The key turned in the lock. Shining Armor twisted the handle, opened the door, and stepped inside. Shining often felt that something in his life had somehow gone terribly wrong. It was hard to pinpoint why it had gone wrong, but the feeling was unshakable. He thought it might have started about a year earlier, when his sister’s dog had started talking. That had been the first time when he’d felt as if something had gone wrong, and it had never really gone away. In fact, other, stranger things had been happening around him ever since then, and he’d become increasingly worried about his sister’s involvement in what seemed like a series of increasingly improbable supernatural adventures. Sometimes he worried about how much control he really had over his life, and whether or not it was still enough.
It must somehow be the dog’s fault, he concluded.
The sensation of wrongness had now peaked, however. He closed his front door behind him and spoke. “Who are you?”
“Whatever do you mean, dear?” the woman draped on his sofa asked. “It’s me, your beloved Princess Cadance.”
“Principle Cadance,” he corrected her. She was certainly dressed the part – the familiar blouse, skirt, brooch, necklace, and blazer were all there, if a bit too small for her; and the hair had been crudely dyed into something purple and yellow that resembled Cadance’s, but somehow the woman in front of him had a color and collection of features that left her very much unlike Cadance. He paused, blinked twice, and considered what the sudden appearance of this new Cadance in his home might mean. “Of course you’re Cadance. How very silly of me. The hair is a dead giveaway.”
“Yes. I am Principal Cadance.”
Shining Armor decided he didn’t have the energy to deal with this. This bad imposter needed to leave, but he was too tired to deal with the police he knew he should call. “You should go home,” he told her.
“But you’ve only just gotten home, my love,” she protested. “Come here and give Cadance some love.”
“Why are you Cadance?” Shining was now worried that the conversation wasn’t making very much sense. Asking a person why they were another person seemed like the kind of thing that gets asked only by a person with a soft, one-fingered grip on reality.
“Because I am, of course. I was hatched this way. What kind of question is that?”
Shining had asked a nonsensical question and, in return, he had received an equally nonsensical answer. He supposed that he deserved that. “One of those stupid questions all my teachers always told me never existed, I suppose. So where’s the other Cadance?"
“What other Cadance? There’s only one Cadance, and she’s me.”
“Are you one of those statue people?”
There was a long and awkward pause. “No. I’m not a statue. I am alive.”
“I mean, are you one of the creatures that come out of the horse statue at that high school?”
There was a longer pause. “Noooooo,” said Not Cadance. “I don’t think that horse statues normally have creatures inside of them.”
Shining Armor nodded. At long last, the woman had said something sensible. Statues weren’t supposed to have things inside of them. Just having some small part of the conversation make sense was like a cool splash of relief. Now that he had one sensible answer, maybe more would follow. “The door was locked. You don’t have a key. How did you get in?”
New Cadance considered the question carefully before searching through her blazer’s pockets and triumphantly producing a key. “You did give me a key, my love! And also someling broke one of your windows in the kitchen. Not that that’s related, I just thought you should know. Now come here and give me some love.”
Shining Armor drooped his entire body. Now the conversation had stopped making sense again. He thought that some of those words might even have been made up. “I’m going to get a beer,” he declared. “The war game was rough. The Major didn’t let me sleep much for the last, I think, fifty-six hours. I’ve had, like, three hours of sleep. Well, it’s not really all his fault. And we lost. I’m going to have one drink, and then I’m going to sleep, probably until tomorrow afternoon. You can see yourself out, right?”
The strange woman sat up. “You haven’t slept since Tuesday?”
“Was Tuesday fifty-six hours ago?” asked Shining Armor. “That can’t be right. That would make this Friday.”
“Yes. Yes it was. And yes it is.”
“Then it was three hours of sleep during a lot more than fifty-six hours.”
New Cadance suddenly seemed very interested the the conversation. It was the kind of sudden intensity that he saw when his sister discussed nonfiction books. “What sort of tactics defeated your army?”
“The kind of no-good cheating hit-and-run tactics that can only be thought up by an eccentric retired marine corps general who treats rules like silly straws.”
“I … see.”
“He bends rules."
"Ah."
"You look very tan for Cadance,” Shining managed. “Very dark.”
“Thank you, sweetie,” said the stranger. And that’s what she was; a stranger. Why did she insist that she was Cadance? Shining vowed to look into that when he’d had some sleep. He finally closed the front door behind him and walked past Imposter Cadance, through the living room and towards the basement door. The stranger got up as he started to open it. “I’m sure that there absolutely no reason to check on your dungeon. There aren’t even any prisoners in it.”
Shining Armor struggled to comprehend the woman’s statement. “I suppose,” he finally said, unsure of what he was agreeing with. He opened the door and walked halfway down the stairs. Cadance was there (the real one this time), having squirmed her way out the the rec room. She was laying on her side, tied to a (tipped over) chair with a combination of electrical cords and sheets from the guest room. “Oh. Hello, Cadance. I’ll be right back.” She gave a muffled shout at him as he turned around.
Shining walked back up the stairs and looked out of the doorway at New Cadance. “I forgot something,” he declared.
“What?” Not Cadance asked.
He grabbed a brass lamp from the hallway table, yanking the cord from the socket, and bludgeoned her over the head with it. “That.” He put the dented lamp back onto the table, where it fell over. Leaving the snoring stranger in the hallway, he went back downstairs and untied the phone charging cable from Cadance ‘s wrists. She had her mouth free before Shining could even untie a second cable.
“Holy crap you look terrible,” she blurted out. “Sorry. Thanks for letting me go. Where is she?” Cadance asked.
Shining spoke with a weary and almost disinterested tone. “The war games went very badly for us. You’re in a weird dress. I haven’t slept since Monday, maybe. She’s upstairs in the hallway, unconscious,” Shining explained. “I just struck a woman. Hard. She might have brain damage.”
Cadance freed her ankle of the last bed sheet knot. “Good! I hope she does get brain damage! She hijacked me in the Canterlot High School parking lot with a knife and made me drive here, pulled out a piece of my hair, then forced my to swap clothes and she stole my jewelry!”
“No, I mean she might have already had brain damage before I hit her. She claimed that she was you. I may have just injured a disabled woman. Am I a bad person?”
Cadance started up the stairs. “No, honey. It’s perfectly reasonable to hit someone who kidnaps your fiancée at knife-point and then impersonates them in your own home which they forced your fiancée to open for them. Now I’m going to go get my clothes back.”
Shining followed after Cadance. “I thought she broke in through a window.”
“That was already broken when we got here,” Cadance said.
“Oh. So it really wasn’t related then.”
Cadance had now reached the unconscious form of her kidnapper. She wasted no time before starting to take back her possessions. “We should tie her up so she doesn’t escape.”
“I have zip ties in the garage,” Shining Armor offered. “That’s exactly the same thing as riot cuffs.”
“Go get them.”
“What if she wakes up?”
Cadance pulled a jagged, black knife from one of the blazer’s pockets. “I can handle her now.”
Shining nodded and jogged out of hallway, through the kitchen, past the broken window, kicked the baseball out of his way, and into his garage, turning on the lights as he went. Cadance’s car was parked inside. It only took a moment to find a bundle of ties of the right size. Then it was back through the kitchen and into the hallway. Cadance was already dressed, except for her shoes. “You’re fast,” he said, kneeling down to tie the imposter’s wrists together. “We should probably call the police. Or an ambulance.” He zipped her ankles together, then used a third tie to secure the first two together, effectively hog-tying the imposter.
“I’m sure that’s not necessary,” the imposter said diplomatically. Shining nearly jumped.
“Gah!” Cadance gasped in surprise, kicking the imposter in the face.
“Ow! Why!?”
“Because you held a knife to my throat you psychopath!”
“The Great and Terrible Queen Chrysalis is not a Psychopath! And you will suffer for any further injures!”
“Queen Chrysalis?” Shining Armor asked incredulously. “You’re a lunatic, at least!”
“I am not! I am Queen Chrysalis, rightful ruler of all changelings, and don’t let that ungrateful grub of an usurper tell you otherwise! Now let’s untie me and talk our problems out so that -”
“You liar!” Shining exclaimed. So you ARE one of those pony monster creatures that come out of the statue, then? One of those demon things that keep trying to blow up that school!”
“There was no statue! Only a stone plinth!” Chrysalis insisted. “And I am a glorious Changeling Queen! I am no pony or demon except when I choose to be! Now untie me so that we can solve this silly misunderstanding amicably.” She wiggled her connected limbs to demonstrate, then gave Shining a creepily intense stare. “You want to untie me.”
“I’m calling Twilight. She and her friends might know how to deal with this.”
“Twilight Sparkle!? She may be more observant than the average pony, but even she has been unable to defeat me!”
“We’ve already defeated you!” pointed out Cadance.
Chrysalis hissed.
The mall food court was nearly deserted except for seven teenage girls (and one dog hidden in a backpack) crowded around a single table. Music played softly underneath their conversation.
“It’s just that it’s really-”
Twilight’s phone rang. “Hold on, that’s my brother’s ringtone.” She pulled her phone out and answered it. “Hello?”
Rainbow Dash cleared her throat. “As I was saying, I think it’s weird that we still hang out in the mall. All of the other teenagers do a lot less of that these days. The malls are dying-- the stores are closing. The Internet is killing the malls.”
“OHMYGOSH! Are you okay!?” exclaimed Twilight.
“Don’t you dare say that!” scolded Rarity. “The malls will last forever!”
A concerned Twilight asked, “Who is she!?”
“It’s called the retail apocalypse, Rarity.” Dash took another swig of her energy drink. “Nobody comes here anymore. They can all buy everything without leaving their bedrooms and they can talk to their friends at the same time. There’s nobody here!”
“I don’t know, I’ll ask Sunset if she’s heard of her. If she doesn’t, the other Twilight might. Are you sure she won’t escape?”
“We’ll be okay as long as the party store stays open,” said Pinkie. “And it had better stay open!”
“No, there’s this other me on the other side, yes, I know, no, there’s another you there too,” Twilight explained. “It’s a mirror universe kind of thing, there’s another one of everybody. Yes, even you.”
“And it’s probably empty in here because it’s only four thirty, and this is the food court,” Applejack suggested.
“We’ve got a problem, girls. Someone came through the portal and tried to kidnap Principle Cadance. My brother’s got her tie up up now, though. Sunset, do you know of any evil ponies or creatures that call themselves ‘Queen Chrysalis’? And could you ask Princess Twilight if she knows?”
Sunset frowned in concentration. “It sounds familiar. I’m sure Princess Twilight mentioned that name at some point. But the journal is in my locker. We’ll have to go to the school to get it.”
“Oh my. Will the school even be open?” Fluttershy inquired.
“I’m pretty small, you could put me in an open window and I could open if from the inside,” Spike offered from underneath the table. “Also, is there any more bacon?”
“The marching band is doing a thing, it’ll still be open if we leave now,” Applejack answered. “Somethin’ to do with an upcoming music festival.”
Rarity stood up. “We’d better get going, then.”
“Yeah, it didn’t make sense for us to be here in the first place,” Rainbow added.
Sunset asked, “Did you say that this Chrysalis was tied up?”
“Yes,” answered Twilight.
“Which principal was Cadance? Was that horrible hag from Crystal Prep who told Twilight to cheat?” asked Rainbow Dash.
“No, silly,” said Pinkie. “That was Cinch. Cadance is the nice one who replaced her.”
“Can they take the kidnapper to the school? Maybe we can return her to Equestria,” suggested Sunset. “Is this Chrysalis a pony or something else?”
Twilight nodded and returned the phone to her ear. “Can you go back to CHS with her? We’ll meet you there. Actually, what was Cadance doing at CHS? For that matter, why did they go to your place?”
“Ah was hopin’ for a nice relaxing afternoon. Just hang out with some friends a the mall,” complained Applejack. “This’ll be easy, right?”
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE GETTING MARRIED TO CADANCE!? AND HOW DID THIS CHRYSALIS KNOW BEFORE I DID!?”
A few minutes later, the girls piled out of Sunset’s car and Applejack’s truck. Spike hopped out of the truck’s bed. Like the ride from the mall, Twilight spent the time it took to get to Sunset’s locker complaining, semi-coherently, about her brother’s lack of communication.
“Neither of them! Neither! Neither even hinted that they were dating!”
“Sunset, yer locker’s vibrating,” Applejack said. “Maybe the princess already knows Chrysalis came through and is tryin’ ta warn us.” It was true; the locker in question was magnifying the noise like a megaphone. Sunset dashed over to it, her friends not far behind. She wasted no time in putting the combination in. She threw the door open and pulled her magical journal out, flipping through it quickly to the right page.
Sunset’s face fell. “Oh no. Equestria’s under attack by Discord! He’s an ancient and powerful avatar of chaos who is supposed to be reformed. It says he doesn’t seem to remember who his friends are! And he’s turned everypony into humans who have no muscle memory and aren’t physically coordinated enough to resist him! Twilight’s the only one who can even walk or talk properly, because she’s been human before, and she needs our help! ” The other girls gasped. “And then Twilight wrote that there’s ANOTHER DISCORD and, oh, the bad Discord is his human counterpart who wandered in from our universe, and their Discord stopped him. It’s over. We missed the entire thing. Maybe I should start keeping this with me. But if something happens to it … hmmm...”
“Well at least everything ended up okay,” said Fluttershy.
“We should really put a gate on the portal or something,” suggested Rainbow. “It’s right out there in public where anyone could lean up against it and fall through. I mean, that’s like two huge problems it would have solved just today!”
“We … might want to suggest that to Principal Celestia,” Twilight agreed. “We’re also lucky that nobody important has taken the possibility of magic seriously enough to turn it into a huge military-controlled site for scientists to study, despite all of the public damage magic has caused. It can’t stay that way forever if we don’t do anything to prevent future problems. Let’s just write our message to the other Twilight, go out to the parking lot to wait for my brother and this Queen Chrysalis, and hope that things have calmed down enough to see our response.”
“Maybe I should just go directly through the portal,” Sunset suggested. “Who knows what state they’re in?”
Shining Armor slept. Getting as much sleep as possible, whenever possible, was a basic survival skill in the military. It was as common and important as breathing. The muffled yells and thumps coming from the car’s trunk didn’t seem to bother him at all. Beside him, in the driver’s seat, Cadance glanced at her fiancée. It was disconcerting that he was sleeping while they had a kidnapped kidnapper in the trunk. The car rolled into the parking lot and stopped a space away from Applejack’s truck. “Wake up,” she said, nudging Shining. “Tell them to come get her.”
“Umup, I’m up,” he answered. More thumps came from the back. “Aw, crap.”
“What?”
“Don’t look now, but I think the school security guard is looking at our trunk.”
“What!?”
“There’s a disabled woman in her underwear with a big bruise because I assaulted her who is tied up in our trunk,” Shining said nervously. “He’s coming this way.”
“Shining, the security officers at CHS are police!”
“Maybe it’s legal because she kidnapped you first?”
“Oh no. I think he’s got his gun out.”
“I’ll miss you the most while I’m in military prison,” he glumly promised. “Maybe it won’t be so bad. I bet the prisoners are more disciplined there.” He looked at Cadance. “Oh right. That won’t help you at all. Maybe we can say I forced you to do it and you can go free.”
The police officer tapped on Cadance’s window. She rolled it down. The thumping continued unabated. “Hello, officer,” She said with a completely fake calm. “Can I help you?” She was surprised by how nervous and young he looked. And familiar. “Wait, Copper Badge?”
“Dean Cadance, I’m kind of surprised.”
“I’m principal now. Cinch was forced to resign. How have you been since you graduated?”
“Um, I’m good. I’m a cop now. That’s obvious, I guess,” said Badge.
“That’s great to hear! When did that happen?”
“Well, um, last Friday, actually. Did – um, why is there thudding and moaning coming from the trunk of your car?”
There was a long and awkward pause. “What thumping?” she asked over the loud thumping.
“I didn’t hear anything either,” Shining added quickly. “Also, could you speak up? I think I completely forgot to wear any ear protection during all of those firearms training sessions. All I hear is loud ringing.”
“You – you aren’t armed, are you?”
“What? No. This is a school. I would never bring weapons onto school property.”
The officer shifted nervously, and he played with the weapon in his hands. Shining frowned – he could now see it was just a TASER, but fire control was deeply ingrained in him him by loud, obnoxious military instructors. “Of course. Um, could you open your trunk, please?”
“Um …” Cadance nervously put her finger over the trunk’s button. “I don’t see why not.”
Badge stopped fiddling with his weapon and backed up behind the car, where pointed it at the ground just behind the trunk. What did he think was in there? A rabid dog? Cadance eyed her car’s ignition longingly, but hit the release.
Badge shouted something in surprise that probably wasn’t appropriate for school grounds. He looked around wildly, then shouted. “STAY IN THE CAR! HANDS UP! DON’T MOVE! DON’T MOVE! STAY IN THE CAR!” He pointed the TASER at the rear window with his right hand (Shining wondered how effective they were through safety glass) and pulled Chrysalis’s dress out of her mouth with his left. “Are you okay!? What’s going on!?”
Chrysalis spoke completely nonchalantly. “Hello, who are you?”
“Officer Copper Badge of the Canterlot Municipal Police Department!”
“Oh, Crackers!” Chrysalis said quietly. “Well, hello, Officer Copper Badge of the Canterlot Municipal Police Department. Is there something wrong?”
“What? You’re tied up and gagged in a car’s trunk in your underwear!” exclaimed Badge.
“Um, yes, I suppose I am. Is that bad? I suppose you could untie me if that’s a really a problem. It’s not illegal, is it?”
“If it’s a problem – What on earth?! Yes! I mean, aren’t you in trouble, or … are you not in trouble? I mean, you’re not – not wearing a seat belt is a secondary offense, technically…” badge looked around in dismay. Copper badge was now worried that the conversation wasn’t making very much sense. “Are you in trouble? That goose egg bruise looks painful.”
“Well, I certainty hope I’m not in trouble,” Chrysalis said. A playful edge entered her voice. “Unless being in trouble means something slightly more loving and fun than normal? Have I been naughty?”
“What? What are you talking about? You’re hog tied … but … why are you hog tied in your underwear?”
“It’s sexual,” she explained. “You’re a cop. In a nice uniform. I have a very good idea of how you could contribute. There’s no reason to feel left out. I’m sure that you have a lot of love you could give me?”
“But … The … What? Bruise! What about the bruise!?”
“Well, I guess I just get very clumsy when my legs are all tied up.”
“But! On Duty! Gah! with my former dean and that guy--”
“Oh, yes. I think I could arrange something with him and you, if you would like. The more the merrier.”
“NO! No no no! You leave me out of this, you … You’re some kind of weird free-love… weirdo!”
“I do love free love,” Chrysalis admitted. “In fact, I find all love is absolutely delicious.”
“I feel like I should report this, but I don’t know how,” Copper Badge admitted. “I’m honestly not sure if you’re trying to bribe me with sex, or … or something else! No – no. just … no. I’m going to close this lid and walk away,” Copper badge decided. “And pretend that this never happened. Why is this happening at a school? No, don’t answer that.”
Once again a unicorn, Sunset found a still-human Starlight Glimmer dragging a still-human Rainbow Dash through the portal room of the Castle of Friendship. “Starlight!”
“Sunset!”
“Heeelllllfffffffaaaa sssssoooooooommssssssssffffff,” slurred Rainbow Dash.
“What happened? Sunset asked. “Is she okay?”
“There were two Discords, but now one is frozen and waiting to be shipped back to the human world,” explained Starlight. “He went mad with power. He turned everypony into a human and only those of us who have been human before knew how to make the new bodies work. The portal converts muscle memory along with our bodies, but the human Discord wasn’t that convenient. Mostly everypony has just been flopping around like fish on land. I’m bringing them here so I can channel some of the magic of the portal to change them all back into ponies. Twilight is in the library with the good Discord (if any version of Discord can be called ‘good’ at all), working on a way to use the Tree of Harmony to broadcast it all across Equestria. We can’t just bring everypony here, after all.” She lit her horn and bright purple light shot out from the portal into it, which was then reflect into Rainbow Dash. She turned back into a pegasus with a lout POP!
“Oh thank Celestia!” Rainbow said, getting to her hooves. “Oh, wings, I missed you sooooo much! Hello, tail, old friend!” She hugged the rainbow-colored appendage affectionately, and nuzzled her left wing.
“Twilight wrote as much. I’m glad it’s over, and I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help. I’m afraid we’ve been having problems on the other side of the portal as well. Do you know anything about a ‘Queen Chrysalis?’
“CHRYSALIS!” Rainbow shouted. She zoomed up into the air. “Where is she!? Tell me where she is! I’ll show her just what a pegasus is capable of! I’ve got a lot to make her answer for!”
“Oh, no! Oh, that’s bad!” Starlight seemed on the verge of panic. “She was the queen of the changelings. She led a nearly-successful invasion of Canterlot during a royal wedding, and when that failed, she kidnapped all of the princesses and the Bearers of Harmony and Discord, a magician friend, a rogue changeling and I had to infiltrate her hive to save them! We overthrew her. King Thorax rules now, but she escaped and hasn’t been heard from since. Sunset, she vowed revenge on me!”
“She’s in he human world, but Twilight’s brother and her old dean caught her and are bringing her to the portal.”
Starlight collapsed onto the floor in sudden relief. “Oh thank goodness. I don’t think I had it in me to fight Chrysalis after everything that’s happened.”
“HA! This is great! Two bad guys taken out in one day!” Rainbow did a loop-die-loop beneath the room’s domed ceiling.
“Can you be ready to take her when she gets here?”
“I’ll get the others! Back in a second!” Rainbow zoomed out of the room in a rainbow blur.
“We can take her from here,” Starlight agreed. “We only have to get Applejack still changed back, and I’m sure that Pinkie will be back with her any minute now.”
The trunk opened once again. It was Cadance. “What just happened?”
“Changeling mind magic is very powerful, especially from a queen such as myself. Just as my magic allowed me to transform into you and stole your beloved’s love, that power allowed me to alter the thoughts of the local guard and send him away! I triumph yet again!”
“No you didn’t! It was obvious that you weren’t Cadance! You never transformed at all!” Shining Armor protested.
“But you agreed I was Cadance!”
“I just didn’t have the energy to argue!”
“There’s no magic in this world! You’re a human now! How did you get him to leave!? And Why!?”
“Well I wasn’t going to let him arrest me! I know how you non-changelings work. It’s much easier to escape from you two than a prison. Not that a mere prison could contain a being of my power, mind you. So I simply made him wish to leave.”
“How?”
“By casting a spell to make him feel awkward, and then I used the phrase, ‘It’s sexual.’ If you ever want to make anything awkward, just say ‘its sexual.’ It works every time.”
For a moment, nobody said anything. “But there isn’t any mind magic,” Shining finally protested. “And you could have claimed that you were the victim, and everyone would have believed you.”
“That can’t possibly be right. Nobody believes anything a changeling says.”
“You’re not a changeling here, you’re a human just like everybody else,” said Cadance. “What even is a changeling?”
“I did think Shining was being rather stingy with his love for Cadance,” admitted Chrysalis. “But I think we’re all forgetting that what we all really want is for you to untie me and let me leave.”
“No, we DON’T want that,”Cadance sternly declared. “You kidnapped me and threatened me with a knife!”
“THERE YOU ARE!” Twilight exclaimed, walking up to the car. “What kept you? Woah. We’d better get her through the portal before someone sees us and gets the wrong idea. Why are you looking at me like that?”
Cadance stopped the car directly in front of the sidewalk that went around the destroyed statue’s pedestal. Twilight’s friends (including Sunset Shimmer) were already gathered around it, and between them they were easily able to carry Chrysalis to the portal. She didn’t even resist “You are going to remove these restraints, right?” Chrysalis asked. “You do know how dangerous it is to transform like this?”
Cadance pulled Chrysalis’s jagged knife from her blazer’s pocket. “Great. We were armed! When did you put that in there?” Shining moaned. “That could have gone so badly. So very, very badly.”
“You fell asleep before I even got in the car. Did you really want me to wake you to tell you that we were taking a knife to a school?”
“Principal Cadance! You’re a Principal! You should know better!” scolded Twilight. “Why would you do that?”
“She threatened to kill me. I’m not taking any chances.” She cut the plastic ties holding Chrysalis’s limbs together. The Queen silently stood up.
The portal glowed and another Twilight Sparkle exited it. “All right, We’re ready. Everypony is back to being ponies and we'll be ready to return your world's Discord to you once our Discord is finished talking to him.”
“Sparkle!” Hissed Chrysalis. “Relying on others to defeat me again? You never were a match for my power.”
“It didn’t have to be this way, Chrysalis. The others have proven that changelings can change. I’m sorry that you couldn’t.”
“That is so weird,” said Shining Armor.
“It is weird. They even smell the same,” said Spike. “Except for a little bit of hay.”
Shining looked down at the talking dog. “Talking dogs are weird too.” He frowned, overcome by a sense that something, maybe everything, had all gone terribly wrong. He felt certain, somehow, that standing with a talking dog and a kidnapper next to an interdimensional portal with his sister who had once turned into a demon was not a normal sort of situation. “This is your fault,” he told the dog.
“My fault? How is this my fault!?”
“It has to be your fault. Everything was normal until you started to talk.”
“So who does with Twilight and I?” Sunset asked. “Twilight and I will go ahead and with her to nullify any spells she casts. We need somebody to stay behind her to keep her from coming through the portal again.”
“Ooh! Ooh ooh ooh OOOH! OOH! Pick me! Pick me!” Pinkie Pie bounced up and down in excitement. “I want to be a pony! I wanna be a pony!”
“Of course you do,” said an annoyed Chrysalis.
“Just take her and her stuff and get her out of my universe,” Cadance said, handing one of the Twilight Sparkles Chrysalis’s knife and dress. “And lock her up forever.”
Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Spike, and Starlight Glimmer stood in a semicircle around the mirror. Twilight came through first, followed by Sunset and Chrysalis together, who were followed by Pinkie Pie. The very first thing that happened after they fell out of the mirror was that Chrysalis screamed. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGHHH!”
“Her horn!” somepony shouted.
“MY HORN! MY BEAUTIFUL HORN IS GONE!”
“AAAGH! The knife was her horn!” Twilight dropped the jagged, severed appendage from her hooves in shock. “EEW EEW EEW!”
“AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH! I’M A PONY!” Pinkie Pie happily screamed.
Chrysalis creamed again and burst into green flame, shape-shifting into a rock and then back into her normal form, complete with a new horn. That new horn glowed green for a brief moment before emitting a blinding flash. ‘My eyes! My eyes!” Starlight cried out. “Don’t let her escape!” Everypony in the room was blinded for a few seconds. When their eyes began to clear, they saw something horrifying.
There were three Pinkie Pies, all lined up together where before the actual pony Pinkie Pie had stood.
“Oh no!” gasped Pinkie Pie.
“Not again!” cried Pinkie Pie.
“WAIT! Don’t send me to the mirror pool!” begged Pinkie Pie.
“Not this again!” Rainbow whined.
“STOP! Everypony stop!” Sunset looked back and forth between the Pinkies. “Whichever of you claims to be the Pinkie Pie who is normally human, raise your hoof.” After several seconds of no movement whatsoever, Sunset facehoofed. “Okay, Pinkie, I know you’re excited to be a pony and want to take over this Pinkie’s life, but I need you to come up here next to me. This is a very serious situation and I promise you’ll get to see this world later.”
“Awww.” A dejected Pinkie Pie walked over to stand next to Sunset.
“There. Now it’s fifty-fifty.”
“I’m the real pony Pinkie!” declared one Pinkie Pie.
“No you’re not! I am!” argued the other.
“Wait!” Twilight cried out. “All we have to do is ask them questions only the real Pinkie Pie is likely to ask! It’s the obvious solution! What’s Rainbow Dash’s birthday?”
“March eighteenth!” said one Pinkie.
“I was gonna say that!” complained the other. “I’m still me!”
“Oh yeah, CHRYSALIS!?” a suspicious Rainbow dash asked, zooming up to get into that Pinkie’s face. “Then what won’t you ever make for my birthday again?”
“Pie!” screamed the other, faster Pinkie Pie.
“That’s two to nothing!”
“Oh, just forget about it!” With that, the changeling pinkie burst into green flames and reverted to its changeling form. Everypony gasped.
It wasn’t Queen Chrysalis. “Pharynx! What the heck!? Where’s Chrysalis? Twilight’s gaze darted around the room searching for the changeling queen. “Where’d she go!? Why were you Pinkie Pie!?”
“Well, you see, I’m distracting you while she escapes,” Pharynx admitted. “She should be almost to the edge of the forest by now.”
“Why in tarnation would ya do something like that!?” Applejack demanded. “Ah though you were on OUR side!”
Pharynx scowled. “Oh, come on! Like any one of you wouldn’t help your own mothers escape is they were captured by a foreign government? Even if your mothers were a little bit flawed? Don’t you understand loyalty to your families?”
“Wait, Chrysalis is you mother?” Rarity asked.
“She’s every changeling’s mother. She’s a queen in the same sense as a queen bee or queen ant,” Pharynx explained. “So, can I go, or are we going to-”
Twilight sighed. “Pharynx, I know that it can be very difficult to not help your mother out of a situation like this, but she’s actually really dangerous and we might have been able to help her! Do you really want her to spend the rest of her life as a dangerous fugitive? We need to talk about this with Thorax. Your brother won’t be very happy, you know. And now there’s going to be a huge Royal Guard marehunt in the Everfree Forest. This isn’t a game, Pharynx.”
“Look, I’m sorry that I undermined you. I know you want her in pony custody, but I just think that we’re all better off if we changelings can capture her ourselves. Some things should be handled by family.”
“If she goes back to you, we won’t interfere – but please, Pharynx, promise that if we re-capture her, you won’t interfere. We can sit down and work out custody,” Princess Twilight offered.
“I promise. And thanks. Um, could I get that horn? She might want that back..."
Grisly trophy in tow, the changeling walked out of the castle’s front doors and down the dirt street. Pharynx took a left on Doubletree Lane, then right again on Third Street. He arrived at the train station, bought a one-way ticket to Dodge Junction. He sat alone on a bench for two hours and twenty minutes before the train arrived. He boarded, and ten minutes later was on his way back towards the badlands. He was alone in the passenger car.
“A changeling, impersonating a changeling? Such an absurd recursion, nopony would ever suspect it.” He pulled a number of hairs out from behind his left ear. “Principal Cadance, Principal Celestia, Vice Principal Luna, and once again Miss Twilight Sparkle. Additionally, there's a Shining Armor for food and power! And they’re pony hairs on this side! Oh, the next day is going to be perfect! All according to my plan!” Still disguised as Thorax, Chrysalis smiled wickedly. "After all, there are so many photographs of royalty that are so easily acquired..."