“Twilight, I’m a changeling.”
Rarity sat across from Twilight with a concerned, almost pained expression as Twilight shot the beverage she had been drinking out her lips like a fire-hose.
“YOU’RE A WHAT‽”
“A changeling, darling,” Rarity replied with an extra layer of coolness.
Twilight’s eyes widened, growing larger and larger until they seemed to cover her entire face; Rarity met them as she took another measured sip from her cup.
“HA HA THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE! He he he,” Twilight lurched forward and began discoordinatedly climbing across the table towards Rarity, her laughter devolving in to quiet giggling as she went. Rarity frowned deeply and leaned back.
“It’s true, Twilight. I really have been a changeling all this time. I kept it a secret because I was afraid of how you would react if you knew, but it has been so long and so much has changed, I thought you should know.”
At this point, Twilight had almost made it all the way across the table to Rarity. She stopped just short of her still-seated friend.
“After the invasion six years ago, I started writing out different possible scenarios where one or more of my friends were changeling. I even wrote some where I was a changeling and didn’t even know it! I must have written hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands! Some times I stayed up all night writing them! I kept them in my private filing cabinets in the basement of the Golden Oaks Library where no-one would ever find them, not because I was embarrassed by them, no, of course not, because I didn’t want any real changeling getting their hooves on them and finding an angle I hadn't explored yet. If the did, they could exploit it and sneak through a vector I hadn’t even considered. The existence of such a hole in my complete coverage of the genre is unlikely, I wrote about pretty much every combination of ponies possible, every explanation for why they are actually a changeling, and every course of events that could logically result, but it is possible. This is the kind of thing you don’t take chances with, you see?” Twilight was looking increasingly disheveled; several of her hairs sprang out in random directions, and her wings and hind legs were haphazardly sprawled out on the table while she supported herself with her front legs. She panted for a few moments, having not taken a breath since she began her spiel, then continued.
“Thing is, after careful, oh so careful, observation of the ponies around me, none of my stories-” Twilight gave a sudden jerk, like she had absentmindedly swallowed a tortilla chip and it had gotten stuck, “Simulations! None of my simulations actually aligned with real life! Due to my exhaustive probing of every possibility for changeling infiltration, I can safely state that it is absolutely impossible for you to be a changeling. I AM SURE OF IT.”
Twilight’s eyes beat down on the slightly smaller mare like drills focused on a point, as if applying sufficient force would cause them to puncture the outer layer of her friend and allow her secrets to spill out. Sporadically, one or both eyes would give an erratic twitch, shooting to some point around the room for a fraction of a second, but always snapping back to Rarity afterwards like two magnets held just a bit too close together.
“W-Well, I--” Rarity stammered out before a purple hoof forcefully pressed itself to her muzzle, silencing her.
“You’re not. Nope. No way.” Twilight reaffirmed, shaking her head and wearing a forced smile that grew in both size and forced-ness as she spoke. Slowly, she began making her way back across the table to the seat that had been hers; as she moved, she maintain her eye-contact with Rarity, ignoring the several loud crashes of items being pushed off the table by her splayed-out wings. Eventually, she sat herself back in her stool and her breathing calmed.
“I’m going to purge this from my memory. It never happened because it couldn’t happen; simple as that. Now, Rarity, what is it you were saying before that little slip-up?”
Rarity only stared at her friend in bewilderment and worry. This was not what she had been expecting at all, no sir. She had expected some level of disbelief. After all, if one of your best friends ever, someone you had known for almost eight years, suddenly told you their identity was fabricated and they had been fooling you the entire time, that would be a lot to swallow. She had thought Twilight would be angry at having been fooled, curious how Rarity had done it, anxious to know why she had been doing it, and, possibly worried about more of the ponies she knew turning out to actually be changelings in disguise. Instead, she got this.
“I’m not joking. Twilight, I am really a changeling,” Rarity challenged with resolve harder than she had before.
“What’s that? He he, I must have something in my ear,” Twilight twittered back, rocking back and fourth on her seat and making coo-coo motions next to her ear.
“Watch this.” Rarity stuck one hoof out in front of her, plainly in Twilight’s view. The tip ignited in sickly green fire, which began spreading out. Everywhere the fire traveled, it left a hard black crunchy occasionally hole-filled surface behind. It stopped when it reached Rarity's shoulder. Rarity’s leg was clearly a changeling’s. It looked indistinguishable from the limbs of the monsters that had attacked Canterlot years earlier. Twilight stared at it with disbelieving, unseeing eyes.
“Gee, Rarity, I guess that does look a lot like the leg of a changeling. If it wasn’t an absolute impossibility for you to be a changeling, I might be a little surprised, even worried. Good thing I know you’re not.”
“Twilight, no!” Rarity snapped with an uncharacteristic anger to her voice. In a flash, the same green fire consumed the rest of her body. When it burned out, a full changeling was left sitting across from the princess.
“Very funny, Rarity, but I see right through your disguise. Trying to fool me in to thinking you’re a changeling, really?” Twilight waved her hoof and continued to look anywhere but at her now insectinoid friend.
The changeling stared back at the lavender unicorn alicorn, one side of her face cocked up in shock, the other drooping in disappointment. Fire slowly crept back over her features, returning them to those of the white unicorn we all know and love.
Author's Note
When one of the examples the presenters of "Them's Fightin' Words" used to how to start a story was the cliche of a character revealing that they were, in fact, always a changeling, I just knew I had to use that as the basis of my entry to the writing contest. This genre was so over taxed during the hiatus directly following the changeling's introduction, I think we've all read many good and many not-so-good stories using it. I thought the idea of Twilight being the one writing all these stories, most of which center around one of her friends confessing to her that they are a changeling, was pretty funny. I tried to layer in a few jokes about other topics covered during the expertly-made panel. I would love to hear your thought are on what's funny, what's not, or anything else!
