Things Change

Chapters

But who wants it?
Can you put a lower price on peace?
So far, so good
Wake up, possibly not dead
Symphony of distraction
Hello me
Changing is my business
Dawn patrol
Change sells, but who's buying it?
We the ponies
Canterlot is next
Thirteen
Loved to death
Meet the real me

But who wants it?

"Just five more minutes..." Celestia lazily rolled around in her bed, turning her back to the guard who had woken her up before her usual time.

Being an immortal alicorn with the power to move the Sun didn't mean she didn't need to sleep, after all. She didn't, much like how she didn't need to eat, but she wasn't going to let ponies know about it. They would think she was doing it just because she was lazy.

"Princess, this is a matter of the utmost importance, it is required that Your Majesty be present. We cannot take decisions on this ourselves and the situation may not be in our control for long."

"Ugh, fine," the alicorn said, stretching her wings as she got out of the covers. She grabbed the first of her breakfasts from the tray lying near her bed and began munching down on the cake as she followed the guard. "So, what is this about?" she asked between bites.

"We were doing our usual patrol when one of us heard a window breaking. We came to see what had happened and we found her unconscious on the ground in the hall. We were about to have Your Majesty called when she woke up, and then..." the guard stopped in front of a pair of doors. "Well, Your Majesty will see for herself."

The doors opened, revealing a group of somewhat scared guards in a circle, one of them in the middle with a large black figure on top. The creature turned its head towards Celestia, two piercing green eyes staring at her, and a moment later it lunged towards the princess.

"Wha-" was all Celestia had time to say before the impact. Her mind processed what was happening when it was already too late, and she was hit and brought to fall on the ground. Her life flashed before her eyes as she laid there in shock, waiting for the end. Being a very old creature with a rather long lasting memory it took about fifteen seconds of going through her memories before she reached the first attempt at assassination she had suffered, at which point she remembered that she was immortal. The pony who had walked up to her and stabbed her in broad daylight had rather regretted not knowing that before.

Still, she would have expected to be feeling some sort of something that told her the Changeling Queen atop her was trying to hurt her. Teeth sinking in, magical blasts, her horn trying to impale her. All she felt instead was a light tugging at her mane. She opened her eyes and saw Chrysalis with a few strands of her ethereal mane between her hooves, intently looking at it.

"Hem... Chrysalis, what are you doing?"

The shape-shifter looked towards her, then around her in a confused manner, then back to the alicorn. "Oh, you're talking to me. I was looking at your mane," she said while holding it up for Celestia to see, "it's really pretty." Chrysalis then was distracted by something she noticed, and let go of Celestia's mane to look at the holes in her legs.

Celestia got up and slowly backed away, eyes locked on the changeling who was now staring at the ceiling through one of her holes. "What is happening?" she whispered to the guard at her side.

"She has been like this since we found her. She hasn't tried to harm anypony, she just tackled a couple of guards to look at them and at their armours. She answered none of our questions, but she seems to not know what any of the things around her are. We immediately requested your help. What do you believe to be the best course of action, Princess?"

Chrysalis's ears perked up and she turned to Celestia. "Princess? You're a princess?" She excitedly pranced towards the alicorn. "I've always wanted to meet a princess! Is that why your mane is so pretty? And why you're so much taller than the others? Wait, I'm taller than them too! Am I a princess?" Chrysalis began to spin around trying to get a better look at herself.

"Do you think she's faking it?" whispered Celestia to the guard.

Chrysalis stopped with her head turned backwards, looking at her wings. "What are these weird thingies on my back?"

"Chrysalis?" Celestia asked in a louder volume.

The queen looked around, and upon seeing no one else answered she turned back. "Am I Chrysalis? Is that my name?"

"Well, yes, it is," answered Celestia, somewhat taken aback by how clueless Chrysalis seemed, "do you not remember?"

"I..." Chrysalis seemed confused for a moment. "I... I don't. Where... Where am I? Who am I?"

"Well, you see, Chrysalis, you are inside the castle in Canterlot an-"

The doors to the room opened with a loud bang and Princess Luna walked inside. "Sister, I have been informed of an emergency occurring here by one of my guards, what is happ-"

Luna's question was interrupted by Chrysalis landing on her, knocking the air out of her lungs. Seconds later she was on the ground, the changeling on top of her playing with her star-filled mane.

"Sister?" Luna called, eyes alternatively darting between Celestia and Chrysalis, "What is happening?"

"Chrysalis, could you please leave my sister?" asked Celestia.

"She's your sister? Wait, does that mean she's a princess too? Oh, wait," Chrysalis walked away from on top of Luna's body, "sorry. It's just that your mane is really pretty."

Luna slowly walked to her sister's side, eyes fixed on the changeling who was now staring somewhere near her tail. "What is going on?" she whispered to Celestia.

"No idea," Celestia whispered back, "they said they found her like this."

"What are those symbols on your butts and why am I the only one without one?" Chrysalis loudly asked.

"Do you think it's a trick?" Luna asked her sister.

"Possibly. But what can we do? What if she really forgot?" Celestia turned to look in her sister's eyes. "Think about it, Luna. If she remembers nothing, maybe we can use her. Her abilities, her magic, she could be quite useful to us."

"Magic?" Chrysalis asked, her face almost pressed to Celestia's. The white alicorn stumbled backwards, startled by the changeling's movement she hadn't noticed. Chrysalis looked at her. "Does that mean I can use magic?"

The changeling turned towards one of the guards, and suddenly the poor unicorn was levitated off the ground in a green aura. "I can!" she happily squeaked.

"Off to a good start, I see," sarcastically commented Luna.

Celestia was about to retort, but more cries coming from her guards distracted her. Chrysalis was sitting on the floor, juggling them around in the air with her magic. Celestia slowly walked towards the changeling.

"I'll send a letter to Twilight," Luna said while walking out of the room.

"Put down the guards, Chrysalis. It's not nice to play with ponies without asking them first."

Chrysalis looked up to Celestia with a pair of large worried eyes. "I'm sorry. Will you play with me?" she asked, her eyes seeming to somehow get even bigger.

Celestia's heart warmed at the sight, the scared and disoriented changeling reminding her of the small foals she used to take as her students. It had been a while since she'd taught to someone, after all. Maybe she could finally turn her lifelong enemy into an ally. "Of course I will. I'll be your friend if you want to. Now please put down the guards."

The Queen's green eyes beamed with happiness. "Yes!" she said as she jumped up to hug Celestia.

The white alicorn was knocked to the ground. The changeling's smooth, cold, black and green shell pressed against her fur, the embrace almost rib-crushing. a few bugs crawled out of the Changeling Queen's tattered mane and onto her white coat. Beside her the pain-filled cries of her guards filled her ears as they fell to the ground from their position in midair, the magic holding them up being cut away.

Celestia stared up at the ceiling, water raining inside the room from the hole left by Chrysalis in the window. A spider walked over her open eyes.

"We're going to be best friends. Forever." Strange bug-like noises came from the changeling's body laying on top of her.

"What have I done?"

Can you put a lower price on peace?

"And you believe her?"

In a corner of the bedroom, Chrysalis sat on the ground, playing with her crown and rolling it around with her hooves. Celestia was sitting in front of a small table, sipping on some tea while eating her third breakfast. Twilight was in front of her, having just asked the question after listening to the explanation the Princess had provided.

"What am I supposed to do? I can't throw her in a dungeon if she's telling the truth, do you know how much that would hurt my reputation?"

"And getting fooled by Chrysalis and captured wouldn't hurt it?"

Celestia gulped down another slice of cake. "After something like that already happened six times in less than a decade?"

"Seven, if you count the second time Sombra came back."

"Don't remind me of that. Didn't we decide to have that removed from the official history?"

"Still working on that."

Twilight took a sip of her tea.

"Anyway, I still think you shouldn't trust her. She should have changed by now if she was sincere."

"What if she can't change? Maybe being a Queen means she can't. Maybe she doesn't know how to do it, it looked like it took a conscious effort for the other changeling. Besides, do you really think she would take it this far?"

Twilight remembered with a shudder the way Chrysalis had jumped on her when she'd arrived at the castle. The large bug-like creature landing on her and starting to sniff her mane, followed by an innocent "Can we be friends?" spoken like it was the most normal thing in Equestria. "Yeah, I don't know if she'd be willing to. But about the changing thing, maybe we can try asking her. Chrysalis, could you-" Twilight turned around, and saw the room's door opened, no trace of the changeling save for her discarded crown on the ground, "-come... here."

"Oh, look at the time! I have an audience to attend. Well, looks like you'll have to find her on your own, Twilight."

Turning back towards Celestia the purple alicorn saw only the flash of light left by the teleportation. After a few moments of staring at the empty seat Celestia reappeared, grabbed the rest of the cake and disappeared again.

The guard was frozen in fear. The large changeling walked closer and closer to him, her eyes fixed on his body. Step after step, every click of her hole-filled hooves on the floor another second that ticked away from the countdown to his demise. Soon it would all be over, and the beast who had once attempted to destroy all he worked to protect would finally exact her vengeance upon him. The end was near, he could see it. Just three steps more. The deliberate slowness with which the creature approached was tearing him up. Two. She knew he couldn't run away, she was playing with him. One. He closed his eyes and waited for the moment it would all dissolve.

It never came. He slowly opened his eyes, and found himself face to face with the abomination, her piercing green eyes a pair of windows to a dimension of pain and suffering, two lakes, two oceans of poison and acid, the sound of her breath howling from the deepest abysses of darkness, her fangs knives ready to tear his flesh and drink his blood.

"Hi," said Chrysalis to the guard, "My name is Chrysalis, what's yours? Do you want to be friends? You have a really pretty colour, you know? I really like your armour too."

The guard passed out with a chocked scream, his body falling limp on the ground. Chrysalis curiously lowered her head to get a better look at him. From the end of the hallway came the scream of a guard who'd just rounded the corner. Chrysalis turned towards him, confused, but he had already began to run away, screaming "She's eating him!" over and over.

The changeling began to walk through the corridors, every pony she met running away from her when they saw her. A few jumped out of the windows. She kept wandering around until she finally bumped into somepony who didn't start screaming as soon as she tried to approach them.

"Twilight!" happily said Chrysalis, walking towards the purple alicorn.

"Chrysalis! I've been looking for you all over the castle! What did you do?"

The changeling was taken aback by the pony's angry tone. She stopped and stared at Twilight, eyes starting to water a little. "What... What did I do?"

"What did you do? What didn't you do is the question! Do you think you can just go around the castle scaring ponies like that?"

"I-I'm... I'm..." Chrysalis burst into tears "I'm sorry!"

Twilight stared at the crying changeling in front of her, her body thrashing around with sobs. She was just scared, after all, she couldn't blame her for not knowing what she was doing when she didn't remember anything. She went to her and hugged her tight. "There, there. It's all going to be okay. We were worried about you, that's all."

"Really?" Chrysalis asked between sobs.

"Yes."

The changeling calmed down. "I'm sorry I disappeared like that. It's just that I was bored and I wanted to play with someone."

"It doesn't matter now. Next time, though, you should ask us to come with you. Or change to something else before approaching ponies, most will be scared of you."

"But why? Am I ugly? Wait, what do you mean change? Can I-"

"Never mind! No, no, forgot you totally can't shape-shift. Just forget I said anything about it."

"Okay. Will you play with me now? Or wait! You can tell me more about myself! You used to know me, right?"

"I didn't really know you that well. But I can tell you more about ponies if you want to."

"Sure! What are those weird things on your butts? Why don't I have one?"

"That's called a cutie mark. You see, when a pony is old enough...

The Sun was setting on the horizon, and in the crowded conference room everypony stared up at Celestia, who was eating a slice of cake. A number of hooves were raised from the crowd in front of her, and she pointed at one of them.

"Princess Celestia, how do you respond to those claiming that your diet is excessive and unnecessary?" asked a green earth pony.

Celestia finished eating her slice and levitated another from the plate near her. "These are baseless accusations. In order for me to have the strength necessary to lift the sun each day each one of my five breakfasts, six lunches and four dinners is fundamental, as well as every other intake of food during my day. Next question," she said while pointing to another raised hoof.

"Princess Celestia, what do you have to say about the reports of ponies jumping out of the castle's windows this morning?" questioned a brown pegasus.

"No such thing happened. Next question."

"Princess, it has been suggested that you might have published books under a false name in the past. Books of a rather salacious content, some claim," said a grey unicorn with a blue mane and a light blue snowflake as her cutie mark, wearing a pair of glasses and a necklace.

"Absurdities, although it would make for a good story. Next, please."

"Your Majesty, there are numerous reports of a large unreformed changeling roaming the castle."

"None of them are true."

"Princess, what about the one that's walking towards you right now?"

"As I've said, these are all false claims without evidence."

"Princess, she is hugging you right now."

"Nonsense. There are no unreformed changelings in Canterlot, and this is my final statement on the matter. We are out of time now, I will be going." Celestia walked out of the room, the rest of the cake floating beside her and Chrysalis being dragged on the ground as she hugged the alicorn's neck. They entered a nearby room and the door closed behind them.

"So, about that book thing," asked Luna from a corner of the otherwise empty room.

"Sister, what season is it?"

"Summer, but wh-"

"Look out of the window, how far can you see?"

"I can see all the way to the edge of Canterlot, wh-"

"Then this is neither the season nor the weather to discuss such matters. Now if you'll excuse me I have to take care of the changeling you were supposed to guard." Celestia looked down at a rather sad looking Chrysalis. "What is it?"

"Twilight explained to me what a cutie mark is. Why don't I have one? Am I good for nothing?"

Those large green eyes stared back at the Princess. "No, dear, no. It's just... You just haven't found your special talent yet. It must be really special if it's taking you this long. I'm sure we'll figure it out. I'll help you."

"Really? Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. Can you put me to bed? Where will I sleep? Can I sleep with you?"

Chrysalis face was full of expectation. "Fine, but just for tonight."

Chrysalis squeed in excitement.

"Don't get yourself hypnotized," said Luna as Celestia and Chrysalis walked away.

After a few hallways and ramps of stairs Chrysalis stopped. "Why are ponies scared of me? Why am I so different? Is there something you aren't telling me?"

Celestia turned back and hugged her. "No. There's nothing wrong with you. I'll tell you everything tomorrow, but don't worry, everything will be-"

From behind a corner a dizzy-looking guard stumbled forward. "Princess, I just woke up... Queen-Queen Chrysalis... she's... she tried to..." his eyes focused on the changeling hugging the Princess and he passed out again.

"- alright."

So far, so good

"Any questions?" Celestia asked the guards standing at attention before her. She had just finished explaining the situation to them, reassuring them that Chrysalis's presence was not a danger to them and that she meant no harm. A trembling hoof was raised, the unicorn to which it belonged fearfully glancing at what was happening to his right. Celestia nodded to him.

"Your Highness, was it not said just yesterday evening that there were no unreformed changelings in Canterlot?"

Celestia swallowed the piece of cake she was munching on. "No such statements were made."

"But, forgive me, Princess, I was present and I remember-"

"Are you doubting your princess' memory?"

"No, no, I would never-"

"Good." Celestia took another bite from her slice of cake. "Then I will be going. I expect you all to do a good job at taking care of her. Goodbye Chrysalis, I'll see you at lunch." Celestia walked out of the room and then teleported away.

"Goodbye," said Chrysalis. She was busy hugging the guard next to the one who'd spoken before, the pegasus paralysed with fear.

"So... What do we do now?" asked one of the guards.

"Well, you heard the Princess, we have to take care of this... of her," said another while pointing to the changeling.

Chrysalis's tongue was slowly travelling towards a few crumbs left by Celestia on the ground, her body still glued to the pegasus.

"How?"

"Oh, come on! It can't be that hard. Why don't we ask her?" asked another guard. He turned towards the changeling. "Chrysalis?" he asked.

"Yepth?" she replied, her tongue slowly coming back in her mouth, "What is it?"

"What would you like to do today?"

"Can I see more of the castle? I'd love to see more of the castle. Can I see more of the castle?"

"Of course you can. Right guys?"

The rest of the guards just looked at him. Except for the pegasus hugged by Chrysalis, who was starting to hyperventilate.

"Of course you can. Come here, we'll show you around."

He began to walk out of the room. Chrysalis started to hover with her wings and followed him flying, the body of the guard who had now fainted carried in her hooves like a stuffed animal. The rest of the guards reluctantly followed them, keeping a safe distance from the changeling.

"Do you think spiders can dream?" asked Chrysalis as she reached the guard in front of her. He turned towards her with a puzzled look but before he could say anything the changeling pointed one of her hooves to a door. "What's behind there?" she asked.

"That is Princess Luna's room. She is sleeping right now so we shouldn't-"

He was cut short by the body of the guard Chrysalis had been carrying around getting thrown at him as the changeling dashed inside the room and shut the door behind her.

"Luna?" she called once inside the dark room. Somewhere in front of her came a mumbling. She lit her horn and walked towards the bed where Luna was lying face-down. "Luna?" she asked again as she turned the alicorn on her back.

"...joining hooves and make a chain, the shadow of the Wicker Mare is rising up again..." mumbled the alicorn in her sleep.

"Luna!" called Chrysalis, louder this time.

The Princess jerked awake, incoherently blurting out something about time. She turned her half-asleep head to the changeling and her instinctive response to the sight was to fly out of her bed and onto the wall in fear, which resulted in her head smacking against the ceiling and in her falling to the ground, all the while Chrysalis watched with eyes that were in equal parts confused and amused.

"Are you alright?" she asked as she walked to the other side of the bed, where the alicorn was.

"Yes," was the somewhat annoyed reply she got.

Chrysalis hesitated at hearing that. "Did I scare you?" she asked Luna.

The Princess looked in the changeling's eyes. Chrysalis looked worried, her body trembling a little. She got up and hugged her. "No, don't worry. I know what it's like when ponies are afraid of you. I'm sorry I made you think that."

"Do you really know what it's like?"

Luna got up. "Of course. You see-" she cleared her throat "- I'm the Princess of the night, so of cou-"

The door slammed open. "I'm terribly sorry, Your Majesty. Chrysalis, Princess Twilight is here and she would like to see you."

"But I was about to break into a song," lamented Luna.

"Goodbye Luna," said Chrysalis as she followed the guard outside.

"But... my six minutes long musical number..."

Chrysalis shut the door behind her. She grabbed another guard and hugged him as she flew behind the one leading the group. The unicorn in her grasp silently mouthed out the words 'help me' before passing out from the lack of oxygen, the changeling hugging him a little too forcefully. The group walked down a series of stairs and reached a hall in the lower floors of the castle, where Twilight waited for them with a stack of books.

"Twilight!" joyfully called Chrysalis as she threw the unicorn's body behind her, knocking down a couple of guards. She jumped on Twilight the two of them crashed through a pile of books before landing on the ground. "I'm happy to see you," she said while hugging the purple pony.

"Me too," replied Twilight from somewhere under the changeling and the books. She teleported out with a flash of light and turned to the slightly confused shape-shifter. "I brought you a few books on pony history, I'm sure you'll find them interesting."

"Oh, thank you!" Chrysalis picked up a small red book and opened it to a random page. "...and I'll look down and whisper "No." " was all she was able to make out from the writing as she read it aloud before it was snatched away from her by Twilight's magic.

"Whoops, that's not supposed to be there. Don't know how it ended up here."

Chrysalis grabbed another one, although it was more like a bunch of sheets of papers held together than a real book. "The time has come for a truth that I have long held back. As of this day, Luna and I shall be stepping down as-" she read aloud before this one too was taken away.

"I thought I'd burned this thing," said Twilight looking at it.

Chrysalis levitated another one and she stopped to read the title. "The Empress of the V-" but once again Twilight took it away.

The alicorn was scanning all of the books she brought, holding them up in the air with her magic as she looked at them one by one. Realization slowly hit her that she'd brought the wrong pile of books, and her eyes widened in fear. "Errrr..." was all that came out of her mouth before she teleported herself and all of her books away, leaving a very confused Chrysalis behind.

"Was that book the book I think it was?" asked a guard to the one near him, but none of them had time to say anything else before Chrysalis was face to face with them.

"What do we do now?" she innocently asked.

"Well, the castle is still big, there's a lot of other things to see before lunch," said the guard who had guided Chrysalis up until that point. He began to walk down a corridor and Chrysalis followed him, the rest of the guards reluctantly joining them.

"So, how did it go?" asked Celestia between bites, a large cake resting on the table in front of her.

"Great!" answered Chrysalis, the slice of cake on her plate left untouched. The pair of guards still left smiled and nodded to the princess, happy that Chrysalis hadn't mentioned what had happened to the rest of them. Showing her the armoury had not been the brightest of ideas.

"Happy to hear that." Celestia took another bite of her cake. "Are you going to eat that?" she asked looking at Chrysalis's plate.

"No."

Celestia levitated the slice on her own plate, then a thought occurred to her. "Chrysalis, have you eaten anything since you've gotten here?"

"No."

"And are you not hungry?"

"No."

"Well, more cake for me then. It takes a lot of energy to move the sun. What do you want to do later, Chrysalis?"

"..."

"Chrysalis?"

Only silence.

"Chrysalis?" Celestia turned to the changeling. "Chrysalis, what are you doing with your head against the plate? ...Chrysalis?"

Celestia lifted the changeling's head. Her green eyes were rolled back in her head and her breathing was slow and erratic. "Oh."

"Is she dying?" asked one of the guards to the other.

"Well, we could leave her there. No one will know, after all."

"That's a good plan," said Celestia, the two guards turning towards her, "although it does involve killing all the witnesses too," she continued as she turned to them.

"I'll go call a doctor. Or a changeling. Or a changeling doctor. Are you coming with me?" said one of the guards as he turned to the other. He'd already left.

A knife was slowly floating in the air towards the remaining guard, a golden aura around it, when a scream from the other side of the room gave him an opportunity to run away.

"Princess, there's a changeling sitting at the table!" screamed a maid who'd just entered the room.

Celestia's eyes shifted from the knife to the pony to Chrysalis. "So what?"

Wake up, possibly not dead

"I brought the right books this time, sorry about before. I asked Luna and she told me you were-" Twilight finally entered the room and saw the changeling lying in a hospital bed "-here..."

"Hi Twilight," said Celestia from the other side of the room, an empty plate with some crumbs on her side.

"What's happening here?" asked the purple pony while pointing to Chrysalis.

"Oh, that? She passed out a couple of hours ago. The doctors say she is love-starved and has entered a hibernation period."

"And what are we going to do about it?"

"Well, we put her in the bed."

Twilight stared at the other alicorn for a couple of seconds. Celestia just stared back.

"You do realise we can't just leave her there, right?"

"Oh, Twilight, you silly, of course we can. This isn't the only hospital bed in Canterlot, you know, it's not like we'll need to use it for someone else. She can stay there for as long as is necessary."

"She isn't going to get up if we do nothing. She'll be there forever, do you get that?"

"Yes."

The two just stared at each other for a while.

"Isn't that a bit unethical?" asked Twilight.

"You and your fancy neologisms, Twilight. It's not like we're doing anything wrong."

"Depriving a living creature of her life and leaving her to sleep for all eternity as she slowly consumes her last shreds of energy?"

Celestia blinked. "Well at least nobody knows she's here."

"She scared half the castle's staff to death, she was seen in a room full of journalists, and you announced her presence to your guards. I think they know."

"That's just their word. What is it worth against mine, or yours, or Luna's? All they have are witnesses, Twilight, and without empirical evidence they can't prove anything."

"And what about the changeling-shaped hole in the window?"

"Well, it's just an alicorn-shaped hole. We'll blame it on Luna."

"It's a changeling-shaped hole, Celestia. You can see the holes in the legs. Because someone decided the windows needed to be frozen in time so they wouldn't age, so the parts that weren't hit are still floating there."

A frown came over Celestia's face. "Oh. We can always break the rest."

"Yeah. It's not like the pictures were on the cover of literally every newspaper in the country. A couple of them had them on the third page."

Celestia slowly got up and moved towards Twilight. "My faithful student, I must ask you to car-"

"Nope. You're not pulling that whole 'please take care of this problem because I'm too lazy to do it myself' on me again, I already got my promotion and the moment you try that I'm teleporting out of here and declaring Ponyville an independent nation. You got yourself in this mess, you are going to deal with it."

"I taught you well, Twilight. Too well. Fine!" she said, turning to the changeling, "Fine, I'll do it! Stupid changelings and their stupid holes. Why do they have holes anyway?"

"That would be your fault," chimed in Twilight.

Celestia gave an annoyed sigh. "Remind me to retcon that. Now, how do we get her out of this?"

"Have you tried loving her?"

"Oh shut up! This doesn't make any sense. I mean, I didn't really like her that much, but there were definitely a couple of times where I didn't hate her in the last days. I even hugged her. And I'm not the only one who did. How can she be starving when we gave her love?"

"Maybe she wasn't taking it?" asked Twilight, her nature having the better over her will to not interfere, "Maybe she forgot how to drain love and she hasn't been eating all this time? If that's the problem then we could just explain to her that she needs to feed on love, once she wakes up. The problem is, how do we wake her up?"

Celestia teleported away and returned with another slice of cake, beginning to munch on it as she watched Twilight trying to solve the issue. "Maybe not too well," she silently chuckled to herself.

Twilight stopped in her pacing back and forth across the room. "I got it! This is clearly a defence mechanism to prevent a changeling queen from starving to death, but it would be utterly useless if all it did was make her sleep. That means it's designed to keep her safe while her changelings hunt for more love, so while in this state she should be able to naturally absorb the love they bring her. Now we just need a changeling to feed her some love and she should wake up." Twilight froze as she realized something. "Wait. I just solved this for you, didn't I?"

"Yep."

Twilight decided that was a good time to introduce her face to the jamb. "I'll go call a changeling," she said, the sound kind of muffled by how her face was pressed on the surface.

"No need for that," said Celestia, "Elytron, dear, did you hear what Twilight said?"

The plate in the corner of the room transformed into a changeling. "Yes, Your Highness," he said before heading towards Chrysalis.

Twilight watched in shock. "You use them as plates? Do you not have a morality?"

"Well, I am immortal, so I guess you know the answer."

"I didn't say- Oh wait what is he doing?"

"It looks like he's transferring his love to Chrysalis."

"That looks... Why-Why does it look like he's..."

"Barfing?"

"Yeah, yeah I think I'm going to do that."

Symphony of distraction

"So, what did you want to tell me?" Chrysalis asked Celestia.

The two of them were inside the hall where Celestia had first found Chrysalis. After she'd woken up Celestia had told her she intended to have a conversation with her, and now was finally time.

Celestia sighed as she looked at the changeling-shaped hole in the window, giving her back to the one who'd left it. "Chrysalis, I'm afraid I... I haven't been entirely honest with you." The alicorn sounded worried and tired.

Chrysalis walked closer to her, stepping over one of the many large pony-shaped mounds of what she assumed was dust under the carpet. "Don't worry," she said as she lowered her head, "neither have I."

Celestia narrowly dodged the shot, the green beam of energy erupting from the changeling's horn hitting the stone wall and blowing a hole in it. She turned to Chrysalis in shock. "You-you lied to me?" she asked while deflecting another magical projectile.

"Of course I lied to you. What did you expect? Did you really think I would become your friend? Did you think I was going to turn into one of those obnoxious rainbow moose things? Well I'm sorry to disappoint you, Celestia, but it was an act, and you fell for it." She fired another shot.

Celestia dodged and responded with a blast from her horn. "How could you-"

"Oh, it was too easy, really. Did you not notice the way I disposed of most of your guards? The way I ruined your reputation in public? The way I explored the castle and studied your habits?" Chrysalis deflected Celestia's magic. "Tricking you into feeding me was the last piece of the puzzle, and now there's nothing you can do to stop me!" Another bolt of energy jolted forward from her twisted horn, sending the alicorn to smash against the wall.

Celestia was lying on the ground as Chrysalis walked closer to her. She slowly lifted her head. "How could you-" Chrysalis stopped as she noticed the smile on Celestia's face "- think that I would fall for that?"

Suddenly guards started to enter the room. From the doors, from the windows, from underneath the carpet. Chrysalis realised in that moment that dust didn't usually protest when you walked on it. Soon the changeling was surrounded on all sides, an array of spears and horns pointed at her from all directions.

"I suspected yours was a trick from the first moment, Chrysalis. That is why I immediately replaced all guards in the castle with novices while the previous members were ordered to wait for my command. At all times they have been following me around, ready to strike when you tried to attack me. As for the journalists, they were merely actors pretending to interview me. It was a test to see what you would have done. This was all part of my scheme, a trap designed to lull you into a false sense of security so that you would expose yourself, thinking you had damaged my reputation and neutralized my guards while in reality you had only played into my plan."

"Clever," the Changeling Queen said, "very clever. But not enough."

Half of the guards suddenly turned against the others, a green glow in their eyes.

"Did you think I hadn't noticed? I knew about your plan from the start," Chrysalis said as she walked forward, guards fighting all around her, "I hypnotized them while you were sleeping. How could you ever think you had outsmarted me?"

Celestia laughed and the Changeling stopped, staring at her.

"What is it now? Have you finally gone insane? You can't defeat me, Celestia, give up now if you want to be spared the humiliation."

All of the guards were teleported outside in a flash of magic. "You think this is over?" asked Celestia. "I'm impressed that you managed to discover my plan. Or rather, I was impressed when I discovered you had discovered it. But I had anticipated such a thing could happen. You see, Chrysalis, the guards weren't there to stop you, it was merely a distraction." Celestia began levitating in the air, her body glowing with magic. "A distraction that would grant me enough time to perform the spell necessary to unlock my true powers. It's a shame most of the castle will be destroyed in the process, but now that you so foolishly allowed me to begin my transformation there is nothing you can do to stop me. Behold the glory of a new sun!"

The light around Celestia grew brighter and brighter, becoming impossible to look at. Chrysalis shielded her eyes with a hoof, then shielded the holes in the hoof with the other one. Small fragments of stone started to lift from the ground, the room began to shake. The temperature began to rise and the smell of ozone filled the air. Then the light flickered off like a broken light bulb, the shaking stopped and a fizzling sound was heard.

A very confused Celestia looked over herself. "Shouldn't my mane be on fire right now?"

"Ha!" Chrysalis shouted at the alicorn, shooting a bolt of magic from her horn that hit Celestia and caused her to fall on the ground. "Did you think I wasn't aware of your alicorn powers? It was the first thing I took care of. When I jumped on you, Twilight and Luna to hug you, I was actually secretly injecting a magical inhibitor in your systems, using the shock of seeing me launch myself on you to prevent you from noticing what I was actually doing."

Chrysalis walked over to Celestia's body. "It's over, Celestia."

The alicorn looked up. "I guess you're right. Congratulations, Chrysalis, you have outsmarted me. Go ahead and lower the magical field you raised around the room to prevent others from noticing our confrontation and entering the room, so that you may gloat in your success as you publicly announce how you defeated me."

"Yeah, I think I'm going to do just that." Chrysalis horn glowed for a moment, then she was immediately hit with a blast of blue magical energy that sent her flying towards the wall.

"Ha!" Celestia shouted at the changeling. "Did you think I wasn't aware of that? I knew about what you'd done the moment you did it. While you were busy scouting the castle I removed the inhibitors from Luna's body, and now that I distracted you for long enough to allow her to unlock her true powers somewhere safe and come back here to stop you there's nothing you can do."

Luna entered from the door and flew at Celestia's side, and the two of them walked over to the changeling.

"Anything left to say?" asked Celestia.

Chrysalis remained silent. The white alicorn turned her body over, only to find it was turning into that of a normal changeling.

"Checkmate!" came Chrysalis's voice from Celestia's right.

Celestia turned around to see Luna's body slowly transforming into that of the Changeling Queen. A bright green flash erupted from her twisted horn and the alicorn was sent smashing against the wall, which broke behind her revealing the gardens below and the starry sky above.

Chrysalis slowly approached the Princess. "You see, Celestia, the Chrysalis you've been interacting with this whole time was always a disguised changeling under my control. Her coming into this room with what appeared to be amnesia was all part of my plan to distract you and your guards while I secretly attacked Luna. I was able to capture her that night, and ever since then I have always been her, and you foolishly revealed all of your plans to me." The changeling readied another blast of magic.

"Wait!" screamed Celestia.

"What is it now?"

"This is the part where I'm supposed to tell you I knew about your plan and I planned around it."

"Then do it, so I can tell you how I planned around your plans."

Celestia hesitated. "There's... a small problem, actually."

"What?"

"I, er, I sort of..." Celestia cleared her throat, "I didn't actually know about this one."

"Oh, well. Goodbye." Chrysalis fired from her horn.

Celestia was sent falling down. She landed in the fountain and began to sink down into the water, the world around her becoming darker and darker. All she could see was the green light glowing above her, Chrysalis readying her third shot. She turned her head to the side and saw Luna looking at her while munching on some popcorn.

Celestia's eyes shot open and her head jerked upwards. She was in bed. Slowly the alicorn's body made its way to the door and into the corridor, before entering another room. She walked up to the bed and watched the figure sleeping there, making sure nothing had happened to her. Suddenly she woke up, and a slight shock was visible on her face before she realized what was happening and relaxed.

"What is it?" Celestia asked, lifting her head from the pillow.

"I had a nightmare," Chrysalis replied, her body still the shape of Celestia's, her voice a copy of the alicorn's, "can I sleep with you tonight?"

Celestia looked back into her own eyes. "Of course you can, dear."

Hello me

"So, what did you want to tell me?" Chrysalis asked Celestia.

The two of them were inside the hall where Celestia had first found Chrysalis. After she'd woken up Celestia had told her she intended to have a conversation with her, and now was finally time.

Celestia sighed as she looked at the changeling-shaped hole in the window, giving her back to the one who'd left it. Luna and Twilight were in the room too, the first one visibly tired while the second was reading a book.

"Chrysalis," Celestia began, "It is time for me to finally tell you about your past and about who you were before your amnesia."

Somewhere behind them the sound of Luna's body hitting the ground was heard. Twilight paused briefly to look at the now sleeping alicorn, then went back to her book. Chrysalis walked up to Celestia.

"You see," the white alicorn continued as she turned to the changeling, "you are not actually a pony."

"I'm... not?" asked Chrysalis, somewhat confused.

"No. You're actually a changeling."

"What's that?"

"You see, Chrysalis, a changeling is a creature capable of transforming into any object or creature they wish. They can use magic and fly like ponies while in their normal shapes, but they don't have a cutie mark. The one you saw when you woke up from your stasis was another changeling. Also, you feed on love rather than food."

"But he was all colourful and he didn't have any holes. Why am I so different?"

"That's because..." Celestia hesitated. "That's because you're actually a changeling queen."

Twilight stopped reading and looked up at the other alicorn.

Chrysalis was surprised. "A queen? Me? I'm a queen?"

"You are, my dear."

"But... But why didn't you tell me this sooner? Why did you lie to me?" Chrysalis asked, confused.

Celestia looked at her, the changeling looking somewhat hurt. "We were... We were afraid this could be a trick. We feared some other changeling was pretending to be you, using amnesia as an excuse for why they didn't know how they were supposed to act so that we would teach them and they could replace you. There was the possibility someone had captured the real you."

"But why would someone do that? Are there evil changelings? Or do they hate me for some reason? Was I a bad queen?" asked Chrysalis, disoriented.

"Evil changelings? Sadly, yes, some members of your kind are evil, but it has nothing to do with you. You were always a good queen, beloved by your subjects and by your allies."

The sound of Twilight's face colliding with the cover of her book echoed from behind Chrysalis, but the changeling was too excited by the news to notice it. "I was good? That's great to hear! Wait, if you're a princess and I am a queen, and we knew each other... Were we friends before?"

"Of course we were. The best of friends, in fact."

Twilight's book hit the wall behind her, the purple alicorn's face still attached to it.

"Really? Can you tell me about the things we used to do together? Or about the things I did when I was a queen?"

"Well, there was that time you inv-hem, you visited the city of Timbucktu. It was a great pegasus city built among the clouds. That was actually the time when you received your title of queen."

"How did it happen?" asked Chrysalis excitedly.

"You see, while you and your changelings were visiting the city someone attacked it. The ponies were being defeated, but thanks to your help and your strategy they were able to win. King Orion was so impressed that he gave you his crown."

Twilight levitated her body out of the room in frustration.

"Oh... Wait, my crown! I think I left it in your room. Can you go get it for me?"

"We can send Twilight. Right Twilight?" Celestia looked but saw the purple alicorn had disappeared. "Luna?" she asked then.

"...Insanity, spinning faster, sending you back..." mumbled Luna between snores.

"Well it looks like I'll have to go myself." Celestia disappeared with a flash and she returned after a couple of seconds, holding a slice of cake in her magic.

Chrysalis looked at her, expectation in her eyes.

"Oh, right. Your crown." Celestia disappeared again and returned with the crown, which Chrysalis immediately put on her head.

"Now can you tell me more?"

"Well, there was that time when you liberated the city of Trot from Emperor Incitatus. It was a fierce battle, but in the end you managed to win, thanks to my help, and the city was freed. After that, I personally rewarded you with a vacation. Unfortunately your stay there was interrupted by a dragon, but you were able to defeat him all on your own."

Chrysalis stared wide-eyed. "Tell me more, please."

"There was the time you attended the wedding of Twilight's brother and Princess Mi Amore Cadenza. That one was a really fun time, you got all your changelings to attend the ceremony and you even pulled a couple of pranks on us by pretending you were the bride. And you were so kind to let Cadence relax while you impersonated her and checked the preparatives yourself."

"Did I really do that? Was I really that kind?"

"You did. And it's not even the best thing you did. Not too long ago you replaced all princesses and all the element bearers with changelings in disguise so that we could all spend some time together in your castle. When Twilight's other friends found out they showed up and we all had a big party together."

"Wow. What is my castle like?"

"Oh, err... It was unfortunately destroyed some time after that. I don't know if it's already been rebuilt."

"Oh." Chrysalis looked around. "Where do changelings come from?"

Celestia almost spat out her cake. "I... don't actually know that one. I mean, you lay eggs, but if you're talking about changelings as a species then you'll have to ask Twilight. I think she mentioned something about a tree once. Something you told her. You two used to be very close ever since the wedding."

"We did?"

"You did. It almost looked like you had a thing for her, with all the posters and writings on the wall in your cell-I mean, in your room. Although after that party in your castle it seems you started to care more for Starlight, Twilight's student."

There was a brief pause while Chrysalis reflected on what she'd been told.

"Can you tell me more?" she proceeded to ask.

"I'm afraid you'll have to ask Twilight for more. I know of a time when you took the Cutie Mark Crusaders on a visit to a castle and then asked her to become your student, or that you helped her when King Sombra came back again, but I wasn't present in either of those circumstances so she will have to tell you more about them. I can go look for her if you want."

"Yes, please." Chrysalis looked at one of her hooves. "You said I can shape-shift, right?"

"I did, yes."

Chrysalis's hoof was slowly transformed into that of a white pony by a green fire-like aura travelling from the tip up to her shoulder. The same green energy slowly passed across all of the changeling's body and after a few moments she had transformed into a copy of the white alicorn in front of her. She ran a hoof through her mane, taking her time to look at it.

Celestia spoke, distracting the changeling. "I'm going to look for Twilight, she was supposed to explain to you how to feed on love after all. Come back here in a couple of hours, I have a favour to ask her and it will take some time."

"Can I pretend to be you with your guards?" asked Chrysalis in Celestia's voice.

"Only if you reveal yourself afterwards. Don't transform into either Luna or Twilight without their consent though. They might not want it."

"And what about other ponies? What if they don't want me to?" Chrysalis asked.

"Their opinion doesn't matter. You're a queen, you can do whatever you want. It's not like they're going to start a revolution, after all. I mean, we're the only alicorns around and we're all on the same page, they'd have no one else to rule them. Goodbye, Chrysalis, and try not to scare too many guards."

"Goodbye," said Chrysalis, and she walked out of the room while Celestia teleported away.

"I knew I would have found you here in the library, Twilight," Celestia said as she approached her student, "I have a favour to ask."

"What is it?" barked Twilight, not taking her eyes away from her book.

"Could you please go through the archives and modify our official records of history to match what I told Chrysalis? I wouldn't want her to find out the truth."

Twilight sighed and she closed her book. "Are you serious about this?"

"Of course I am. This is a great opportunity, Twilight, think about it. Chrysalis, the Changeling Queen, finally on our side. We're writing history."

"Technically, we're rewriting history. But do you really think it will work? Do you really think she won't find out the truth when her attack on Canterlot is something we teach in schools?"

"You'll just have to be really fast at rewriting those books, then."

"Celestia, that's-" Twilight turned towards her "- That's not the point. The point is, ponies remember her. They're afraid of her. How long will it take before she starts to question why?"

"Then I'll order them to lie."

"Celestia, they hate her."

"That's never stopped them from pretending they like me out of fear, I don't see why it would be any different with her."

"I guess you're- Wait, you mean you know they hate you?"

"What? You think I eat all this cake just because I like it? It's clearly a symptom of depression."

Twilight stared at her with a shocked expression. "And I thought you were too stupid to notice. maybe you didn't make it here just because you're immortal and-"

"Of course not! Now if only I could figure out why those ungrateful ponies don't throw themselves at my hooves in worshipful adoration at the notion of how I allow their lives to continue."

"-Never mind."

Changing is my business

"I still don't get why we need to take care of that thing. After all she's done we should just lock her in a cage and put her in Tartarus."

"It's the Princess' orders, we can do nothing about it and you know it. And for once, she's right about this. If she really has amnesia then we can't do that to her."

"Oh, this time she's right. Do you really think she's doing it out of compassion after she did that to a filly? She's doing this because she thinks having that thing around could be useful, and she certainly doesn't care if we get hurt in the process."

"Maybe. But what are you going to do about it? You remember what happened to the last guy who tried to start a revolution, right? She's the Princess, and like it or not we have to obey her orders."

"I know. It's just... Wait, do you hear that?"

The other guard nodded. The sound of hoofsteps was coming down the hallway. Heavy, metallic, the one they'd learned to recognize as Celestia's. Immediately the two stood up at attention, going back to their assigned positions. Positions which any living creature with the barest knowledge on the matter would have deemed as the most inefficient possible, but the one who had assigned them did not have that kind of knowledge. When asked about why she'd chosen the various guards' positions as she did, Celestia had replied that it "looked good". The day the captain had notified her of his opinion on the matter was fondly remembered by a certain white stallion as the one when he was promoted. Not that Shining ever understood why he had been promoted. No one had asked the Princess, and many were certain the answer would have been no different than the previous.

"Your Majesty," the two guards saluted in unison as the Princess passed by.

Celestia's body stopped and she turned to look at them. There was a strange look in her eyes, one of uncertainty and guilty amusement. "You," she called, pointing at a guard, "come here."

The guard obeyed, walking up to the alicorn. Celestia began to look at him more closely, practically glueing her eyes on him as she scanned his body, her face close enough for him to feel her breath as she circled him.

"What is she doing?" silently mouthed the unicorn to his friend while Celestia was facing the other direction.

"I have no idea," silently mouthed back the pegasus.

"I'm inspecting you," came Celestia's voice from behind the unicorn's head, the Princess still intent on closely examining his back.

The hearts of both guards skipped a beat. "Your Majesty, may I ask why?" the unicorn was able to say after recovering from the shock of having been heard.

"You may."

Nothing else was said for a couple of seconds, then the unicorn tentatively uttered "Why?"

A few other seconds passed. "Your Majesty?" said the guard.

"I didn't say I would answer. Anyway, I'm done here, you can go back to your position."

The guard went back to his assigned position. As he turned towards the Princess, a flash of green light enveloped Celestia and her body became a copy of his. The changeling then proceeded to walk away, leaving the two guards to stare at each other.

"And this is how you're supposed to eat love," said Twilight, lowering the rod she had been using to point at the whiteboard. Various drawings and diagrams of a changeling's anatomical structure decorated the surface, accompanied by a number of complicated formulae explaining how the feeding process worked. "Did you get all of that?"

Chrysalis nodded, looking up from the doodles she had drawn on her desk. "I open my mouth and suck it in."

Twilight's rod almost snapped in half. "That's... not exactly how it works. There are a number of phases and correlated biological processes involved in this action, and it's important that you unders-"

"Twilight, did you have to explain this to every changeling?" Asked Celestia from the back of the room.

"Well, no, but-"

"And did you need to be thought how digestion works before you could eat something?"

"No, but my poi-"

"Twilight, we've been here for three hours. I already forgot about half the things you explained, and I plan to wipe my memories of half the things I remember because, believe it or not, changeling anatomy isn't as fascinating as you think it is, and if I had a proper digestive system I would have already regurgitated all of my five breakfasts and six lunches. So please, can we move on to the testing part?"

"But-"

"No buts."

Twilight exhaled, visibly annoyed. "Fine. Chrysalis, let's proceed to the test."

A cage in the corner of the room was magically opened and the guard inside it was levitated between Twilight and Chrysalis. The cloth around his mouth was removed, but Twilight kept him pinned there with her magic.

"Actually, I was enjoying your lesson. I have a couple of questions in fact. Can you repeat it for us, please?" the pegasus weakly asked while Chrysalis got up from her chair and walked near him.

"So, do I just do it?" asked the changeling.

"Well, miss 'I don't know why they hate me' over there said so. Go ahead," replied Twilight.

"No, no! Please wait, I have a family, I have kids to take care of, please, pleaaaaaghhh-" The guard was silenced as a tendril of green energy slowly slithered out of his mouth and into the changeling's waiting maw.

The flow of love continued, the whole room filled by its sickening green light as the guard's body thrashed around in his magical restrains, spasmodically jerking as his eyes rolled back into his head. The pegasus began to wither, his bones becoming visible under his skin while his fur started to become grey. The green light coming from the connection between the two mouths reflected in Chrysalis's eyes, the changeling standing over the pegasus as she consumed his last remaining energies. With a sharp snap the flow ended and the guard collapsed to the ground, the green glow disappearing as Chrysalis closed her jaws.

The Changeling Queen looked down at the pegasus' body, laying limp on the ground beneath her. "Oh dear. Did I hurt him?"

"He'll be fine," Celestia said from the back, "Twilight, please take out the body when you leave."

Suddenly the doors of the room burst open and a guard came running in. "Your Highness," he began, panting for breath, "there have been reports of-"

He was unable to finish before another one entered the room and began to speak. "Your Majesty, one of your guards has been seen intruding in the armoury without consent."

Another pair of guards came running in. "Princess, there are numerous reports of guards being outside of their assigned positions," spoke the first one.

"A female pegasus has reportedly been seen stealing from the royal food storage, she-" the second guard stopped as he noticed something in front of him, "-You!" he said pointing to the second guard who had entered the room. "Princess, she is the one in question."

"What?" the pegasus replied. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Princess," another guard who'd just entered the room began, "a pair of your guards have reported seeing someone impersonating you, most likely a chan-"

"Hey! You're the one who tried to sneak inside the armoury!" the pegasus shouted.

Other guards began to enter the room, in various degrees of fatigue.

"Your Highness, one of your guards has been seen drawing over the royal portraits."

"Princess, a member of your guard reportedly built a tent with the tapestry in the western hall."

"Your Majesty, someone used the books in the library to create a book fort. Some of the books from the dark magic section were used too, and we've already lost three guards in an attempt to dismantle the structure."

"Princess, someone wrote 'Celestia is best princess' on the walls of the southern hall. Witnesses say it was a member of your guard."

"Princess, someone has been spreading the undoubtedly false rumour the you tried and failed to open the door leading to the treasury, triggering the alarm and having four of your guards find you semi-unconscious in front of the door after being hit by the defensive spell, mumbling something about revenge."

"Your Highness, I have been accused of having entered the dark magic section of the library without your permit. This is preposterous, as I was guarding a completely different part of the castle at the time. You saw me yourself."

"Impossible, I was guarding the Princess throughout this morning and she never passed by you."

"Wait, aren't you the one who was seen writing those things on the wall?"

"Hey, he's the one who tore the tapestry."

"Princess, this is the mare responsible for what happened in the library!

"Impossible! You're covering up for the fact that I saw you out of your position!"

"Are you not going to stop them?" Twilight asked, looking at the tangle of pony limbs from which the guards were accusing one another, each trying to reach and capture one of the others.

No one answered her question, and as she looked around she noticed how both Chrysalis and Celestia had left the room. More guards began to enter, but before she could teleport away a voice ringed through the halls of the castle. It was a pre-recorded message of Celestia's voice, magically distributed to all the rooms of the building.

"From now until the end of today I delegate all of my tasks and none of my authorities to Princess Twilight Sparkle. She will be entrusted with receiving and answering all of your complaints, protests and reports. She is not allowed to take any decisions as Princess of the Sun, merely to suffer through the boring experience of having to deal with you ponies. Maybe we should cut out that last part. What do you mean "we can't"? I'm not doing another one of these. How do you turn this thing off? Is it this button that say-"

All guards turned to Twilight. She stared back for a couple of seconds, then teleported away. Once she reappeared in the middle of the castle's gardens, she noticed a trail of golden magic that ended where she was and seemingly began somewhere inside the castle. She also noticed a giant golden arrow above her head with the words 'she's here' floating at its side.

The sun was setting on the horizon, and a long trail of guards and dignitaries could be seen from the window on Celesia's room, all of them walking towards the giant golden arrow and the disgruntled princess beneath it.

"Can I stay here tonight too?" Chrysalis asked.

"Well, I don't-"

"Of course you can, dear." Chrysalis relied to herself after having rapidly shifted to Celestia's shape and voice.

"Chrysalis?" the real Celestia called.

"Yes?"

"Never do that in front of me again."

"But Celestia," Chrysalis said, maintaining the other's form, "I thought you liked the sound of your own voice." The changeling pressed herself closer to the alicorn.

"I... You know what? I take that back. Please do more of this in front of me."

Dawn patrol

"Lotus? What are you doing?" the Princess said aloud in her sleep, rolling around in her bed.

Chrysalis was lying at her side, staring at the ceiling. She hadn't slept for the whole night. Not that she needed to, given how she'd recently fed, but now it was starting to get a little boring to lay there. She tried to call Celestia but all she got in response was some mumbled out question about a ring. The changeling got up and walked to the mirror, looking at herself.

She felt like she wanted to go outside, to see something beyond the castle's interior after she'd completely explored it the day before. Her eyes danced between her reflection and the sleeping alicorn, then an idea struck her and a devious smile crossed her lips.

"Celestia, can I go out and see the city?" she asked.

"Of course you can, dear," replied back Celestia's image in the mirror in front of her, the Princess' voice ringing in her ears even if it had come from her throat.

The changeling happily strolled out of the royal chambers and took flight from the first broken window she found, assuming the shape of a pegasus maid she had seen in the castle as she began to fly over the city. She took the time to admire the architecture of the palaces in the low light of the last hours of the night, then a movement in the streets caught her eye. She flew down there and found a number of ponies entering a building, and curious she followed them inside.

The inside of the building was a single large room with a long counter at the end opposite to the entrance, behind which were a couple of ponies dressed with the same outfit and a series of bottles-filled shelves near the wall. The room itself had a number of circular tables with chairs around them, and some chairs were in front of the counter as well. Chrysalis walked up to the counter but before she reached it she stopped to listen to the conversations the ponies inside were having.

"So, how is it going?" asked a mare from behind the counter to a unicorn who had just taken a seat in front of her.

"Horribly. Like every other day. A little worse, I guess, Celestia has been even more annoying lately."

"What did she do this time?"

"You know how Chrysalis has been inside the castle lately? We haven't figured out why she's there yet, but yesterday Celestia fed her one of the other guards. And then they left him there. We had to drag his body back to his house. He's fine now, but both him and his family got scared to death. If only we had a better ruler."

"We all think that, but you know how it is. She's an alicorn, and we are ponies, unless another alicorn pops up and decides to lead a revolution we are stuck with her, even if we don't like her."

"Excuse me," Chrysalis interrupted them, walking up to the counter, "did you say you don't like Celestia? But isn't she the best princess in all of Equestria?"

All throughout the room every conversation stopped and all eyes were suddenly on Chrysalis, the changeling in disguise scared at the sudden attention she was receiving.

"You're... not from around here, are you?" asked the unicorn.

Chrysalis gulped. "Yeah, you could say that. I really just got here."

"Well, I guess that means at least the propaganda department is working efficiently. I don't know what you've heard about her, but trust me, no one likes Celestia around here. Not that she's ever given us any reason to like her."

"Yeah," spoke a pegasus from a table near the entrance of the building, "I worked in the royal guard and she fired me because I stepped over some flowers while chasing a thief in the gardens."

"I used to be one of her cooks and when I told her that we no longer had enough ingredients to make cake she threw me out!" said a unicorn.

"I lost my job as a journalist because she said the portrait of her I used on my article was a bad, deformed representation of her image. It was a photograph."

"I asked her if we could have a little more sun to grow our crops and my whole village was burned down," an earth pony chimed in.

"My house was demolished to make space for a giant statue of her face."

"Once we asked her which one of our three foals should have played with the toy they had. She said that it's important to share and proceeded to tear the toy in four pieces. She kept one of the pieces for herself."

"When an ambassador from the griffons came to visit she decided she wanted him to feel like at home, so she forced everyone in the castle to wear outfits decorated with griffon feathers. Real griffon feathers. It almost started a war."

"One time she stole a jewel from the shop I was working at, and then denied that she had even as she was wearing it, even if it still had the price tag on, even as the alarm went off when she walked out," said a unicorn mare.

"She was invited to a birthday party once, she brought no present and ate all the cake."

All through the morning Chrysalis listened to the stories the ponies had to tell her about Celestia, and when they finished the sun was already high up in the sky. Confused and shocked, the Changeling Queen walked out of the building.

"I have to go," she said, "I need to have a talk with the pony I've been staying here with."

"You should, they need to know the truth," said the unicorn, who had followed her outside.

"I'm afraid they might know it already. I'm afraid I might have been lied to."

Change sells, but who's buying it?

"What do you mean "I don't know"? Did you seriously lose her?" Twilight screamed at the white alicorn in front of her.

Celestia just took another bite of her cake. She had just finished raising the sun when Twilight had come to ask her where she could find Chrysalis, saying she wanted to try to teach her to share love instead of stealing it, and she had responded saying she had no idea of where the changeling had gone. After asking her guards it seemed that Chrysalis was nowhere to be found inside the castle. It had been hours since then, and after searching over and over no trace of the Queen had been found, so Celestia had decided it was time to inform Twilight.

"Honestly, I don't see the problem," Celestia said while finishing her slice of cake.

"You don't see the problem? One of your greatest enemies is loose somewhere in Canterlot after having acquired information about us and the castle and you don't see the problem?"

"No."

Twilight gave an exasperated grunt in response.

"Oh, come on, Twilight. What's the worst that could happen?"

Twilight stared at her. "What's the worst that could happen? Do I need to remind you of who we're talking about?"

Celestia cocked her head. "No. We're still talking about Chrysalis, right?"

"That's exactly the problem! How can you trust her? Why haven't you put someone to keep an eye on her? Why have you wasted so much time when we should have tried to figure out the truth from the start? Why didn't we start by teaching her to share love so we could be sure that she was actually reformed?"

"That one's easy. We don't want her to turn into one of those things the other changelings turned into," Celestia said interrupting Twilight, her sitting posture and her expression giving off the impression of a student happily answering a question they knew the answer to.

"...Why? Why don't we want her to transform?" Twilight asked, not sure if she wanted to hear the answer.

"Twilight, you silly. If we want to send her against our foes we need her to look like this. We need her to strike fear into the hearts of our enemies. If we want her to be of any use to us at intimidating others, why would we want her to become like the other changelings? Tell me, what is more menacing, Twilight? Chrysalis, evil Queen of the Changelings, conqueror of cities, destroyer of empires, ruler of armies, overthrower of kings, or Chrysalis, the friendly rainbow moose thing who wants to hug you?"

Twilights left eye twitched slightly. "First off, she could always transform to look like her old self when we send her-"

"It's a matter of principle, Twilight. If they know we converted her they won't be as afraid."

"-Second, why do we suddenly want to strike fear into our enemies? What enemies do we even have?"

"But the other nations, of course. How are we supposed to take over them otherwise?"

"Did you forget that Equestria is known for being a peaceful and accepting country? A country that has a long history of being that way? A country that prides itself on being that way?" a progressively angrier Twilight asked.

"Well it's about time things started to change. The old days are over, it's time for Equestria to rise as a glorious empire reigning above all others."

"Celestia, Equestria is a country made of ponies! The most dangerous thing most of our citizens have faced is the summer heat when you decide we haven't had enough sun. In the last decade alone there have been at least four recorded cases of the entire nation being brought to its knees by one single individual. Nopony out there is going to like fighting in a war, and very few would survive."

"That's exactly why we need Chrysalis. Now all we have to do is find her and convince her to help us."

"Do you really not get it?"

Celestia just looked at her, cocking her head to the other side.

Twilight resisted the urge to slam her hoof against her face. "She tricked you! She tricked us! How could you be so careless and trust her?"

"Should I not have been?"

"Celestia, she's a monster! She destroyed the city of Timbucktu, drained all of its inhabitants of love, stole King Orion's crown and was possibly responsible for what happened to him afterwards. She almost did the same to Trot, and the only reason that didn't go as badly was because you stopped her in time. She escaped the volcano you trapped her in by hypnotizing a dragon and then piercing one of his wings, and then she threw one of her generals back inside the volcano out of spite. She trapped Cadence under the castle, hypnotized my brother and tried to take over the city. I'm not even going to talk about what she did to the citizens of Wuvy-Dovey Land."

Twilight raised her tone, visibly frustrated by the lack of responses from the other alicorn. "Then she trapped the Cutie Mark Crusaders in that castle with her and almost forced me to become her servant. She tricked us and escaped from her imprisonment, she helped Radiant in her plan to bring back Sombra and left as soon as she realized what freeing the Umbrum would have meant. She trapped all of us in her castle and replaced us with changelings so she could control all of Equestria, and even after she lost her castle and her changelings she refused to join us. She was born evil, and she will stay like that no matter what."

Somewhere outside the sound of hooves running away was heard. Twilight paid it no mind, focused as she was on her ranting. "She used us, Celestia. She stole information from us, she studied the castle and the guards, she probably tampered with the spells we put in place to protect this place. Right now she's probably preparing for an attack or infiltration, and we have no idea of where she is or of what she could have done in here."

Celestia got up and walked up to a wall, always staring behind Twilight at the entrance of the room. "I still don't see the problem."

"I... You... I... How? How? How did you make it this far as a ruler when you're this bad?" Twilight angrily shouted back.

"I wasn't always this bad. In fact, until very recently I was very good at this. You see, Twilight, after we had to cut all connections to the other world the thought of never being able to see my love again, and the fact that he's slowly being consumed by evil, slowly eroded my sanity. I couldn't stand the fact that there was nothing I could do, and when just a few weeks ago we risked losing all magic in Equestria I finally snapped. I realized that I felt sad because I was good, so I changed myself into an evil and uncaring tyrant and then changed the memories of all the citizens of Equestria to match my new personality, making them believe I had always been like this."

Twilight stared in disbelief. "A-A-Are y-you s-serious?"

"Maybe," Celestia said while picking up another slice of cake, "maybe I made that all up. The end result is the same, really, if everyone thinks something happened a certain way and it's impossible to prove that it didn't then the truth is irrelevant. What is important is that I could have done it."

Twilight was still confused. "I... I'm not sure I understand. Does that mean you can just change yourself to be good?"

"Well, I could, but that's not the point. It's not something the me I am now would do. The point is, Twilight, I'm powerful enough to do something like that. Chrysalis might be strong, maybe even stronger than me at times, but she is alone. Even if she somehow defeated me, you and Luna, she would never be able to rule Equestria. She has no means of controlling that many ponies. And as much as they might hate me, I'm still the best option they have. That's how I made it this far, Twilight, because if they have to be stuck with an immortal tyrant then I'm the least bad one available. So unless a good alicorn appears out of nowhere without having been indoctrinated by us like you or Flurry first and she starts to lead a revolution then the citizens of Equestria will always turn to me."

Twilight spent some time looking at the floor, contemplating what she'd just heard, then she wordlessly walked out of the room.

"I'll be in my chambers if you need me," Celestia told her as she was leaving, "I need to have a conversation with someone."

We the ponies

"Is that... Is that what I think it is?" asked a pegasus to another pony walking beside him, pointing a hoof towards a point somewhere in front of them on the street.

A rapidly growing crowd was gathering there, ponies curiously trying to understand what was going on. At the centre of it all, on the receiving end of numerous stares both bewildered and hopeful, was a tall cream-coloured alicorn with a billowing blue mane and green eyes, staring down at the ponies around her, waiting for them to calm down.

"Oh, please, not another one of those things!" the pony said to the pegasus at his side.

"Maybe this one is good."

"Sure, like the last four."

"Oh come on! We should at least give her a chance," the pegasus said as he began to walk towards the alicorn, "she might have something important to say."

"I'm only following you because she'll probably have those who didn't listen to her jailed," the other pony said as he began to follow the pegasus.

The two arrived near the alicorn, close enough to see her cutie mark, a grey-coloured pair of scales, but still held at a distance by the still agitated and moving mass of perplexed equines, from which remarks and observations of various kinds could be heard, spoken to everyone and to no one in particular.

"Remember when you could be a princess without having a pair of wings and a horn? I mean, I don't, but according to the archives that was a thing at one point."

"Can't wait to hear what sort of crazy requests this one will have."

"Do you guys think we're we getting a song?"

When enough ponies had gathered around her the alicorn loudly cleared her throat, and all around her was silence. "Ponies of Canterlot!" she began, all heads turned to her, all the presents eagerly awaiting what she would say next. "It has been brought to my attention that Equestria has been under the tyrannical rule of one 'Princess Celestia', and that she has her residence in this city. Many cries for help I have heard from you, citizens, asking to be freed from her. Fear not, for your prayers have been answered. I, Giustize, Princess of Justice, have come here to rescue you and dethrone this vile creature."

The ponies around her remained silent, those who believed her still trying to process the information, those who didn't fearful of the repercussions for exposing what they believed to be the latest of Celestia's schemes.

The alicorn produced a roll of paper from beneath one of her wings. "Once I have finally defeated Celestia, I promise to you that I will-" she unrolled the paper, the bottom of it reaching the ground, and began to read from her list "- reduce your taxes, establish peaceful relationships with our neighbour countries, reorganize the royal guard, utilize a meritocratic procedure to determine the assigned positions of our dignitaries-" Chrysalis had to double check she'd read that right "-fix that one annoying hollow in the road near the bakery, give out free candy once a week, ban from entering the nation all z-eh, actually, not this one." Chrysalis began to move ahead on the list, trying to find something else to appease the crowd with. "Not this one. Not this one either. Legalise what exactly? This one I can't even read. Free ice-cream on the weekends, a proper water distribution system, nerf quest rogue, more frequent FiMC updates, and... Eh, you know what?" Chrysalis threw away the list. "Screw it. Whatever you ponies want, I'm sure I'll have the time to accommodate your requests once I'm queen. Now who wants to follow me as I march towards the castle and politely offer Celestia a chance to surrender?"

The crowd remained silent.

"Well I'm going," the disguised changeling said, and she began to walk away.

"Excuse me, Your Highness," a female earth pony said to her, "the castle is that way," the pony pointed in the direction opposite to the one Chrysalis was walking towards.

"Oh, I..." the changeling turned around and began to walk towards the castle. "I knew that. I was just... testing your loyalty."

"Do you think we should follow her?" a pony asked to the one near him.

"Well, if she's saying the truth then this is what we've always been waiting for. We definitely want to go."

"But what if she's lying?" a third asked, "What if it's a trap laid out by Celestia?"

"Then we'll say that we were following her to make sure she didn't actually hurt the Princess."

And so, either out of hope or out of fear, the crowd began to follow the cream-coloured alicorn Chrysalis had disguised herself as as she marched towards the castle. All but one pony, a certain purple mare born a unicorn who had been in the process of returning to her town with all the intention of declaring its independence before she had noticed the crowd and who was now teleporting herself directly to the castle.

"So Chrysalis is trying to start a revolution?" Celestia asked, taking another bite of her cake.

"It's what I've been trying to tell you for the last ten minutes!" a very disgruntled Twilight replied. "We could have prepared ourselves, but you had to keep asking questions!"

"It's not my fault that you kept mentioning an alicorn. I had to understand who she was."

"Really? Did you just forget that Chrysalis can shape-shift? After she spent the good half of a day impersonating you and your guards and causing mayhem around the castle? Really?"

"How did you say this new alicorn is called?"

Twilight resisted the urge to go back to Ponyville that instant. "Giustize, but I'm pretty sure she got it wrong. You see-" Twilight produced two worn out books seemingly out of nowhere "-if we look at this version, that's how the name is spelled. It's right here next to yours," She said while pointing to one of the books, now opened, "However, if we look at this," she said while opening the other book, "which is the original copy, we can see that an error was made during the transcription. It looks like whoever had to copy this accidentally swapped the ending of the name with that of the one next to it. So it should actually end with -ia, while the other... Wait a minute." Twilight's eyes frantically darted between the two versions of the text. "Oh dear. you might want to see this," she said while levitating the books closer to Celestia.

"Oh," the alicorn said. "So I was using-"

"The wrong one, yes."

"Twilight?"

"Yes?"

"Do me a favour and burn this book, please. As for the revolution, Luna?"

The dark alicorn snored in her chair.

"Luna!" Celestia repeated, nudging her sister with her hoof.

"What is it?" Luna said, dizzily waking up.

"Chrysalis, alicorn disguise, revolution. Go deal with them."

"Sure," the alicorn said, walking out of the room.

Celestia kept eating her cake and Twilight burned the book, then spent the subsequent minutes curled up on the floor, trying to hold back the tears for the horrible crime she'd committed.

After a while Luna entered the room. "Sister, there's a large crowd outside demanding you give up your position. They're lead by an alicorn and it seems the whole city is out there."

"Luna, I sent you out specifically to deal with them. Why didn't you deal with them?"

"They were singing 'Dethrone Tyranny'. I could never harm ponies with such a fine taste in music."

"Oh fine! Twilight, get out of your cataleptic state and come help me," Celestia said as she got up and walked towards the balcony of the room, "we're still two alicorns against one."

The two reached the balcony and looked down. Sure enough, everypony in Canterlot seemed to have gathered there, and on a pedestal just outside the gates stood the alicorn Chrysalis had disguised herself as.

"Do you think you can deal with that?" Celestia asked to her once student.

Twilight was about to answer, but Chrysalis interrupted her. "I see you there, Celestia!" she shouted, "Can you hear it? Can you hear the ponies singing for the revolution? Singing for your DOOM?"

"Impossible!" Twilight shrieked, and she instantly teleported to Chrysalis. From her position Celestia couldn't hear them, but she saw they were discussing and Chrysalis was holding a large folder in her magic.

Twilight reappeared at Celestia's side. "Sorry, it looks like you're on your own. Chrysalis might have, sort of... She... found... She..."

"She found your shipfic folder, didn't she?"

Twilight backed away in shock. "You know about my secret shipfic folder?"

Celestia stared at her. "Twilight, everypony knows about your shipfic folder. It's probably the worst kept secret in the history of Equestria."

"Oh. So... did you read any of it?"

"I'm not that crazy, Twilight."

The purple alicorn gave a sigh of relief. "Okay. But the contents must still remain a secret. The world isn't ready to know of my genius yet, and I haven't finished writing them. Chrysalis says she'll publish them if I help you, so you're on your own."

"Honestly Twilight, the prospect of her publishing them would be enough for me to order you not to help me."

Canterlot is next

"Wasted years!" Luna screamed as she stormed out of the room.

Celestia and Twilight looked at each other, equally confused.

"Did she just... What happened exactly?" Twilight asked.

"We walked back in the room, Luna got angry for no apparent reason, she screamed something and then she walked out," Celestia answered.

"Is this something she does often?"

"Only when music is brought up and somepony disagrees with her."

"Oh." Twilight looked around the room. "So... What are you going to do? About Chrysalis, I mean."

Celestia got back to her chair and to her cake. "I was thinking about waiting here for them to go away. They can't stay out there forever, they'll need to eat at some point."

"So you're just going to wait? Do you think problems will just solve themselves naturally if you do nothing?"

"Historically speaking, problems have solved themselves on their own while I waited and did nothing," Celestia said, taking a bite out of her cake.

"Historically speaking, I solved your problems while you waited doing nothing. This time I can't help you, so what will save you?"

"Starlight, probably. She seems to do a much better job at being you than you. I should have picked her as my student instead, I'm sure if she was an alicorn then right now all this would have already been solved. And if she fails then Flurry will eventually be old enough to come and rescue me. I can wait for as long as I need."

"How long has it been?" Celestia asked, discomfort radiating from her body.

"Four hours," Twilight dryly replied.

"I forgot how much I hated waiting. What's Luna doing at the moment?"

Twilight walked up to the balcony. "She's down there in the middle of the crowd, singing Gamma Neigh's 'Hoof of Fate' from atop a small stage they built. She seems to be enjoying herself."

"What about the rest of the ponies out there? Still blocked outside the castle?"

"No, they got in a couple of hours ago and they've been slowly making their way through the magical barriers I put up. They won't be able to enter this room, but they should arrive outside of it in another couple of hours."

"What about the guards? Have they tried to stop them from advancing?"

"The guards joined them as soon as they understood what was happening. In fact, I'm pretty sure they opened the gates and let them in."

"Chrysalis?"

"It looks like she's playing with a bunch of foals. They're drawing over her face. She looks happy."

Celestia slumped back in her chair. "Well, at least I still have cake," she said, looking at her empty plate and starting to cast a spell with her horn.

"About that," Twilight began, walking back in.

Celestia's spell went off and a flash of light shone over the plate, but nothing appeared on it.

"They got inside the food storage and took out all the cakes. They're eating those right now, and it looks like they'll have enough for some days."

Celesatia looked up at Twilight. "So we're out of cake?"

"We are."

"Does that mean there's no more cake?"

"It does."

"So we don't have any cake left?"

"We don't."

"So I can't eat cake any more?"

"You can't."

Celestia turned back towards her plate and stared, her gaze distant and unfocused, her expression blank and her face possibly even whiter than normal. She remained like that for a few minutes, occasionally muttering out the words "no more cake", seemingly unable to process the information.

"I'll go find something to read," Twilight said as she walked out of the room.

"I met Luna on my way back, she said she'll come here in a while," Twilight said as she walked back inside the room, her vision obscured by a book she held in front of her with her magic, its condition, title and colour yet another reference to a much better story. "Have you decid- WHAT HAPPENED HERE?"

Celestia was sitting in the middle of the room, some silver-coloured scraps of metal resting on the ground below her and some more on her lips. No furniture was left in the room, the balcony had missing chunks that looked like they'd been bitten off, and all over the walls, floor and ceiling the words 'no more cake' had been obsessively written, seemingly burned into the surfaces. "Hi," Celestia calmly greeted Twilight.

The worn green copy of 'Peaceful Charms' Twilight had brought with her fell to the ground with a thud. The purple alicorn stared at the scene for a couple of seconds, then closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "So what are your plans for dealing with Chrysalis?" she asked, ignoring everything else.

"Because things aren't going as fast as I wish I've decided to take matters into my own hooves and do the most logical thing to do in this case."

"So you're going to talk to her?" Twilight asked, a strand of hope in her voice.

"Actually, I had something else in mind," Celestia said. The lights in the room went out, a single cone of light was projected onto Celestia from above, and a piano started to play in the background. "A musical number."

"What?"

"I wish-"

"Celestia?"

"That I could turn back time-"

"Celes-"

"'Cause now the guilt is all mine-"

"Ce-"

"Can't live without the tr-"

"CELESTIA! Stop this right now!"

The music stopped and the lights returned to normal. Celestia looked at Twilight. "But what else am I supposed to do?"

"Go out there and talk to Chrysalis! Why would you ever think that singing a song would help you now?"

"But isn't that how you reformed Starlight? Or how Spike convinced others to give Thorax a chance? I thought singing was the natural way to convince others here in Equestria. You ponies seem to have this natural tendency to be easily influenced by songs."

"You really have a poor understanding of how ponies work, you know?" Twilight said as she paced back and forth inside the room. "You're supposed to sing the song after you've talked to the ones you want to convince, not before. That way when they enter their music-induced state of trance they'll accept the suggestions implanted in their brains by your previous discourse. Singing before doesn't do much, especially if there's no one there to be mesmerized by the performance."

"So I have to go talk to them?" Celestia asked, disappointment in her tone.

"You do," Twilight said, picking her book back up.

"Isn't there some kind of spell or charm to take control of the minds of other ponies and bend their wills to my commands? Some way to put them in a passive state where I can impart a series of instructions with my voice?"

"Don't be silly," Twilight said while flicking through the pages of 'Peaceful Charms', "there's no such thing. Why would someone even create such a possibly dangerous spell in the first place?"

Celestia sighed as she walked up to the balcony and looked down. She stood there for some minutes, contemplating the situation.

After a while Luna walked through the door and into the room. "Sister, there are ponies out here who would like to talk to you. I believe they said something along the lines of having you give up your crown, apologise to the population, be deprived of your powers and then locked up in a cage and thrown in a dungeon. They were having a bit of trouble with some spells and wards someone accidentally left in the corridors, so I lent them a hoof. They're right outside this room right now, I believe the sound you hear is that of their tools banging against the door. I think they're trying to fix it, and they need to dismantle it first."

Twilight briefly stared at the lunar alicorn, eyes wide and mouth slightly agape. "Is she always this clueless?" she finally asked, turning back towards Celestia.

The Princess walked back inside the room. "No, but she has a very hard time wrapping her head around the concept of someone who shares her musical tastes not being good." Celestia's horn shone with magic and a golden armour appeared over her body, the helmet resting on the ground in front of her.

"Are you preparing yourself for battle, sister?" Luna asked.

"Indeed."

Twilight buried herself and her frustration in the book.

"Marvellous!" Luna excitedly exclaimed, "It has been quite a long time since we've partaken in a proper fight. To celebrate, I will provide musical accompaniment. Do you believe 'Another Holy War' would be a fitting piece to play?"

"Luna, please," Celestia said while fastening her helmet on her head.

"I guess you're right. That song doesn't actually talk about a war. I guess 'Battlefield' would be a more appropriate choice."

"Luna."

"'Time Stands Still'?"

"Luna."

"But of course! 'The Duellists'! It should have been the most obvious choice from the start, really."

Thirteen

"Are you sure about this?" Twilight asked to Celestia, extending a wing to stop the white alicorn from leaving the room.

"Not really, but you did tell me to do something. This is how I used to deal with Chrysalis back in the days, so it's the only thing that came to my mind," Celestia answered, turning to Twilight.

"How many cakes ago? But beyond the fact that you might no longer be that good at fighting, the circumstances here are vastly different. Back then you were protecting Equestria from Chrysalis. Now you'd be attacking somepony whom the citizens love. I don't think it's the right thing to do."

"So you're saying I shouldn't go out there and fight?"

"You shouldn't."

"Thank me!" Celestia said, discarding her armour, "I completely forgot how you're supposed to fight. And that thing must have shrunk with time-" she pointed to the armour "-I remember it used to fit me perfectly when I was young."

"Metal doesn't shrink with time, Celestia."

The white alicorn perplexedly looked at the younger princess. "What are you suggesting?"

"Maybe it was, you know, all the cake you eat." Twilight looked at Celestia but found only more confusion in her face. "Forget that, it's a topic for another time. We have more important things to take care of right now. So what is your new plan to deal with Chrysalis?"

Celestia looked around. "Well, you know," she said, fidgeting in place, "I don't really have a plan. I was thinking you could come up with one for me." Celestia looked to Twilight expectantly. "Please?"

"Do I have to?"

Celestia looked at Luna, who had fallen asleep on the floor. "Depends. Would you rather let me come up with one on my own?"

"Oh fine!" Twilight barked, walking up to the balcony. "Hey!" she called to Chrysalis down below.

"What is it?" the Changeling Queen replied in her camouflaged voice.

"You said you wanted a chance to talk to Celestia before dethroning her, right?"

"I did, yes."

"Come here in five minutes, she agrees to your offer of trying to solve things peacefully. And come alone," Twilight said before walking back in.

"Why haven't we entered the castle through that opened window up there?" a pony among the crowd quietly asked to the one near him.

"It wouldn't have been polite," Chrysalis answered despite the large distance, leaving the pony shocked at how she'd heard him.

Twilight walked back in. "She'll be here in five minutes, alone. You'll have a chance to avoid a nation-wide crisis by talking to her, try not to mess things up. I'll be here to stop you, but if you're unsure of what to say ask me first."

"Actually, I think you should leave the room and let me talk to her alone."

Twilight turned back towards Celestia. "Why? Do you want to ruin things?"

"No, and that's why you should leave. She'll be alone, ponies wouldn't like it if I wasn't too. It wouldn't be fair."

Twilight pondered for a moment. "You're right," she said, then she stared at the ground. "I didn't think I'd ever get to say that. What about Luna though?"

Celestia looked at her sister, still sleeping on the ground. Her horn flashed with magic, and Luna's body was enveloped by a golden aura, then unceremoniously thrown out of the window. The groans that came from outside indicated that she had probably landed on somepony.

"Well, Chrysalis should be here shortly, so I'm going," the purple alicorn said.

"Don't forget your FiMC reference," Celestia said as she tossed the book back to Twilight, who grabbed it in her magic and walked out of the room.

After a few minutes of waiting the door opened again and Chrysalis stepped in, still transformed, the door closing behind her. "I'm glad you accepted my offer, Celestia. You see, I am the Princess of Ju-"

"Cut the act, Chrysalis, I know it's you."

Green flames ran over the changeling's body and she returned to her normal appearance, an annoyed expression on her face. "How did you know it was me? I had come up with and utilized an intricate disguise."

"It was really bad. Now-" Celestia took a step forward "-will you please cease this madness and stop this revolution of yours? I don't care what you'll do after, if you'll choose to stay with me or if you want to go back to being a villain, but I won't let you take away my throne."

"Celestia, why are you doing this?" Chrysalis asked, taking a step forward herself.

"Why? Why are you doing this? After I gave you a home, after I fed you, after I tried to make you a part of pony society. I believed you had changed, I believed you could finally become my friend, but it seems I was wrong. You're still my enemy after all. Maybe you didn't change. Maybe this was your plan from the start."

Chrysalis stopped and laughed. "My plan from the start. You know what's funny? It could be. Pretend that I changed, infiltrate your castle, get as much information as I could, use the freedom gained after gaining your trust to ruin your reputation, then assume the identity of some mysterious saviour that came out of nowhere and dethrone you. I'd never have expected that you would have done a better job than me at ruining your reputation, but here we are now. You can't win this fight, the other alicorns have been dealt with, and every citizen in Equestria loves me. I'll defeat you, take your place on the throne, and feast on the love of all your precious little ponies until I become invincible. And the funny thing is, no matter how bad of a ruler I might become, it will take very little effort to still be better than you."

"So this is it then?" Celestia said, readying a blast of magic in her horn. "Fine. If this is what it's come to then so be it. But I won't go down without a fight."

Celestia fired her horn at Chrysalis. The changeling easily deflected the blow, which fell outside through the window. The groans that came from outside indicated that it had probably landed on somepony.

"So are you going to try to stop me or what?" Chrysalis asked.

Celestia remained silent, almost looking embarrassed.

"Wait... That was your strongest shot, wasn't it?"

Celestia swallowed. "You know, I saw this going differently. I mean, I was sure you would have defeated me eventually, but I thought I could put up a bit of a fight before that. Make a last effort to survive, so that ponies would remember me for how I bravely fought with all my strengths until the last moment. This is just kind of sad. Celestia, the evil tyrant who didn't really put up much of a fight and was swiftly dealt with. Doesn't really have a nice ring to it, does it?"

"I've been absorbing the willingly shared love of all the city for the last hours, what did you expect?"

"Yeah, I guess you're right. Can't we at least pretend this was a great and hard fought battle?"

"No."

"Oh well." Celestia positioned herself on the ground, lying on her side. "Come on, finish me. Like you should have done back then during the wedding. I guess I should have seen this coming, I really lost all my talent when it comes to fighting. Maybe I should have listened to Twilight when she said I spent too much time eating cake."

Chrysalis stood over the alicorn. "Celestia, I..."

"Come on, there's no need to make an evil monologue when there's no one else to listen to it. This is what you want, isn't it? You'll finally defeat your greatest enemy. And even if you did really change, this is what the ponies want."

"I..."

Celestia looked up. "Come on. End me. Figuratively, I mean, I'm still immortal."

Chrysalis charged her horn, then she hesitated and dispelled the magical energy. "Celestia, I... I can't. I don't want this."

"Why? Am I in the wrong position?" Celestia looked at herself. "Of course! I should be lying on the other side," she said as she got up.

"No, it's not that!" Chrysalis said, stopping Celestia with one of her hooves.

"Then what is it dear?"

"Celestia, I don't want you to be thrown in a cell! Even if you're as evil as they say, I want you to be good! From the moment I first met you, back in that room, my memories of the past gone, I always looked up to you. I thought you were a good princess. I don't want to take your place. I know nothing of how to properly run a nation. I want you to be the princess I thought you were."

"But that's not who I am," Celestia said.

"And so? Can you not try to change? Look at me, Celestia. I was a monster, and now I'm here to free your citizens. If I can become so much different from what I was, then you can become what you were always supposed to be."

Celestia looked at the changeling. "But why should I? You had nothing when you lost your memory, and you found friendship and acceptance from the ponies of Equestria. But there's nothing for me to want. Not for this me, not for the one who doesn't care about her citizens or her nation but only about herself."

"But that's not true."

Celestia looked at Chrysalis with a questioning expression.

"There is something else you care for, something you dedicated yourself to in these past few days. Something that you are caring for even now, I can feel it. I can feel it in my love-receptor-thingies, or whatever Twilight called them. You won't change for your subjects, and you won't change for yourself, even if it would be the right thing to do for both you and them. But please, Celestia-" Chrysalis looked deep in the alicorn's eyes, giving her that same wide-eyed green stare she'd given her when they'd met each other in the castle after she'd crashed through the window "-will you change for me?"

Celestia's heart warmed at the sight. She pondered what the changeling had said to her for a few moments, then stood up, having taken her decision. "Okay, Chrysalis. For you, I will try to change myself for the better. Stand back, please."

Chrysalis took a couple of steps back.

Celestia's horn began to glow with magic, and the alicorn began to levitate. The amount of energy in her horn kept increasing, becoming a larger and larger globe of light that expanded on top of her. The glow was becoming almost impossible to look at, and Chrysalis found herself staring through the holes in her front legs. Currents of wind began to swirl around in the room, gathering around Celestia, the ground began to shake slightly and a vibrating sound could be heard. Then, suddenly, all movements ceased and only the large sphere of magic remained, balanced on the tip of Celestia's horn.

The ball of energy slowly detached itself from the alicorn and floated to the middle of the room, still levitating in mid air. "I'm doing this changing thing for you," Celestia said, "but I want you to know that if I wanted to I could hit you with this big ball of magic right here and knock you out of Equestria. Be thankful that you're so adorable that I couldn't bring myself to trick you."

With a backwards jerk from Celestia's horn, the sphere of glowing magic slammed into the alicorn's body. A loud boom was heard, and an explosion of light came forth from the point of impact, rapidly expanding over the whole city and momentarily blinding everypony. The writings on the walls disappeared, the furniture in the room returned. All windows in the castle except for one repaired themselves, as did every other damage done inside the castle's other rooms. The ponies outside and most of the ones inside fell asleep and were teleported to their homes. The giant statue of Celestia's face was replaced with a house. Somewhere in Canterlot, a toy broken in four pieces put itself back together, and two more copies appeared. The hollow in the road near the bakery was fixed. Finally, the light dissipated and Celestia descended back to the floor.

"Congratulations, Chrysalis," the alicorn said, "you passed your test."

Loved to death

"What?" Chrysalis asked, taken aback by the alicorn's words.

"This was all just a test, and you passed it," Celestia replied, walking closer to the changeling.

"What?" Chrysalis repeated, still unsure of what was happening.

"I suppose I should explain what happened. You see, I became aware of your presence when you first entered the castle, and I wanted to make sure that you were telling the truth about your amnesia. So I cast a spell on myself and over the city of Canterlot, convincing ponies that I had always been a terrible ruler and modifying the city accordingly. I set up this to see if you could not only free my ponies from my oppressive rule, but also bring my corrupted self to return to my normal ways."

"You what?"

"Yes."

Chrysalis walked closer to Celestia, staring deep in her eyes. "So you forced your ponies to suffer your new self, knowing that if I failed things would remain like that and Equestria would be doomed, knowing that even if I was good there was a chance that you would be thrown in a dungeon, knowing that there was a possibility that I was still evil and that your actions would allow me to defeat you and rule over Equestria, and you even changed your memories of yourself, all so you could make sure that I was being sincere to you?"

Celestia rubbed the back of her neck with a hoof. "I did, yes."

Chrysalis took a step towards the alicorn. "That is-" she took another step "-without a doubt-" another step, almost face to face with the alicorn "-the sweetest thing someone has ever done form me," Chrysalis said, eyes beaming.

"Do you really think that?" Celestia asked.

"Of course! I would have never thought you could care so much for me."

"I do care for you. I love you, Chrysalis."

"I love you too, Celestia."

The two moved a little closer, eyes locked into those of the other, feeling each other's breath on their face, silently contemplating the one in front of them, until finally, after a few moments of hesitation, they moved together and embraced the other in a deep, passionate, warm hug of friendship, which was what they felt for each other.

The door burst open with a loud bang. "Oh come on!" Twilight shouted, entering the room. "That was a perfectly romantic scene and you ruined it! Will you two just kiss already?"

Chrysalis and Celestia looked at each other, giggling a little.

"I'm afraid this isn't one of your stories, Twilight," Celestia said.

The purple alicorn walked closer to the pair, an annoyed expression on her face as she stared at the two. "That was really anticlimactic, you know?"

"How about this then?" Chrysalis asked. Her body began to levitate and glow, and Twilight realised what was happening a moment too late, the resulting blast of energy sending her flying back out of the door.

"So, about that whole 'test' thing," Twilight said to Celestia, the two of them sitting under the shadow of a tree in the castle's gardens.

"What about it?" Celestia asked, looking at her student.

"You made that story up on the spot, didn't you?"

Celestia went back to looking at what was in front of her. "Maybe. Does it matter though? This are my memories and those of everypony else now, so there's not really a point in trying to figure out how things were before."

"I guess you're right. Still though, rewriting the memories of all your citizens? Isn't that a little extreme?"

"Friendship is magic, Twilight, but sometimes, friendship is mind control. That sounds like a title now that I've said it. 'Friendship is Mind Control'. Bah, I'm sure there's someone out there who already used it."

Sitting at Celestia's other side, Luna mumbled something about justice in her sleep.

Twilight looked at Celestia with a somewhat confused expression, her mouth half open and ready to ask a question, then she shook her head and went back to looking to the park in front of her. "So I guess things are back to normal now."

"I don't know, Twilight," the white alicorn said. "I would say..." Celestia looked at what was in front of her, the newly reformed Chrysalis playing in the park with some of her guards. "I would say that things changed."

Meet the real me

"Celestia, she's a monster!"

Chrysalis stared through the slightly opened door, listening to Twilight's screams coming from inside.

"She trapped Cadence under the castle, hypnotized my brother and tried to take over the city."

Celestia tilted her head to the side and Chrysalis could swear she was looking at her.

"She was born evil, and she will stay like that no matter what."

Chrysalis run away from there. She didn't want to listen any more.

"I knew I would find you here," Celestia said as she surveyed the inside of her room.

Chrysalis was standing silently in a corner, facing away from her and towards the walls.

"I believe there's something you want to tell me, isn't there?" the alicorn spoke as she walked closer to her.

"You lied to me."

"I did. Do you want me to tell you the truth?"

Chrysalis turned towards Celestia, staring straight in her eyes. "The truth? How can I trust you to tell me the truth after everything you've done? I've seen what your ponies think of you, Celestia."

"But you want to know the truth, don't you? If you trust them more than you trust me then go out there and ask them about your past. I won't stop you."

Chrysalis looked up at the alicorn, then she ran away from the room.

From the door she'd exited through Princess Luna walked in. "So you're just letting her go?" she asked to her sister.

"It's her choice to make. She wants to hear the truth, even if it will hurt her. She could have believed in my lies and lived a comfortable life at my side."

"Like you did, convincing yourself that you were good at one point and you only made yourself act this way, so you didn't have to deal with the knowledge of being such a terrible ruler?"

"Or maybe that really happened, and you're just saying that because I made you think that I was always this way. As I've said to Twilight, it doesn't matter, this is who I am now and everypony thinks it's always been like that."

"But why are you letting her go?"

"I'm bored and I want some action. What's the worst that could happen?"

Chrysalis landed in the middle of the road, her body once again transformed into that of the pegasus she'd impersonated that same morning, and once again she entered the same building.

"Hi there!" the unicorn she'd met before greeted her, "So, how did that talk go?"

Chrysalis sat at a chair next to him. "It's... complicated. There are still things I'm trying to figure out." The two remained quiet for a while, then Chrysalis broke the silence. "Since I'm new around here, could you tell me about this 'Queen Chrysalis' I've heard mentioned a couple of times?" she asked, some uncertainty in her voice.

"Queen Chrysalis? She tried to take over Equestria a couple of times. I could tell you more about it, but why do you want to know?"

"Simple curiosity. I'd also like to know, what would you want your princess to be like?"