No… It’s not a Phoenix ray.” Shining Armor replied. “It’s only a cockatrice.”

“Because that’s soooo much better.” Shade replied sarcastically. “So how do we handle this?”

“We don’t do anything.” Shining Armor replied. “I’ve got to handle this. I think we should reconvene tomorrow to finish up the planning. Meanwhile, I believe Lance has something she wants to show you.”

Crimson Lance smiled. “That I do.” She hopped down from the table and pulled Shade out from under the table with her magic. “Come along Captain.”

Shade would have been willing to follow, but Crimson was dragging him across the ground by his tail, winding him through the castle until the came to a secluded spot that seemed to be a rather pointless dead end in the castle’s design.

“Alright, we’re alone.” Crimson said. “Sorry about that, I didn’t want you asking stupid questions.”

Shade picked himself off the ground. “After you dragged me up a flight of stairs?” He massaged his face, which had hit a total of twelve stone steps by his count, he could be wrong though.

“Listen… This is where I tell you who I really am.” Crimson said. “Queen Pupa, of the Warrior hive.”

Shade was looking at the Unicorn in surprise. “Queen…What… Celestia…?” He stuttered. “How?”

Crimson held up her hoof. “She knows and my hive has been holding positions in her military for well over five hundred years now, however that is not why I brought you here.”

“Could have fooled me,” Shade replied. “So why did you tell me this?”

“Well… Acari thinks you should know that you have access to my troops if need be, but also to avoid any questions when I show you our little surprise.”

“Surprise?” Shade repeated. “What surprise?”

Crimson smiled. “Follow me, and you’ll find out.”

Shade walked alongside the red unicorn, and for the first time getting a chance to look around the castle’s halls without either nerves or fear getting in the way. He was impressed, while it followed much of the castles base design, white stone and lots of arches, it was still beautiful. The ceiling was a good thirty feet above them, and looked like a full grown dragon could fit in it. The large windows spread at a perfect interval showed him that the sun had almost set fully, casting the room into a strange pink light.

Crimson led him through the castle and down to an area that seemed like it could have been a dungeon, if not for the rhythmic clang of metal on hot steel.

“ANVIL!” Crimson shouted into the room. “Get your metalworking flank out here!”

There was no response but the clanging of the metal.

Crimson let out an aggravated sigh. “I hate when he gets like this.” She turned to Shade. “This is going to hurt a bit.”

Shade opened his mouth to ask, but found his brain bombarded by a single command from Crimson. “ANVIL GET YOUR CHITIONUS FLANK OUT HERE NOW OR I WILL MAKE YOU EAT THAT SWORD!”

Shade clutched his head as the clanging stopped. He only knew the clanging stopped because his head wasn’t hurting with every metallic slam.

“Crimson,” Came a low growly voice. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Shade looked up from the ground as his vision cleared to see a strong looking Earth Pony stallion, a blacksmithing Apron across his chest, the light brown contrasting his gray coat. His mark was that of a hammer and anvil, his cold green eyes looked towards Crimson.

“Well this stallion for one.” Crimson said motioning at Shade. “Is my commission ready yet?”

Anvil grunted. “More or less, I’m still working on some of the smaller details, but the main body is complete.”

Crimson smiled. “Wonderful.” She turned to Shade, “Are you ready to see your first present as a Captain?”

“I guess…” Shade replied still working off the Mental link’s pain. “So long as you never do that again…”

Crimson smiled. “No promises.”

How the hell is this a Queen?

Shade was led into the back of the room, where a forge was set up, on a nearby Anvil, a red hot sword was waiting to be hammered into shape. Next to the Anvil was a trough of water, while the furnace was spitting red hot embers, the red flame underneath magically holding the same brightness despite the influx of oxygen.

Anvil led them to a back room, where he lit a lantern and Shade looked up to see a large group of pony mannequins each made of some kind of leathery material, there were pegasi, and Unicorn ones mixed in, probably for more specific armor forging. However the one Shade was led to was interesting.

It looked a lot like the Royal Guard armor, but instead of the golden design, was a slightly lighter black than his own carapace. The armor lacked the part on top that seemed to push the Guard’s manes into a Mohawk kind of design. The helmet seemed to curve around where his horn should have been, but the armor was still clearly being made, it lacked a few of the essential parts to it.

“What do you think sir?” Anvil asked.

“It’s…” What do I call it? “Unexpected… To say the least.” Shade replied. “Why is it black though?”

Crimson looked up at him. “We’re infusing it with some spare Chitin we have laying around,” She explained, “So that it will actually follow your transformations.”

Shade looked back at her. “You can do that?”

“Of course.” She replied. There was a bright red flame, and a Changeling Queen stood where she was at first, her armor having modified itself to fit her now taller and winged body. Her mane was short, mimicking the style of her disguise. “How else would I be able to wear it?”

“Fair enough.” Shade replied.

“It’s still a work in progress.” Anvil said, walking up to the armor. “I’m still working out the visor, getting the plans for General Dragon Dust’s armor was not easy.”

Shade turned. “Drak-ill?” Shade had committed the name to memory for the pure purpose of remembering Drak-ill. “You are going off of his design?”

Anvil nodded. “The Queen requested it, so I must oblige.” He looked up at Shade. “Any requests?”

Shade thought about it for a moment, thinking about any small changes that may need to be made, but there was only one that he needed. “Yes, right on the chest, could you make a small compartment to fit six-pointed star shaped gem?”

Anvil nodded. “I’m going to need the dimensions of it.”

Shade nodded. “I’ll try to get it to you.” Now I have to get my hands on that gem… “I should be able to get it tomorrow.”

Pupa had transformed back into Crimson Lance. “Come on Captain, I think you’ve had enough excitement for the day.”

Shade walked out, following Crimson Lance. “Now that you’re a part of the Guard,” She said “How much do you know about combat?”

“I know plenty about combat,” Shade replied. “Just… Not a lot like this…”

Crimson Lance smiled. “That’s excellent, tomorrow morning I’m going to teach you how to fight.”

Shade paused for a second. “Like…Training?”

Crimson looked back at him. “Yup, be prepared for a tough day.” She replied. “The recruits are going to be your sparring partners, maybe if you do well enough, I’ll let one of my sergeants try out your skill.”

“You are enjoying this far too much aren’t you?” Shade asked.

“A little.” Crimson admitted. “Anyway, do you need to turn off that projection spell?”

Shade’s eyes widened. “Yeah… I should do that now. I don’t know how stable that rune actually is…” Shade absent-mindedly began thinking, but he realized he was being dragged for half of the journey to the smith. “Um… I don’t know where we are in here?”

Crimson chuckled. “I’ll get you a map tonight, follow me.”

The Rune turned out to be perfectly stable, which was good because setting that up again would take too long if the crystal shattered, instead of dispelling it, he took the emerald and map off the rune, leaving the three separated with clear instructions to make sure they weren’t messed with.

After that he was led up to where he would be sleeping, and it was a huge room to say the least. As tall as the hallway and looked fit for royalty, large bed, mirrors, looking fancy as anything else he had seen. While he didn’t have anything to put in them, there were closets and drawers for anything he could need, for now though, he just used them to place the saddlebags he needed to give back to Twilight.

The room also had a bathroom attached to it that seemed to just ooze rich and fancy, however Shade didn’t exactly register most of it, as he quickly used the shower it had to get the rest of the blood out off of his chitin. As well as get the very faint scent of Timber wolf essence out of his horn, which he had to admit, does add a bit of spice to emotions.

When he had made sure he was cleaned, he looked back at where he had the saddlebags, he opened them and pulled out the curved horn he kept in one of the sides.

“Mirror…” He said under his breath. “I hope you found him…” Shade placed the horn on top of a dresser. “If Spine hurt either of them… I’ll do more than just kill him.”

Chapter 44: Conquering Combat

I have never slept that well! Shade thought to himself as he got up, which was relatively quick. No nightmares, no weird phenomena, nothing waking me up, awesome.

He stretched his back before transforming into Sunstreak, not that he needed to, he just preferred it to walking around as a Changeling. Looking at dresser he found a map of the castle placed underneath the curved horn. Then looking out the window, he saw the sun beginning to rise into the sky. Good not late for anything…

He was about to start trying to figure out more about the plans when the door was thrown open by Crimson Lance, causing Sunstreak to jump into the air.

“Rise and shine!” She shouted into the room. She was wearing a whistle around her neck alongside her normal armor.

“Where’s the fire?”

“No fire. Just training.” Crimson replied, pulling Sunstreak down to the ground with her magic. “And since this is your first day, expect the same treatment as the rest of them. And that starts with Roll Call.” She blew a whistle around her neck. “Get moving!”

The morning was an…interesting affair to say the least. Not for Shade, he was used to the rigorous tasks of the military, after all, three hundred years of routine tends to stick with you, it was more interesting for the recruits to see a Captain alongside them, let alone a Changeling.

So that led to a lot of interesting complications… Such as the standard military nicknaming, while Shade was never really a fan of these, being called ‘Bug Boy’ really just made him prove that they had nothing on him. By the time the standard military drills were over, Shade was barely working a sweat, while the same could not be said about the rest of them.

“I’m impressed Shade.” Crimson said. “No wonder Celestia made you a Captain.” She blew her whistle. “Pegasi! Get flying! Goes for you too.”

“Of course Ma’am.” Shade replied transforming into Sunstreak.

“I want Five Laps around the castle exterior! Get going!”

“You heard the Unicorn!” Sunstreak shouted. “Don’t let me catch you slacking off or I’ll make you fly till those wings fall off!” With that, he jumped into the air followed by the rest of the pegasi.

“Captain!”

Sunstreak kept flying, but looked towards the sound, and found an orange Pegasus flying up to him. “Who are you?”

“Lieutenant Sunglider.” The Pegasus said flying up to him.

“Glad to see you out of the Hospital bed Lieutenant.” Sunstreak replied. “Every soldier we can get will be useful.”

“Actually sir, I’m still on recovery leave.”

“Then what the hell are you doing here?” Sunstreak asked looking back at the other Pegasus. “Swift Wing! Keep those wings moving!”

“I came here to speak with you sir.” Sunglider replied. “I wanted to talk to you myself.”

“Well I’m sorry to disappoint you Lieutenant,” Sunstreak replied, “But I’m going to be spending all day alongside Miss Lance, so unless you agree to be a training partner, I will have very little time. Speaking of which.”

Sunstreak turned around to look at the rest of the Pegasi. “Come on boys! You’re not going to let a bug beat you at flying right? My daughter flies faster than you lot!”

Sunstreak turned back to Sunglider. “I’ve got another few minutes of flying around in a circle if you want to tell me what’s up now.”

“Listen… This is going to sound crazy.”

“I’ve been living with Pinkie Pie for four days, try me.”

“I would like to be a part of the main assault force against the hive.”

Sunstreak stopped in the air, followed by Sunglider. “Listen I… KEEP GOING!” He shouted back at the Pegasi that had started to slow. He then turned back to Sunglider. “Listen Sunglider… I can’t make that call.”

“But you…” He was cut off by Sunstreak holding up his hoof.

“Sunglider, I’m not in charge of the main attack force, I was made a Captain in order to give me enough power to actually make the plan and stay here without fear of being attacked. If you really want to try and get yourself into the attack plan, you may want to bring it up with Shining Armor.”

“Sir with all due respect…”

“You owe me nothing.” Sunstreak replied. “I was a part of the invasion force, I sent you into a comatose state for quite a long time. I made up for that second one by helping give you back what I took. Now I’m making up for being a part of the attack by helping protect Equestria. I’m doing it not only for that, but because ‘general’ Spine made it highly personal to me.”

Sunstreak looked back towards the squadron of Pegasus. He sighed. “Swift Wing is slacking off again… I need to go Lieutenant, if you want to talk about this more, wait until I’m done, or sign up as a training partner. I need to catch up with the rest of them…”

Sunstreak flew off, rushing to catch up to the rest of the Pegasus. “Swift Wing! Pick it up!”

An hour or two later, Shade hadn’t been keeping track, the other Guards had left from morning Drills to eat breakfast, while Shade remained outside alongside Crimson.

“Explain to me why we have to train outside,” Shade said, “When there is a room specifically made for this.”

Crimson put on her helmet. “Because in a battle, specifically against Changelings, we need more than just a quiet room, Changelings will use everything they have available in a fight, but first we need to train you in normal combat.”

“Define ‘Normal’.” Shade said.

“Lance skills.” She replied.

“Is the lance used often?” Shade asked.

“Well…sort of… depends on divisions and preference.” Crimson replied. “Most use the Lance, keeps your hooves free, can be latched onto a war saddle, and are designed to be efficient, however some use swords, mostly clutched in their teeth, but Unicorns can use magic. The Lunar guard have their own weapon, I’ve never seen it though…”

“So using your hooves isn’t the standard?” Shade asked. “Could have fooled me…”

Crimson giggled slightly. “Yes… Often the Guards use their hooves. We aren’t always armed, so knowing to fight without it is always useful.”

“So when do we…” Shade said looking towards Crimson, to which he rolled out of the way of a lance.

“Right now.” She said with a smile pulling the Lance back.

Shade had barely enough time to pull himself up before the lance was being thrust at him again, he jumped up into the air and hovered above the lance, landing on top of it, causing the tip to be stabbed into the ground.

Crimson pulled it out of the ground with her magic pulling it back and wiping it around, smacking Shade in the side, sending him against the ground.

Shade groaned as he pulled himself up. “Couldn’t wait could you…”

“What’s the point in waiting?” Crimson replied. “I’ll tell you what, disarm me, and I’ll stop.”

Shade rubbed his side, checking to make sure that there was no damage to his chitin. “Don’t you think you should train me to…?” Shade felt the lance go through one of the holes in his foreleg, with a quick flick; he was flipped onto his back. “Guess not…”

“The best training is experience.”

“Experience means nothing in the face of Educated bolts.” Shade replied standing up.

“Touché.” She replied. Attempting to repeat the flip move, but Shade was ready. Right before she flicked the lance, Shade flipped himself over so that the lance corrected him, making him land on the ground on his four hooves.

“You know the whole magic thing kind of makes this unfair.” Shade said stabbing the lance into the ground again.

“Well you have it too. So why not use it?” She replied.

“I could… But I prefer to do this with it instead.” Shade teleported away.

Crimson pulled the lance out of the ground and looked around. When she looked up, she saw Shade hurtling towards her, surrounded by green flames. Defensively she raised the Lance to block it.

Gotcha. Before Shade hit the Lance, he slowed himself and teleported behind Crimson Lance, his right foreleg surround by flame as he pulled a silver ring from it and quickly jammed it onto Crimson’s horn before he raised his hind legs and pushed her to the side causing her to fall to the ground.

The Lance fell onto the ground where Shade left it and walked up to Crimson Lance, his foreleg transformed into a long blade, the tip of which he held up to Crimson’s throat.

Shade smirked. “Checkmate.” Shade transformed his foreleg back and helped pull Crimson up.

“You always keep a suppression ring in your leg?” She asked.

Shade shrugged. “I thought that in case Twilight’s spell didn’t hold I might as well be prepared for anything.”

“Smart.” Crimson’s horn glowed red and the suppression ring was pushed off her horn. “Too bad I’m a Queen.” She said, levitating the silver ring back to Shade.

“Well I disarmed you didn’t I?” Shade asked.

“Yes… You did.” Crimson replied, pulling her lance from the ground. “When did you learn to teleport? Acari never told me you could do it that accurately.”

Shade rubbed the back of his neck. “Umm… I can’t… I kind of just focused on the air, and then on being on the ground, me being in the correct places was just random… I had no real location in mind.”

Crimson pulled up her visor. “You lucky Love sucker.” She punched him in the shoulder. “So you’re a tactical fighter?”

“Whichever one keeps me alive the longest.” Shade replied. “Usually that turns out to be the tactical approach.”

“Acari tells me you were in the military before.” Crimson replied. “Mind if I ask your rank?”

Shade sighed. “We don’t exactly have the same ranking system, but sure. Warrior Class: Spec Ops Berserker, First Class. Skilled in tactical insertions into foreign territory, assassinations, Intelligence gathering and swordplay. I’m not too bad with a crossbow either.”

“What kind of tactical insertions?” Crimson asked.

“Well… Standard stuff, insertion of troops, short-term sabotage, assassination prevention, just a few things.”

“Interesting… I’ll see what I can do about getting you a crossbow, after breakfast you should head to the training room, Lieutenant Star Dust has a group of training partners for you while you learn standard hoof to hoof fighting.” She placed her lance back onto her armor and pointed it’s tip up. “By the way, after lunch we are reconvening in the war room. You have about forty five minutes left of breakfast time left, and I don’t know how much time you are going to have to get that gem thing for Anvil.”

“Will do.” Shade replied, transforming into Sunstreak. He took off from the ground and began flying off towards where he knew his friends were. Boy have I got a story to tell Twilight…

“I’m not kidding.” Sunstreak said as Twilight led him through the Museum. “You are officially looking at the first Changeling Captain of the Royal Guard.”

“Why did Celestia keep this from me?” Twilight asked herself. “It would have been amazing.”

“Probably because of Pinkie Pie.” Sunstreak replied. “Think about what she would do if she found out.”

Twilight’s face changed to one of fear. “You’re right… We can’t let her find out. She’ll probably destroy the castle with the idea of a party that big!”

Sunstreak chuckled. “I don’t think she would do that. Besides, the Guard could probably handle it… Hopefully.”

The two of them stopped outside the particular display they were looking for. Sunstreak pushed open the door, and his jaw swung open.

Inside were three of Ceymi’s Changelings, each one clad in the chitin armor.

Sunstreak took up an aggressive stance. “You have twelve seconds to either buzz off, or tell me what you are doing here before I crack your skulls open like that assassin.”

The three Changelings hissed at them.

“Cracked skulls it is then.” Sunstreak transformed back into Shade. “Let’s have some fun boys.”

The three Changelings charged at him, so he dragged his horn across the ground and green fire spouted up. “Twilight.” Shade said. “Could you go and gather my fellow guard for me while I deal with these three eggshells?”

Twilight nodded and teleported out of the room. Leaving the four Changelings alone, the wall of green fire separating them.

“Now then…” Shade said. “Who sent you?”

One of the Changelings hissed.

“We will never follow Ceymi’s rule!”

Shade’s eyes widened. “Hold up. What?”

“Ceymi is a fool!” The Changeling replied. “She will kill us with this idiotic plan!”

“You are against Ceymi?”

“We would never follow one so stupid! To attack a Peaceful hive, even with the promise of endless love, is insane!”

Shade loosened his muscles. “We have a common enemy then.”

“Lies!” The largest of the three replied. “None of our Hive is this far from the swarm!”

“The Queen will fall!” The Changeling fired a magical beam through the wall of fire, scattering the flames. Shade was unprepared for the following attack, he was pulled off the ground by one Changeling, while another began to pound against his chest, knocking the wind out of him whenever he got a chance to breathe.

I don’t want to do this… But I have no choice… Shade quickly charged his horn with magic, sending a bright flash into both Changeling’s eyes. He fell to the ground, and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry for this…” He focused the breath into a very specific path through his throat, before letting out a spout of fire, burning one of the Changeling’s wings.

Shade rushed up and grabbed the second Changeling, the one that had been holding him back, and slammed it against the wall, causing it to fall to the floor. All that was left was him and the other Changeling to deal with. “Listen to me!”

“Never! I will give my life for Chrysalis!”

“I’m not following Ceymi!” Shade shouted. “Shade, Captain of the Royal Guard stand down now!”

“Your lies cannot trick me traitor!”

“I don’t want to harm you.” Shade said, “But if it is the only way for you to listen, I will try to make it painless.”

“I give you no such comfort!”

Shade and the Changeling walked around each other in a circle, each one waiting for the other to make a move. Eventually, the other Changeling jumped at Shade, fangs bared and ready to bite down on him, Shade sidestepped the attack and bucked the Changeling in the side, sending him into the wall.

Without thinking, Shade rushed up to him and crossed two bladed forelegs against the Changeling’s throat. “Now you are going to listen to me. Or I am going to leave a third Corpse in this city.” Shade hissed at the Changeling before moving the crossed blades closer to his throat. “Now, I do not follow Ceymi, for all I care the cunt can burn in the pits of hell. My name is Shade, I am a Captain of Celestia’s Royal Guard, and I promise if you tell me everything I want to know, I can make sure that you are not treated the same as those who follow her.”

The Changeling hissed at him. “How do I know you do not follow Ceymi?”

At that moment the sound of Hooves slamming against the stone floor drew their attention. A few seconds later and a few Royal Guards entered the room, alongside Twilight.

“Bout time you decided to show up.” Shade said to the guards.

“Sir.” The Guard saluted. “What happened here?”

“These three happened here.” Shade replied. “I want these three brought to the Castle as soon as possible, and get Dr. Sapphire on the line, I need to talk to her about something important. This one,” Shade motioned to the Changeling currently between his bladed forelegs “Is to be placed in the interrogation room until further notice.”

“Yes sir!” The Guard replied, the unicorn of the group walking over to the wingless Changeling, still squirming from the heat.

“These three are to be separated from the other Changelings.” Shade said. “Bring those two to the infirmary.” Shade pulled his bladed forelegs away from the Changeling’s neck. “I’ll speak with you in a few minutes.”

Shade watched as the Changelings were placed into small cages and led out of the museum, when he was sure they gone, he looked over at Twilight. “I think we just found our group of soldiers.”

“What do you mean?” She replied.

“They were against Ceymi… They thought I was one of hers…” Shade said. He shook his head. “That’s not why I’m here.”

“You never really explained…” Twilight replied.

“It’s… Important to me…” Shade said, flying up to the armor in the center of the room. “Promise me you will not tell anyone about what I am about to do.”

Twilight nodded and Shade changed his hoof into a claw, running it along where the cutie mark should be. His claw found the familiar notch, and pulled it off, he looked in the compartment where the orange crystal still lay in its spot.

“What is that?” Twilight asked.

“It’s my secret weapon.” Shade replied, pulling the orange crystal from the compartment. Even though he knew it wasn’t where the crystal needed to be to activate fully, he could feel the energy flowing through his claw. “I hope that it still works….”

“What are you going to do now?” Twilight asked.

“I’m going to talk to that Changeling, he says they defected from Ceymi, but I want to be sure…”

“I meant about the crystal.”

“Oh… Well I plan to keep it safe, until I need to use it…” Shade replied, placing the crystal into one of the holes on his leg. “Now… I need to get back to the Castle, royal duties and all that.”

“I’ll see you around Captain.” Twilight replied, “I’ve got to go research more on the various Changeling societies. Having three different Hives is going to be a wonderful learning experience.”

Shade rolled his eyes. “Have fun Twilight.” Shade replied as the lavender Unicorn walked out of the room. Shade transformed back into Sunstreak, and as he did, he felt his hoof still flowing with energy. At least I know it still works… Shade replaced the cover and flew back out the door, giving a last look back at the room, Shade let out a sigh. “I hope I’m making the right choice here…”

After Shade dropped the crystal off with Anvil and told him how he wanted the indent made, he began walking towards the interrogation room. He looked up at a clock, telling him he still had ten minutes before he was needed in the training room, which meant he had just enough time to speak to his guest.

“Sir,” One of the Guards said to hm. “We contacted Dr. Sapphire; she said she will be coming by to check on the Changelings before transporting them to the Hospital.”

“Good.” Shade replied. “Give her whatever help she needs and make sure those Changelings are restrained.”

“Sir, are you alright?” The Guard asked, noticing Shade wobble slightly.

“I’m fine…” Shade replied. “They just surprised me… A few bruises, that’s it.”

“If you say so Sir,” The Guard replied.

“You’re dismissed.” Shade said, walking up to the interrogation room. The Guard saluted and continued down the hall, leaving Shade outside the room.

Shade pushed open the door to the interrogation room, noticing that the crystals he placed there were now mostly gone. The Changeling from earlier was placed on the far side of the replaced table, his forelegs cuffed on the table and a suppression ring on his curved horn. His armor having been confiscated by the guard.

“So…” Shade said walking in. “How is it,” Shade said sitting down, “That a group of three Changelings managed to sneak into the city of Canterlot without being detected?”

The Changeling hissed.

“Alright…” Shade replied. “Too soon, I understand. So who are you?”

The Changeling remained silent.

“Alright, I’ll start. My name is Shade; I am a failed conversion from a Dragon by Queen Chrysalis, now a captain of the Royal Guard, and currently the planner for an attack against Ceymi’s location. How about you?”

“…..”

“Alright… Still nothing?” Shade sighed. “Here’s the deal buddy. I can’t help you, if you don’t talk to me. So you can either tell me your name, or I can just have you thrown in the dungeon alongside the rest of Ceymi’s followers.”

“I do not follow Ceymi.” The Changeling replied.

“Aha! So you speak!” Shade said. “Wonderful! Progress… So what is your name?”

“Why should I tell you?” The Changeling replied. “You could simply be a spy for Ceymi.”

“Oh… well I could be, yes…” Shade said tapping his hoof to his chin. “Although I would probably be the worst spy in all of existence…” Shade looked back towards the Changeling. “While we’re on the subject of the Parasite Queen, why not tell me why you and your buddies decided to turn against her?”

“Chrysalis’ orders.” The Changeling replied.

“What are these orders?” Shade replied.

The Changeling shook his head. “To disclose the Queen’s orders is to endanger the rest of our Swarm.”

Shade pulled his hooves up and laid them on the table. “Listen… I’ve witnessed firsthand…or hoof… Whatever… the kindness of these ponies, they will not harm those that are not a threat. If you tell me, I promise you we will ensure the safety of every Changeling civilian. All I want is to end the reign of Queen Ceymi.”

The Changeling glanced behind Shade. “Tell them to leave, and then I’ll tell you.” Shade looked back at the one-way mirror, and indeed did see a flicker of emotions from behind it.

“Give me a moment.” Shade said, walking out of the room, he walked around and entered into the back room where Shining Armor was.

“You can’t trust him on his word.” Shining Armor said. “We don’t know if he is lying or not.”

“True…” Shade replied. “But if it is true that Ceymi doesn’t have complete control over the Swarm, then there is a chance they will join us in taking out Ceymi.”

Shining Armor thought about it. “The plan is supposed to be put into action in two days,” He replied, “If you can find them by then, I’ll consider letting them help.”

“Just a few minutes are all I need.” Shade said. “After that, I’ll leave it up to you.”

Shining Armor sighed. “Alright, but I expect a full report by tomorrow.” He replied.

“Send the papers to my room and I’ll finish them when I have time.” Shade said. With that the two of them walked out of the room, Shining Armor staying out of earshot while Shade reentered the interrogation room.

“Done,” Shade said. “Now talk.”

“Very well, Captain.” The Changeling replied. “My name is Mandible; I am a Major in Chrysalis’ army, loyal to only the Queen.”

“Pleasure to meet you Major,” Shade replied. “Now what about your allies?”

“Scouts, placed alongside me while we gather information on the attack of Ponyville.” Mandible replied. “We planned on placing our own into your ranks before the attack and assisting if necessary.”

“So how many of you defected from Ceymi?” Shade asked.

“We did not defect!” Mandible hissed. “We were obeying Queen Chrysalis’ orders!”

“And those were?” Shade asked, leaning in to Mandible.

Mandible sighed. “Weeks before the Invasion was meant to take place, Chrysalis called her highest officers to a meeting in the war chamber.” He explained. “In that time, we were instructed on what to do in case the Invasion failed. ‘Remain within Equestrian soil until contacted by her’. So we did, many of our best remained within Equestria, hidden among the populace.”

“We remained there for quite a while, until we were given a call in the middle of the night, telling us of our Queen’s death.” Mandible snorted. “And just like that the Princess believes herself to be the new Queen! She is too young, she could not understand. Neither did a majority of our Hive.”

“They blindly followed her, but those of a higher mind refused to follow, the Queen gave us a very specific order. We intend to follow it to the letter. We were told if the Queen falls ‘We must return to the Ancient Hive, and attempt to repair relations.’ We were never told to attempt a second attack. Ceymi’s actions will doom all of us!”

Shade listened closely to the Mandible, but something was still wrong. “Where is this Ancient Hive?”

Mandible smirked. “Ask the Princess of Love.”

Shade stared at Mandible for a few moments, before hopping off the chair and walking out the door. “He’s all yours Captain.” Shade said before walking down the hall towards the training room. Ask Cadence? What does that mean?

“Captain, you’re late!” Star Dust said as Shade pushed open the door to the training room.

“Apologies,” Shade replied. “I was having a rather riveting conversation with one of our newest prisoners.”

“Well you kept us waiting.” Star Dust replied. “So I hope it was worth it.” Star Dust blew a whistle. “We only managed to get you two other sparring partners, but we will make due.”

Shade looked at the other two ponies in the room, one he recognized as Sunglider, he didn’t know the other, the other guard was a dark purple Earth pony mare, her pale purple main was tied into a ponytail.

“This is Lance Corporal Void, she will be helping me with your ground combat training.”

“Void…” Shade repeated. “Sounds like a Unicorn name…”

“I’m part unicorn, on my mother’s side Sir.” Void replied. “I wanted to see Changelings in action sir.”

“Well you came to the wrong place to see trained Changelings corporal.” Shade replied. “I was never trained in the Hive. So I don’t know standard combat. Though it would be a pleasure to train with you.”

“And you already know Lieutenant Sunglider. He will be training you in aerial combat.”

“Consider it a rematch for last time.” Sunglider said opening up his wings.

“Lance Corporal Void, start by showing the good captain here how to fight like a real soldier.”

An hour or so after they had begun, Sunstreak and Void had begun a small sparring match, in which Sunstreak couldn’t use his wings as the two of them circled each other before Void made the first move, charging at Sunstreak, who ducked down and head butted her right in the chest, flipping her over his back before bucking her in the stomach, sending her across the room.

Before she could get up, Sunstreak dashed over and pinned her to the ground. “You done yet?”

Void tapped her hoof on the ground three times, prompting Sunstreak to get off. “How are you so quick to learn this?” She asked wiping a bit of blood from her snout. “Took me a while to perfect that move.”

Sunstreak shrugged. “Two Hundred years of combat training don’t tend to leave you easily. I didn’t hurt you did I?”

“Nah…” She said. “I’ve had worse.”

“Void… You should probably see somepony about that…” Sunglider said, looking at her hind leg. “Looks kind of… beat up…”

Shit… “I knew I should have turned into Fluttershy for this…” Sunstreak said. “Then it probably wouldn’t have hurt… Then again… I’ve never seen Fluttershy fight…”

Star Dust blew his whistle. “Sunglider, you’re up.”

Sunglider took to the air. “Pay attention Changeling,” He said. “Cause I’m only showing you these once.”

“Yes sir!” Sunstreak said taking to the air next to him.

Sunglider began performing various aerial maneuvers, which as Sunglider told him, ‘Looked a lot more complicated than they were.’ Sunstreak just watched, analyzing movement, muscle contortion and change in wing beats.

“Now you try.” Sunglider replied when he was finished.

Sunstreak took a deep breath and tried to repeat what Sunglider did, with terrible results, Shade was not used to having feathered wings when he attempted any kind of precision flying, so he ended up eating stone way more times than anything else.

“Damn… I’m out of practice…” Sunstreak said as he changed back to his normal form.

“How in Tartarus did you manage to take me out when you fly like that?”

Shade looked up at him. “More precision flying with these from what I’ve seen.” Shade opened his insect wings. “Besides… my training with my wings doesn’t exactly transfer, Scaled wings are heavier, more powerful, and more sturdy, changing to two wing types where one is the same as tissue paper, and the other one isn’t quite as powerful, makes it very difficult for precision flying.”

Shade flew back up with his insect wings, hoping they would be a little more accurate, but trying to do any kind of extreme moves caused him to face-plant into the ground again.

“Maybe you should stay on the ground…” Sunglider said landing next to him. “I’m still not sure how you did that move before.”

“I hunted Phoenix rays for my whole life,” Shade replied. “I know how to down a flyer easily. I just… can’t fly through hoops. I was a warrior, not a stunt flyer.”

“So you can fight in the air, you just can’t accurately fly?” Sunglider reiterated.

“Exactly.” Shade replied. “My training was in taking down flying targets, never really focused on keeping targets in the air.”

Sunglider looked at him in a challenging way. “Prove it.”

Shade smiled back. “Your Funeral.”

The two took off into the air, and within a few moments, Sunglider was pinned to the ground, a bladed foreleg up to his throat. “Told yah.”

“Alright, get off of me.” Sunglider replied. Shade obliged and pulled the bladed foreleg away from Sunglider’s throat.

“I told you, downing a flyer is in my training.” Shade said.

Sunglider rubbed the back of his head. “Well… I guess I don’t have to teach you much…” He said. “Given that you seem fine in combat…”

Shade smiled. “Tis what my training was for.” He said.

“But your dodging could use some work.” Sunglider replied. “Star Dust could you pull that lever over there.”

Star Dust used his magic to pull down a lever marked “Storm Training”

From hidden panels in the walls and ceilings, cylindrical wooden structures came out and began swinging across the ceiling in sporadic patters, a few wall panels opened to reveal large fans that began to spin, creating large torrents of wind to blow across the room at random intervals.

Sunglider motioned for Shade to fly through it.

Shade looked at him like he was crazy, trying to voice his concerns when a bolt of lightning slammed into the ground in front of him. Shade gulped before transforming into Sunstreak and taking off.

He was pushed around by the wind very easily, flying into the wooden obstacles, getting smacked around by everything, including the lightning strikes, luckily they weren’t like real lightning, more like static shocks, but they still threw him off course.

“SHUT IT OFF!” Sunglider shouted over the gusts of wind. Star Dust pushed the lever back to it’s inactive position, causing the various hazard to stop moving, and causing Sunstreak to crash into the ground.

“What part of ‘I’m not a flyer’ didn’t you understand!” Sunstreak shouted pushing himself up.

“Okay so maybe…”

“What!” Sunstreak shouted, his ears still ringing from the lightning strike.

“I said that…”

“WHAT!” Sunstreak said, placing his hoof in his ear to try and clean it. “I can’t hear you!”

Sunglider rolled his ears. “I SAID IT WAS A BAD IDEA!”

“Why didn’t you just say so!” Sunstreak replied, pulling his hoof out of his ear. “And stop whispering!”

“I’m not whispering!”

“Sure you are!” Sunstreak replied, hitting the side of his head to get some spare water out of it. “There we go, much better. What were you saying?”

“It was a bad idea… we should probably teach you to-”

“I thought I heard the storm training system turning on.” Cadence said, looking into the room. “I hope nopony got hurt.”

“A Changeling did…” Sunstreak said under his breath, changing to his natural form. “Sorry to disturb you Princess.”

“Not at all Shade.” Cadence replied. “I came to check up on our newest Captain, and ask you something…in private.”

“Of course Princess.” Shade replied, buzzing his wings to fly over to the door. “Give us a minute Lieutenant.”

Sunglider saluted as Shade flew through the door and closed it. “What did you want to ask?”

Cadence seemed a bit nervous. “What did you and the Changeling talk about?”

Shade held back the urge to laugh. “You’re pretty wound up for this given how many Changeling prisoners we have.”

“Yes… But the fact that you are treating them differently is surprising me.”

Shade’s eye twitched. “Do you know them?” Cadence asked.

Shade shook his head, then looked down the hallway to make sure nobody was coming. “Listen… Cadence… I believe these three Changelings are part of a group that still owes allegiance to Chrysalis.”

Cadence looked surprised, and the neon yellow flame proved that. “What?”

Shade looked back towards the training room. “Cadence… Can we move this somewhere a bit more… secluded?”

Cadence looked unsure for a moment, but nodded. Shade poked his head back into the training room. “I’m sorry Lieutenant, but something urgent has arisen, I will contact you when we can continue with training.”

“No problem.” Sunglider replied. “You go do your Captain duties.”

Shade nodded and quickly turned back to Cadence. “Follow me…” Shade began to lead Cadence towards his room, for the pure purpose of it being unlikely anyone would try to reach him there given his planned schedule. When they got there, Shade opened the door to let Cadence in, before slamming it closed and locking it.

“Ugh… I knew this would come to bite me in the ass eventually…”

“Captain… What did you mean by them still having allegiance to Chrysalis?” Cadence replied. “If the Queen is still alive…”

“She can’t be… Antenna was there when she…” Shade turned to see the confused look on her face.

“Antenna?” She asked.

Shade’s eye twitched, he took a deep breath. “Remember how I said that I did meet other Changelings at that Royal Summit?”

Cadence nodded.

“Well…” Shade began to explain the real story to her, Darkblaze, Acari, Blackout, everything he needed to tell her. As he continued the look of shock only became stronger.

“But… I heard about the magic you used on Shifter… how did you do that?” Cadence asked.

Shade sighed, and levitated the curved horn over to her. “This… Used to belong to a Changeling named Mirror, the mother of Echo, a small Changeling I saved from attack by ponies. Two days ago, she was killed, and… I lost it, I gave up on doing things in a stealthy, law abiding way, I want to find both of them, and now… Major Mandible just gave me a way to get a few hundred soldiers on our side.”

Cadence’s eyes widened. “How?”

“He said that those still loyal to Chrysalis gathered in some ‘Ancient Hive’ and apparently you were there before.” Cadence began thinking about when she had ever been to a Changeling hive.

She let out a gasp. “The Crystal Caverns!”

Shade was confused. “Come again?”

She grabbed the Changeling. “The Crystal Caverns! It’s where Chrysalis was holding me during the Invasion, it’s right underneath Canterlot! And there are enough winding paths that anypony could get lost there easily! That must be what he was talking about!”

“Crystal Caverns? So that’s where you were while that whole thing was going on.” Shade said. “So… How do I get in there?”

Author's Note

Oh NO!!! I almost did it again!
Ugh... Sorry for anything that looks odd in this chapter... It's late... I'm tired... And I just transcribed everything, so there may very well be errors rampant...

I'll try to be better about this in the future... :fluttershysad:

Chapter 45: Chrysalis' Command

“Sergeant Silver Shield!”

Silver had just come from a basic training drill when he turned to see Shade calling over for him.

“Get over here!” Shade ordered. Silver quickly ran up to him.

“You called sir?” Silver replied.

“Yes… I did…” Shade wrapped a hoof around Silver’s shoulder. “Walk with me. Talk with me.”

Silver glanced at the black, hole filed limb over his shoulders before walking next to Shade.

“So I heard that you know about your true identity now.”

“Yes Sir.”

“Well…” Shade said, lowering his hoof. “Tell me… How much have you managed to learn about your new powers?”

In truth Silver knew very little about his powers, he never tried to fly, and all he was really taught so far was transforming back into his normal (Pony) form. “Well I…”

Shade grabbed him and pulled him into a side room, locking the door behind him. “We’re good.”

Silver looked into the room and saw Princess Cadence. “So this is the Changeling Guard?”

Silver looked back at Shade. “You told her?”

Shade shrugged. “I…uh… To be fair. I did also tell her about my friends, another Changeling hive, and the reason why I almost gave us a Changeling statue for the gardens.”

Cadence looked at the two of them. “Silver. Shade told me what he knew about you, and I have no intention to punish you. I wanted to meet you myself.”

“Silver, I told her everything she needed to know. She knows you aren’t a threat.” Shade said. “But… We need your help with something…”

Shade explained the situation, he told Silver all about Mandible and where they believed the Changelings were hiding.

“So… Why are you telling me this?” Silver asked. “And not say, Captain Armor?”

Cadence glanced at Shade. “Um… Yes… This is kind of… between the three of us.” Shade said.

“May I ask why?”

“Be honest with me Silver.” Shade said. “If I were to tell anybody in this place there was an army below Canterlot, waiting for the return of their Queen that attacked Canterlot less than a month ago. What do you think they would do?”

“I see your point.” Silver replied. “So why not tell a pony Guard?”

“Again… You are a soldier in hostile territory and one of those who you attacked less than a month ago comes near your base, first reaction?”

“Got it…” Silver replied. “So how are we handling this?”

Shade smiled. “You ever wondered what Changeling armor feels like?”

“How in Tartarus did you talk me into this?” Silver asked, standing at the large crack in the ground leading to the Crystal Caverns, they were just outside the city’s walls, where the area had been sectioned off for exploration later to check and see what is actually down there.

The two Changelings had gotten the armor from the dungeon, under the order of Princess Cadence, under the cover of Military research. They had taken the armor out of the city to where the entrance was. When they were there, Shade had put on the armor with very little issue, almost like it was designed for him.

Silver had more trouble, he was not a fan of being in his Changeling form, let alone without his armor, so Shade had to practically force him into it before the armor was placed on.

“Because I’m both your commanding officer, and I’ve got a silver tongue, sometimes…”

Silver rolled his eyes. “So long as I don’t have to fly anywhere, I’ll be fine.”

“Alright then,” Shade’s horn glowed and his right eye turned into the standard solid blue eye. “Spell I learned from Darkblaze, really useful when I’m trying to stay hidden.”

Shade picked up Silver and lowered him down into the crack in the ground, lowering the two of them into the caverns below, to which both of them looked around impressed.

Inside, the walls, floors, and even the columns that held up the rest of the cave were covered with crystals, ranging from green to dark black ones. There were no traces of any Changelings in the first section of the cave, meaning they just looked around the area at first.

“How are we going to find our way around this place?” Silver asked concerned. “We have no idea where we are, and I’ve heard stories about this place.”

“Any of them good?” Shade asked.

“These Caves were used to trap greedy Unicorns, who then died because they couldn’t find the exit.” Silver said, shaking slightly.

“Then it’s a good thing we aren’t Unicorns.” Shade replied stepping on a bone. “Huh… Looks like you weren’t lying.” Shade bent down and looked at the skeleton. “Looks like he got hit in the face with a rock.”

Silver looked away from the skeleton. “How can you tell?”

“The giant hole in its skull,” Shade said.

“Can we get moving? I’m still a pony at heart Captain.” Silver replied. “I’m not used to seeing…”

“You smell that?” Shade asked, cutting off Silver.

Silver sniffed the air. “All I smell is dust, and that corpse.”

“No… It’s something else…” Shade replied. “It’s like…” Shade thought about the smell for a minute, before it hit him what it was. “Skunkweed…”

“Pardon?” Silver replied.

“It’s a plant, it’s defense mechanism is smelling terrible, and the last time I smelt it was inside the main Hive.” Shade lifted his head up and began sniffing the air before he found where the smell was coming from. “This way.”

“Major Mandible! Respond!”

“What if something happened to him General?”

“I knew I shouldn’t have let him go…”

“Major Mandible! Respond Now!”

“Sir, we need to address Ceymi’s position on…!”

“SHUT UP!” The General shouted towards the other officers. “Ceymi, it’s difficult enough to deal with leading this militia without all of you chattering my ears off like Chrysalis damned Caretakers!” The General took off his helmet using his magic. “If I get any information on the Traitor I’ll tell you! Now unless it’s vital, I don’t give a damn!”

“Mandible Respond!”

Another Changeling walked through the cloth acting as a door. “Gen-”

“What in Chrysalis’ Name is it!” The General shouted, startling the Changeling.

“I…uh…”

“What?” The General said.

The Changeling shook his head. “Two Changelings just entered the Hive.”

“The scouts?”

“No Sir,” The Changeling replied “One of them is from our Hive, the other is from Pupa.”

“Is it one of ours?” One of the other Changelings asked.

The Changeling shook its head. “He doesn’t hold the same scent.”

“Bring him here.” The General ordered. “If they don’t come willingly, then try to keep one alive.”

The Changeling saluted before running out the makeshift door.

“Mandible… What did you get yourself into?” The General asked himself, rubbing his eyes.

“Seven minutes Captain…” Silver said. “Seven minutes of wandering around this cave. Where the hell are we going?”

“I… Don’t know…” Shade replied, still smelling the air. “I’m just following this scent.”

“But what is it Sir?” Silver asked. “I can’t smell anything.”

“If I were to guess…” Shade replied, “I would say it’s Pheromones, like marking territory, or finding home.”

“Then why can’t I smell anything?” Silver asked.

“Maybe it’s only for members of the Hive, something to keep those who were exiled away or something.”

“So we are running on a theory here?” Silver sighed. “Wonderful.”

A few more moments of following the scent led them to a dead end. “Well… That failed.” Silver said. “What now?”

Shade looked up at the roof of the cave, and his eyes widened. “Um… I think we surrender…”

“Correct Traitor!” A group of Changeling flew down from the ceiling, with a few others clinging to the walls, their horns glowing a venomous green, all pointing at the two Changelings.

“Permission to speak freely sir?”

“Go.”

“Cadence warned you about this.”

“Jack Ass…”

The Changelings fired at the two of them, knocking them out.

Cadence was nervous. Shade and Silver Shield said they would be back in an hour or two, they had been gone for nearly three hours! They promised her that there was nothing she had to worry about, but they could be in trouble but if they weren’t, she didn’t want to risk their cover.

“Why do Changelings have to keep interfering in my life?” Cadence said.

“You called Princess?” Crimson asked, walking into the room.

“Yes… Crimson, I need to confide something in you.” Cadence said.

“What is it?” Crimson asked.

Cadence took a deep breath. “You remember Silver Shield?”

“That Unicorn raised by Pegasi?” Crimson asked. “What about him?”

“Have you noticed that he hasn’t been here for quite a while?”

Crimson took off her helmet. “Hmm… I guess I haven’t been paying attention.” Crimson replied. “Have you seen the new Captain?”

Cadence was beginning to panic. “Why do you need him?”

“He was supposed to join up with me for weapon training,” Crimson said. “And Lieutenants Sunglider and Star Dust said they last saw him with you.”

“Well…”

Crimson raised her eyebrow. “Princess, what happened to them?”

“Don’t… Promise me you won’t tell anypony.”

“Princess. What happened?”

“Sit down Crimson.” Cadence said. “And don’t freak out.”

Why do I keep waking up in these things? Shade thought to himself as he felt the strange liquid around him.

“So you were the one our scout warned us about.”

Shade opened his eyes, to look at the Changeling.

“Tartarus happened to your eye?”

“Would it help if I said ‘Fuck you’?” Shade replied. “I was born with it.”

The Changeling smirked. “We did a little check on that armor you used.” The Changeling flew up to glare at Shade. “Do you know what we found?”

“Not a clue.”

“That armor belongs to Major Mandible, a high ranking officer in her Majesty’s military, I don’t know who you are, but I want to know what you did to him.”

“Well… That is quite an idea.” Shade replied. “Since I wanted to ask you something, I suppose there is no point in hiding. I captured him personally, brought him and his small team to the Royal Castle.”

“Why would you bring them there?” The Changeling asked.

“Tis my job.” Shade replied. “Well… Temporary job, that other Changeling has it as his full job. But to answer your question. I was walking to a very specific exhibit when I came across the three of them. I told them who I was, they decided to start punching me in the stomach, so for one of them I burnt off his wings, the other I knocked unconscious, and Mandible I interrogated to find this place.”

“Why?”

“We have a common enemy.” Shade replied. “This Ceymi character, I don’t give a shit about, and clearly you are against her from what I’ve heard.”

“Give me a reason to trust you.”

“Queen Ceymi has taken four things from me. My daughter, my friend, my calm life, and my patience.” Shade glared at the Changeling. “Oh, and if we do not report to Princess Mi Amore Cadenza before nightfall, the Lunar guard will come here and rip this place apart.”

Shade stared down the changeling. “And before you say, ‘you’re Joking’ Queens Ovi, Cytes, Pupa, and Acari are there. Ovi’s daughter was hurt by an assassin, Pupa is always willing to kill you, and Acari’s Hive has been taken over.” Shade said seriously.

“How do I know you are not bluffing?”

“Because if I was bluffing,” Shade replied, “I would have pulled the Celestia card on your ass.”

The Changeling thought about it for a second. “Fair point.” The Changeling replied. “Who are you soldier?”

“Shade, Captain of the Royal Guard. The Other guy is a Royal Guard, and I would prefer not being trapped in one of these things for longer than possible.”

The Changeling looked him over. “I’ll send word to a known Infiltrator in the area, if he confirms your story, then I’ll let you out. Until then, have a nice sleep.”

The Changeling’s horn began to glow as Shade felt a wave of sleep rushing over him and the world just seemed to blur out.

“And you just let them go?” Crimson asked. “Celestia damn it! Didn’t you three have any kind of contingency plan?”

“Of course we did.” Cadence replied. “If I didn’t hear any reports from him by nightfall, I was to contact you and Luna about it.”

Crimson rubbed her forehead. “I knew I shouldn’t have let Silver know about his heritage…”

Cadence cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

“Oh… Damn it…” Crimson replied. “I kept tabs on Silver since I found out his father was a Changeling, at the time it didn’t seem like a problem. Now it’s just gotten me into a lot of stress lately…” Crimson said. “Celestia’s been on my flank about this…”

There was a knock on the…window?

Both of them looked at the window where a gray Pegasus was tapping on the window. Crimson instantly caused the window to flip open, and the Pegasus to fall into the room.

“What are you doing here?” Crimson hissed at the Pegasus.

“Well… I was here to warn you about…” The Pegasus’ eyes widened. “Oh… hi…Um… Crimson…”

“Tell me who and why!” Crimson said. “Or I swear to Celestia I will…”

“Are you Tornado Dust?” Cadence asked, looking at the brown tornado Cutie Mark.

The Pegasus nodded.

“Crimson, let him go. He knows Shade.” Cadence said, to which Crimson dropped him.

“You don’t need to hide here Changeling, Shade told me all about you.”

Tornado Dust twitched. “Wonderful… Did he tell you anything else?” Tornado Dust asked before shaking away the thought. “Listen! Snake Eye found the Hive!”

“Is he okay?”

“Yeah, he’s fine.” Tornado Dust replied. “The Swarm contacted me a little bit ago. They needed me to check his story to make sure he wasn’t sent by Ceymi. They also wanted me to check on Major Mandible, make sure he was still alive.”

“Why?” Crimson asked. “Also Who?”

Tornado Dust took a deep breath before beginning to explain everything he was told, Shade was captured along with Silver, they were being held by a group of Chrysalis’ Commanders, and he was sent to confirm the story.

“Then why not just confirm the story?” Crimson asked. “They would have to take your word for it.”

Tornado Dust shook his head. “They wanted some… Physical proof.” He said. “The word of an Infiltrator is only as good as you want it to be, and since I cut myself from the main Hive Mind, it’s not too good.”

“What kind of Physical proof?” Cadence asked.

“They…want…you.” Tornado Dust said.

Crimson looked as though she heard something stupid. “Come again?”

Tornado Dust took a deep breath. “They want to see Princess Cadence.” Tornado Dust took into the air so that he was out of reach of Crimson’s hooves.

“Why do they want to see me?” Cadence asked.

“They said they wanted to be sure of Snake Eye’s story, and that the best way to do that is to see you personally.”

Crimson grabbed her helmet. “I’m coming with you two.”

“Crimson I don’t think…”

“I’m not letting you go down there alone, even with this Changeling!” Crimson said. “This could be some kind of trap, a revenge scheme for the death of their Queen!”

Tornado Dust stood firm. “Listen, Pupa!” Crimson twitched slightly. “Ceymi may be a power hungry Nymph, but Chrysalis would never sanction a revenge scheme like this! Killing a Princess would bring death to our Hive, we would never do something so stupid!”

Crimson wrapped him in a red aura and pulled him close. “Listen to me. I will not have any kind of harm coming to the Princess. If I find so much as a feather out of place, I will make sure you rot in the dungeon" She poked him directly in the chest. "Got it?”

Tornado nodded.

“Now then,” Crimson said as she began to walk to the door. “You have two hours. After that, I’m bringing the Lancers.”

Cadence was shocked by how quickly Crimson changed her mind. “Crimson…”

“Two hours.” She replied. “Clock’s ticking. Now go before I change my mind.”

“You sure about this Princess?” Tornado Dust asked as the two of them looked down into the cave. “Your last visit wasn’t exactly pleasant.”

“I understand that.” Cadence replied, “But this time I know what I’m up against.”

“Suit yourself…” Tornado Dust said. “I’m more worried about Crimson’s threat… Can she really do that?”

“I’m sure she’s just being protective.” Cadence replied. “After all, we can’t have another invasion incident now can we.”

“I think that’s a good idea…” Tornado Dust replied.

The two of them entered into the cave, light spread by the various reflective crystals, Tornado Dust looked wearily around the cave, while Cadence looked at the crystals.

“This cave is unnatural…” Tornado Dust said. “It… Shouldn’t be like this.”

“What do you mean?” Cadence asked, looking at a clumped black crystal.

“I mean… that this place… it feels familiar… but,” Tornado Dust couldn’t put his hoof on it, the entire Cave felt unnatural, like all the crystals weren’t supposed to be there. “Guess it’s just nerves…” Tornado Dust said. “After all, I haven’t met up with the military of my Hive since Canterlot… And they weren’t too pleased with me then…”

“So how do we find them?” Cadence asked looking around the cave. “This place is huge, I should know.”

Tornado Dust transformed into Darkblaze, and sniffed the air. “Homing Pheromones, we use them to mark key locations, think of it like an emotional tracer.” Tornado Dust explained. “Certain Changelings can create more advanced variants, but mostly we just mark our food storage and territory, to keep Exiles and rival Hives away.”

“I don’t smell anything.” Cadence replied.

“Well you couldn’t.” Darkblaze replied. “It’s a Changeling thing, like how you can’t…actually,” Darkblaze tapped his chin. “Can you see love?” Darkblaze shook his head. “Sorry… Twilight’s been bugging me with questions about emotions for days… Anyway, the scent is here, but it’s weak… they clearly didn’t want anypony finding them unless they were a ways into the cave.”

“Then how come you can smell it?”

“Infiltrators have better noses, training taught us to pick out the scents no matter how weak they are. It should be this way.”

Darkblaze and Cadence began to traverse the caverns, following the pheromone trail, until they came to what looked like a dead end.

“Are you sure you’re following the right scent?” Cadence asked, looking at the wall.

“Yup.” Dark blaze replied, looking straight up the wall. “Hey guys!”

“Oh great…” A few Changelings flew down to the ground. “Is that you Darkblaze?”

“What? Aren’t you happy to see me?” Darkblaze smiled.

“If by happy you mean I wish to gouge my ears out, than yes.”

“Aw… You did miss me.”

“Chrysalis… If I knew you were coming I would have set up a booby trap.”

“Do you know them?” Cadence asked.

“They were a group of Soldiers in my Cluster.” Darkblaze replied.

“And you were the biggest Jack Ass we ever met.”

“Oh come on, you guys were in Canterlot, how am I the biggest Jack ass you met?”

“The Nobles in Canterlot at least waited until they thought we were gone to put on a shit eating grin.”

Darkblaze smiled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

One of the Changelings facehoofed. “Let’s get this over with as soon as possible… I’m not reliving training with you.”

Darkblaze leaned into Cadence and whispered. “I loved to mess with them.”

“Follow us. The General wants to see the Princess.” The Changeling said. “Meanwhile, Infiltrator, you will be identifying the Prisoner.”

“Alright… But I am warning you, Pupa did say that if she gets hurt, the Lancers are gonna attack all of us.”

“Noted.” The Changeling said. “The General knows you’re coming. Just follow us Princess.”

“Bout time you showed up!” Shade said as he was pulled from the cocoon. “I was beginning to think you forgot about me?”

“Come on.” Darkblaze replied. “I wouldn’t leave you hanging like that.”

“This is really sentimental and all.” The Changeling said. “But I need your help getting this Changeling out of the cocoon.”

“On it. Snake Eye… Just stay still for a bit.” Darkblaze replied.

“Where’s Cadence?”

“She’s talking with the general.” The Changeling replied, as the two of them began gripping at the side of the pod holding Silver. “They were talking about this plan of yours. Infiltrator! Lift up!”

“Sorry, I’ve never opened these things before. Give me a break.”

“Just lift.”

The two changelings pulled open the pod causing Silver to fall to the caves floor coughing.

“Where in Tartarus am I?” Silver coughed. “Where was I?”

“Inside a containment pod.” Shade replied. “That makes it my…” Shade tapped his chin, “thhhhird time if I’m counting right.”

Silver coughed up a bit of the green liquid from inside the pod. “What in Tar…?”

“You do not want to know…” The Changeling replied. “Is he okay?”

“No!” Silver snapped. “I come down here, follow the Captain for seven minutes before getting shot with a knockout spell and stuffed into a pod!” Silver coughed again. “My mouth tastes weird…”

“That’s the goo…” Shade replied.

Silver groaned. “Can I stop being a Changeling yet?” He asked.

“Go for it.” Shade replied.

Silver took a deep breath and closed his eyes, in a flash of red flame, he was back to his normal appearance. “I’m still getting used to that…”

“Getting used to it?” The Changeling asked. “What?”

“Later!” All three of them replied.

“We need to see Cadence now.” Shade replied. “Before something bad hap-”

Shade was shut up by a green aura throwing him into a wall. “Son of a…”

Darkblaze and the other Changeling were looking like they saw something that they didn’t want to see. Both of them looked up at the roof shaking their heads. “Not now…” Darkblaze mumbled.

“The hell just happened?” Shade asked.

“So this is the new guy?”

“Piss off Crush.” Darkblaze said. “We don’t have time for this.”

“Oh come on Dark spark.”

“Darkblaze.”

“Whatever.” Shade finally managed to repulse the aura around his head, giving him the ability to turn around to see a rather large Changeling, easily the same height as Shining Armor, he had a chipped fang, a couple of scars along his chitin showing the pinkish flesh underneath. He had a group of three other Changelings with him.

“The hell are you supposed to be?” Shade asked, looking the Changeling up and down.

“I am Lieutenant Coronal Crush, You are a waste of chitin.”

“Well good for you.” Shade replied with a golf clap. “I don’t care. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a Princess I need to-”

Crush stopped him from moving. “Nah… I think you and I have something important to discuss.”

“Crush… Don’t…” Darkblaze said.

“Dark spark, stay out of this!” Crush said, looking over Shade. “So this is the Changeling that managed to beat up Major Mandible?”

“Crush… Please…Don’t…” Darkblaze said.

“I told you to stay out of it!” Crush shouted at Darkblaze. “Now how did a pathetic, weak, Failed Conversion like yourself manage to take out a major?”

“I don’t have time for this shit,” Shade said walking past Crush, “I have a Princess to talk to.”

Crush turned around. “What’s the matter Nymph?” Shade stopped mid step. “Cat got your tongue?”

Darkblaze took off from the ground, a look of slight worry on his face.

Shade glanced behind him. “The fuck did you just call me?”

Crush smiled. “What? Don’t like being called Nymph?”

Darkblaze twitched. “Crush… Stop now… Don’t go any further…”

“No…” Shade said. “I want to know. What. Did. You. Call. Me.”

“I called you a little. Insignificant. Nym-”

Shade turned and fired a black beam from his horn. “Choose your next fucking words carefully. The last time I was called that, I almost murdered one of your best. So… If you call me that, I promise you pain.”

Crush smiled. “I’ll take that bet. You Nym-”

“Well Princess,” The General said, “I’m glad to hear about the safety of my operatives. However now we need to…”

A changeling walked into the room. “General Sir!” The Changeling saluted. “Captain Shade and Infiltrator 75 are here to speak with you.”

“Let them in.” The General replied.

Shade, Silver, and Darkblaze walked in, both Silver and Darkblaze with looks of shock. Shade was walking on only three of his legs, his right foreleg was spattered with blue blood. “Sorry about your Lt. Colonel,” Shade said plainly.

The General sighed. “What did Crush do this time?”

Darkblaze swallowed. “He called Snake Eye a ‘Nymph’, it was what Spine used to call him.”

“I didn’t even know it was possible for legs to bend like that…” Silver said.

“Forget the legs!” Darkblaze replied. “I didn’t know it was possible to tie somepony’s wings together without rope.”

Shade spat out a bit of crimson blood. “He got a few good hits in, I got more.”

“I told him his arrogance would get the better of him eventually…” The General sighed. “What happened?”

“Short version,” Shade replied, “I beat the shit out of him. Long version, he’s missing his other fang, four of his teeth, his wings are probably broken and his spine is dislocated in seven places.”

“Efficient.” The General replied.

“So what have you two been up to?” Shade asked.

“We were just going over a possible compromise between our two factions.” Cadence replied. “So far General Thorax here has agreed to help with the planning, and maybe provide troops.”

“That’s great.” Shade replied. “What’s the catch?”

“We are not all soldiers here,” Thorax replied. “We have caretakers, nymphs, and couriers. We would like to negotiate for medical and civilian protection aid.”

“That can’t be all.” Darkblaze replied.

“You’re right.” Thorax sighed. “This operation is of the utmost importance to us. We would like complete transparency, both of us help each other and share intelligence, and we will provide military assistance.”

Shade tapped is chin. “Sounds fair enough to me,” Shade replied. “However, I don’t know about full transparency, Captain Shining Armor may not feel too good about telling you our plans.”

“I have already conquered that particular obstacle,” Thorax replied. “We will answer any questions on our military power, and only I will accompany you into the city.”

“I’m not sure about this…” Silver replied. “I mean we have orders to capture any Changelings that we find within the city’s walls…”

“Then shouldn’t you be in a dungeon Silver?” Shade replied.

Silver opened his mouth to say something but closed it shortly after. “Touché.”

“He has agreed to stay in the castle and remain there until such time as the plan is initiated, provided we don’t attempt any attacks on him.”

“Anything else?” Shade asked.

“Yes, I want Mandible to be released.” Thorax replied. “He is one of our best Majors, and he will be instrumental in taking down Ceymi.”

Darkblaze looked down at the table. “Listen… We should get going, Crimson Lance did tell us to be back soon…”

“Of course.” Cadence replied. “Lead the way General.”

Author's Note

Sorry for the day late upload, this weekend has been hectic... and I don't see next week going much better... :fluttershysad:

Chapter 46: Final Preparations

Walking through the streets was interesting, two Changelings, a Royal Guard, and a Princess tend to draw attention with such a strange combination.

“Five minutes to spare.” Crimson said looking at a pocket watch as the group entered the castle grounds, “Cutting it kind of close there.”

“Sorry to miss weapon training.” Shade replied. “Something came up.”

“I know Captain.” Crimson replied. “And Training begins in ten minutes. So don’t think you're skimping out on me.”

“Never planned on it Ma’am.” Shade replied, turning to Cadence. “I believe you can show our guest to the War room, I’ll have Major Mandible escorted there soon.”

“I would prefer we begin the planning as soon as possible.” Thorax replied.

Crimson glared at him. “We will begin in a few hours, after we get some weapon training out of the way. Come along Captain, we have lost time to make up for.”

“Of course Commander.” Shade said before following after her. “So…” He said as he caught up to her. “Do I actually get to train using the weapons or is it more disarming practice?”

Crimson was looking down at the ground, mumbling under her breath. “I can’t believe she said yes to this.”

“Said yes to what?” Shade asked.

Crimson looked up from the floor. “Cadence! She said yes to allying with Chrysalis’ top commanders!”

“Yes… I understand…” Shade replied. “But it’s our best bet to…”

“I understand the strategic standpoint, but from her view point, she just allowed a known enemy of Equestria into the castle! Who knows what he’s trying to find out about the castle?”

Shade thought about it for a moment. “Probably nothing new… Chrysalis was Cadence for God knows how long, she easily managed to get whatever she needed about it.”

“I still don’t like it…” Crimson mumbled.

“We’re allies here Pupa.” Shade replied. “Even if I don’t like it, I have to admit that they hold a better understanding of strategies we are facing than we do. I may be in charge of the attack, but I don’t know what to expect from them, Thorax can help us get rid of the unknown factor, so it is a risk I’m willing to take.”

“And if they betray us?” Crimson asked.

“Then we slaughter every last one of them.” Shade replied with a smile. “Hopefully it doesn’t come to that… But desperate times…”

“We’ll discuss it more at the planning meeting. Spitfire left to go and coordinate that storm you asked for.”

“Excellent… So when are we-?”

“Tomorrow we mobilize," She said plainly, "we have the troops getting ready and the trains clearing the tracks. We hope to get the plan finalized today, as we were close to finishing it already.”

Tomorrow? “Isn’t that kind of soon?”

“Celestia doesn’t want another Chrysalis incident.” Crimson replied. “She wants to stop Ceymi before she gets a chance to feed off love. And it’s my job to make sure you can hold your own.”

“Aren’t you coming?” Shade asked.

“Nope,” Crimson replied. “Acari is having all Queens remain within the city, she doesn’t want any of us to get involved." She let out an annoyed sigh. "Instead, a squadron of my Lancers will be accompanying you.”

Shade began to think about that. It made sense to keep the high value targets out of range, but he had counted on Crimson being able to lead the Lancers… That only complicated things, how were they going to keep them all connected?

The two walked on in silence until they reached the training room, which had been modified since the last time he was there. The panels in the walls and ceilings had been replaced, and the center of the floor was covered in a training mat, a rack of various weapons was off to the side.

“Take your pick, and we’ll begin.”

“So we’ve tried Lances, swords, spears, maces, and flails.” Crimson read off as Shade picked himself up from the ground; he had gotten quite used to his face being pressed against the blue surface. “And you have shown absolutely no ability with any of them.”

“I’m sorry,” Shade said sarcastically, “I’m used to having hands in combat. Pardon me if making a switch from fingers to hooves is a bit of a difficult one.” He waved his hoof for emphasis.

Crimson flipped up her visor. “Well given how skilled you were at unarmed combat, I figured it would be easy for you to grasp the concept.”

Shade managed to steady himself by leaning against a wall. “I was taught hand to hand combat for almost my whole life; I’ve never used a lance before. Even if I did, I was throwing it at something.”

“Well we ran out of standard weapons…” Crimson sighed. “So I guess there is really only one other thing left, aside from magic.”

“What’s that?” Shade asked, managing to stand on his own.

“Remember when I told you about the Lunar Guard’s own special weapons?”

“Yeah…” Shade replied, “Those things that you have never seen before.”

“Well… I managed to talk Darkstar into letting me borrow a pair of them for training exercises.” Crimson walked over to the rack of weapons and began shifting through them. “They might just be the weapons you find the most use from… Now where did I put them?”

“I still don’t see the point in this.” Shade said. “I mean… I can transform my forelegs into whatever weapon I need. So why do I need to have another set of weapons?”

“In case you can’t use magic Love Bug.” Crimson replied. “Your magic is tied to not only your energy, but your body as well. In a combat situation, it would be a bad idea to use all of it, so it might be a good idea to limit your use of it.”

Shade thought about it. It made sense; if he used too much energy he would be open to an attack or wouldn’t have enough to defend himself, and when he is planning on fighting a General, that would be a very bad thing to have happen.

“Now where in Tartarus did I put it?” Crimson said to herself before lifting the weapons off the rack with her magic. “Ah…there they are.”

Shade looked over towards Crimson to see her levitating what looked like two metallic bracers, but the interesting thing was what was on them. From each of the bracers, there was a single curved blade, which looked like it stopped where the foreleg’s knee was supposed to be. The blade itself was a sleek black and seemed designed for either stabbing or slicing through something.

“Whoa…” was all Shade could say when he saw them. “What are they?”

“Hoof Blades,” Crimson replied. “Personally I see them as a waste of good metal, but the Lunar Guards are proficient with them. Maybe you could use these?”

Crimson levitated them over to Shade. When they were near him, he took a good look at them. From up close, Shade could tell the blades were made with quick attacking in mind. The blades were made to slice and stab, only really long enough to allow for bending the knee to prevent self injuries while using them.

He had seen weapons like this in the Fiords; they were normally reserved for assassins, a way to fight if they were ever disarmed. However these were less mechanically inclined, the blade didn’t swivel like the Fiord version, making it much more a close range weapon, but it would work. Shade had enough practice with them before to know the basic way to use them.

“I think this will work…” Shade replied.

“They are supposed to keep your hooves free, in case you want to pound the hell out of whatever you’re attacking.” Crimson replied. “You want to try your luck with them?”

Shade transformed into Sunstreak before putting on the bracers. He made sure they covered the entire section in between his ankle and knee, to make sure the blade was correctly spaced. “Alright, let’s try this out…”

Sunstreak had more than made up for his last mistakes with the other weapons, the hoof blades were just what he needed, quick, easily controllable, and didn’t impede his movement. By the end of the training, Sunstreak managed to stop all but one of Crimson’s assaults, and the only one he couldn’t stop was magic.

“You’re a natural with those things.” Crimson said as they left the training room. “Most of the Lunar Guard can’t even use those things that well. Hell… I don’t even think Darkstar can use them that well.”

“I guess I’m a Changeling of many talents.” Shade said. “Plus… fifty years of practice.”

“They had Hoof Blades out in the Fiords?” Crimson asked.

“No… but they had something similar. They were used in case of disarming, a magical spell placed on them so that they wouldn’t activate until it was needed. Aside from that, they act the same.”

Crimson looked up at the clock. “Well… It’s almost time for us to meet up with the others for final plans, so we have just enough…” Crimson stopped for a second.

“Crimson?” Shade watched her suddenly stop for seemingly no reason.

“Change of plans.” She said a smile working its way across her face. “Anvil finished.” Crimson’s horn began to glow bright red and in a flash, both of them were in the blacksmith’s domain. Only Shade had a pounding headache.

“The hell?” Shade said as he felt the headache vanish quickly.

“First time riding along in a teleport?” Crimson asked. “That happens the first time, it gets easier.”

Shade shook his head and looked around the room, Anvil was hammering something or other on his namesake. He didn’t so much as flinch when Crimson teleported them in.

“How many times have I told you Pupa?” Anvil asked. “Don’t teleport directly into my Forge, it disrupts the air flow.”

“Anvil.” Crimson said. “The Armor.”

Anvil grunted, and hammered the rest of the metal into place before placing it in the water trough, cooling the metal. “It’s over here.”

Anvil led them to the back room, where the previously incomplete armor was now finished, and Shade was surprised by it. It did indeed take heavily from Drak-ill’s armor design, but seemed to be lighter, and the design gave a spot for Shade’s wings as well as his horn. The underbelly was armored, and on the chest was an engraving where the orange crystal would fit. “Where’s the gem?”

Anvil reached into his blacksmith apron, and tossed the orange gem towards Shade. “That gem was a pain to deal with. I couldn’t get my hoof to stop shaking.”

“Well… Go on Captain. “ Crimson said. “Put it on, and we’ll get going.”

In the War Room, Shining Armor was looking over the two Changelings in front of him. The two of them seemed to be glaring directly at Shining Armor, it made him uncomfortable to look into their solid blue eyes as they glared at him.

“I’m sorry for making you wait to begin…” Shining Armor said to them. “But we need to wait for the other two to arrive.”

“It is not a problem Captain.” Thorax replied. “We understand how… New Shade is to this position. I only hope that he is not as new to planning.”

“General Thorax, I have faith in his abilities, he did not prove to be a Nymph in combat.”

“I understand he took out all three of you,” Thorax replied. “He even took out Lt. Colonel Crush from what I heard.”

“Really?” Mandible replied. “Impressive given his size.”

“Oh from what Infiltrator 75 told me-”

“You’re kidding!” Mandible said. “Darkblaze actually came back?”

“Yes… Though it was because I forced my hoof.”

“Damn… Remember when we were in his class with Gamma?”

Thorax chuckled. “How could I not? Best years of my schooling right there.”

“Remember what they did to Private Endo?”

“Do I!” Thorax replied. “We were laughing about that for weeks! His wing is still stained from that stuff.”

Mandible laughed. “Even Chrysalis laughed at it! Remember what she said to the two of them?”

“Next time you two pull something like this, Warn me first. I want to watch.”

“That’s it!” Mandible replied. “Man… I need to catch up with him… I wonder how life in Ponyville has been treating him…”

“Oh. Sorry Captain.” Thorax said looking at Shining Armor’s confused face. “We’re just talking about the good old days.”

“Oh it’s… No problem…”

“He’s uncomfortable being in a room alone with us.” Mandible said. “It’s obvious.”

“Captain Armor,” Thorax said. “We have no intention of repeating Canterlot’s incident. We only wish to stop Ceymi from attacking you again. We want to repair the gap.”

“Sure… Just help us stop your Queen and then I’ll think about trusting you.” Shining Armor replied.

At that moment the door opened to the war room opened, and Crimson stepped into the room, followed by Sunstreak, wearing a set of Royal Guard Armor, strangely it was the same color as his carapace would be normally.

“Damn Shade… Nice armor.” Shining Armor replied. “But I think you messed up the colors a bit.”

Crimson walked up and sat next to Shining Armor. “Remember during the Invasion when we found a few of those Changeling bodies against the outer walls?”

Mandible and Thorax shivered.

“Yeah.”

“Well… I had Anvil use some of the chitin from their bodies and put it into the armor.”

The two Changelings shivered again.

“What’s the point of that?” Shining Armor asked.

“Let’s us transform the armor as well.” Thorax replied, taking off his helmet and placing it on the table, he touched it and in a wisp of flame, the black helmet was replaced by a royal guard helmet. “Granted, normally we don’t wear armor during an infiltration, and we can just transform armor onto us as well.”

“Well… Not that this isn’t fascinating, but we have an invasion to plan.” Shade said. Flying above the table to move the map and emerald into place.

“This is… fascinating…” Thorax said, looking at the map. “How do you do this?”

“It would take too long to explain, and I don’t feel like talking about it. Focus on the task at hand.”

“Of course.”

The next few hours were spent with the commanders looking over every possible route, using Thorax and Mandible’s knowledge of Chrysalis’ tactics, they managed to work around every possible issue, and with the addition of an estimated two hundred and fifty seven soldiers, courtesy of Thorax, they only had one obstacle left.

“Communication.” Shade said. “We need it for coordination of lightning strikes and in case of any penetration to defenses.”

“None of our soldiers were made for working processes.” Thorax replied. “The last ones we had were forcibly converted to Ceymi’s side during a raid.”

“A raid by who?” Crimson asked.

“Some Sergeant or something in Ceymi’s army.”

Shade rubbed his face. “That only narrows it down to two hundred…”

“When we tried to deal with it, they threatened a group of Nymphs…”

Crimson smiled. “Well… I think we’re both in luck then.”

Shifter had been stuck in the dungeon cell, with almost no ability to move either his wing or his leg, as both were now crystal. He had been left there shortly after his ‘torture’ by Shade, and had been staying as far from any Royal Guards as he could.

He had been put the farthest away from the entrance, for the pure purpose of staying as far from Shade as possible. Though he was going to have trouble with that…

As he was stuck in the back of the dungeon, not much reached his ears, but he definitely managed to catch what sounded like stomping, and shouting. He just laid his head back down and tried to sleep, until he heard one of the voices.

“If that son of a bitch thinks I’m done with him…”

Shifter began to panic, he knew that voice, he couldn’t forget it after his torture.

“Sergeant Shifter” Shade said walking up to the cell. “We have much to discuss.”

Shifter backed away as fast as he could from the Changeling. “No! I Told you everything!”

“Silver. If you would.” Shade said, and the Royal Guard opened the cell. Allowing for Shade to walk in.

“Stay away!” Shifter shouted. “Don’t Come Near Me!”

“Listen to me you sack of shit!” Shade grabbed Shifter. “Tell me where they are!”

“Who?”

“You know who!”

“I…I…I”

Shade’s eyes began to glow bright red. “I will eat you, you pathetic Nymph!”

Shifter closed his eyes in fear. “No! No! No!”

“What in Tartarus is wrong with him?” Silver asked as both of them looked at Shifter, who was now cowering in the corner.

“Um… Maybe he relapsed?” Shade suggested.

“Relapsed on what?”

“I don’t know…” Shade said. “Maybe he normally acts like this.”

“No! No! No!”

“Snap him out of it.” Silver said. “Just slap him.”

Shade walked over and picked up Shifter, whose eyes were widened in fear, and the scent of black liquorish was very strong here. Shade lifted his hoof and slapped Shifter across the face with a resounding crack.

“No! Don’t hurt me!” Shifter said raising his hooves.

“Shifter,” Shade said. “I just want to talk.”

“T-Talk…?” Shifter repeated.

“Yes… Talk.” Shade said calmly. “I see that Celestia hasn’t fixed everything yet.”

“No…No…” Shifter replied. “I…Can’t walk…”

“Mmm… Sad…” Shade replied with more than a little apathy. “Listen, this is about the other Changelings in your command.”

“Wha-What about them?”

“How many of them are workers?” Shade asked.

“Thirty-five…”

“General! Is that enough?”

Thorax walked up to the cell. “Yes… I believe that will be plenty.”

“Gen-Gen-Gen…”

“Surprised?” Thorax replied. “You are in a lot of trouble when this is all over Sergeant.”

“Ye-Yes Sir…”

“How many of them were communication drones?” Thorax asked.

“Any of them could be,” Shifter replied not taking his eyes off Shade. “The Queen wanted more soldiers. So we made due…”

Shade stepped closer to Shifter. “How many of them did you threaten?”

“Most of them…” Shifter said quietly. “It was a direct order from the Queen, I couldn’t disobey.”

“Ceymi is not the true Queen.” Thorax replied. “She is too young to lead, too inexperienced. She could not hope to lead us effectively. Look at her plan, she would destroy our Swarm!”

“Spine was… He… It was from both of them!”

“Let me guess,” Shade replied. “You were just following orders?”

Shifter nodded nervously. “They killed those that didn’t obey! We had no choice!”

Shade shook his head. “We’re done here.” He walked out of the cell. “Thank you for cooperating, when we have defeated Ceymi, then perhaps I will heal you.”

Shifter remained with his back against the wall. “Queen Chrysalis… Forgive me…” Shifter whispered.

“She won’t protect you.” Shade said as Silver locked the door. The three of them walked away from the cell before Shade turned around. “Silver, I want you to gather the Changeling prisoners, make sure that they are restrained, and bring them to the main courtyard, I’ll gather the leaders of each battle group.”

“I will see to it that they do not attack.” Thorax said. “They will listen to my orders.”

Shade nodded. “See to it General.” Shade saluted before walking towards the exit to the dungeon.

Crimson Lance was leaning against the wall, waiting for Shade to finish. “So,” She asked in a singsong voice, “How’d it go?”

“We need to inform all of the Team leaders of their newest addition.” Shade said. “Mind helping me gather them?”

“Not at all,” Crimson replied.

An hour later, the courtyard held the team leaders in charge of everything from Shield Unicorns, to the Pegasi teams in charge of the lightning attacks. Facing the castle, all of them looked at the team of Captains.

“I hope this doesn’t cause any problems.” Shining Armor said to Shade.

“You and me both Captain.” Shade replied.

Crimson walked up to them. “That’s all of them.”

“Shining Armor if you would like to begin,” Shade said. “They probably trust you more than me.”

Shining Armor walked up in front of them. “Royal Guard, I know that you have a lot of planning and preparations to do before tomorrow, so we’ll be brief.” Shining Armor walked up and down the line of Guards. “You all know the mission, and you all know what is at stake here. This mission requires communication; we need to be in contact at nearly all times for this to work. Scrolls won’t work, and we don’t have the time to send runners. Now I know that some of you will be against this plan, but it is the best option we have.”

Shining Armor motioned at Shade, “We have learned of an inner connection between all Changelings within a Hive, this connection is quick, nearly impossible to intercept, and is silent. Now if you remember, we have a group of Changelings as prisoners, we would like to attempt an integrated effort in the attack.” Shining Armor turned to Shade. “You’re up.”

Shade stepped forward. “Okay… I understand some of you are probably not thrilled with this idea, but I believe that this is the best course of action. We have created a separate Mental Connection, one that I have been informed, is completely separate from our enemies. Now on the topic of the Changelings in question,”

“You have no doubt been informed of the Queen we are after. She controls a majority of the Swarm’s soldiers through fear and oppression. We have a General of our own; he owes allegiance to the previous Queen, who wishes to stop the new Queen from killing off their race. I know many of you still hate Changelings, but all I ask is for two days. After that, make your decision. These Changelings were forced to work for Ceymi, their families threatened, and they did not wish to fight. Keep in mind, they are not soldiers, they are workers, the backbone of the Hive, they are here to assist us in liberating their families.”

A low murmur swept through the crowd. “And I know what you are thinking, ‘How can we trust them?’ I am not asking you to trust them, I am asking you to tolerate them, and they only wish to help. Many of them have families being used by Ceymi, but don’t take my word for it. General, if you would?”

There were two wisps of green flame, and Major Mandible and General Thorax walked onto the stage, followed by a group of Changelings.

“Greetings Royal Guard,” Thorax said. “I am General Thorax, commander of Chrysalis’ army. We have a common enemy.” Thorax paced along the line of soldiers. “It is true that I was there at the attack on Canterlot, and I obey the orders of my Queen. However, Ceymi is not my Queen; I follow Chrysalis, even in death. I have spoken with your Princesses; they have allowed us the power to assist you in the attack. We will follow the Captains to our death. Any who dare betray the chance they have been given, will not make it out of the Village.”

“Thank you General.” Shade said. “Now then, here is the plan; every one of you will be assigned a Changeling Communication Officer. They are to remain alive; they will broadcast your position to the Striker teams, in order to keep you safe from the storm we have brought in. They will obey your orders, but I want them to remain safe unless it can no longer be allowed. Remember, they are a member of your team, do not waver either of our trusts! Any direct attack on them will be treated as subordination, and from what I’ve heard, Changelings don’t take that very well.” Shade turned back to Shining Armor. “That is all. Captain Armor, final words.”

Shining Armor stepped forward. “Now do not worry about being told what to do by a Changeling, only Captain Shade will lead a strike team of ponies, the Changelings will lead their own forces. Now we have knowledge of a second hive being controlled by Ceymi, if you see any Pink eyed Changelings, they are to be captured alive. They are not the enemy. Now, these Changelings were told who their Commanding officer is, and I expect them to be shown the same respect you would a Pony officer. Is that understood?”

“Yes Sr.”

“Good. Dismissed.” The Changelings walked up to the Team Leaders they had been assigned, while Shade and Thorax moved to the side to speak.

“I hope you know how far we can trust them.” Thorax said. “I doubt they will be pleased with this.”

“Give them a chance.” Shade replied. “They don’t hold too much of a grudge, except Silver… But I’m sure that steam blew off a while ago.”

“Hey! Captain Shade!” Crimson called. “I need to speak with you.”

Shade turned back to Thorax. “Just get your men ready, we’re moving out tomorrow morning.”

Thorax saluted before transforming into a Pegasus and flying off towards the Crystal Caverns. Shade walked over to where Crimson was waiting. “What’s up?”

Crimson began walking back towards the castle. “I’m teaching you to use short Range Teleportation, might just save your life.”

“Do we have enough time?” Shade asked.

“We have plenty; you should learn it pretty quickly.” Crimson replied. “As long as you pay attention, I’m teaching you this so that you can save yourself if you do something stupid.”

“How’d you know?” Shade asked, knowing he was probably going to do multiple stupid things during the attack. “So how do you want me to do this?”

“We’ll start small, a few feet, and then we’ll try combining it with your attacks.”

“Oo… Fancy.”

Sapphire was working at her desk, looking over the injuries that the newest Changeling patients had accrued, as well as the ones that had healed.

In the past week, the Royal Guards and Civilians had all been taken care of, some of them merely waiting for bones to mend or shock to wear off. However they were not in critical condition any more, making her job much easier as she could focus on the Changeling patients now.

Carrie had been healed, her wounds were mostly fixed, but her consciousness kept waning in and out. Sporadic is the only term for it, no pattern of consciousness, and for random times, sometimes she was conscious the whole day, other times only a few seconds.

While she wasn’t thrilled about it, Ovi had returned to care for her Hive, however she still returned every day to check on Carrie.

The other two Changelings that were brought to her healed rather quickly, however the burnt wings was much more difficult to heal without his own Queen’s power, but she could handle it.

Finally the one she kept under the most surveillance, Bloodpool. He had woken up a few days ago, but the amount of threats he made to the other Changelings required they place a tranquilization spell on him. Just to be sure he wouldn’t do anything rash. His backplate refused to regrow, and his Chitin still had plenty of cracks through it, but overall, he could move without anything bad happening, so long as he didn’t get hit in any of the cracks he would be fine.

Sapphire sighed. She hated to hear about the fate of Acari’s Hive, but she could do nothing about it, her Changelings were not soldiers, they were healers. In fact, she was one of the only Changelings in her Hive to have actual offensive capabilities; most of their spells were healing or calming spells. In a fight they would be as useful as trying to pick up dust with your hands.

She was brought out of her thoughts by the intercom system beeping into life. “Yes?”

“Dr. Sapphire,” Callsign said, “Nurse Redheart wishes to speak with you.”

“Redheart?” Sapphire repeated. “Shouldn’t she be in Ponyville?”

“She says she came by a few days ago, but you were busy.” Callsign replied.

Sapphire sighed. “Alright, send her in.”

The door opposite her desk opened as the white unicorn mare walked in, her red mane lying flat. “I’m sorry to disturb you Sapphire,” She said as she walked into room, closing the door behind her. “I know you must be very busy, but I couldn’t wait any longer to speak with you.”

“Of course Redheart,” Sapphire said, placing the documents she was looking over in a drawer. “What’s the problem?”

Redheart sighed. “It’s very personal to me… I don’t exactly know how to…” She was cut off by the intercom beeping again.

“Hold on, let me take this.” Sapphire pushed down on the answer button. “Yes Callsign?”

“My Queen!” She sounded panicked. “Don’t speak with her, she-” The Intercom was torn off the desk, surrounded in a venomous green aura.

Sapphire looked up at Redheart, her horn glowing with the same green color. “Cytes,” She said. “We need to talk.”

Author's Note

Okay... First off... Sorry for the wait... My life has gotten really Hectic as of late, and I may have some trouble with posting stuff... So that's never good.
Also as I wrote these next few Chapters in about... 48 hours, they are ripe with errors and such that I need to run through a fine toothed comb. So it should take me a while to get the next few Chapters up... So I do feel bad about that... :twilightsheepish: Hopefully life won't be such a cruel mistress and throw all of this work at me next time :facehoof: We'll just see what happens :trollestia:

Chapter 47: The Calm

The night passed quickly, and Shade watched the sun as it rose over the horizon. He didn’t want to sleep; he was busy thinking about the day ahead of them. Off in the distance, he could see the large black clouds, covering the entirety of Ponyville. He was running through the plan, over and over again, making sure it would be fine.

“Captain Shade.”

Shade turned around to see Thorax flying up next to him. “Bit early for you to be up.”

“I never went to sleep,” Shade replied, “Too much going on.”

“I hope that doesn’t skewer your judgment,” Thorax replied. “You need a clear head if you want to survive.”

Shade sighed. “I’m fine…” Shade pulled out the small orange crystal from his leg, “So long as our two races tolerate each other, this should turn out fine.”

“Speaking of which,” Thorax said, “We’re beginning to board the train.”

Shade looked over towards the train station. “Go. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Not my fault if you get stuck with the storage car.” Thorax said. “We’re going to be separating the main Changeling force from the Pony force, to avoid any major hostilities.”

“Keep the communication officers with their squads.” Shade replied. “I want them to see each other as a unit, not as an extra wheel.”

Thorax nodded before flying off the tower.

Shade looked over towards Ponyville. “Meadow… Echo… I’m coming for both of you…”

“I expect the best from all of you.” Crimson said to her Lancers. “Follow your orders, and keep as many Changelings alive as you can, we don’t want to have unneeded bloodshed.”

“Yes Ma’am!”

“Good!” Crimson said. “I’ll see you all when this is over. Make me proud out there boys.”

“Well, Well, Well.” Mandible said walking up to Crimson, “Never thought I would see you avoiding conflict.”

Crimson turned to look at Mandible. “Not my idea.” Crimson replied. “Acari wants all of us to remain here. So I have to remain… but my Lancers can still fight, and they will help.”

“We will fight for Equestria; we will not give in that easily.” One of the Lancers said.

“Keep that attitude soldier; we’re going to need it.” Crimson said. “Now get in, we have a town to free.”

“Yes Ma’am!”

Sunstreak flew down to the train, now ready to depart from the station. He stepped into the train, where he saw the soldiers speaking with each other, and favorably the fact that the Changelings were actually joining into the conversations. He heard laughs, some shouting and various other things he considered standard in a military outfit.

Sunstreak walked back towards the rear of the train, where the Changelings were staying. Neither of them had any problem with this, as both Ponies and Changelings didn’t seem to enjoy to mingle with the others actual military force. And stepping through the train cars was almost like stepping into a totally separate world.

Unlike the Pony cars, the Changelings were silent, each one seeming to stare off into the distance. Even the hive mind was silent, each one seemingly focusing on the battle to come. Sunstreak walked through the cars with a slight feeling of unease from how the Changelings were so unlike the others.

Eventually he got to the back of the train, where the equipment was stored. Spare weapons, some armor replacements, and medical kits, anything they would need to be prepared for.

As the train began to pull out of the station, Sunstreak began to go over the plan. It wasn’t too complex, get off the train before reaching the Ponyville station, and survey the town for a bit before making any moves then deal with it as it comes…Easy right?

The only issue was what came after, almost none of the soldiers knew Ponyville’s layout, Ceymi had two or three days to set up as many ambushes as she needed, and the secrecy of their communication rested on a hunch. So all in all, it didn’t seem as though they had the higher ground, metaphorically or physically.

Then there was the issue of friendly fire with the Changelings, the fact that they had two hundred and fifty Changeling soldiers from the same hive meant that in a fight, it would be difficult to tell them apart.

Sunstreak sighed. “Hopefully those marks on the armor are visible enough…” On all of the Changelings’ armor, marks had been placed on it by them, some kind of green liquid that actually burned itself into their armor. It wasn’t much, but it was all they had.

Sunstreak decided to move to the back cabin, to watch the scenery go by as he returned to Ponyville. He got up from the ground and walked towards the last car, opening it he found something he didn’t expect at all.

When he walked into the car, he found a balloon just, floating in the middle of the room. “What?”

“SURPRISE!” Pinkie Pie said jumping out from behind a box and hugging Sunstreak.

“Pinkie?” Sunstreak said surprised. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Well, I wanted to see you at the Train station, but when I got there you weren’t there, so I waited a bit and then the train whistle blew so we climbed aboard the…”

“We?” Sunstreak asked looking around the room.

“Oh right…” Pinkie giggled. “We’re not supposed to be here. That’s why it was a surprise!”

“Howdy Sunstreak.” Applejack said walking out from behind another set of boxes, followed by Twilight and Rarity.

“What are you all doing here?” Sunstreak asked managing to push Pinkie off of him.

“Don’t be mad…” Twilight said. “But we wanted to come and help.”

Sunstreak transformed back into Shade, still hiding a majority of his armor, so it looked like standard Changeling armor now. “What?” He said shocked. “You snuck on board a military convoy, so that you could help fight?”

“Yup.” Applejack replied. “Sounds ‘bout right.”

“Anything else I should know?” Shade asked, deciding to do that before yelling at any of them.

“The Changelings came with us!” Pinkie said hopping over to the side of three boxes and pulling a very displeased Blackout from behind them.

“Put me down… Now!” Blackout said.

“Hey Snake Eye.” Darkblaze said hanging from the ceiling, a small white rabbit on his back.

“Is he still disguised as that rabbit?” Shade asked looking at the white fluff ball.

“Yup.” Darkblaze replied. “Hasn’t changed out of it yet.”

The Rabbit fell to the ground and transformed back into a Changeling. “Ow…”

“Anything else?” Shade asked.

“Rainbow Dash is outside the train!” Pinkie stuck her head out of a window and shouted, “DASHIE! SUNNY WANTS TO SEE YOU!”

The Cyan Pegasus in question opened the caboose door and walked in. “Yeah?”

“So… If all of you are here,” Shade began “Where’s Fluttershy?”

“She and Antenna are currently holed up in the Apartment.” Darkblaze replied. “Antenna wasn’t too thrilled by me coming here, but I figured I might as well fight for my home now right?”

“Fair enough…” Shade replied. “So whose idea was it to come here?”

“We all mutually agreed it would be the best course of action.” Twilight replied. “More so Blackout.”

“Acari may not want to come, but I’m not letting that stop me.” Blackout said. “I have a debt to repay for what they did to Haze.”

Pinkie squinted at Shade. “Hmmm….”

“Can I help you?” Shade replied, not sure what Pinkie was doing.

Pinkie gasped. “When did you get that snazzy new armor?”

“I’m a Captain of the Royal Guard.” Shade replied. “Anvil made it using the design plans of Dragon Dust’s armor.”

“You’re a Captain!” Pinkie squealed. “I need to start planning a-!”

“NO!” Shade snapped. “I don’t need a party right now! Party later! Saving Ponyville now!”

“Can I at least fire the Party Cannon?” Pinkie asked, pulling the aforementioned cannon out from behind a box.

Shade sighed. “Go for it…”

Pinkie pushed the button on the back of the Party Cannon creating a loud bang and showering the wall with confetti.

“Better?” Shade asked.

“Much.” Pinkie Pie replied.

“So… How far ahead did you guys plan this out?” Shade asked, looking at the group. “I mean… You got on the train. So what now?”

“Well… next was asking you if we could help, then possible pleading.” Twilight began listing off her plan, “Then trying to get you to say yes.”

Shade rubbed his chin. “Actually…” He said. “You may be able to help after all…”

“General Spine!” The Changeling Officer ran into the Throne room, out of breath.

“What is it soldier.” Spine demanded. “This had better be important.”

“I do hope so.” Ceymi added. “Otherwise you will have wasted both of our times.”

The Changeling bowed. “We have reports that the Equestrian military is coming to Ponyville.”

Ceymi laughed. “Excellent. The fools don’t know what they are getting themselves into.”

“My Queen,” The Changeling continued. “An unexpected storm has rolled in, if we attempt to fly through it, we may suffer-”

“It doesn’t concern me Soldier.” Ceymi replied. “We will send our workers through it.”

The Changeling looked up. “But… My Queen… They would not make it through the…”

“Are you disobeying me?” Ceymi asked, looking down at the Changeling. “Because that is what it sounds like you are doing.”

“No… My Queen. I am merely…”

“Then do as you are told!” Ceymi ordered. “When the Equestrians attempt to take back the town, send our workers through it.”

“Yes… My Queen… It shall be done…” The Changeling bowed before stepping out of the room.

Ceymi looked at Spine. “Are the creatures tame yet?”

“No Ceymi.” Spine replied. “They are still as violent as when they were first captured.”

Ceymi looked at the wall, covered with the pink memory crystals; she levitated one over to her. “When the workers fail, and they will fail, I wish for you and your team to release those creatures on the town, and if the workers begin to fall back, send in the creatures.” Ceymi shattered the crystal in her magical grip. “I have no place for cowards in my Hive.”

“Of course my Queen.” Spine replied he began to walk out of the throne room.

“And love,” Spine turned around. “If you see my Mother’s pet project, be sure to kill it where it stands.”

Spine smiled. “It will be done, My Love.”

“Make sure the child can watch I always enjoy hearing her squirm.”

“Of course Queen Ceymi.” Spine bowed before walking out of the throne room.

Ceymi took another of the memory Crystals off the wall and looked into it. “So mother… Who is the weak Queen now?”

Spine descended the Hive, heading to where the two Fillies were held captive, he had visited the two of them before, to feed off of the Unicorn, her love was sweet, but waning. She served her purpose, but she would be kept alive, at least until Nymph’s death, then he would kill her.

“So how are the two food sources doing today?” Spine asked the Changeling he placed in charge of guarding the two fillies.

“The Nymph is going to die if she doesn’t get some Love.” The Guard replied. “The scraps we’ve been giving her aren’t enough.”

“Very well…” Spine grunted. “Give her enough to last another day. After that we won’t have to deal with either of them.”

“So the reject is coming?” the Guard asked.

“Him and the rest of his pathetic allies,” Spine replied. “I came to make sure they could watch as Nymph dies by my hooves.”

The Guard shrugged. “Go for it.” He opened the green membrane separating the two rooms.

Inside, Meadow was looking over at Echo who was clenching at her stomach. “So…Hungry…” Echo said. “Daddy…”

“Your Daddy won’t be saving either of you.” Spine said as he stepped into the room. “He is going to die today.”

“You’re lying!” Meadow shouted. “Mr. Shade will rescue us, and when he does he’s going to make sure that-!” Meadow was silenced by Spine’s teeth slamming shut if front of her face.

“No. He will die! In fact, he is coming here as we speak.” Spine broke off a crystal from the wall and levitated it in front of both of them. The Crystal turned green and projected an image of a train caboose. “Now be good little girls and watch as Nymph tries to save his precious village.” Spine began to fly towards the exit. “Don’t worry, after he dies, you won’t get a chance to mourn.”

Spine flew out of the chamber, leaving Meadow and Echo with the projection of a train.

“Daddy…” Echo said weakly. “He’s gonna…be okay right?”

“I hope so Echo…” Meadow replied. “Please be okay Shade…”

“Alright, so you all know what I want you to do.” Shade stated. “All I need is one final thing, Twilight, come with me.”

Shade led Twilight into the next train car, where they could be left alone. “I’m going to teach you a spell.”

“Shade, I don’t think now is the best time for some magic practice.” Twilight replied.

“Well we have no armor in your size, and this is the next best thing.” Shade replied removing his helmet. “Besides, you should be able to get this spell mastered in a jiffy. It’s an old mage spell, meant to help protect them from physical blows as a substitute for armor.”

“Oo…” Twilight replied. ‘I’m intrigued.”

“I knew you would be.” Shade replied. “Now think of it like your Shield spell, only much more focused. Instead of projecting the force field around yourself in a bubble. You need to think of it as if it were only inches away from your skin.”

“I… Don’t know…” Twilight replied. “That is a pretty specific spell….”

“I’ll show you then.” Shade closed his eyes, while he hadn’t done this in quite a while, he still remembered how to do it. The only issue was not transforming while doing it… He tried to focus on the look of standard Changeling armor and after a few moments of focus, he felt the spell begin to take effect.

There was a bright flash for a nanosecond, before it vanished, leaving Shade with a green corporeal variation of normal Changeling armor along his body. “Oooo…”

Shade opened his eyes and the spell cut off. “Sorry… I haven’t used it in this body and it is draining me…”

“No problem Shade. Let me try it.” Twilight focused, on it but the only thing she managed to do was make a force field around her. “Hold on… I can…”

Shade was going to interrupt her, but before he got the chance, she cast the spell four more times.

“This should be working.” Twilight said. “What am I doing wrong?”

“You’re focusing on the shield aspect, focus on the armor aspect.” Shade explained. “Focus on…” Shade tapped his chin. “Your brother’s armor for instance.”

“You sure about that?” Twilight asked.

“Yes.” Shade replied plainly. “You need to try and imagine yourself wearing the armor, before casting the spell. Now this alone took me a few weeks to learn, and a few months to master, but I have faith in you.”

“How can you tell?” Twilight asked.

“Twilight,” Shade began. “I’ve lived around a magic wielder my whole life, she taught other mages and I watched sometimes. My mom taught me how to pick out those with potential, and those who would need to be pushed along, you definitely have potential for whatever you need. Just try.”

Most of the hour long ride was spent with Twilight attempting the spell, and failing for the most part, she managed to get small sparks of it, that almost instantly failed.

“Don’t get stressed out,” Shade said, “You have to let it come naturally, don’t force it.”

The other door towards the Changeling cars opened. “Hey Shade you… Twily?”

“Shiny?” Twilight said looking towards the entrant. Shining Armor was standing there.

“What are you doing here?” Shining Armor asked, looking at Shade.

“I had nothing to do with this.” Shade answered. “I just came here to watch the scenery go by and found her and a bunch of friends…”

“Twily, are your friends on this train too?”

“Um… yes,” Twilight replied unsure. “We decided to come along…”

“I already gave them the shtick. No point repeating it.”

“You’re okay with this?” Shining Armor asked in disbelief.

“Hey. You should have seen what they did in Canterlot.” Shade replied. “Well… I didn’t see it either, but I saw the aftermath. That was a lot of unconscious changelings.”

Twilight blushed. “Most of that was actually Pinkie Pie… You see she…”

Shade held up his hoof. “I don’t want to know… I’m sure I’ll figure it out.” Shade looked at the two of them. “I can tell you two are going to do a brother sister argument here, so I’ll just go into the other car while you two…Do…whatever.”

Shade managed to slink into the other car before the two began arguing, and he saw that not much had changed in the few days he had been absent, Applejack was still distancing herself from any of the other Changelings, Pinkie was jumping everywhere, and Darkblaze was lounging on the ceiling.

Shade sighed and shook his head. “Some things never change.”

“So how’d teaching Twilight that spell go?” Darkblaze asked.

“Well… She’s getting the hang of it…”

“In other words it failed.”

“Yeah…” Shade replied, he looked up to see Pinkie staring right at the still unnamed changeling. “Hey, why don’t you show Pinkie that disguise of yours? I’m sure she would love it.”

“Are…You sure?”

“Oh right!” Darkblaze slapped himself. “I promised to introduce you to her!”

“Huh?” Pinkie replied.

Darkblaze flipped over and flew down to them. “Pinkie, this Changeling has a very… specific habit. He likes to see ponies happy. I thought of you.”

Darkblaze nudged the Changeling, who took this as his cue to disguise. Upon seeing the White and yellow version of herself with wings, she gasped loudly.

“Ohmygosh! You look just like her!” Pinkie said quickly. Eliciting confusion for everyone.

“Looks like who sugarcube?” Applejack asked.

“My Great-Great-Great-Grandma!” She reached into her mane and pulled out a photo book, flipping through it and finding a black and white photo of what looked exactly like Pinkie, with wings. “Her name was Surprise!” She gasped. “Hey maybe that should be your name! You could come work with me at Sugarcube Corner! Then we could throw parties every day to-!”

“Pinkie… I think you broke him…” Darkblaze said, looking at the newly dubbed ‘Surprise’ who was just staring at Pinkie in shock.

“You…You want me…To work with… You?”

“Uh Yeah!” Pinkie said as if it was obvious. “You love making ponies smile, you have the look, and… wait…”

Pinkie reached into Surprise’s mane, before pulling out a couple of balloons. “Aha! You are perfect for the job!” Pinkie pulled Surprise into a hug.

“Hey great job Surprise!” Darkblaze said. “Looks like you just got yourself a family.”

Surprise was processing this information. “I…Family…We…” Surprise was surrounded in a yellow flame and returned to his Changeling form, falling to the ground unconscious.

“What was that about?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Short version, he never had a family, he never had a Hive, so this is the closest thing he’s had.” Darkblaze replied. “I guess it is a bit of a shock for him.”

“Is he going to be okay?” Pinkie asked. “His eyes are kind of bugging out.”

“No… that’s just how they normally look.” Shade replied. “But he is drooling.”

Surprise suddenly jolted up and pulled Pinkie into a strong hug. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” He said changing into his pony form. “You won’t regret this I promise!”

Pinkie’s eyes bulged out of her head before Surprise let go and she seemed to deflate to the ground before instantly re-inflating and jumping around. “Oo! I’ve got to plan a MASSIVE party! For all the Changelings! For Saving Meadow! Now for a new friend!”

“And now we have two of them…” Darkblaze sighed. “Maybe this will be better as I get used to it.”

The door to the train opened up and Shining Armor walked in. “I’m not happy about this, but I’ll accept it. If they get hurt, you have to deal with me.”

“Got it.” Shade replied.

“Now…” Shining Armor sighed. “Back to the first reason why I came here. We’re almost to Ponyville.”

Shade looked back at Tornado. “Get going buddy. I need you up there.”

Tornado Dust saluted and flew out of the car.

Shade turned back to Shining Armor. “Get the Strike Teams ready. Tornado Dust will act as a leader for some of the forward strikes.”

“Why is that?” Shining Armor asked.

“Because he has years more experience with the Hive mind, and I trust him to deliver the correct orders.” Shade replied. “Now… I trust you to handle the placement of the Bearers, they already know what I expect from them.”

“And that is?”

“Stay away from anything that is a huge threat.” Shade replied. “I don’t want any of them getting killed because they were doing something dumb.”

Pinkie was smiling. “I’ve got a big surprise… I’m not going to tell you what…”

“I never asked.” Shade said. “I probably will later though.”

“I’m ready to crack some Changelings.” Rainbow said, slamming her forehooves together causing both Surprise and Blackout to shiver. “Oh… Sorry…”

“Just don’t get us confused in the fight.” Blackout replied. “Or I will show you what changelings do to traitors”

Rainbow Dash gulped.

“Hey! Hey! Save it for the Ceymi!” Shade replied. “Captain Armor, get the rest of the strike teams to the clouds, and prep the rest of them for the attack.”

“Alright, I hope you know what we’re doing…” Shining Armor replied.

“So do I captain…” Shade replied. “I just hope this isn’t some kind of elaborate trick…”

Spine paced along the line of makeshift soldiers, Workers, Couriers, any Changelings they could get were given armor, and orders to kill. Many of them were shaking.

“Scout 137. Report!”

A small Changeling came up to him. “The Ponies are entering the city in a few minutes.”

“How are the Handlers doing?”

Spine walked next to a set of five reinforced metal boxes, each one with a large Changeling next to it. The boxes were making a high-pitched screeching sound and rattling constantly.

Spine smiled. “Excellent…” Spine looked back at the makeshift army. “All of you, remember, do this and save those of you who betrayed our one true Queen. Remember that they wish to destroy your family. Let them believe they are hold the higher ground, before we pull it from away from them.”

The Changelings saluted.

“Remember, Ceymi will not allow any cowards. If you run, we will hunt you down.”

The Changelings all hissed in disgust at the thought.

“We attack once they walk into the trap.” Spine smiled. “Then it will be easy pickings…” Spine looked back at the army. “If you find the traitor who calls himself ‘Shade’ bring him to me. He is a high value target.”

“Yes sir!”

Spine smirked. “You are all loyal soldiers. Ceymi will reward your loyalty! Now let’s see how well these Equestrians can stand against the Swarm!”

Author's Note

Okay... SO not exactly the best grammar checking and stuff... I decided to post this as is. Mostly because I needed to get it out before that weekend... (As was my plan) and I'll try to get the next part out before Monday... Hopefully :twilightblush:
Also saying this now... I'm not the best at are scale battle descriptions, single combat is better for me... So... Next chapter may be a bit strangely written...

Chapter 48: The Storm

The Scouting party showed that there were no Changelings inside of the city from a long distance viewpoint. So the entire military exited the train, each smaller patrol moving to their positions. While most of the force remained by the train.

Shade walked to the town center. “Darkblaze, Can you see anything?”

“Nope… The clouds are a bit too thick. I can see small traces of emotions…aside from that nothing.”

“Keep me posted on anything you see.”

“Will do.”

Shade walked towards the building he knew was the town hall, a couple Lancers following him with a Unicorn Guard alongside them. They left the rest of the army behind in case of any ambushes. Shade looked up at the building, the domed top had a large hole through it.

“Captain,” The unicorn next to him said. “Are you certain this isn’t some kind of trap?”

“No. I’m not.” Shade replied. “And I don’t care.” Shade looked towards the building with his left eye, there were a few emotional traces inside. “But there are some ponies in there… and we need to get them out.”

“Of course sir.” The Lancers lowered their weapons.

The four of them walked up to the main door. Shade turned his back to it and nodded to the lancers. “3…2…” Shade bucked the door open and the Lancers rushed in, a few slams and crashes later and a few unconscious Changelings were placed in a corner of the room.

“In here.” Shade said, pointing to a reinforced door.

The Unicorn lowered his horn to it, and blasted a large magical beam that blew apart the door. Shade walked in to see the Mayor tied to a chair along with a few other ponies. Upon seeing him, all of them began to struggle.

“Stop struggling,” Shade said. “I’m here to help.” He walked up to where the mayor was held and raised the Hoof blades to cut through the rope, being rewarded with a strike to the side of his face. “Well…Ow… Sergeant, you can handle this right?”

“Of course sir.” The Unicorn replied.

“Wait!” The Mayor said. “This is a trap!”

The two ponies beside her transformed and shot green beams towards the Lancers knocking them against a wall.

Shade quickly rushed forwards and jammed one of the hoof blades into the Changeling’s throat, pulling it out as the Changeling struggled to stem the flow of blood.

“Surrender.” Shade hissed at the other Changeling taking up an aggressive stance.

“Ceymi will crush you!” The Changeling mirrored the stance.

“Tell Queen Chrysalis I said hi.” Shade lowered his horn and shot a green beam right into the Changelings chest, in a flash of green fire; Shade was behind the Changeling, with a bladed foreleg piercing through its back. He pulled the blade out allowing the Changeling to fall to the floor, in a burst of fire, it was gone.

“I warned her.” Shade said as he wiped his foreleg against a wall.

“Who are you?” The Mayor asked.

“Captain Shade, you know me as Sunstreak.” Before the Mayor could react accordingly to this piece of information Shade held up a hoof. “Hold on. Repeat that Squad Five.”

Squad five was sent to the side of Everfree to monitor for any changes and inform him directly. “Sir. There’s some kind of giant cloud of…”

“Giant cloud of what?” Shade asked.

“It’s the Swarm! They’re here!”

Shade ran past the Mayor. “Stay somewhere safe, I’ll be back.”

“Wait!” The Mayor said, making Shade turn. “A lot of Ponies are still inside their homes, the Changelings forced us to.”

Shade sighed. “Alright… Darkblaze, keep those strikes clear of buildings, some ponies are still being held there.” Shade watched the two Lancers get up off the ground and follow him out. “You two alright?”

“Fine. Just took us by surprise.”

“Good.” Shade transformed into Sunstreak and bolted into the air. “Stay here, protect her.” He flew off back towards the train, where most of the main force was. “EVERYONE GET READY!”

The troops, who had been preparing, all stood at attention. “Now then. The force is coming as we speak. Now I’m not one for big fancy speeches and what have you. So instead I’ll say this.”

Shade landed and as he did, he transformed his armor to its normal appearance. The plates covering his body in a similar pattern to that of Dragon Scales, near his wings, the armor reached up and covered the top section of them. The armored forelegs gave was for the Hoofblades to be placed around them. The visor was raised, but was designed to cover his snout without restricting his vision. “For Princess Celestia! For Queen Chrysalis! And all that shit.” Shade lowered his visor. “Now let’s go save Equestria.”

“Darkblaze! Everfree!”

“We’re moving.”
“Let’s move boys! They’re coming from Everfree!”

Pinkie hopped up to Shade. “Oo! Oo! Can I help?”

“Pinkie…” Shade looked at the pink pony, “How?”

Pinkie reached into her mane and pulled out a small metal box with a big red button on the top that read, “FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY!” In big bold letters.

“Pinkie… What are you-?”

Pinkie pushed the button, and throughout the town, Party cannons popped out of either the ground, roofs, and a bird feeder. Shade raised the visor to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. “What?”

“Silly Billy!” Pinkie said. “I always keep my emergency Town-Party-System ready in case of surprise Celebrations.”

“Does that… Happen often?”

“We have a lot of town celebrations.” Twilight said walking over. “Too many to count for certain. Pinkie is in charge of almost every single one.”

“And they can spread confetti across Ponyville in record time!” Pinkie replied.

“Mortars…” Shade mumbled rubbing his chin while giving a thoughtful hum. “You can aim these right?”

“Of course silly.” Pinkie replied.

“Then point them towards Everfree and start launching them!”

Pinkie saluted before Shade shot off the ground and started flying towards Everfree. He could see clearly what they were talking about, a large black cloud of Changelings flying towards them.

On top of the Clouds, Tornado Dust had organized the rest of the Pegasus in his team around the clearing between Everfree and Ponyville.

He kept his eyes focused on below as to not hit any ponies that might be flying or running beneath him.

“Remember controlled bursts!” Tornado Dust shouted back to the others.

“Now!” Shade said through the Mental link.

“Go for it boys!” Tornado Dust slammed his front hooves onto the cloud he was flying above, causing a large crack of lightning to shoot down from it, followed by more and more of it, mixed with the explosions of party cannons.

Sunstreak flew through the air, either grabbing Changelings and hurtling them towards the ground, or using the hoof blades to accurately sever their wings, or simply going for the neck. Many of the Lancers had joined him in the air and were flying in formation, keeping Changelings from getting past them.

“Not exactly warriors are they?”

“Regardless, we need to keep an eye out for…. BEHIND!”

The Pegasus turned and found a flaming changeling ram him and hurtle towards the ground.

“God Damn it…” Sunstreak said as he flew down and knocked the Changeling off by slamming into it, quickly knocking it unconscious with a punch to the face. He walked over to the Pegasus. “Keep an eye out. I’m not saving your ass aga-” Sunstreak’s ears perked up at a whistling sound, he tackled the guard just as an explosion of confetti hit where they were standing but a second ago. “That makes two.”

“I owe you a drink.”

“Later soldier.” Sunstreak said pushing off the ground to join the rest of the forces. Where he remained until another wave of the Changelings began to show up.

Sunstreak looked around, the Pegasus were being grounded, the Unicorns seemed to be placing all their effort into shielding spells, and the Earth ponies were getting surrounded. “FALL BACK!” Shade said both verbally and through the Hive mind. “We’ll regroup at the town limits!”

“Why are we moving back?” Sunglider flew up next to him.

“Too open,” Sunstreak replied. “We’re getting surrounded by sheer numbers, in the town at least there is the possibility of confining the ground war to choke points…”

A Changeling was dashing towards the two of them, but Shade teleported to the other side of Sunglider and uppercut it with the Hoof blades, making its horn split in half. As it fell spells fired off randomly, blowing holes in the ground.

“I recommend we move.” Shade said, flicking the blood and gray matter off the blades.

Moving back was a smart idea, as many of the Unicorns and Earth ponies couldn’t hold their own in a full surrounded assault, instead, the Unicorns put up shields to stop the Changelings from flooding in and the Earth ponies dealt with them as they came.

The Party Mortars had begun to fire slower and slower, Shade flew towards the town hall, and found Pinkie sitting on the top balcony she was looking at the streets with a pair of candy cane patterned binoculars and a military jacket on.

“Private Pinkie!” Shade said as he landed on the ground, deciding to humor her. “What’s the problem with the Mortars?”

Pinkie turned and saluted as the binoculars stuck on her face, giving a middle finger to gravity. “I’m just running out of stuff to fire from them.” Pinkie replied.

“Well can’t you get…?” Shade began as Surprise landed next to him.

“Pinkie! I’m running out of… Oh hi Captain.” Surprise said before turning back to Pinkie. “Pinkie! I’m out of Confetti!”

Pinkie flipped the binoculars into her mane. “NOT THE CONFETTI!” Pinkie ran over to a glass box and grabbed a small hammer, rearing it back to smash the glass, before lightly tapping it, causing a web of cracks that broke the glass.

From inside she pulled a large bag of Confetti. “Here!” She shoved it into Surprise’s hooves. “Take the Emergency supply! And if you run out of Confetti, ASSAULT THEM WITH CAKE!”

Surprise saluted and flew up to the top of the town hall, where a party cannon was set up.

Shade flipped up his visor and rubbed his forehead. “I’m so confused…” He quickly got over it. “Private Pinkie I need you and your Party Cannon on the frontlines ASAP!”

“Oooo…. Small problem…”

Shade raised an eyebrow.

“I let the Crusaders borrow it…”

“WHAT!” Shade shouted. “THE FILLIES ARE FIGHTING HERE!”

“No. Don’t be such a Silly Billy!” Pinkie replied. “They’re guarding the most important building of all!” Pinkie pointed towards the Gingerbread building that Shade knew was where she lived and worked. “That’s where all the cakes are.” She whispered.

“Captain!” Sunglider said flying down to them. “We are having trouble holding them off.”

“Damn… How much trouble?”

“The first squad is already neck deep in Changelings.”

Shade sighed. “If only we had something more powerful…”

Pinkie gasped. “Oo! Sunny!”

Both Sunglider and Shade looked at her.

“Oh. Sorry. Our Sunny”

Sunglider rolled his eyes and dashed off.

“What is it Private Pinkie?” Shade asked turning to face her.

“Can you turn into Twilight?” Pinkie asked.

Shade was taken aback by the question. “Yes… Why?”

“Follow me!” Pinkie quickly dashed off the roof and towards the front battle lines. Shade groaned before transforming into Rainbow Dash and bolting after her. When he got there, Pinkie was looking at a butterfly on a flower right behind where a Royal Guard was being mauled by a Changeling.

“Pinkie! What is this about?” Shade asked.

“Transform into Twilight for me!”

“Why?”

“JUST DO IT!” She shouted. “Please…” She gave Shade the biggest puppy dog eyes he had ever seen.

Shade rolled his eyes. “Fine…” Shade transformed into Twilight wearing Royal Guard armor. “I still don’t see wh-WOAH!”

Pinkie had grabbed Shade by his mid-section and pulled ‘her’ to face the oncoming Changelings. Before Shade could say anything, Pinkie raised Shade’s tail, making ‘her’ horn glow.

“TIME TO HIDE CHANGELINGS!” Pinkie shouted before rapidly pulling Shade’s tail up and down, causing ‘her’ horn to fire off magical blasts in quick succession. Shade had no idea what was going on, all ‘she’ knew was that Pinkie was happening and to just roll with it.

When Shade was finally let go, he looked up to see that a good portion of the Changelings were now unconscious against the ground.

“What the Bloody Hell just happened?” Shade asked, rubbing ‘her’ head before transforming to his natural form.

“I did the same thing during the invasion!” Pinkie said. “I wasn’t sure it would work since you aren’t technically a Unicorn, but it did work, and are you okay?” The Quick switch of topics caught Shade off guard as he wobbled to stand up.

“Yeah… I’m just…Who are you again?” His vision was very blurry, and he couldn’t think straight. “Oh good… The colors are back… I’m just gonna… Rest for…A few hours…” Shade fell on the ground.

“General Spine!” The Changeling ran into the room. “The First attack force is only at 10 percent! We need to send more troops!”

Spine glanced towards the Changeling. “Very well…” Spine walked over to the metallic boxes.

“Sir… What are you doing?” The Changeling asked.

“Sending in reinforcements.” Spine opened one of the boxes, and the Changeling tried to back away but found a long thin stinger jammed through its abdomen. The Stinger pulled the Changeling into the cage as a loud Crunch could be heard.

“Handlers! Move!” Spine ordered. “First Wave of Soldiers! Follow behind”

Shade slowly opened his eyes as he was looking at two Changelings, one seemed to be holding a green vial of some kind of liquid, both of them had the green energy flowing through their armor.

“Welcome back Captain.”

Shade groaned and pushed himself up off the wooden floor. “Where am I?”

“Inside the town Hall… We set it up as a field hospital.” Now that Shade could see, he recognized the Changelings, Thorax and… “Ortho?”

“Yes… I snuck on board. Now hush.” She placed a mask over Shade’s mouth. “Just inhale.”

Shade took a deep breath and felt whatever headache he had vanish and feel reenergized.

“I took the liberty of procuring some of our stockpiles of Love.” Ortho explained. “Now… What exactly were you doing that drained you of that much love?”

“No idea…” Shade replied honestly. “It involved Pinkie.”

“Of course it did…” Ortho replied with a shake of her head. “Listen just don’t…”

She was cut short by a high pitched screech that seemed to cause all of them to shiver. “What in Tartarus was that?” Thorax asked, looking towards Shade, whose eyes were currently wide in fear.

“No! No! No! nonononononononono!!” Shade ran to the door. “They can’t be here! Why are they here? This can’t be good!” Shade pushed the door open and found Pinkie sitting outside.

“Hey there sleepy…”

“No time!” Shade replied holding out his hoof. “Binoculars!”

Pinkie pulled them out of her mane and handed them to Shade, he quickly grabbed them and looked over towards Everfree. As he did, he felt his blood run cold.

Flying in from the forest, were what could only be called a ‘flock’ of large ray like birds, each one with a large stinger on the end, clawed feet, and bird like heads.

Shade took a deep breath. “PHOENIX RAYS!” The look of confusion on most of the ponies evaporated as a scream perforated it, one of the rays had lifted two earth ponies into the air by its claws, and it then flew up and dropped both of them onto the hard earth below.

Shade threw the binoculars back to Pinkie. “Stay inside! Gather as many as you can and tell them the same thing!”

Pinkie saluted before dashing in a pink blur around town.

Shade’s horn glowed as he pulled an orange gem from his leg, he held it up to look at it. “I didn’t want to use it this early…” He muttered through gritted teeth. He sighed. “Desperate times…”

Before he got the chance to do anything with it, one of the rays had swooped down and grabbed it in its beak.

“HEY!” Shade shouted as the ray flew off. “Give that back!” Shade bent down to take off.

“Shade wait!” Ortho said, “Don’t over ex-”

Shade took off and flew quickly after the Phoenix Ray.

Ortho sighed. “Exert yourself… Why do I even try?”

Rainbow Dash had been flying after a few remaining Changelings when she was suddenly covered in a pink flash and found herself inside the town hall. “Twilight,” She said as she hit a wall. “What gives?”

“Sorry Rainbow.” Twilight replied. “But Pinkie just told me to teleport you in here.”

“Well did she say why?”

“Something about giant rays and Shade telling us to.” Twilight replied.

“Hold on… Giant rays? You can’t be serious.” Rainbow asked, flying to a nearby window as a Phoenix Ray slammed into the wall, startling her. “Yeah… Good call…”

“But where’d Bug boy slip off ta?” Applejack asked looking around the room.

“DON’T YOU DARE SWALLOW THAT!”

Rainbow looked out the window to see a Phoenix Ray flying in a circle around Shade, an orange object in its beak. With a flick of its head, the orange object fell down its throat.

“THAT’S IT!” Shade rammed into the Phoenix ray, heading right for…

“INCOMING!” Rainbow Dash shouted as she flew away from the window right as it shattered with the force of a Dive-bombing Changeling and a giant Phoenix Ray. The ray whipped its tail into one of Shade’s holed legs, and flicked him away.

“I’M GOING TO KILL YOU!” Shade said as he steadied himself in the air, The Phoenix ray screeched and flew through the roof, followed by Shade.

“I’ll go check on him…” Rainbow Dash said. Before either of her friends could argue, she dashed through the hole in the roof, chasing after Shade.

When she finally caught up, Shade didn’t realize she was there until she spoke up. “Hey! What are you doing?”

“I’m Chasing a Phoenix Ray!” Shade snapped back. “A rather temperamental one at that.”

“Yeah… But Why?”

Shade didn’t even turn to look at her. “She stole the only…”

“Wait how can you tell?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“I’ve hunted them my whole life, this one’s a female. She stole my one trump card! The only thing that could help me if I get into a battle with Spine. She ate it!”

“That orange thingy?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Yes… and now I need to catch up to…”

“I’m on it.” Rainbow Dash said before zooming off leaving a rainbow contrail behind her. She flew ahead of the large ray and started flying in a circle, soon there was a small tornado formed in the air. The Phoenix Ray slowed itself as to not get sucked in, but Shade didn’t.

He slammed into the ray, “Now then… My turn…” Shade transformed his forelegs into hooked blades, which he jammed into the ray’s wings. After he was secured, he transformed his wings so that they were much larger than he would have normally needed and opened them fully, causing him to slow down more than the ray, and for his hooked legs to drag against the Ray’s wings.

The Ray let out a screech before plummeting to the ground, before the two of them hit the ground, Shade transformed his legs back and pushed off the ray. Letting it slam mercilessly into the ground. Somehow it was still conscious, and that suited Shade just fine. It began trying to hobble away before Shade landed next to it.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Shade asked the Ray as he slammed a hoof onto its wing. “We aren’t done yet.”

The Ray seemed to gulp while Shade transformed his foreleg into a blade again. “Now do try to scream at least a bit, makes this so much more pleasant for me.” He jammed the blade into the stomach, making sure that the Ray felt everything as he made the opening. It let out a loud screech as he stopped and reached into the incision with a clawed hand and rummaged around in it for a few seconds.

He pulled out a few bones, which he didn’t consider strange, some rocks, a couple pieces of fresh meat and he found what he was looking for. He pulled out the small gem coated in the sickly yellow acid.

Shade let out a relived sigh, the stomach acid hadn’t begun to destroy it yet.

“Is that what you were looking for?” Rainbow asked keeping her distance from the ray.

“Yes…” Shade replied walking around to the ray’s head and giving it a quick twist. “Damn that felt good. I haven’t done an old fashioned Ray stomach search for a long time.”

“Well… what is it?” Rainbow asked. “I mean… it just looks like a gem?”

Shade was going to explain, but one of the Changeling Soldiers landed next to him. “Sir! These creatures are pushing us back.”

Shade twirled the gem in the air, suspended by his magic. “How many?”

“Ten at the most from what we have seen.”

Shade sighed. “Fine… I’m going to have to use this much sooner than I thought I would…”

“Sir?” Shade dismissed him with a wave.

Shade looked towards Rainbow Dash. “Ever seen what happens when a Changeling has their magic boosted?”

Rainbow shook her head.

“Well let’s find out.” Shade floated the crystal into the compartment on his chest piece, as he did, the crystal glowed bright orange before Shade’s eyes reflected the same bright orange of the crystal. “This is going to be fun…”

Near the front line, the Phoenix Rays were flying around, grabbing the Changelings from the air, biting at them or slashing them and then letting the dead bodies fall or burn up in their claws. Major Mandible was in charge of the Changelings of this particular squadron.

“Come on! Fall back! Orders from-Whoa!” A Ray saw him and picked him up holding his back in its claws. “Oh…Chrysalis…”

The Ray looked down at him, opening its beak to show a row of sharp teeth, it lowered it down to bite at him, Mandible closed his eyes.

When the killing blow never came, Mandible looked up to find the Ray’s beak being held back by clawed hands. The beak was ripped apart by the hands, causing the ray to drop Mandible.

Mandible regained control of his flight to watch the ray fall to the ground.

“Major! Watch your ass.”

Mandible looked at his savior, it was a Dragon, but… “Captain Shade?”

“S’up.” Shade replied, his scales only a slightly lighter color than his carapace before, the armor he was wearing covering over the entire body. The Hoofblades looked rather out of place on the Draconic figure however the armor seemed more natural looking, mimicking the scales of his body. His wings were larger and with the armor spreading over the main structure of the wing, staying off of the thin fleshy portion that aided in flight.

“How are you…?”

Shade tapped an orange crystal in the center of his armor. “Magical Amplification gem, boosts magical powers. Since our bodies are practically magical, I’m not feeling any drain on my energy like this.”

“Impressive.” Mandible replied. “Mind lending a hoof?”

“That’s what I came here for.” Shade extended his claws and rushed towards the Phoenix Rays nearby. None of them noticed the Changeling watching from above, showing everything to the Hive.

Inside Acari’s Hive, Spine watched the battle through his scout’s eyes. Watching the Dragon kill the beasts they had captive from the Fiord raids with increasing hatred and disgust.

“That bastard…” Spine said watching. “Thinking he is superior to all of us. Worthless Conversion.”

“Sir!” A different Changeling officer came up to him.

“This better be important.” Spine hissed.

“The Creatures tore through their defenses. We have a straight line to the bulk of their forces. Those above the clouds are being dealt with now, and the stealth forces are preparing to attack from behind.”

Spine watched the images of Shade. “We must deal with him first.” Spine said. “That gem is required for him to remain that way. I want it destroyed.”

“Anything else sir?”

“Yes.” Spine replied. “Send in everything we have.”

“Sir?”

“Once the Conversion is dealt with, there will be nothing to stop us from taking this village.” Spine smirked. “I will deal with him personally.”

“Sir… What if we fail?”

Spine turned to look at the officer. “Then I suppose the Queen will simply eradicate the town. Now tell her what we are doing.”

Shade was dealing with the last few of the Phoenix rays, easy enough given his years of training which he found dull and repetitive, funny how now that training was actually proving to be useful for something. However one thing he failed to take into account was the scheming nature of Changelings.

When he thought that he was simply attacking another of the rays, a Changeling popped out of it and rammed directly into his chest with a flaming head-butt. He heard the crack of the crystal, and he swore under his breath.

When he steadied himself, he looked down at the crystal, it had a large crack straight through it, where orange lightning was beginning to spark, keeping the two pieces together as best it could.

He looked back at the Rays, only a couple of them remained, so he had to work fast on it. Or risk them staying alive…

When he was finished with them, he was breathing heavy, not from how he handled the rays, it had been an easy rush in, slice the neck, tear wing, done. Instead he was panting from lack of energy.

His vision was beginning to blur as he fell to his knees and looked down at the crystal. The lightning arcs between it were increasing in both frequency and brightness, and the crack had spread across the surface leaving a spider web of cracks.

The crystal glowed bright before shattering, or rather disintegrating. The crystal broke out of the compartment and fell to the ground as a slightly sparkling orange powder. Shade looked at his clawed hand, and noticed a hole was beginning to form in the palm. The hole was surrounded by green fire that began to spread across the rest of it. Before it got a chance to reach any further, Shade transformed back to a Changeling.

He was taking deep heavy breaths in an attempt to calm himself down, he tried blinking away his blurry vision, and he could no longer avoid the feelings of pain that shot through his legs or the twisting feeling he got when he drew breath.

“What did I tell you?”

Shade was still looking down towards the ground, his neck refusing to move from its current position, so the speaker went unanswered.

“Maybe next time you’ll listen to me when I tell you to do something!”

Shade felt himself get pulled up by a magical field, and felt something over his mouth.

“Just breathe.”

Shade felt his energy return to him, along with his vision. When he looked down at the Changeling who was lifting him, he saw Ortho.

“You’re very lucky,” Ortho said, “If I didn’t come and follow you after that Ray crashed through the building. You would probably be dead now.” Ortho placed him on the ground. “Why is it that everypony I tell to rest doesn’t listen to me until they are nearly unconscious? I didn’t go to medical school for nothing you know.”

Shade pushed himself up and tried to keep himself steady. “Sorry Ortho… I…”

“Shut up!” Ortho shouted. “You are coming with me, and you are resting until I am one hundred percent sure about your condition.”

“Ortho… I’m thankful for you helping me but…” Ortho used her magic to grab Shade’s ear and drag him. “Ow Ow Ow Ow!”

“No!” Ortho said, pulling him back towards the Town Hall. “You are going to wait until you are recovered, no more of this one pony army nonsense.”

“Well pulling my ear off is not going to help!” Shade replied. “Ortho let go of my ear! I feel fine. I’m fine!”

“Oh no!” Ortho replied. “You are not getting off that easily.”

“Then at least let go of my ear so I can walk there.”

“Snake Eye!”

“Darkblaze?”

“Help! They’re attacking up on the clouds!”

Shade’s horn glowed green. “Fine, you want to get to the Town hall, then let’s go.” Shade closed his eyes as both of them teleported to the town hall. Ortho’s eyes were spinning and she let go of Shade’s ear.

After Shade shook away the disorientation from his first dual-target Teleport, he looked around at the soldiers. “Pegasi! Get up to the clouds! Our teams are in danger!” All at once, the pegasi saluted and ran out of the town hall, going to gather others or fly right into the air.

I don’t like this… Shade thought. Using an attack like this could either mean they are being boxed in, or they are preparing for a full on frontal assault. He looked back to make sure Ortho was still disoriented before turning to Pinkie.

“Listen Pinkie… I have a very important job for you.”

“Uh huh?” Pinkie asked leaning in.

“Go to the other side of Ponyville and tell me if you see any Changelings or ponies that aren’t supposed to be there. And take Surprise with you.”

Both of them saluted and hopped out of the room, each one alternating which was on the ground and which one was in the air. Please let me be wrong…

Up on the clouds, the Changelings were swarming over the sky, Tornado Dust himself was flying away from the small swarm alongside a few other Pegasus. “Where in Tartarus are they?” The Pegasi teams had all split up once the Changelings pierced through the cloud layer, those that tried to fight them were quickly overwhelmed and sent hurling towards the ground.

“Tornado Dust, are you sure that transmission even got to them?”

“No I’m not! Keep flying!”

“Hey DUSTY!”

Tornado Dust looked to his right as he saw Rainbow Dash flying backwards. “Rainbow?”

“And some friends.” Rainbow pointed up towards the sky where the Blue and yellow suits of the Wonderbolts came hurtling in formation, their smoking contrails sparking behind them. “Oh and below us as well.”

From the cloud layer, a group of twenty-five Lancers flew through staring at the oncoming Changelings.

“Alright boys!” The lead Lancer called. “Let’s show these Love suckers what real Changelings can do!” Each of the lancers were covered in a red flame before being replaced with red eyed Changelings.

“Whoa…” Rainbow Dash said surprised. “That… That I didn’t expect…” Tornado Dust nodded in agreement as he looked on wide eyed

“Lancers! Engage!”

The two Pegasus turned to look at the ensuing chaos, Lances colliding with Chitin, snarling, biting and spells firing through the sky. The Wonderbolts doing what they could without getting caught in any of the attacks from either side, they rammed into the Changelings, created a small tornado behind them, anything they could think of. Rainbow and Tornado watched for a few seconds before heading below the cloud layer and towards the Town hall.

“Well… That was interesting.” Rainbow Dash replied. “Hey, do you think there are Changelings in the Wonderbolts?”

Tornado Dust rolled his eyes. “Always with the Wonderbolts.”

Back in town hall, Shade was being looked at by Ortho, who slapped him whenever he tried to move. She had removed his Hoofblades which were currently hanging from a hook on a wall that Ortho was keeping a very close eye on.

When Tornado Dust and Rainbow Dash flew through the shattered window, he looked up at them to find his head being magically turned to look at a pair of light blue eyes.

“Hey Snake Eye.” Tornado Dust said. “We kind of lost the thunder clouds…”

“I could see that…” Shade replied, only moving his eyes to look over at them. “So you two happen to see Pinkie?”

“Right Heeeeereee~!” Pinkie said in a Singsong voice popping out of a barrel. She reached down into the barrel and pulled Surprise, who looked very confused, out of the barrel.

“How did we get here?” He asked.

“Shhh….” Pinkie said to Surprise. “I’ll teach you later.” She winked at him.

“So Private Pinkie?” Shade said keeping his head forward. “Any news?”

“Yes!” Pinkie said. “There’s a bunch of Mean Changelings surrounding the town from the train station. At first I thought they were just here for a party then I-!”

Ortho turned to look at the pink pony. “I’m busy with a patient. Contain yourself.” Ortho looked back at Shade. She lifted a small flashlight up to Shade’s eyes. Ortho sighed. “Luckily you don’t have a concussion…”

Shade rolled his eyes.

“Now tell me if this hurts.” She placed her hoof on Shade’s chest and pushed lightly on it.

“OW!” Shade said after she applied a small amount of pressure.

Ortho shook her head. “You have a cracked rib.”

“Meaning?” Shade asked.

“Meaning I’m not letting you go back out there.” Ortho replied. “This can only get worse. I’m not letting you go anywhere until…”

A green burst of fire appeared in front of Twilight. “Spike?”

Twilight unrolled the letter and read it. Her eyes widened as she read. “They have Spike!”

Twilight turned the letter so Shade could read it.
Nymph,

We have hostages of a small purple dragon and three young fillies. If you don’t want to see them bleeding out on the ground, meet me in front of the library. Bring this Twilight Sparkle with you. We are going to end this once and for all.

General Spine.
Shade’s wings buzzed angrily as he read it. “Fine by me…” He growled.

Ortho stopped him from moving by pushing on his hoof. “Oh No! I’m not letting you go off and do whatever it is you think you’re doing! You need to rest, you’re drained, and injured. You wouldn’t be able to stand your own against this General pony.”

“Excuse me Ortho.” Shade looked directly at her, his eyes radiating pure hatred. “I don’t give a fuck!” His horn charged up and he teleported behind Ortho, raising his foreleg he brought it down on the back of her head, knocking her out.

“Shade!” Twilight said in surprise her voice leaking disapproval. “You…You just…”

“I’m saving Spike.” Shade said. “I don’t care anymore. This is personal. Don’t stand in my way!” Shade growled, even if Twilight wasn’t a Changeling, she could feel his determination.

Twilight sighed. “Fine… But I am coming with you to keep those four safe.”

“Fine by me.” Shade hissed. “But Spine is mine.” He turned to the others. “All of you! Make sure this city stays safe. I’m going to go deal with an insignificant, Scum sucking, Urpalosh!”

He turned and walked out of the town hall, followed by Twilight.

Tornado Dust looked at the others. “So what do we do now?”

Lyra teleported into the room. “We use anything at our disposal.” She looked at Pinkie. “Get that Cake cannon of yours ready.”

Pinkie smiled. “Let’s go! I’ve got cakes to launch from a cannon!” She jumped into the air and dove head-first into a nearby barrel. She then reached out of it and grabbed Surprise, pulling him into it with her. The top of the Barrel spun in the air before landing perfectly on top.

Author's Note

Part 1 of the Epic Climax.
I am sorry for how this had to be split up, I didn't want to make you guys wait any longer, but technology decided to make me wait... So I let this one out... I'm not sure when the next part will be up, but I'll try not to make it too long. :twilightsheepish:

Chapter 49: Duel of Fates

When Shade and Twilight arrived at the Library, they saw a small Squadron of Changelings, four of which were holding a Dragon and the CMC in their forelegs while holding blades up to their necks.

“Let them go Spine.” Shade hissed.

The Changeling in front, wearing a dark blue armor that had a large crack in the chest area looked back at them a small smile working across his face. “Ah… Nymph so you came.”

“Let them go.” Shade hissed again, taking up an aggressive stance.

“So much hostility.” Spine replied calmly in a false Sotto voice. “Remember when we used to be friends?”

“No.” Shade replied venomously, growling slightly.

“Well neither do I.” Spine looked towards Twilight. “So you’re the one this Dragon has so much respect and affection for? I must admit, it is a rather strange chemistry you two have. Almost like brother and sister.” He walked up to Spike and lifted his head with a hoof. With the other one, he transformed it into a small blade and lowered it down to Spike’s eye.

“NO!” Twilight shouted. “Leave him alone!” Her horn lit up and as it did, the Changeling holding Spike pushed his head up so Twilight could see the bladed foreleg pressed tightly against his neck.

Spine laughed. “Oh… This is great…” He dragged the blade across Spike’s cheek, leaving a small cut. “A baby dragon and his precious pony sister. That is almost as funny as Nymph and the foal!”

Shade stepped forward. “He has nothing to do with this Spine. None of them do.” Shade growled. “Just let them go.”

Spine shook his head. “I thought you would have learned by now…” He said. “Simply knowing you is a good enough reason to kill them.” Spine pressed the blade against Spike’s cheek, increasing the pressure as the baby dragon’s eyes dilated.

Shade glared at Spine and pulled the dagger from his side, he tossed it into the air before surrounding his hoof in a green flame, as the blade fell, Shade griped it in a Griffon claw and threw it towards the two of them. It hit the Changeling holding Spike in the shoulder of its bladed limb, making him wobble slightly as Spike began squirming against his captor. “I mean it Spine. Let them go.”

Spine laughed, pulling the blade away from Spike. “Very well.” He nodded towards the other Changelings. They let go of their prisoners and all of them ran towards Twilight. The Changeling holding Spike fell to the ground and clutched at the knife now imbedded into its Chitin.

Shade turned to her. “Get them out of here.” He ordered motioning to the four young ones before turning back to Spine.

Twilight opened her mouth but seeing the death glares both Spine and Shade were giving each other, she closed it and nodded. In a flash, all five of them were gone, leaving Shade with Spine.

“What did you do to them Spine?”

“The fillies you mean?” Spine asked as if he didn’t know. “They’re alive… For now.” Spine motioned to the top of the tree. A small Changeling flew out from behind the layers of leaves; its eyes were glowing bright green as it flew up to Shade’s face. “Say ‘Hi’ to them.”

Shade glared at the Changeling. “I’m coming for you two… I promise…”

Spine dismissed the Changeling with a wave, and it flew back up to the top of the tree, observing the two combatants. “A valiant statement, but one that will ultimately be proven false,” The two of them began to circle each other. “I am going to pay you back for what you did in Canterlot.” Spine smirked. “And I must thank you.”

“For what?” Shade asked keeping his defenses up as he watched for any kind of opening to form, while keeping his eyes on all of the Changelings around him.

“Helping me deal with the Queen,” Spine replied. “Chrysalis was simply a puppet, under mine and Ceymi’s control. I had been running the Hive from the shadows for years. And now?” Spine laughed. “Now she’s dead, and the blame fell on you. Now Ceymi is the true Queen, and I will soon be a hero for killing the perpetrator of the crime.”

Shade glared. “If you can even manage it,” He hissed. “Hoping third time’s a charm, huh?”

“So much anger.” Spine replied. “So much hatred. It tastes delicious.”

“Let the two fillies go! They have nothing to do with this vendetta of yours!”

“Oh on the contrary,” Spine replied. “They know you, and once I kill you. They will watch as you suffer, then I’ll let them slowly starve, before bleeding them dry of any Love and emotions they have left.”

Shade charged at Spine. “You mother Fucker!” He tackled the Changeling but was quickly pushed off.

“That’s not even the best part!” Both of them transformed their forelegs into blades. They charged towards one another and clashed their blades together, Shade’s snarling face mere inches from Spine’s smirk. “Once that’s done, Ceymi will drain those Element bearers. Then nothing could possibly stop her!”

Spine slammed his body into Shade, pushing him away. “Not even Celestia can stand against the element’s power!” Shade pushed himself up in time to stop Spine from ramming him through with sharp blades by catching the blades with his own crossed blades. “And then we will conquer the other hives! With the combined power of the sun and moon, we would be invincible!”

Shade was having trouble pushing against Spine’s attack. He was in a bad position with his back up against the ground with Spine having the ability to place his full weight on the Conversion. Shade managed to pull up one of his hind legs and kick Spine back; he quickly used his wings to lift himself off the ground. “Then why hurt Meadow? Why kill Mirror?”

Spine was already back on the offensive, Shade only managing to block as Spine’s ruthless attacks pushed him back. “Because I love to see you squirm… In fact. Maybe I’ll let you watch as I drain them, then I’ll kill you!” Spine shifted his foreleg into a mace and brought it down on the two bladed forelegs, causing Shade to become wide open.

Shade’s horn ignited and he teleported out of the way of a jabbing foreleg, then something Spine said connected, Control of the Queen? “How long did you have control over Chrysalis?” He said as Spine pulled the blade out of the ground.

“For forty Years! I spent forty Years controlling a foolish Monarch! She couldn’t tell her Flank from her face if they were labeled! She was too kind, she cared not for our old ways! So I pushed her in the right direction… I controlled her during our last attack, and Ceymi was in charge of Canterlot.”

The fiords… Shade felt something inside him click. “You… It was… You! You attacked my home! You destroyed it!”

“The Burning Fiords? Yes that was my plan. It was fun to slaughter your village…”

“YOU FUCKER!” Shade felt a deep-rooted anger welling up, something he had not felt for almost two hundred years. It wasn’t anger, it wasn’t hatred, it was much stronger than that… It was a bloodlust… “You destroyed everything I held dear to me! You turned me into one of you! You DARE to attack a dragon! Then Let’s see what you’ve got insect.” Shade didn’t care what it took, he would kill Spine, he would not stop until every piece of him was scattered through the lands.

“Oh yes. Now is where I say I don’t play fair.” Spine nodded to the other Changelings, which charged at Shade.

“STAY OUT OF MY WAY!” Shade turned to them, his bladed forelegs igniting with green fire. He ran the blades through each of them, stabbing, slicing through their wings, and ripping the horn off of one only to jam it into its throat. He looked down at the Changeling now gasping as its lungs slowly filled with blood. A smile worked its way across his face as he looked over the struggling Changeling.

He began to laugh, a slow quiet laugh, his bright red eyes showing a sadistic pleasure at watching the changeling gasp, the laughter got louder slowly, more insane, until it as nearly unstable. “I haven’t felt like this for centuries…” He said. “It feels good…” He raised one of his bladed forelegs up at Spine. “Now let’s see how far I can go before you break!”

Shade charged, his bladed forelegs quickly slicing towards Spine, but while he was more aggressive, he was sloppy, Spine was able to block or dodge all of the strikes easily before knocking Shade back with a flurry of blows to his chest. Spine turned around and bucked Shade directly in his Ribs, there was a resounding crack, and Shade fell to the ground.

Throughout the Underground cave, every Changeling looked up as a huge emotional spike came from the city above, a bright red fire that caused all of them to shiver. Including the Queen.

“Spine…” She said softly. “Slave!”

Biome flew into the chamber.

“Gather my Guard! I will enter the fray myself!”

Farther in the Hive, Meadow and Echo watched as Shade was knocked to the ground.

Meadow gasped and covered her eyes. While Echo started to cry. “Daddy! Wake up!” She shouted at the projection. “Daddy! Please!”

Meadow looked at the projection, Shade wasn’t moving. “Come on Mr. Shade,” She said softly. “Please…. Get up…”

“DADDY! NO PLEASE!” Echo shouted. “DON’T GO! I NEED YOU!”

Meadow looked as Spine stepped on Shade’s chest. “Shade… Please…”

“See where your precious emotions get you?” Spine said as he looked down at Shade, holding him down with one of his forelegs pressed squarely against Shade’s ribs. His foreleg became a deadly blade as he smirked. “You are going to die here! Then there is nothing that will stop Ceymi from destroying Equestria!”

Shade slowly opened his eyes, all hints of the bloodlust gone. Instead of anger, it was replaced by sorrow. He had failed again… He couldn’t protect those he cared for from the Changelings back then, and he wouldn’t be able to now. The Changelings flew above him in the sky, chasing down Pegasi as they did. As he watched, the shapes and surroundings twisted to reflect his home…

“Good… I want you to watch as I…” Spine was tackled by a dark gray earth pony guard.

“Surprised to see me?” The Guard said to Spine.

“You!” He shouted. “You were the one that helped us!”

“And now I’m returning the favor!”

Shade pushed himself up off the ground, his head was spinning, and every time he took a breath it hurt as if a knife was jammed into his chest. He looked up to see Lockup on top of Spine.

“Lockup! Don’t!” Shade tried to shout, but ended up cringing as he made the sounds.

Spine smiled as he shot a green beam at Lockup’s chest. Lockup was launched back, and landed on the ground a few feet from Spine. “You pathetic Enforcer.” Spine walked over to him. “I’m going to make this…VERY… painful for your insolence!” He jammed the bladed forelegs into Lockup’s hind legs, piercing right through them, there were two very loud cracks, he twisted the foreleg and listened to the Changeling scream.

“NO!” Shade shouted. The anger began to rise again, but it was more controlled, it wasn’t a wild inferno he couldn’t hope to control, it was more a consistent flame of hatred… He felt he could use it… he had to use it… After all, all emotions are is… “power…” Shade said under his breath.

Shade closed his eyes and focused on the inner flame, he tried to will it to grow, so he could use it. I hope this works… He lowered his head as a green flaming circle began to surround him, popping up as he stoked the anger within him, thinking back to his home as he watched it burn, the looks of families, and he focused all of it on Spine. As the flames completed their circle, Shade ducked his head down and flared out his wings as a large green beam shot into the sky.

Spine turned away from Lockup to see Shade as a Dragon flying directly at him.

Shade threw a punch directly at Spine’s face, with a resounding crack; the Changeling flew off of Lockup and slammed against the ground.

Shade looked down at Lockup, his eyes closed and his body unmoving, a section of his golden armor had a black burn mark over it. Shade knelt down and placed two of his clawed hands by Lockup’s neck, feeling the faint pulse, he let out a relieved sigh.

His transformation was in no way painless, he still felt the now shattered rib, and he had to lose his wings and tail after the charge to make sure he was still able to do anything, even now; the drain was evident on his body. He stood up and quickly strode over to where Spine had started to get up; he gripped the Changeling by the horn and dragged him across the ground towards a building. He lifted the Changeling up and with his other clawed hand, punched him in the stomach, hearing a crack of his ribcage as the Changeling gasped for breath.

He lifted Spine up and slammed him into the wall as a crack formed across his back from the collision. Shade let go of Spine, and let him fall to the ground. “You made some very big mistakes…” Shade growled, looking at the Changeling as he struggled to stand up. “You attacked innocents, You attacked a child, you attempted a brainwash of a leader, and you pissed me the fuck off.” He extended the claws on his right hand as he lifted Spine with his left. “Now let’s see how much blood I can drain before you die.”

Shade lifted his claws but before he could bring them down, something forced his entire body to stop.

“HALT!” Shade found himself crippled by the mental attack. And he found himself obeying it.

“Release him!” Shade let go of Spine. Leaving the Changeling General to cough for a few seconds.

“Kneel to your Queen!”

Shade tried to resist it, but he found himself falling to the ground as Ceymi landed in front of him. “Spine! Are you alright?”

Spine weakly pushed himself up, his chitin cracked along the left side of his face, and his backplate cut through the middle. “I am fine now that I am in your care my Queen.”

Shade tried to move anything, even gag! But found himself unable to do anything at all. He couldn’t even dispel his transformation, which was still draining his energy quickly. “So this is the one you sought.”

“It is my Queen.” Spine replied.

“Then I believe you should do the honors.” Ceymi said, looking down at Shade. “But not before I have a little fun of my own.”

Her horn glowed and Shade’s eyes shot open as his mind was assaulted by thousands of voices. This time, it was worse than when Blackout did it to him, as this felt like the entire Hive was bombarding him instead of a portion of it.

Shade felt himself get lifted into the air and thrown against a wall. He opened his eyes to look at Ceymi, she was saying something, but Shade couldn’t make it out. She lifted him again and fired a green beam at his chest. He felt the scales around his body burn and underneath the hardened armor; he felt a few more of his ribs crack.

He was thrown against the ground, and felt a heavy force press down on his back. One very bad crack later, and Shade lost feeling in his legs. The shouting in his head stopped, as he opened one of his eyes to look for a reason.

“I believe that is enough damage.” Ceymi said. “You may kill him now.”

Spine hobbled over to Shade, and transformed his foreleg into a blade. “This is the end for you Nymph!”

Shade could barely keep consciousness, everything was blurring together, he lost feeling in most of his body, and he had no way to defend against it. He just kept his eye open and struggled to speak. “Make…Sure you….Finish me off…This time…”

Spine smiled and lifted the foreleg, but before he brought it down, Spine’s ears swiveled around as his eyes widened. He turned to look up at the sky. “no…”

“ENOUGH!” The Voice pierced through the heads of every Changeling, regardless of Hive, every one of them stopped what they were doing and turned towards the voice.

“PRINCESS CEYMI!” The voice shouted, Shade barely moved to look at Ceymi’s shocked expression.

“That… That’s not … Possible!” Seem said as her eyes widened at the voice, she began to step backwards as she looked into the sky.

“YOU HAVE TESTED MY PATIENCE FOR THE LAST TIME!” Shade craned his head to look into the sky.

An army of Changelings was flying above them, each one from Ceymi’s hive, only… They were fighting the others? Shade looked around and saw a group of Changelings land around the three of them.

“Ceymi!” Spine said looking back.

“SURRENDER NOW! OR FEEL MY WRATH!” All of the Changelings following Ceymi landed on the ground, placing their hooves over their heads.

Shade looked up, and saw something that elicited a mixture of pure hatred and relief.

“M-m-Mom?” Ceymi said surprised.

Queen Chrysalis landed in the center of the Changeling circle, her horn was covered in some kind of crystal. She was just as ugly as Shade remembered her, only a few small things were still damaged, with small pieces of her chitin giving way to the gray flesh underneath.

“You take my throne! My Hive! And have the audacity to attack a peaceful Hive!” She hissed as she walked towards the Princess. “Be lucky that I don’t strangle you myself!”

“Mom! I-I thought you were dead!” Ceymi replied, she was backing away from her mother, like a mouse when cornered by a large cat.

“I’m sure you did,” Chrysalis replied. “That is why you and your subordinate here brainwashed me into attacking not one but TWO peaceful nations!” Queen Chrysalis grabbed Spine in a green aura and pulled him close to her, making sure he was hanging by one of his hind legs. “Soldier 495, I hereby relinquish you of all power you have over my army.”

Spine was going to argue, but Chrysalis glared at him. “You have nothing to say to me. You are a traitor, a cowardly Nymph that deserves respect from nopony, not even the lowest Grub would dare listen to you!” She tossed Spine to the ground and stepped on his back plate. “I hereby revoke all connection to my Hive!”

Spine’s eyes widened as a Green aura surrounded his wings and horn. The aura pulled the wings open forcefully as the wings began to shrivel to nothing and his horn was turned to ash. Chrysalis applied pressure to Spine’s back making a loud crack as she shattered the blue backplate, letting the pieces fall to the dirt below as she pushed him with her hoof.

She turned to Ceymi. “As for you my loving daughter,” She said with pure disgust. “You are forgetting the powers a Queen has.” She leaned in to glare right at her daughter. “I revoke your rights to the crown.” She hissed

Ceymi’s eyes widened. “You can’t do that! It is my biological right to be on the throne!”

Chrysalis hissed. “You forget… only I may choose who succeeds me! It is a privilege to be a member of the Royal family. But I refuse to allow a power hungry tyrant like yourself to rule over MY hive.” Chrysalis lowered her horn to Ceymi, Ceymi looked at the horn with pure fear. A green beam was fired and connected with Ceymi’s own horn.

There was a bright flash as the spell hit Ceymi. She screamed as she watched herself transform slowly. Her pupils expanded and gave way to pure blue eyes, and her longer horn shrank to a small curve. There were a few painful sounding cracks as the Chitin shrunk and contorted to fit her newly smaller body.

When the spell was completed, Ceymi looked down at herself in shock. She screamed and looked at every detail of her body. She was now almost completely indistinguishable from the other Changelings. The only thing remaining that proved she was once a princess were the three green stripes across her stomach.

Ceymi began to tear up as her mother stood over her menacingly. “I do hope that Celestia and Acari come to an agreement on what to do with you.” Chrysalis said scathingly. “Because as far as I am concerned, My daughter is dead.”

Chrysalis turned from Ceymi, who ran over and tried to comfort Spine. Chrysalis looked down at Shade. “Is he alive?”

A Changeling walked up to Shade as his vision began to blur out again. The last thing he saw was his claws being surrounded in a slow green fire that began to work its way down from the tips of the fingers.

“He’s fading my Queen.”

Chrysalis sighed. The rest of her words blending together for Shade, the last thing he heard was a single word. “Sleep…”

Author's Note

Ugh..... Fuckin... Spent all night on this.... Slept for a few hours and then looked at it... :pinkiesick:

Hopefully this stupid Corruption doesn't happen again... Because that was obnoxiously long...
Anyway grievances aside. The Final part of the Epic climax. Hope that you guys enjoy it. For now..... Time to relax for a bit.

Chapter 50: Aftermath

A single grave.

One of a million others, a warrior fallen.

Equestria had seen many soldiers fall in the years, but what made this one strange, was who it was.

It was not a general, known for their brilliant planning, or strategic placement. It was not even a private, who died protecting the Princess. In fact, it wasn’t even a pony.

The one inside the grave was a Changeling, a creature known for their ability to take the form of any other. This soldier died from over exertion of energy, literally disintegrating their bodies as the form ate through the energy stored there.

Overlooking the gravestone, stood three Changelings each paying their respects, one was crying into the open hooves of a second, while the third clutched a single curved horn, hanging around its neck.

There had been others there before, but they had left. They wanted to finish the repairs to the town, nearly destroyed during the attack a few days ago. These three Changelings remained for well over an hour after the others left.

On the grave, which had been hoof crafted by the best stone smith they could afford, was an image of a Pegasus, a Changeling, and an earth pony. The Pegasus flying above the Earth pony while the Changeling watched on. A circular rune was carved into the stone, translating into “Remembrance”.

A few minutes later, the crying Changeling was led away by the one she had been crying into, as the third stood there, looking at the Grave.

“We had some great times didn’t we?” Darkblaze said to the grave. “You showed me friendship, helped me see the errors in my life, I made a promise to you…” A tear fell down his face.

“I hope I made you proud.” Darkblaze touched the horn around his neck. “You will always be a part of me… No matter where you are…”

He looked down at the grave, at the inscription he had read so many times.

In loving Memory

A great Changeling, a great friend, and a teacher.

A dear sister, and a Loving Daughter.

Gamma

Darkblaze shed another tear before placing a small green crystal next to the gravestone and turning from it. The crystal was meant as a sign of respect, a charged crystal that was said to help link those that lost their horns to the afterlife. He headed back down towards Ponyville, the place that had been his home for over five years, and was now his official home.

“Hey Dusty!” Rainbow Dash called flying down to Darkblaze.

“Yeah Rainbow?” Darkblaze replied.

The cyan Pegasus flew down and landed next to the Changeling, putting a hoof on his shoulder. “Listen, if you want to take a few days off from work because of all this, I’ll understand…”

“I know that isn’t it Rainbow.” Darkblaze replied, looking up at his employer. “What is it?”

Rainbow Dash smiled. “He’s waking up.”

When they got to the Hospital, Antenna was already clinging to her Queen, crying either tears of joy, or the same tears from Gamma.

“But…I-I saw you.” Antenna said through sobs. “H-How did you survive?”

Chrysalis placed one of her hooves around Antenna, drawing her close in an attempt to comfort her. “Well, as it turns out. A group of Cytes’ Changelings was passing through the area looking for herbs, when they saw a smoke cloud rising up into the air. When they went to investigate, they found me inside the cave.”

Antenna looked up at her Queen, Chrysalis was smiling down at her. “Then they brought me back to a hospital run by Cytes’ Daughter. I made her promise to keep me a secret. I had no power, no strength, and was by all accounts on my deathbed. If it wasn’t for that strange fire, I may have died.” Chrysalis looked off to the side in thought. “You wouldn’t happen to know who did that would you?” She looked back down to Antenna, a small knowing grin across her face.

Antenna felt surprised and then a smile crept across her face. Chrysalis brought Antenna into a hug. “Thank you, Antenna. You saved my life.”

Antenna blushed but returned the hug. “I-It was my pleasure your Highness. I-I was just doing my job.”

The rest of the group of Changelings and ponies was waiting in the lobby of Ponyville Hospital, waiting to be told it was safe to enter the room. Inside which, Princess Hemo was looking over the patient. She looked much like her mother, sky blue eyes, and a longer curved horn than most Changelings, but she was smaller, about the same size as Ceymi used to be if not a bit taller. Ortho was helping her examine the patient.

In the next room over, Two Pink-eyed Changelings were watching over a third Changeling, his horn and wings gone. A slightly larger Changeling crying into her shorter sister.

“Tell me he’s going to be okay.” Haze cried to Blackout, looking up to see her Sister’s eyes. “Please?”

“He’s going to be fine.” Blackout assured her, pulling her a little closer to try and comfort her. “You heard what the Doctors said, he’ll make a full recovery.”

“B-But when is he going to w-wake up?” Haze asked. “I-I still need to get Hab-beas and Z-Zakon…”

Before Blackout could respond, the door to the room opened, and another pink-eyed Changeling rushed into the room, he was smaller than either of the two others, on his back was a young pink earth pony with pure pink eyes.

“Is dad alright?” The Changeling asked, looking at Haze then back at Lockup.

“Habeas?” Haze asked.

“Yeah, hi mom” He said nonchalantly. “I came as soon as I heard.”

“Didn’t you have to take your exam today?” Haze asked looking at Habeas questioningly.

“I ditched it.” Habeas replied, oblivious to his mother’s shocked expression. “I’m not going to just wait to hear if Dad’s alright.”

The small Earth pony filly looked over at the two Changelings and jumped into Haze’s hooves. “Mommy!”

Haze looked at the young filly with a small smile. “My little Zakon…”

“Where did you go Mommy?” Zakon asked. “Home was all weird looking. There was this black stuff everywhere.”

“Mommy had to see the Queen sweetie.” Haze replied. “Oh… and you got your Shape shifting working.” Haze nuzzled the filly. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Mom!” Habeas shouted attempting to get Haze’s attention. “Is Dad going to be okay?”

“Yes… He’ll be fine…” Haze said, looking over at Blackout, who was giving a reassuring smile and nod. “Just…fine…”

“Mommy.” Zakon said looking at Lockup curiously. “Where’s Daddy’s horn?”

Haze let a tear drop down her face. “It’s a long story my little Caterpillar.”

A groan made them all look towards the bed. “Ugh… What happened?” Lockup asked, raising a hoof to his head.

“Honey!” Haze handed Zakon to Blackout before rushing up to Lockup, giving him a long kiss.

When she pulled away, Lockup was actually more confused than he was a few seconds before. “What was that for?” He asked curiously. “I mean… I’m not complaining, I just want to know what I did to deserve that.”

“Hey dad…” Habeas said hoping that his father wouldn’t be mad about him being here.

Lockup looked towards his son. “Habeas?” He asked. “What are you doing here?”

Habeas wrapped his hooves around his dad, giving him a hug. “I came to make sure you were alright.”

“Shouldn’t you be in Canterlot?” He asked Habeas after he broke off the hug. “More to the point what happened after I passed out?”

“Daddy!” Zakon said, hoping next to the bed energetically.

Lockup looked at the small pink filly and smiled. “Oh! There’s my little Zakon.” He lifted the Filly up and onto the bed with him. “How have you been my little Honey pot?” He asked nuzzling the young Changeling.

“I’m fine, Daddy!” Zakon replied happily, hugging her father’s neck. “Does this mean you’re coming home?”

“I believe that is my place to decide.”

All five Changelings looked towards the door Acari had just stepped through. “After all, I am the only one who decides how Exiles are treated.”

Zakon looked at Lockup. “Daddy, what’s an ‘Exile’?”

“I’ll tell you later sweetie.” Lockup replied picking up Zakon and putting her on the ground.

Acari looked at the family of Changelings before focusing her gaze on Lockup. “Soldier 27, Lockup, years ago you betrayed my trust, and the trust of everypony else within my Hive. You released highly sensitive information to Queen Chrysalis, information which she later used to invade Equestria.”

Lockup’s ears fell flat against his head as he looked away from Acari’s glare.

“However,” Lockup looked up. “You also helped me without question for these past few years, you never once gave me another reason to question your loyalty to me, and you served to protect not only your own family, but the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony.”

“Under most normal situations, I would see no reason to allow you to reenter my Hive…” Haze’s jaw hung open as she looked between the two of them; she reached and grabbed Zakon, pulling her close. “However, when faced with death, you risked your own life to save that of one who would be considered an enemy, ending with yourself being heavily wounded.” Acari’s horn lit up. “While I can say with certainty that you are not an enemy, I will give you a single warning.”

She leaned in to glare directly at Lockup. “If you ever betray my hive again, I will not be so gracious with your punishment. Is that understood?”

Lockup nodded as he stared into the death glare Acari was giving him.

“Excellent, now hold still.” She pointed her horn at the base of the broken horn Lockup had. The glow surrounded the small base before in a bright flash; it was replaced with a very small curved horn, about the size of Zakon’s.

Lockup reached up and touched his regenerated horn, his eyes widened as he felt the small curved appendage. “I…I Have…”

Acari nodded. “It will grow back in time. Your wings on the other hoof, I will replace them after you prove to me that I can trust you fully again.”

Lockup looked at her surprised, but that was replaced quickly with slight sorrow. “But… without wings, I can’t live in the Hive.” He pointed out, a large amount of the tunnels were off the ground, and if he didn’t have wings, he wouldn’t be able to reach some of them efficiently.

Acari looked off to the side thoughtfully before looking back at Haze. “That is quite a predicament. I suppose you will have to settle with living together here then.”

Haze’s eyes widened in joy and she buzzed her wings quickly. “Are you giving me permission to…”

Acari nodded and Haze grabbed Lockup and kissed him again.

Blackout rolled her eyes. “Get a room you two…”

Acari chuckled at the two Changelings before walking over to Lockup. “It turns out, that Ceymi destroyed the only list of Exiles… While my memory is not quite as good as it used to be, I’m sure I could… Lose a name or two. Consider it thanks for your service to the Hive these many years.”

Lockup nodded and turned back to his wife. “So… It seems our schedules just opened up, I guess we can have that…”

“Shut up you stubborn stallion, we’ll talk about it later.” She hugged Lockup, “let’s just savor this moment…”

Back out in the hall, a few of the Changelings were watching the display between Lockup and Haze.

“They make a cute couple.” Darkblaze said watching them.

“Maybe you can find somepony that makes you that happy?” Antenna replied, looking back at her son. “Maybe give me some grandfoals to look after.”

Darkblaze laughed. “I’ll wait a little on that one mom.” He replied.

“I’m not waiting forever on grandfoals, you know.” Antenna said.

“Wait a few more years.” Darkblaze replied.

Surprise came bolting down the hall, bits of loose confetti in ‘her’ mane. “Sorry!” He replied. “I was busy getting the Party cannons loaded when one went off in my face.” He put his hoof in his mouth and blew on it, causing the Confetti in his mane to pop out accompanied by the sound of a party popper. “I didn’t miss anything did I?”

“Don’t worry, newbie.” Darkblaze replied. “You didn’t miss anything.”

Surprise let out a sigh of relief. “Oh… I’m glad about that… I thought Pinkie was going to have to tell me everything.”

He looked up at Chrysalis and jumped slightly. “Sorry… Queen Chrysalis…”

Queen Chrysalis waved dismissively. “I’ve had many of those looks for the past month. I’ve become used to it.”

Twilight was looking at the crystal on Chrysalis’ horn curiously, she was still not okay with the fact that Chrysalis was in front of her after the Invasion, at least not without a rather lucrative amount of steel bars between the two of them. However, her curiosity had been growing about the purpose for the crystal. “Why is there crystal on your horn?”

Chrysalis turned to look at Twilight, she raised her hoof and touched the crystal, in the center there was a small crack that ran around the jagged black horn. “My horn was broken in the crash after I was repulsed from the city. The crystal keeps the pieces together until it can be healed by the magic within the gem. Cytes said it would take a few more days to heal before I can reconnect to the full hive mind. After that I should be able to-”

The door to the room opened and Hemo walked through. “He should be waking up soon. I would prefer for only a few of you to be there first, just to ensure he’s okay with visitors.”

Darkblaze walked up to her, “He knows me.” He said. “He’s more likely to trust me.”

Hemo sighed. “Very well… Chrysalis?”

Chrysalis nodded and stood up.

“The rest of you wait out here.” Hemo said. “I’ll tell you when it is alright.”

The rest of them nodded. “We understand.” Twilight said.

When Shade regained consciousness, he groaned as pain began to course through his body. “Am I dead yet?” he asked as he woke up.

“Oh, not yet you aren’t.” Shade could swear he heard the voice before, but he couldn’t put it to a face.

“Snake Eye?” Now he knew that voice.

“Darkblaze?” Shade asked.

“Hey, Snake Eye.” Darkblaze said. “How’re you feeling?”

Shade tried to open his eyes, but his right one refused to let any light through it. He squinted when light hit his eye. “I still can’t feel my hind legs… and I think I’m going blind in my right eye.”

“That’s probably the eye patch.” Darkblaze replied. “Princess Hemo said that you need to wear it for a while.”

“Princess Hemo?” Shade repeated. “Is that another important Pony I never knew about?”

“That would be me.” Hemo walked into view, she was slightly taller than Ceymi, but she had the same coloration as Cytes. “You should know my mother Queen Cytes.”

“Oh… You’re her daughter?”

“Yes.” Hemo replied. “And you are lucky that you were brought here when you were. Any later and we wouldn’t have been able to stop the process.”

“Process?” Shade repeated.

“Ceymi did a huge number on you.” Hemo replied, looking at a clipboard, “Broken and shattered ribs, dislocated wings, broken spine, and a couple of other smaller lacerations.” Hemo lifted up a page on the clipboard, on the page was a line graph, the chart began at a very low point below a solid blue line, as the line went further, it climbed slowly before leveling out by the line. “And that form you used didn’t help much. It drained your emotional reserves far below stable levels.”

“Meaning?” Shade asked.

“You were eating through your body’s magical supplies at an alarming rate,” Hemo replied, flipping another page to show a Changeling with green flames working up its legs. “If Chrysalis hadn’t been forcing love into you, you probably would have…”

“Hold up.” Shade said. “What was that name?”

“Chrysalis.” Hemo replied, looking off to the right. “She’s right here.”

Queen Chrysalis walked into his view. “Hello, my Soldier.”

Shade gritted his teeth, he felt anger rising up within him as he looked back at Chrysalis, were he still a dragon, his claws would have unconsciously extended. “I’m not your anything!” He spat, voice leaking with venom.

Queen Chrysalis was taken aback by his anger. “My. What has gotten into you?”

“A lot of things…” Shade growled. “The biggest and most glaring being you turned me into this!” Shade motioned to his body while still glaring at Chrysalis.

Chrysalis looked over Shade before a look of comprehension dawned on her. “Ah…” She replied, a hint of sorrow in her voice. “I remember you. You were that Dragon that I tried to heal.”

“HEAL!” Shade shouted. “HOW THE FUCK IS THIS BETTER!”

“I did say attempted…” Chrysalis replied with a sigh. “Ceymi had control over me… I’m sorry…”

Shade calmed down slightly, looking away from the Queen. “So long as she suffers…”

“Oh… She will.” Chrysalis replied. “Being stripped of all magical power for a Changeling is practically a death sentence.”

“You should still do more.” Shade replied.

“If you have any ideas, I would love to hear them.” Chrysalis replied.

“Send her to the Fiords, the torture is better there.” Shade said.

Chrysalis smiled. “I like the way you think.”

“Now do me a favor… Leave.” Shade said bluntly. “I’m afraid that I will still kill you if I get the chance. At least for a few months.”

Chrysalis looked at him and shook her head. “Ah yes, I remember you dragons and your grudges.”

“Piss off.” Shade said.

“Very well…” Chrysalis replied. “I have to head to Canterlot, Celestia requested me to help make a peace treaty.” Chrysalis walked out of the room.

“Chrysalis!” Shade shouted, causing the Queen to turn. “Make sure Spine suffers.”

Chrysalis smiled “Ooo…. There’s that Dragon vengeance I love so.” Chrysalis replied before walking out of the room.

Hemo looked between the two of them. “History?”

“She nearly killed me, shattered the bones in my hand, and then her army nearly destroyed my home. Then I got turned into a Changeling. Oh! Then I got thrust into an invasion. Shall I go on?”

“No. That’s plenty…” Hemo replied. “Now, I think you’re okay to have visitors. Just keep that bandage over your eye, you got a concussion, it’s affecting your photosensitivity, so just keep it covered or you might agitate it.”

Shade nodded as Hemo stepped out into the hall, when she reentered, The Bearers (minus Pinkie), Antenna, and Surprise walked in.

“How’re you doing?” Twilight asked.

“Well according to Hemo, I have a broken spine, a concussion, broken ribs, and a dislocated wing… So good considering.”

“You were out for quite a while…” Rainbow Dash replied.

“Really? How long?”

“Two days.” Hemo replied, scribbling something down on her notepad. “You were unconscious and unresponsive for two days.”

Shade twitched. “TWO DAYS!”

“Yep…” Darkblaze replied. “You’ve missed quite a lot…”

‘Quite a lot’ turned out to be nearly the entire town cleanup. Apparently Chrysalis had lent her Changelings to help with cleanup, while she personally entered Acari’s hive and liberated the Changelings. She promised to punish those who knowingly served Ceymi, luckily, or unfortunately, most of the Changelings that had been following her had no idea about Ceymi’s plan or were forced to through threats, so most willingly began serving Chrysalis again.

“But… What happened to Meadow?” Shade asked, noticing a lack of the filly

Surprise jumped into the air. “Oh! I was supposed to get Pinkie!” Surprise reached into his mane and pulled out a pink kazoo. He blew into it and Shade heard a light tapping above his head. He perked up his ears and turned his head to the ceiling, the tapping sound was getting closer. Shade looked over towards where a majority of the sound was to see a vent cover.

The vent cover was kicked off rather unceremoniously as Pinkie Pie jumped into the room, two very confused fillies on her back. “What’d I miss?”

The Pegasus filly on her back was the first to come to her senses and looked up at Shade. “Daddy!” Echo hopped off Pinkie’s back and jumped up to hug Shade.

“Echo!” Shade said as he tried to lift his forelegs, one of which refused to move, and the other one only let him bend at the shoulder. Echo was also currently hugging right on his broken ribs making it very difficult to talk and even harder to not cringe in pain as he did so. “Echo… Ribs…”

“Oh, Sorry Daddy.” Echo gave one final squeeze before hopping down from the bed.

“Mr. Shade…” Meadow said hopping of Pinkie’s back and walking up to the bed.

“Hi, Meadow…” Shade said softly. “Listen I…” Shade couldn’t finish. He didn’t want to talk about what must have happened through those weeks she had been left with Spine, at least not in front of the others. “Can you guys… Leave us alone please?”

“I think that would be wise.” Hemo said, looking between the two. “In the meantime, I suggest we find where Meadow Song’s mother is right now…”

Hemo led the group out of the room. Leaving Shade and Meadow alone. “Meadow I…”

Meadow held up her hoof and Shade stopped. “For the past three weeks, I have been praying to Celestia that you would come to rescue me.”

Shade’s ears dropped.

“I never gave up on you, even if I wanted to. Those Changelings were being cruel, they…fed… off me more times than I could count, I felt terrible, and I thought you gave up on me.” Meadow looked up at Shade. “And… I’m sorry I ever doubted you…”

Shade looked at Meadow, unsure of where she was really going with it. “Meadow… I…”

Meadow hopped up and sat on the bed next to Shade. “Please… Promise me something.”

“What is it?” Shade asked, wanting to shift slightly to give Meadow more room.

Meadow reached over and hugged Shade, being careful to avoid his ribcage. “Promise that if I’m ever in trouble, you will come and get me. No matter what you have to do.”

Shade lifted his foreleg, using it to try and reciprocate the hug. “Meadow… I already made that promise to you.” He replied. “I intend to stand by it until I am certain you are safe. In those weeks that I was stuck, unable to do anything, the thought of you getting hurt because of my own decisions kept me awake at night. I never stopped looking, I was always planning, always trying to get some way to contact you.”

Meadow looked up at him. “But Spine said that…”

“Shh….” Shade replied, pulling her a little closer. “Spine isn’t going to bother us ever again.”

Meadow wiped her eyes. “I watched you fight.”

“What’d you think?” Shade asked. “Pretty impressive for a Changeling that woke up little over a month ago.”

Meadow giggled. “You were great.” She said, releasing the hug. “Can… Can we still be friends?”

Shade smiled. “Of course Meadow…” He replied. “Whatever you need.” Shade looked down at her. “I’ll make up the lost time to you.”

“Alright…” Meadow said. “Mr. Nymph.”

Shade chuckled a little at this before Princess Hemo walked in flipping through the clipboard she was carrying. “I hope my mother is telling the truth about you.”

“What are you talking about?” Shade asked.

“This little, ‘Rapid Healing’ thing she told me about.” Hemo rolled her eyes. “It’s complete coincidence if you ask me. Nopony can do that…”

“Well…” Shade replied. “I was a dragon, so…”

“Yeah… Whatever.” Hemo replied tapping a pencil against the board. “Now, if her calculations were right…” Hemo did a few quick equations on the clipboard. “Normally you would be stuck here for a few weeks while we reset the backbone and for your wing to recover. Then we would let you go under heavy supervision.”

Shade looked down, he was sad he would be trapped inside for another few weeks. Though he was glad that it would be close to home this time.

“But, if she is right about this, than if we give you enough of the healing potion and assuming that you promise to come back to this Hospital so that I can monitor your recovery, then we should be able to get you out by…” She quickly checked her math. “Tomorrow.”

Shade’s eye widened. “Would I at least be able to fly?”

Hemo tapped her chin. “If you let me reset the bone now, then yes, I think you could be able to fly for at least a little bit. But you will have to return here immediately.”

Shade nodded and looked up happily. “Do it…”

Hemo smiled. “Alright… But this will hurt.”

“Meadow… Please go outside for this.” The Little brown filly nodded and hopped off the bed before walking out of the room as Shade’s wing was lifted in a blue aura “3…2…” Snap

The next morning, Shade was allowed to leave the Hospital, after Ortho and Hemo made sure that there was no danger in letting him roam around, his hind legs were attached to a wheeled contraption to keep his back steady while he walked and the brace placed along his back made it so even if he could move his legs, he wouldn’t be able to do all that much. Shade only hoped that the brace didn’t make flying around more difficult than it was already going to be, he knew that turns were going to be difficult already with his wing in pain, but doing any hard turns would be impossible.

The other thing that added to his slight difficulty with flying was going to be the bandage over his right eye. He kept it on since his photosensitivity hadn’t abated, something he learned very painfully. A few doctors attempted to check on his eye, and that ended with a thrashing Changeling that felt like a large needle was jabbing into his eye. He had startled Tenderheart pretty badly too.

Shade lifted the card that was left at his bedside by, if he had to guess, Surprise, but either of them could have done it, knowing Pinkie Pie. It read: Meet at the Train Station! Nothing else, no time, no nothing. If he wasn’t certain that these bracers and wheel things could teleport with him, and if he were still a dragon, warning bells would be going off. Though knowing about the friendly and open nature of most ponies meant that Shade simply had to turn off those alarm bells.

Shade transformed into Sunstreak before walking out of the Hospital and beginning to walk towards the station, not that he was worried about getting attacked for what he was, he was more doing it as a precaution; get the ponies used to seeing him before he showed them he was a Changeling, especially if someone thought that the world could use one less Changeling…

As he walked through the town, he noticed that a few minor repairs hadn’t been completed yet there were still a few buildings with windows shattered or walls with some dents in them, but all the main structuring and holes in roofs had been covered, and as he passed by the Town Hall, he was surprised to find the building that he and a Phoenix Ray slammed into was already fully repaired. He understood that the Changelings were helping, but he figured with how much damage and how high up it was, it would have taken at least another day.

This town must have a lot of near destruction incidents, or really dedicated carpenters. He then thought about the stories he had been told by a few of the Bearers. Nope… Definitely just a weekly thing…

As Sunstreak walked around the town, he wasn’t surprised to see a few ponies look at him confused, or even when a few of them came up and asked where he had been for so long or what happened to him. Whenever this happened he just replied with: “Just doing my job.”

When he managed to walk to the train Station, he saw Twilight and Tornado Dust waiting for the train with the small form of Meadow between them looking both nervous and hopefully towards the track. When he walked up, Twilight looked at him in surprise.

“Are you sure you’re healed enough to be here?” She asked looking at the brace and bandage.

Sunstreak groaned. “Yes… Ortho made absolutely sure there was no way for me to damage myself at all with this… And I’m fairly certain she will not be forgiving me for that sucker punch I gave her…”

“You did hit her pretty hard…” Twilight replied.

“I did what I had to…” Sunstreak replied. “I wasn’t going to let Spine hurt anyone else. Besides, I didn’t do enough damage to cause any serious injury.”

“So I see Surprise got you the card.” Tornado Dust said.

“Yeah, came as kind of a surprise when I managed to wake up.” Sunstreak replied. “How can they get into anywhere without being caught? I man, the vent in my room was closed this morning.”

“If I knew I would tell you,” Twilight replied. “I’m still not sure myself.”

Sunstreak shook his head. “I’ve already given up on figuring it out.” He looked down at Meadow. “How have you been holding up?”

“I’m fine.” Meadow replied, looking down the tracks again.

“Happy to see your mother again?” Sunstreak asked to which Meadow nodded.

Tornado looked at him confused. “How did you know that’s what we were doing?”

Sunstreak rolled his eyes. “Come on I’m not dumb. Why else would you guys tell me to come to the train station?”

“Fair point” Tornado replied.

“So when is the train supposed to get in?” Sunstreak asked, looking at Meadow as she peered towards the tracks.

Twilight looked up at a clock. “It should be here right about…”

A train whistle echoed through the air, causing all of them to look down the tracks where the metal train was spewing black clouds into the air. It screeched to a halt in front of the station. The instant it stopped, Meadow looked at the train in anticipation, waiting to see her mother get off the train so that she could hug her.

When the train doors opened, a small crowd of ponies moved off, much less than the number who got on to be sure. Meadow was looking over every pony that got off, scanning for the look of her mother.

“I don’t see her.” Meadow said, her tone betraying her nerves and fears.

“Give it time.” Sunstreak replied, moving to stand beside the filly. “You can’t expect everyone to walk off at once.”

After another thirty seconds, Candlelight walked off the train, a small briefcase next to her; she looked around before spotting Meadow. “Meadow?” She said, her eyes locking onto the young filly.

Meadow turned to look at her mother. “Mom!” Meadow ran forward and into launched herself the open hooves of her mother. “Mom I missed you so much!”

“I missed you too Meadow…” Candlelight said through a tear. “I was so worried about you. After the invasion I thought I lost you. Then to hear about what happened… Promise me you will never make me worry like that again.”

Meadow began to tear up, nuzzling into her Mother’s coat. “I promise Mom. I’ll never get Foalnapped again.” She looked back towards Sunstreak. “Even if I do, Sunstreak promised to find me.”

Sunstreak nodded. “I did indeed…” He replied. “Just… try not to get kidnapped for a few weeks, or however long it takes for my spine to fix itself.”

“Oh no. What happened?” Candlelight asked, keeping Meadow close to her, almost afraid to let her get too far.

“I’d like to know that as well actually.” Twilight added.

“Short version… Princess Ceymi crushed it, threw me against a wall, and broke my ribs, Queen Chrysalis showed up. It gets really fuzzy after that…” Sunstreak rolled his head, since it was still annoying to lift his forelegs any further than what was needed to walk. “If I’m remembering correctly, she turned Ceymi into a Drone…”

“Oh…” Tornado said his eyes widening slightly. “That explains why that Changeling had three stripes on its stomach.”

Sunstreak looked towards Candlelight, and he saw a small dark blue flame come off her. “Candlelight, what’s wrong?”

Candlelight looked surprised for a moment, then she sighed. “I guess I shouldn’t have expected to keep it away from all of you.” She looked over at her briefcase. “I’m afraid that my boss has become… fed up with me.”

Sunstreak’s eyes widened. “What? Why?”

Candlelight sighed. “My boss is a very greedy stallion. And me having to leave an important business trip because my daughter was just found after almost a month of me worrying my tail off about her, is not something he enjoys.” Meadow pressed herself closer to her mother.

Sunstreak’s jaw was hanging open. “But…He…He can’t just do that!”

“Can and did…” Candlelight replied with a sigh. “So… I don’t have a job, and with Meadow’s father still off in the Griffin Kingdom, we wouldn’t have anything that would bring us any real revenue. Canterlot is a very rough town, I’m not sure if I could manage to find another position there.”

That put a rather large damper on the mood. “I’m…Sorry to hear that…” Sunstreak replied.

Candlelight looked up at him. “It isn’t so bad, I won’t have to go on business trips anymore, and I won’t have to deal with my boss… He was always such a stuck up little…” She let out a sigh and looked down at Meadow.

Sunstreak began scanning the ground, before an idea popped into his head. “Why don’t you just stay here?”

Candlelight looked at Sunstreak surprised, but then looked down at the ground. “I… Don’t know…” Candlelight replied unsure. “Canterlot has been our home for a long time…”

“I understand that, but think about it,” Sunstreak replied. “It’s a nice town, open fields, good ponies around here, I’m sure Pinkie wouldn’t mind having a new friend either.”

“Yes, but…” Candlelight replied. “There’s so much that I would be leaving behind… Meadow too.” She looked down at her daughter

“I’m not asking you to move now.” Sunstreak said. “Just think about it while you settle down for a bit.”

Candlelight nodded. “I’ll think about it. We have a few hours before the next train to Canterlot comes through, so I suppose it wouldn’t be too bad to look around…”

“I’d be happy to show you around.” Twilight replied with a friendly smile. “Maybe Sunstreak can join us?”

“Sadly” Sunstreak said shaking his head. “I’ve got to cut it short soon, the doctors want to keep their eye on me, make sure that these injuries heal correct.”

“Aww…” Meadow replied looking down at the ground.

Sunstreak walked over to her. “But… I think I have enough time for one last thing.” He bent down to be eye-level with Meadow. “Want one last fly before you leave?”

Meadow looked up at Candlelight with an expression that just said, ‘Can I?’

Candlelight looked over at Sunstreak, but nodded. “Be careful, Meadow.”

Meadow nodded and looked up at Sunstreak, he bent down further to let Meadow hop onto the front portion of his back, and she wrapped her hooves around his neck. “Ready.”

Sunstreak’s forehead was covered in green flame as his black curved horn flared into existence; his horn glowed as the supports on his leg detached. He transformed away his horn and flapped his wings to lift himself off the ground, when he was high enough; he flew out of the train station and flew into the sky, before beginning to fly around the small town.

As he began his slow circling of the town, trying to keep himself from ramming into anyone else or agitate the injuries. Despite that, he could tell Meadow was enjoying herself. The happiness radiating off of her was even making him crack a grin as they flew around the town.

Sunstreak looked down at the town from above, looking at the village he actually grew to enjoy, despite the rather… Interesting first few days, he found himself smiling as he looked out over the clear skies. This is my home now… and I couldn’t have chosen a better village to land in.

Author's Note

I need an honest opinion from you guys: Should I write another Chapter that shows the Hive Queens meeting with Celestia? I'll wait a bit before deciding, but if you guys want, I'll write it up and put it in. If not, then I'll just post the final part.

I had to redo the edits after a slight electronical mishap occurred RAGHR would have had this out yesterday... Anyway. Hope you guys enjoy :pinkiehappy:

Epilogue

As Sunstreak made his fly around the town, he didn’t notice someone watching him from the Everfree forest. A white Pegasus wearing a dirty brown cloak was watching from a tall tree, standing on one of the highest branches. He hopped from branch to branch, never even causing a leaf to fall, once he was under the tree line, he pulled a small purple crystal from under his cloak.

He lifted the crystal up to his ear, where it grew across his face, stopping down by his mouth, forming a small earpiece. “Get me in contact with the Council.”

The crystal began to pulsate as he waited for a response. Looking around as he looked for any sign of the local fauna, or flora for that matter, that might decide to try and have a snack.

The Response came with a number of growls and beeps.

“Tell the Councilor that I don’t care who they have.” The Pegasus replied. “Tell him that he put me on this God forsaken mission, and I expect him to talk to me when I have a report to give.”

There was a short pause before the crystal glowed blue. “What?”

“Councilor, I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

“Bad news first.”

“I found the Phoenix Rays that vanished all those years ago.”

“How is this bad?”

“They’re dead.”

There was a pause over the crystal before the Councilor spoke again. “And the good news?”

The Pegasus smiled. “You aren’t going to believe who it was.”

“Who was it? This had better be good.”

“Went missing 30 years ago, cousin is in the Specters”

There was another long pause. “You’re certain?”

“Of course.” The Pegasus replied. “I wouldn’t say it if I wasn’t sure of it.”

“You are to return here.” The Councilor replied. “Bring your findings, and make sure you tell no one of this. We need to keep this confidential.”

“Understood sir.” The Pegasus said as the Crystal glowed purple and began to recede, he grabbed the small shard with a hoof. “This should be interesting,” He said, looking back towards the town.

He placed the crystal back inside his cloak and jumped into the air, flying to the southeast, towards a place far from reach of any of the ponies. He was heading back to the land he knew as home, he was going to the Burning Fiords. He was Content with how the mission had turned out, his entire mission had been to find a flock of Phoenix Rays that went missing and keep a watchful eye on any strange occurrences. Now he may have found something stranger than the rest of it. “Back from the dead…” He mumbled to himself before picking up his pace to arrive back as quickly as possible. "Maybe this Mission won't be so boring after all?"

Author's Note

Mysterious hooded man watches, from a distance
And thus, Converted comes to an end. First real MLP based story I had ever written, and I'm proud of it.

However this is not the end of Shade's story, and far from the end of my stories based in this world. The next big project I'm working on is essentially Shade's experiences in Equestria for the first year of his new life.

I'm glad that all of you guys enjoyed the story, and I hope that you guys enjoy my other stories :twilightsheepish: So for now, I think it is time to focus on that Pesky brain of mine that keeps deciding to flitter around the room. I'll fill you guys in once I get that other story written up.