Grab Bag of Harmony

I stood still, completely frozen, my hand hovering over my nose. I felt an intense tingling feeling, one that I was sure was going to drive me mad. I took in a shuddering breath, and screwed my eyes shut, trying to force the feeling to go away. I felt something begin to build up, and smiled. It was time!

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaah…” I leaned my head back, a giddy smile on my face. After all this time, the moment was finally here! “CHOOOOOO!” My head jerked forward as I let out the worlds greatest sneeze, one that felt like sweet ambrosia on my mind. Finally that stupid pressure was gone!

I slowly opened my eyes, a look of ecstasy on my face. I probably had that sneeze on the verge for a whole minute. I blinked, then rubbed my eyes. I don’t think I was seeing things properly. I looked again, and frowned.

When did I start standing on the balcony of a castle? And since when were there ponies in armor that stared at you like you just popped out of nowhere? I nodded, and said the sensible thing. “Well, shoot. I’m just as surprised as you two are. I’d like to get off, now.”

They blinked, and floated two spears towards me. Right. Unicorn guards, magic, and a large castle. Where else could I be, but Canterlot? One of the guards stepped towards me. “Halt, intruder! You will have to accompany us to a cell, while we work out how you teleported here. We have a strong shield set up exactly to prevent this kind of thing from happening, and passing without permission is a large offense.”

I gave two thumbs up. “Sounds good. I’m gonna try and wake up now, if you’ll excuse me.” I turned around, and started walking towards the balcony. I was surely dreaming, that much was certain. Maybe I hit my head when I sneezed, and fell unconscious?

Either way, I would wake up just before I hit the ground, of course. I stood up on the balcony, saluted the guards that were wearing shocked expressions, and leaned off the tower. Falling from a large height is extremely uncomfortable. All your guts like to go up, while you go down, and it makes you feel funny. I smiled, and embraced the darkness as the ground came rushing towards me. My last view of dream-Canterlot was some very surprised ponies.

My eyes snapped open as I let out a long yawn. I was back in bed? Maybe that nightmare sneeze was just… well, a nightmare. I sat up, and swung my feet out of the covers, which felt odd, and onto the floor. Which was smooth, freezing, and definitely not my nice carpet.

“The heck?” I reached down, and felt the floor. Going from the bumps, and occasional lines, it was definitely some sort of stone. Okay. Still dreaming, maybe. Or I got kidnapped, and drugged. Nah, definitely dreaming. I cupped my hands to my mouth, and gave a shout. “Oi! Anybody there? I’d like some light here.”

I heard some grumbling, and a pair of heavy steps. Two people were coming, I decided. The lights burst on, causing me to cover my eyes as they adjusted. “Hey, a little warning next time, please? Lights hurt, even in dreams.”

I uncovered my eyes, and looked up.”Well shoot! I’m even more surprised than before!” The same guard pony that had spoken to me before was standing, just past some metal cell bars. Alright, either this was a very strange dream, or I had transported to Equestria via sneeze, jumped off of Canterlot, and survived.

Strange dream was the more logical choice, of course. The guard frowned. “Who are you, how did you get past the shield?”

“Blake Dunn, nice to meet you. Last thing I remember before being in Canterlot was sneezing. It was a very nice sneeze, the kind that builds up for a long time, then releases itself really abruptly. I know as much as you, I think.” The guard frowned, and shook his head.

“So that’s how it’s going to be. We’re kind a expecting an attack of some kind, so when some… creature teleports into one of the most restricted areas of the castle, without warning, we kind of have to arrest said creature. And, once you jumped off, we got to add resisting arrest to your list of crimes.”

I nodded, and scratched my chin. “Speaking of jumping, how did I survive that? I kinda fell a long way.”

He blinked, and gave me a confused look. “You don’t know? I just figured– never mind. When you hit the ground, you turned into a giant puddle of ink. We had to go and collect you, which had already begun to reform into… whatever you are.”

I frowned. “I usually can’t turn into ink. And, it’s human. I’m a human.” With a small breath, I looked at my hand, and punched it with my other hand. Both turned black, and intersected. Ink dripped off of them, onto the floor. “But I guess this is just one of those days.”

The guard fidgeted, then nodded. “Well, I’m going to leave now. I don’t have the authorization to press to hard for answers, so I’m going to send a note to the Princesses, and Shining Armor once they’re free.” I made a small noise, and nodded as he walked off.

I was distracted by my new body. I poked, prodded, and punched practically every patch of skin I could see. It all turned into a black, slightly viscous ink as I did so. “Well, this has got to be either the strangest dream ever, or I’ve become the protagonist of an HiE fic.”

I groaned, and stuck my hands in my pockets. I felt something metal in there with me, and pulled it out. It was a metal rectangular business card of sorts. I read over one side, and slowly put it back into my pocket. “Yup. HiE fic.”

The card had said something to the lines of ‘you have superpowers, have fun now in Equestria!’ I laid back, and took a deep, calming breath. “Don’t worry, Blake. You’ve just introduced yourself to the ponies by breaking the law, jumping off a Canterlot tower, and turning into ink. But things are going to work out in the end, because this is friggin’ Equestria.”

I head shouts from out of the room, and what sounded like explosions. “And in the middle of the Canterlot Wedding arc, no less. I think.” I stood up, and walked over to the cell bars, and looked to the doorway. “Okay superpowers, impress me.”

I walked forwards, and through the bars. My body turned to ink where I passed through the bars, leaving a little bit of me-residue on the metal. I was out of the cell, at least. I looked back to the bars, and willed the extra ink to come back to me. It hopped, for lack of a better word, back on to me. The more the merrier, am I right?

I started walking up the dungeon stairs, and found myself in some sort of barracks room. The poor guard fellow from a moment ago was on the floor, with a changeling hovering over him, magic flared. I was guessing it was doing some sort of emotion-stealing magic.

“Hello there, Mr. Changeling.” It turned to me. “Can you tell your hive to stop destroying stuff? I’d appreciate it.”

The changeling hissed, and dived at me. I raised my arm, and the love bug slammed into a blob of ink, that I grabbed him with. “Y’know, this ink power is nice. Very intuitive. And if I read my card right, I can do this now!” I pointed my other arm at him, and a stream of ink flowed out, and into the poor changeling’s mouth.

He struggled for a moment while I flowed myself into him, but stopped once I lowered the last of myself into him. “Well, that was gross.” I said with the changeling’s mouth. Possession was going to be handy, a nice application of two of my powers. Gross, but handy.

I smiled when I realized that moving around was alright. Probably worked like the ink did, I knew how I wanted to move, and I moved that way. I stretched my new, ink-filled body, and pushed the slightly-ajar door of the barracks open with my head.

It was absolute chaos. Green streaks of fire fell from the sky, ponies ran to and from cover, and changeling chased after them. I looked around for a certain castle, and smiled. Time to go meet royalty! I took to the sky with my pirated wings, and made my way to the castle.

Flying as a changeling is boring. Theres no rushing wind, or feeling of freedom. You kinda just slowly float to your destination. After a minute or so of floating, I finally found myself outside the main doors of the castle. I figured they were the main ones, at least. They were very shiny looking.

I looked at the large keyhole on the door, and frowned. A tentacle of ink flowed out of my mouth, and towards the door. I wedged myself in-between the door, and pulled myself through. I could always find another changeling to force myself into.

I looked down, and frowned. My clothes, a t-shirt and jeans, were too boring. I shifted them into a comfortable pajama onesie, black of course, and started walking through the halls of the castle. I followed the sounds of ponies, and shouting until I found a pair of doors with a large amount of changelings guarding it.

I flattened into a puddle, and slid under the carpet, and under the doors. I reformed on the other side, to the surprise of the changelings in the room. I saw Chryssie herself staring at me with a look of confusion. “Who in Tartarus are you?”

“Uh, hi. I’d just like to ask you if you could stop attacking the city. It’s hard to mingle when everything’s covered in love bugs.” She scoffed, and looked me over. I smiled, and rocked on my feet.

After a small moment, she facehoofed. “You can’t be serious. You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“No, actually. I’m Blake, a human! Nice to meetcha.” She gave me a flat stare, and some changelings groaned.

“Will somebuggy put this imbecile in a cocoon? I don’t want to hear another word out of him.” She pulled her hoof from her face, and stared. Next to me sat a nice collection of changeling guards, wrapped up nicely in ink. I was noticeably smaller.

I heard the doors behind me begin to open as Chrysalis ordered the rest of the guards to attack me. I looked back, and almost squealed at the sight of the Mane 6. Sure, they were looking rather down, and somewhat surprised to see me, but still awesome.

“Oh hi, you six! Blake Dunn, huge fan.” I tossed the changelings I was attached to back through the air, and grabbed the ones guarding the Mane 6. From the shouts I heard from behind, I might have hit a few changelings with the ones I had incapacitated.

Talk about good luck, eh?

The Mane 6 were understandably confused, and surprised. I shrugged, and turned back around. “Yo, Chryssie, now can you stop? I don’t think that these fellows are going to let you keep blowing the city up.” I pointed a thumb back at the Mane 6.

Chrysalis scowled, and took a combative stance. “If you seriously think that something as simple as a group friends will ruin this day, then you are sorely conf– mphurk!?” She stopped speaking as a stream of ink flowed up her legs, and into her mouth. I started walking towards her as I took her body over.

Once I was all into Chryssie, I shivered. “Wow. Changeling queens feel really weird. Their organs are all wonky. So, I don’t actually know how to call the invasion off now. Twilight, can you go free your foal sitter? They need to put the shield back up.”

The room was quiet, except for the sounds filtering in from the outside. “Oi! Twilight! Saving first, gawking later.” I frowned at the sound of Chryssie’s weird echoey voice. I was gonna have to figure out how to change voices later.

Twilight blinked, then began to run to Cadence, making a noticeably wide arc around me. The rest of the M6 followed behind, and I focused on making a certain something solid again. I held out a hoof, and spit a glob of ink onto it. It began to harden, and reshape itself until my little power card was sitting in my hoof.

“Alrighty. How to get rid of Chryssie, without future repercussions. I could steal her life essence, make a bug-sicle, throw her into the horizon…” I looked up from my card, and towards the Mane 6. “Do you fellows have any idea on how to get rid of a bug queen?”

The glanced at me, but turned back towards Cadence and Armor. Rude. I ate my card, and decided to keep Chryssie for now. Twilight fired a laser at Cadence’s hooves, allowing the alicorn to embrace her fiancee. I tuned out of the conversation, and began to head towards the door with all the intent of exploring the castle.

I heard a shout from behind as my vision glowed purple, and I began to float backwards. I kicked in the air, trying to break free of Twilight’s magical grasp. “You aren’t going anywhere, Blake Duff, not until you explain how exactly you are controlling the Changeling Queen, and how you know us.”

“Okay. I poured my actual self into Chryssie, thats short for Chrysalis, by the way, which allowed me to move her muscles, bones, and body! And I’m from another world, where a group of people gathers weekly to watch you six ponies do pony things!”

Twilight’s eyes widened, but she sighed. “Alright. But you still aren’t going anywhere. I have more questions for you.”

Cadence touched her horn to Shining’s, causing a large wave of energy to begin to build up. I clicked my tongue. “You know, I don’t actually know if this is gonna harm me while I’m possessing Chryssie.” The six glanced at me with slight worry and confusion as the love/shield spell fired.

As soon as I felt the spell push Chrysalis’ body, I ejected by way of projectile ink vomit. It was an unpleasant experience for everybody. The bug queen was pushed back, and down a long hall in Canterlot Castle, letting a stream of curses fly as she did so.

We watched her sail back, then hit the far wall with an echoing thunk. “Huh. That was oddly satisfying to watch.” I nodded, and headed towards the hallway to fetch her body. Being ink was cool, but it felt nice to have something physical.

“Nnno! You still aren’t allowed to leave, Blake Duff!” Twilight grabbed my ink form, which naturally caused things to go wrong. I felt something really fantastic press against me, like a warm fuzzy blanket or something I pulled on it, which caused the violet glow around me to intensify, and Twilight to let out sounds of strain and effort.

I continued pulling on the warmth, smiling as I took it in. I only stopped when I heard Twilight hit the floor, and her company shout in panic. I let go of the warmth, and blinked as the violet glow of Twilight’s magic disappears. Was I stealing her magic? Did magic count as life energy?

The Mane 6 sans Twilight, Cadence and Shining all took up a defensive position towards me, sheltering the unconscious Twilight. Rarity, surprisingly enough, was the first to speak against me. “We should have known you were trouble, especially after you took over that queen in such an… unpleasant manner!”

Rainbow, of course, was next. “What have you done to Twilight!? Speak up you icky blob, or I’ll buck you into the next Winter!” I held up my hands in the standard ‘I surrender’ position, and began to back away.

“I’m not entirely sure what I did. I think that magic counts a form of life energy, which allowed me to use my Wraith powers to absorb said magic once it made contact with my actual form. Not my fault magic feels like a cozy blanket!”

Rainbow growled, and dived towards me with a battle cry, to everypony else’s dismay. I ran my mind over what was on the card, and tried to use one of my powers. My vision of the world folded and inverted as I pushed myself through the world’s energies, to someplace I sorta knew.

I took a gasp of breath as I became physical again, and looked around me. Yep, I had gotten it right. This was definitely the Everfree Forest.

I really hope that Twilight is okay.