Please's senses had shifted.

Sight had become less sharp, but she could see a little better when the light was off. Everything had shifted in color, like the blue tint she had first had in the shell was now constant. Hearing was a little sharper, but she couldn't twitch her ears nearly as well as before, so if she wasn't looking at something it was worse.

The scary thing for her, had been her ability to feel. It wasn't her hooves, the feel of the wind in her wings. Please could feel other ponies' emotions. When Slice invited guests around, she could feel when they were happy, when they were worried, or even amorous. It was scary and she was scared that it would overwhelm her own senses and feelings, leaving her as much a shell as the thing that had trapped her was.

Along with the strange empathy, came the hunger. The shell she was trapped in was doing just what Slice had said, it was making her into a changeling, and changelings fed on emotions. She had started doing that now, she hated it. But she knew deep down, that she needed to do it.

"I hate you." Please spat the words at the changeling coming down the stairs, before she saw who it was. "Wait, I'm sorry!"

Smaller than Slice, the drone shook her head as she crawled a little further down. "No, you do hate him. I do too." Cuddle stepped down further. "Can you walk properly yet?"

Please hung her head. "My legs don't work right, I can stand up, but more than a few steps and I am on my belly again." She looked at the annoyingly solid-appearing legs. "Why do you hate him? Why do you stay here?"

Cuddle walked slowly over to the larger changeling, laying down before her. "My name is Cuddle. My mommy was Summer Breeze…" Please couldn't stop herself, she fought the heavy shell around her, shoving her body around and reaching one clumsy leg over the little drone's withers. "He got mommy first. She started seeming odd, acting really strange and… well, she let him stay with us."

"He changed you?" Please gave the filly a squeeze, all sense of Cuddle being a 'changeling monster' was lost, she was just a filly, a scared one.

"No. He didn't care about me at all, he still doesn't." Cuddle leaned in against the trapped mare. "Mom changed me, her first shell caught me up and… and turned me into this." Her snout found the curve of Please's neck and she had no hope of stopping the tears that were flowing.

Please wanted to ask a question, but wasn't sure if she should. "Where is… where is your mom now?" The reaction she got was one she expected, the crying getting worse and worse. "Shh, don't worry about answering, I'll get us out of this."

"No!" Cuddle looked up at Please in fear. "We can't leave, he will… do what he did to mom." Please felt the terror and fear pour off the filly, it made not comforting her impossible.

"Cuddle, you need to tell me, I think." Please leaned down as best she could, the heavy shell making even comforting a terrified foal hard.

"He… he told the ponies what mom was. He did something that made it hard for her to transform… " Cuddle sniffed loudly, pressed in tight to Please. "They… she was locked up, nopony near her was happy…"

Please cursed, she said a string of words that no filly should hear, not ever. But Cuddle looked up at her with those big blue eyes and smiled. "We are getting out of here. The ponies here won't do that to a changeling, they will ask questions and feed us first. Feed us…" Please inhaled deeply, trying to fight her own panic at the fact that she accepted the fate she seemed to have been given. "They even have a changeling living here, a prince."

Cuddle looked up, eyes wide, her crest-fin raised in surprise. "A… prince? Of changelings?" She blinked a few times. "You shouldn't lie… I am not a little filly who believes in fairy tales…"

"I am not lying. If we can get out, we can go to him. If you get out you must! On the other side of town there is a castle, go there, don't stop." Please tried to kiss the filly on the head but her lips were still quite stiff. "I really hate this thing… am I going to have to keep doing this when my old… shell, when it gets too thick?"

"Yeah, but you can shed early, the shell won't be able to do this… to a pony. But you will be more comfortable. Slice is just a big poopy head." Cuddle looked up at the changeling comforting her, she had been scared the mare would be like Slice, she was really glad she wasn't.

Working at her magic, Sunset was getting better and better with it. "Feeding helps. When I am full, I can manage the magic much easier." She was relaxing in the castle itself, flopped on one of the old couches used for the regular parties. A gentle hoof rubbed up and around her ear, an ear that had an extra tuft sprouting from it. "It's like… like the blood helps fuel my magic."

Muffins kept rubbing the mare's ear gently. "Like changeling magic, then. I can't cast it at all unless I have been feeding, not feeding also makes me a grumpy filly." The words stirred Sunset to tilt her head and look up at the other alicorn, then snort in laughter. "You better not say I am fat."

"Big, you are not a filly, Muffins. Tasty though." Sunset lowered her snout back down, closing her lips around the gray foreleg. She was gentle with her nip, she felt not a flinch from her friend.

She felt it, of course, Muffins leaned down and nuzzled at the flame-colored mane. "Dash will be back soon, you want to grab a room and… make like old times?" She felt a slightly tighter bite then, Sunset nodded with the leg still locked in her mouth. "I heard you are going to stay here, forever?"

The vampony groaned, having to feed like this was inconvenient when one wanted to talk. Sunset gave a little more of a slurp and then drew back, licking the wound. "Mmm, yeah. I don't think I want to go back now, what if I lost control?" She nuzzled and poked her snout around the hoof, finding the wound having closed.

"Self exile. You are a good pony, Sunset. Bite again if you are still hungry." Muffins didn't cringe in the slightest when the fangs sank in again. "But don't drink too much, I plan to have some fun tonight, and you had better not be full for it."

"Full for what?" Rainbow Dash crashed to the floor, her hooves skidding half a foot as she stuck her landing. Behind the mare, it was like a rush of cold wind and anger flooded her wake. Barely visible to most ponies, a pegasus adept at noticing wind currents would be able to make out the windigo.

Sunset used her fangs to gently probe around before giving up finding the vein again. "Hi, Dash, you… you brought them inside?" The fiery mare was on her hooves and practically leaped behind Rainbow, spreading her wings.

A storm of wind wrapped around Sunset, the essence of anger spiraling tight and lifting her. The windigo rode over the odd pony and settled in close, taking all the petting she would give them.

"They really like you…" Rainbow was surprised, but smiled. "We had a race to see who could get here first, we all cheated."

"I can feel them… the anger and violence of them…" Sunset leaned in and nuzzled one spirit, the thing's icy body, chilling winds, doing nothing to a creature that no longer feels the bite of winter.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Muffins pointed to Sunset's shoulder and the fiery mare turned her head to look. Her bright color was muted there, ice was clearly visible in her fur. It should be cold, and hurting.

"Nope… don't even feel it." Sunset poked with a hoof, the ice breaking and falling free. "Feels odd, but I get the feeling that the cold doesn't really do anything to me anymore."

Dash squinted. "Want to test that out? Like, really test it?" She wore the same grin she did when challenging a pony to a race, or binding up her wife.

Sunset blinked at the enthusiasm her friend and sometimes-lover showed. "Uh, okay, but you need to let me tap out. I… what are you going to-" Rainbow had leaned down, was whispering to the spirits of the wind that still cavorted around Sunset. They brushed against her, pressing in around Sunset more and more. She didn't feel the cold, but she felt when one leg wouldn't move. "Wh-What did you do?" She turned and looked, seeing her leg fully encased in ice.

"Hold on, Dash." Muffins stepped up, fighting the chilling nature of the wild spirits. "Unfreeze her leg and make sure it is okay."

"It is and will be." Maddie trotted into the room, watching her filly playing with her friends. "A vampony can be frozen completely and then thawed. Just promise you will not leave her to melt in the sun."

Sunset herself started channeling magic, weaving darkness through her spells was second nature now. A large black hound, flame leaking from its snout, started licking at her leg. Everypony present could feel the heat radiating from it.

"Wow… is that really… it looked like the 'dry me' spell…" Muffins' eyes were wide as she watched the shadow hound thaw the mare's leg.

"It's the shadow I weave into my spells. If I don't do it I would burn up, but the magic needs to do something. It prefers to work as illusions and trickery, it is better, I found, to give it a pattern than to let it loose." Feeling returned slowly and Sunset soon took a step, movement restored.

Mademoiselle was staring in shock. She stepped forward and reached out a hoof to the creature. "I feel real heat…" It snuffed her hoof and gave it a lick. "And here I thought my foal only knew small magics."

Rainbow Dash, flanked by her two pets, reached out a wing protectively to Sunset Shimmer. "She is an alicorn, her magic was way powerful before, stands to reason it still is, even if she has to mess around with this sort of thing." She gestured to the big shadow hound that slowly unraveled and blew away. "Okay, yeah, that was way cool… Wonder why Twilight doesn't do that kind of thing?"

"Because 'she' can't." Twilight was rubbing one eye as she descended from the upper level of the castle. "You worked out how to wrap your magic in shadow?"

"Better!" Sunset trotted over to her friend. "Here, watch how I do this!" And, just like that, she began to weave a simple illumination spell. It was harder than most things she could do, needing more light. An eagle screamed and made itself from darkness on the fiery alicorn's back. Spreading its wings, the bird revealed their undersides to be a silvery light.

Twilight's jaw hung open. "That wasn't wrapping, you mixed them! How did you mix them?" A scroll appeared mid air, sleep was suddenly banished as Twilight was taking notes.

"Come on, let's go to your library." Sunset had her little pet close its wings down, letting barely any light out. She spared a glance back to Rainbow Dash and Muffins, a look of regret showing.

"No nookie tonight." Dash lowered her head down, both the windigo whining and nosing at her. A bigger snout pushed in and the pegasus felt a lick on her cheek.

"Oh no, no nookie with Sunset. Come, my wife, let me seduce you." Muffins turned the lick into a kiss as the giggling Dash was suddenly wrapped in a tight ball of green force. Turning, the former mail mare trotted for the exit, her struggling—and laughing—mate fighting the inside of the bubble.

Watching the strange ponies of this town play out their private lives, Maddie shook her head and kept walking. "Just like her cutie mark," she murmured, able to smell where her Sunny Days was staying. Her snout curved upwards, maybe the town was infectious… possibly… likely.

Author's Note

Sometimes when a transformation makes a monster, it isn't really making one, it is just revealing the horrid thing that was already there, hidden by a thin veneer.

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