A Foreign Education: Another Roadby RainbowDoubleDashChaptersForeword/Author's Really Long NoteChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineEpilogueForeword/Author's Really Long NoteAuthor's Note Listening to the soundtrack for The Last of the Mohicans as I type both this essay and the story that follows. It…fits. Don’t ask me how or why, I’ve actually never seen the movie from start to finish, but the soundtrack is beautiful and sad, and what follows is certainly one of those things. In particular, “The Gael”/"Promontory" is a tune that feels like it keeps trying to rise up and become more than it is, only to be continuously beaten down by its own nature. I didn’t want to write this. I actually kind of hate myself for doing so. It doesn’t feel great, being That Guy who can’t just unfollow a story that I no longer like and leave it alone. I mean, I can…I have, in fact. There’s been stories that I’ve lost interest in, or which took plot turns or made characterization choices that I couldn’t jive with, and so I dropped them quietly and without rancor. A standout example of this is probably the otherwise excellent fic Sunshine and Fire, which I dropped due to a line from Celestia – up to this point, acting in all ways like the canon Celestia we knew and loved – to Twilight, who was distraught at the idea of having to kill to survive and get home, saying what amounted to “Oh, Twilight, sometimes you just have to pop a cap in some nigga’s ass.” Still, I just left the reason for why I was leaving in the fic and left. I didn’t go off and write an entire fix-fic for Sunshine and Fire, and honestly I don’t think it needs it – it’s a pretty good story, it was just one particular line that somehow managed to ruin the whole thing for me, and I fully admit to that being my problem. But for some reason I can’t do the same thing here, with A Foreign Education. I guess I was just more emotionally invested in it, and the series it was part of (The Third Wheel and Courtesans). So when A Foreign Education took such a nose-dive into dark territory and, more, left me with the impression that I was stupid for having expected it to go any other way, it hit surprisingly hard: that my failure to anticipate where it would end up going was my fault for getting my hopes up, for actually believing in the ideas put forth by the previous two fics, particularly Courtesans, with its themes of forgiveness even for the worst of monsters and how that forgiveness can change them, earning your happy ending in spite of all you may have done, and ending on a positive note that things will eventually turn out alright if you just try hard enough. Pulling a tonal shift in a work of fiction isn’t easy. It can be done, and done well. Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Til Dawn is a good example of this, a crime thriller that, at exactly the halfway point of the movie, suddenly and without any warning or possible way to see it coming, transforms into a vampire survival horror movie. It pulls it off because the turn is so out of left-field that you are left just as gobsmacked as the characters, utterly unprepared, and then it fully engages and revels in the dark, comedic absurdity of its change. But probably the best-known tonal shift in modern storytelling is the shift in the Star Wars series from A New Hope to The Empire Strikes Back. A New Hope is a schlocky sci-fi fic, optimistic to a fault, where the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad (and even have the decency to dress like Nazis so that we know they’re bad), and in the end the good guys win and the bad guys are sent running. The Empire Strikes Back is by contrast a much darker film that starts off with Our Heroes having already lost their secret base and scattered across the Galaxy, then one by one all the characters lose essentially everything they have except for their lives. Friends betray friends and the Empire is stands triumphant. Yet, at the same time, the movie ends on a hopeful note. The Empire has won, but the Rebellion continues. Han is captured, but his friends will find him. Luke lost badly to Vader, but has learned from the experience. You are not punished for having believed in the tone and theme and message of A New Hope. Whatever you invested emotionally in the first movie is tested and beaten and bloodied and bruised, but by the end of it you are at least left sure in the knowledge that it was right, and that you will see everything pay off in the end. A Foreign Education doesn’t do that. It’s my understanding that GaPJaxie intends for his next work in the series to more properly follow up on Courtesans, and in that sense A Foreign Education is basically like the Empire Strikes Back of this series. But in that, it fails. Partially, it fails on a technical level. GaPJaxie has, to put it mildly, stumbled in his world-building, creating an intractable geopolitical situation that cannot have a believable happy ending behind it, and which further should never have come into being in the first place assuming that the various nations of his world were run by even average leaders. GaPJaxie has gone out of his way to establish that Cadance is inept as a ruler, but by logical necessity this must apply to any nation’s rulers that borders the Northern Changeling Hive, but especially Equestria and Celestia. In historical fiction circles we call this a “wank” (Yes, the double meaning is intentional). GaPJaxie has wanked Queen Amaryllis (here, I’m not certain the double meaning isn’t intentional). But maybe that’s just me; I’m a student of history and sociology primarily. I realize that works of fiction don’t have to conform to reality (it’s not like Star Wars’ Empire makes much sense when you try and examine it), but generally the more “realistic” a work is intended to be, the less forgiving I am in lapses of that realism. Still, that is just basically nitpicking, and it’s something I could have learned to live with…but… The other problem is tonal. A Foreign Education is predicated entirely on the idea that you cannot change who you are or what you will become, that happy endings cannot be earned unless they were destined to happen anyway and that the world can actually be worse for trying to pursue them if they weren’t “supposed” to happen, and that there are things you can do that cannot be forgiven even if you only did those things because you were incapable of making other choices, for reasons of circumstance and information available to you verses things you did not and could not be reasonably expected to know. Monsters will always be monsters by their very nature, ignore that a running theme of My Little Pony since literally the first episode of the Generation 1 cartoon has run counter to that. In sum and to pull on some bad memories from my past, it takes the message of Courtesans, and actually My Little Pony as a whole, like they were a childhood toy and then stomps on them like an emotionally abusive parent, breaking them, disciplining you for having had the audacity to actually believe that nonsense. As you can tell from the phrasing up there, existence of this essay, and the following fic, I may have had a bit of a problem with that. And while a later fic may attempt to reverse course on this and restore us to where we were at the end of Courtesans, it will always run into the problem of A Foreign Education existing, lurking just behind it and saying “things only turned this way ‘cause the author willed it, otherwise you’d still be here with me.” That is, things can only change at this point as a result of deliberate and obvious authorial contrivance. A change to a more positive tone cannot feel natural. Obviously every story is the result of the will of the author, but a good story progresses in a way that feels natural. Bad stories progress because of transparent author fiat. A Foreign Education ensures that this is the only way the series can progress. So, I’m trying to fix that. I don’t expect this fic to really even be noticed. I don’t expect a grand uprising or boycott of GaPJaxie, who otherwise was a good author until A Foreign Education (you’ll note that, tainted by association though they are, I still have The Third Wheel and Courtesans in my “favorites” folder). If it gets noticed at all I actually expect it to pick up far more hate than praise, on the grounds of this whole thing being what amounts to an eloquent temper tantrum by a guy who just doesn’t like that a story didn’t end the way he wanted it to. Still, I actually feel that on principle it has to be written. I have to reject what GaPJaxie did to the fullest extent of my ability and I have to try and deliver the ending to A Foreign Education that feels right, the kind the characters deserved for what they’ve suffered. So, here it is, and here we are. Oh, and on a tonal shift note I’m also making one minor edit completely unrelated to my beef with the story or GaPJaxie, but rather it’s just something I noticed as I was gearing up to write some changeling stories of my own a few months ago: changelings don’t have nostrils! No, seriously, check them out: no pre- nor post-reformation changelings of any kind are ever depicted with nostrils in any scene or official image, despite most other creatures (ponies, griffins, yaks, dragons, etc.) clearly having them. Weird, huh? Maybe officially they don’t have a sense of smell or something (have we ever seen a changeling smell something?), though I’m going to depict them as having one, but it’s much weaker than a pony’s, and they smell via their mouths and tongues rather than non-existent nostrils. Again, unrelated to GaPJaxie and not something I’m in any way condemning him for, just something I noticed and feel kind of special for possibly being the first one in the fandom to notice, so I like to include it in changeling stuff I write. …see how much that paragraph took you out of where we were emotionally and psychologically? That’s what I’m talking about with tone. Foreword/Author's Really Long Note Chapter SevenAuthor's Note This fix begins immediately after Chapter 6 of A Foreign Education; essentially a replacement for Chapter 7 and beyond. Also, I’m not going to attempt to ape GaPJaxie’s style of writing, I have my own, so this may be a bit jarring at first. Chapter Seven Cadance, Shining, Flurry, I’m a rapist and a murderer. The words were there, right on the tip of Cheval’s tongue, and she should have been saying them. They should have been the first words out of her mouth as soon as she arrived home. She shouldn’t have broken down in tears, she shouldn’t have let them take her into the palace and into her bedroom, she shouldn’t have let them get anywhere near her. On the theory that she was still a princess of the Crystal Empire with some level of authority, she should have called for the guards and had herself arrested on the spot. Or executed. But she didn’t do any of that, because it wasn’t enough that she was a rapist and a murderer, she was a liar too – lies by omission, outright falsehoods, misdirection, she’d used them all on herself and others. So the changeling that had been forced on the nominal rulers of the Crystal Empire wore Flurry Heart’s form and lay on a bed she didn’t deserve with her pillow in stolen hooves and a stolen face buried in the pillow. The tears were real enough. She didn’t know how long she spent crying, but the sun was sinking beyond the horizon on her bedroom window by the time she finally lifted her head from the pillow. Flurry was still there. She’d known, of course, since a mixture of worry and anger and love had been pouring off of the alicorn the entire time. Cadance and Shining Armor weren’t there…which was stupid of them, given what she’d looked like when she stepped off the train, what she still was behind the illusion. She shouldn’t have been left alone with anypony. Flurry had noticed Cheval’s movement, and looked to her. She didn’t smile, and Cheval was glad of that. “You…kinda’ smell,” Flurry said. Cheval was less glad of that, even though she could sense that the grim attempt at comedy was soaked in worry. She looked away from Flurry and at a crystal wall instead. “You do,” Flurry continued. “I’m not surprised, you never notice how you’re smelling, even when you – ” “Where’s Mo – where’s Cadance? Shining Armor?” Cheval interrupted. She could feel them, their love for her, somewhere in the palace. Flurry took several seconds to answer. “Mom and Dad,” she said. That was it. Just who they were to Flurry and who they couldn’t be any longer to Cheval, not where they were. “Where are they?” Cheval felt movement on the bed, then hooves on the crystal floor. “Reading Amaryllis’ ultimatum. Talking it over. Figuring it out, deciding what’s best.” Flurry had come up alongside her, knelt down so she was eye level with Cheval. “I can get them.” Cheval looked to Flurry, the sister she had been forced on. A normal pony would have felt the love coming off of her, nevermind a changeling. The undeserved love. Flurry Heart loved her. She really was the stupid one, wasn’t she? Cheval sloughed off Flurry’s stolen form, took on her real one, the one with a carapace and holes in her legs and fangs. Her bed creaked a little at the sudden change in mass. Flurry opened her mouth to speak, but Cheval beat her to it, the words pouring out as quickly as they could, before she had any chance to think about stopping herself. “I’m a rapist and a murderer. I raped a griffon. His name was Gideon. I made his ex-girlfriend watch…her name was Gia, and I’m the one who broke them up. I’m pregnant too. I enthralled griffons I pretended were my friends, I don’t even remember who, to make sure no one interrupted me. Then when Amaryllis came to get me I made them all attack her, but it wasn’t Amaryllis, they just killed a drone she had sent. And then Amaryllis’ other drones and some Revolutionary Guard I think she enthralled but maybe not killed them all. That’s why I stink. I’m covered in blood and cum.” Flurry froze after the first word, and all the love that Cheval had felt sputtered and faded to nearly nothing. She remained still for a few more seconds as Cheval continued, but eventually stood and turned around, walking away at a deliberate, quick pace. The last words that Cheval said to her were as the youngest alicorn was going out the door. Cheval was alone. She buried her head in her pillow again, reaching out, feeling, wondering where the unicorn and alicorn she’d been forced on were. Sometimes if she tried hard enough, followed the feeling of love enough, she could pinpoint where it was in the palace… Half an hour later, by the time Flurry would have made up her mind about what to do with what Cheval had said and then gone to find her parents, she lost the sensation of Shining Armor's love. She sucked in a breath and held it. Moments later – for the first time in her life when both her mother and her were in the Crystal Palace – she felt Cadance’s love fade beyond her ability to feel it. They’d hate her now. She’d be sent back to Griffinstone on the first train tomorrow, tried for what she’d done, executed. Either that, or they’d decide to turn her over to Amaryllis, give the monster she was back to the monster that had birthed her. Either way, they’d hate her, and she’d stop hurting them by her mere existence, being a weapon that could be used against them simply by being alive. Cheval breathed out. It was difficult. It came out ragged, hardly getting by the lump in her throat. It felt as hard as breathing was after she molted. “Good...” she began, but even as she started to say the words, she felt it again, a faint tickle the back of her throat that she reflexively swallowed and recognied the sensation of immediately...love. Love tinged with disgust and fury, but still love, getting closer to her room. First from Shining Armor, then Cadance. Cheval's eyes were as wide as they could get when she heard the angry hoof-stomps on the floor of father and adopted mother entering the royal apartments and making their way to her room. Feeling...feeling like they did whenever they'd come to scold her after she'd done something wrong. The anger was multiplied a thousand times over, yes, but the love...somehow it was still there. It was all still there, even after what she'd told Flurry...what she'd told them. They still loved her. They still loved her. Cheval screamed a sound no equine creature could reproduce. Her wings buzzed in fury. She put her fangs to use on the pillow underneath her and tore it apart, then tore apart her bed. The pair of Crystal Guard that patrolled the royal apartments rushed to the door, beating Cadance and Shining Armor to her as they sought to protect their sovereigns, but she hissed at them and used telekinesis to shove them away and back outside. That was about when her conscious thoughts ended for a time and there was just a vague sensation of noise and thrashing and destruction. When she finally came back to herself, she was in her bathroom, clutching a piece of broken crystal-glass and trying as hard as she could to jam it into her throat at the soft gap in her carapace where the neck met the head. But her hoof was seized in a blue effervescence, halting it from doing more than mildly stinging while powerful white forelegs were physically trying to pull her own from her throat. In the shattered mirror, she saw Cadance behind her and Shining almost on top of her, both crying and shouting something, but she didn’t hear them. “Don’t stop me!” Cheval screamed. Her horn glowed green as she tried to put her newfound magical ability to enthrall others to use. “Don’t stop me! Don’t stop me! DON’T STOP ME!” But it didn’t work. Shining Armor had been enthralled by a changeling queen once, one much older and stronger than Cheval, and it was never going to happen to him again. Her attempt didn’t work any better on Cadance. Pink hooves joined Shining’s. Flurry Heart was there now, and Cheval wasn’t a match for the three ponies. Flurry grabbed the crystal-glass shard and yanked it from Cheval’s hoof, a slight spray of red blood hitting Cheval’s eyes as Flurry cut herself on it, adding pony blood to the griffin that still stained her. The blue glow of Cadance’s spread across all of Cheval’s body, and was joined immediately by Shining Armor’s and Flurry Heart’s, freezing her in place. They tried talking to her, but Cheval didn’t listen. She screamed and struggled. She called them every single insult she could, the gist of which was calling Shining a whore and Cadance a moron and Flurry a retard, anything to get them to hate her so she could stop hurting them, but it didn’t work. Tears started falling from her as she shouted. Cheval had been sure she’d cried all the tears she possibly could have had left in her last night, but apparently not. At some point, the palace physician arrived, and the Crystal Guard, taking over for the unicorn and pair of alicorns in holding her still. There was a needle and one-one millionth the pain that Cheval deserved. Then everything was dark. Chapter EightSomething has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.Chapter NinePublicly, Princess Cadance agreed to the first of Amaryllis' ultimatums. The Crystal Empire would cease to exist, becoming instead the Crystal March of Queen Amaryllis' Northern Changeling Hive, severing all formal ties with Equestria in the process, including Cadance's claim to being a member of the Equestrian Royal Family. The title of Crystal Princess would be destroyed, and Cadance would be created as duchess - ostensibly a kindness, to lower Cadance's title so little - of the Crystal March. The March would have some of its former lands restored to it, including its border with Equestria, but it would henceforth be the duty of the duchess of the Crystal March to guard against Equestrian incursion into the lands of the Northern Changeling Hive. The crystal ponies didn't mind. As far as they were concerned, it was just a de jure recognition of what had de facto been the case for twenty years. It was formalities, an excuse for a parade, but nothing more. Princess Cadance wasn't much of a ruler and never had been. It had been a mistake to ever make her the sovereign of her own nation. But she wasn't stupid, and she knew that even this state of affairs would last only as long as it amused Amaryllis. One day she wouldn't wake up, poisoned in her sleep, or perhaps all pretenses of subtlety would be dropped and Amaryllis would have her hauled in chains before her to be executed. And she knew that all that would be required for the crystal ponies to accept this was the right wording and the right excuses from Amaryllis. The Alicorn of Love was the alicorn of all love, and though she loved the crystal ponies, she also knew that while they loved her, they loved Amaryllis more, and between their loves, they'd choose the changeling queen. And Cadance loved her family too much to let her love of the crystal ponies put them in danger any longer. And so, on the night before Amaryllis was to arrive to begin the formal proceedings, Cadance and her family left the Crystal Empire. For any other group of beings, it might have been a harrowing experience, one that required weeks or months of planning ahead of time, using agents that could be trusted and moving from safe house to safe house across the northlands, always on the lookout for the agents and spies of Amaryllis. But they all of them knew Twilight Sparkle, so instead all it had required was for them to gather together - a normal enough occurrence that raised no red flags - an undetectable message sent by dragonfire, and five minutes of waiting for Twilight to teleport to them, rest a moment, then teleport them all back to Equestria. They took the Crystal Heart with them. The following morning, Queen Amaryllis came to the Crystal March to find no Cadance to create as duchess, and no Flurry Heart or Cheval to take the title in her place, and no Crystal Heart to claim as a prize. There was a delay of several hours before a pony named Robust Core was found who may or may not have been only eight steps removed from the old royal family - King Sombra had been thorough in his extermination of the bloodline - and created as the Marquess of the Crystal March, not having done anything to earn a higher title than what his fiefdom required. Despite the theft of the Crystal Heart, Robust Core and Amaryllis promised that the whole of the northlands would be scoured for it, and it would be found, as would anypony who had aided in its theft. Cheval had looked like her old self again, before her trip to Griffonstone, for the journey. It had been decided it would be easier than explaining to Twilight what had happened, at least until they were all out of danger. But none of her family would leave her alone...and though Cheval could taste that it was out of worry that she might relapse and try and hurt herself, she could also taste that it was out of a resolute determination to ensure that she didn't hurt anyone else. Cheval didn't intent to hurt anyone else...but then she had never intended to hurt anyone in the first place. Twilight's castle in Ponyville had been marginally closer to the Crystal Empire than Canterlot, and given how long-range the teleportation had been even saving a few miles had helped Twilight immensely, so the family had ended up there. Flurry and Cheval shared a room. Without having to be told, Cheval decided not to leave it, grounding herself. Flurry stayed with her. Without knowing they were thinking the same thing, both marveled at how easily Twilight accepted the excuse of fleeing the Crystal Empire as the reason for Cheval seeming so depressed and the family as a whole being so out-of-sorts. It was, at least, a partial truth. Cadance and Shining Armor went with Twilight to Canterlot to discuss with Celestia what had happened, what Equestria's response to the Crystal Empire situation was going to be. Amaryllis' outright annexation of it was not going to be recognized as a matter of course - there was no such place as the Crystal March as far as the government was concerned, and Robust Core was a pretender to the throne. The fact that Equestria possessed the Crystal Heart would likewise remain secret for now, as would the whereabouts of Cadance and her family - officially, Equestria suspected Amaryllis had slain them, but perhaps they would miraculously turn up alive somewhere. But that was it. With the forces of the Second Storm still resurgent on Equestria's southern border, and the eastern ocean being threatened by a monstrous being calling itself Squirk and wrecking ships and drowning whole islands in its search for the legendary Flashstone Amulet, Equestria simply did not have the resources to reclaim the Crystal Empire without stretching itself dangerously thin and leaving its shoreline and southern border vulnerable. Despite the official condemnation, status quo was, one again, to be the official policy. It didn't surprise any of them. Nor was Cheval surprised when Cadance, Shining Armor, and Twilight returned to Ponyville that night, and without even being in the same room or the same floor she could sense that Twilight's love for her had shifted and twisted, that the love was now tainted with anger and disgust and shock, and probably always would be forevermore. Her mother and father were honest to a fault, of course they had told Twilight what she had done, and probably Celestia too. Not that they should have done any different. Cheval's ear-fins flicked when the door to her and Flurry's room opened. She had resumed her other form, her real form now, and glanced at the door without turning her head. She saw and she tasted the sudden shock from Twilight at the sight of her, could tell how Twilight was trying to reconcile the little innocent changeling nymph she'd known with the rapist queen that was now lurking in her castle. "Twilight, can you give us a minute?" Shining asked. It was all Twilight could do to mutely nod, and turn and walk out of sight. Once she was gone, Cadance and Shining entered the room, and closed the door behind them. And then there they were. Three of the best ponies in the world...and a monster who didn't deserve them. Shining spoke first. "I don't...know how to deal with this," he said. "I don't think...I don't think any parent could. All I keep doing is trying to find excuses for what you did and why you did it, but at the same time I keep realizing that if you weren't my daughter, I wouldn't be trying as hard, or even at all." Cheval shifted, looking down. "There's no excuse," she mumbled. "There's reasons...but no excuse." Cadance breathed out sharpy. She stepped forward. "As...as a family, we can't handle this. No real family could, no real family is mentally or emotionally equipped to be objective towards each other. So I...I spoke, with Princess Celestia. She always seems so wise, seems to always know what to do...and she reminded me that I'm not just your mother. I stated the intent to, but I never formally, actually surrendered my claim on the Crystal Empire, or my claim to the Equestrian Royal Family, and Equestria doesn't recognize the Crystal March and neither do I. So I'm not just your mother and you're not just my daughter. I'm your Princess, your liege, and you're my subject. I need to view this, to approach this, like that. And I've never been a good princess but damn it all, I need to...need to try." Cheval stiffened, but nodded. She felt Flurry grab her hoof, and she grasped it back, as tight as she could. Cadance continued, though she reached out a wing and draped it over Shining Armor, leaned against him for support. "S...so, as your Princess, and with the permission and on the advice of my liege, the Solar Throne of Equestria, I am stripping you of your own title as princess of the Crystal Empire. I am rescinding my recognition of your bastard claim and disinheriting you as a member of the Royal Family of both the Empire and of Equestria. You have no claim and no right to anything. And...and I am disowning you. You are...you are officially not my daughter, not Shining Armor's daughter, not Flurry Heart's sister. You are not family, you have no family." She closed her eyes and took in a shuddering breath, holding it. "And, and I must wish...that you should die naked and alone, despised by everypony whom you have ever loved." Cheval had shuddered at the start of Cadance's sentencing. By the end of it, by the last words that were part of Equestria's official rite of discommendation, her tears were flowing again and her own breath was hitching, but she nodded again. It was, all of it, more than deserved. "And..." Cadance continued. Cheval had to put a hoof to her mouth at that to stop a wail of contrition - what Cadance had just done was already the most painful thing that she could have done to her, no matter that it was what Cheval wanted and less than she deserved...what more could there be? Cadance gave her a few moments before continuing. "And I am banishing you, to the Badlands Changeling Hive. I've written to King Thorax and he has agreed to suffer your presence for as long as I will not. You will remain there until...until I can think of some way or you can do something for you to make up for what you have done. I think you will be there for a very, very long time." As exiles went, it was ideal. The Badlands Changeling Hive were all of them reformed changelings. There was nearly limitless love there that was given freely, so she wouldn't be hungry. There were three royal changelings there who all knew how to deal with a queen and so would not allow their subjects to be enthralled by her, even if she were to try. Really, it was where she should have gone in the first place, and maybe she could have avoided all of this if she had. But it was still banishment, for real this time. Still sending her far, far away from her family - from what had used to be her family. "I..." Cheval croaked, the simple word catching in her throat. She swallowed several times before trying again. "I...understand. I don't know what I could do or how I could possibly make up for what I did...but...but I promise I will spend every day trying." "And I'll help." Shining Armor started and Cadance's wings flared, and Cheval let go of the hoof she had been holding on to like it suddenly burned. All three turned to look at Flurry Heart. "What?" Shining Armor demanded. "No, Flurry, you're not - you aren't banished." "Of course I'm not," Flurry retorted. "But sending off Cheval on her own was what started all of this. I'm not letting it happen again, I don’t care if you say she’s not my sister, I’m not going to run the risk of this happening again under Thorax’s snout." Flurry reached out again and grabbed Cheval's hoof, holding it tight as she looked into her little sister's eyes. There was love there...but hardness too. “I’ll keep an eye on her, I’ll help her, and I’ll make sure she stays in line. No matter what.” She looked back to her parents. "And even if you say no, I've known how to teleport since I was a yearling, I'm nearly as good as aunt Twilight, so you can't stop me unless you want to lock me up somewhere." The two older ponies looked to each other, at a loss for words. Finally, Shining looked back, and nodded. "Fine," he said. "That's fine, Flurry, I'm fine with that. We...we can even visit, or you could visit us." Left unsaid was that King Thorax would be obligated by etiquette and protocol to lock Cheval in a cell out of sight of Cadance if ever and whenever she came for as long as she was there. It was something Cheval wouldn't mind in the slightest, in fact she fully expected to be locked in a cell out of Thorax's sight as soon as she got there anyway. Cadance nodded along with Shining. "Yes. Fine...just..." She closed her eyes, then stepped forward, reaching out and hugging Flurry. "Be careful, be smart. I trust Thorax with my life, when he lived with us I trusted him with your life, but as for the other changelings there...I think...I think we've all learned to not put any trust in the words reformed changeling." Flurry hugged her mother, then her father. For just a moment, with their love focused on their real daughter, all the anger and disgust they'd felt for Cheval slipped away and there was nothing but pure love. Cheval couldn't stop herself from eating some of it. She hated herself for it. Eventually, the hug ended, and the ponies parted. Cadance and Shining Armor looked to Cheval, and after a moment Cadance lifted a leg. Cheval almost thought it was inviting her into a hug as well, something to take with her, and she rose to go to it...but instead, Cadance pointed towards the door of the room. "Go. There's a pegasus chariot waiting. It's...it'll be big enough for Flurry too. They'll take you to the Badlands." Cheval hesitated a moment more, before nodding her head once and going out the door, and into her exile. Flurry followed her. EpilogueA week after they had left the Crystal Empire, Cadance and Shining Armor had left Twilight's castle, since it was perhaps the most obvious place in the world for Amaryllis' agents to look for them. Hiding an alicorn and a unicorn of impressive height and stature wasn't easy, but with magical help it was achieved, the two settling down into an isolated cloud-home that hovered in the air six miles from Cloudsdale. Everything they needed would be brought to them by Twilight Sparkle herself via teleportation, and only the three of them plus Cheval and Flurry Heart would know where they were. Amaryllis finding them was as impossible as they could make it. A week after they had left the Crystal Empire, Flurry Heart and Cheval had reached the Badlands Changeling Hive. One of the words in its name was now a throwback and had been for years, for with the Protean Throne gone and no longer draining magic from the land, the lands surrounding the Hive had transformed into lush savanna, and the Hive itself was overgrown with moss and flowers and vines that turned it into a riot of colors. As the two sisters stepped from the sky-chariot that had brought them, they were met by King Thorax, Prince Pharynx, and Chrysalis. Flurry Heart was welcomed with open arms and embraces from all three. Cheval was looked at with and could taste something she hadn't expected and couldn't understand: pity. A week after Cadance and her family had left the land now known as the Crystal March, a dozen crystal ponies in the capital, members of the Society for Equestrian Harmony, had been rounded up by Robust Core and the Crystal Guard by the authority of Queen Amaryllis, suspected of having robbed or aided in the robbing of the land of the Crystal Heart and aiding in the flight of its renegade former rulers. They were marched to the empty dias where the Crystal Heart had been on display and, in full view of the city, executed for treason. The intent was to show the crystal ponies cost of treachery to the Northern Changeling Hive. But some of them, hearing their fellows’ protestations of innocence and ignorance, wondered instead if it was the cost of allegiance. Author's Note No, people who didn't want me to write this in the first place, I'm not going to write a sequel despite deliberately setting up for one, you won't have to suffer through that. I hijacked a fic already, I'm not quite enough of an asshole to hijack an entire series. So...I've gone on at great length elsewhere as to why I don't buy Amaryllis' military successes since Courtesans, or Flurry Heart, Savior of the Empire. Most notably earlier in this story from Flurry's own mouth. I could honestly go on for...hang on, let me check my notes...at least another two pages. But that's my worldbuilding issues, and it's obviously not the major point of divergence. Cheval is. Why did it feel more "real" to me that Cheval admits what she did? Fundamentally, it's simple. Amaryllis told her she's a liar, and Cheval hates Amaryllis and everything she represents. The tragedy of A Foreign Education is that in Cheval's attempt to become her own mare and get out from Amaryllis' shadow and stop hurting her family, she instead became more and more like Amaryllis. But at the same time, Cheval (supposedly) isn't stupid, and had Amaryllis herself tell her, to her face, that she was becoming like the Queen, and advised her on how to be a better liar, a better Queen. It's one thing for a teenager to make stupid mistake after stupid mistake when those mistakes follow one right after another in a way that clearly is spiraling out of their control and they just don't want to admit it. It's another when a teenager, out of defiance towards some authority figure they resent, makes a transparently dumb choice that they were told was dumb. But it's a whole other thing entirely when Adolf Hitler walks up to a teenager and says "You remind me of a young me. Keep it up. And keep on after those Latinos, it reminds me of what I said about Jews," and the teenager doesn't realize that they're doing something fundamentally wrong. Basically, I don't buy it. I don't buy Cheval hiding what she did from her family. Not because she's necessarily sorry, but simply because Amaryllis wants her to, wants her to be a better liar. Here’s the thing about a smart character: you have to show them doing smart things if you want the audience to believe they’re smart. Cheval and Flurry in A Foreign Education didn’t do that, even once, at least not in any way that matters. For all of Flurry’s supposed intelligence in the original fic, she blunders into choosing a power she could never realistically hold on to (and frustratingly unlike Cadance’s plan at the end of Courtesans we’re never given even the slightest sense of how she intends to do it - nearly everypony goes on about how she could save the Crystal Empire but no one stops to say how). Likewise original Cheval makes dumb choice after dumb choice after dumb choice even when directly confronted with those choices, recognizing how dumb they are, and having ample opportunity to make intelligent choices. Do you know what you call someone who only makes dumb choices? You call them fucking dumb, no matter how well-spoken they are or reflective they seem. From Cheval’s change, the other changes fall into place. Being honest with her family necessarily means hurting them with what she's done, or in other words, catastrophically failing in everything she'd tried to accomplish by going to Griffonstone to begin with (becoming her own mare, escaping Amaryllis' shadow, stopping hurting her family). She is, from her perspective, left as nothing but dead weight for her family. Which helps Amaryllis, so of course she'd want to try and remove herself from the equation, first by hoping to get them to hate her and send her back to Griffinstone, then in trying to kill herself. The other major change, Cadance finally deciding to get out while the getting's good, likewise feels more natural. Amaryllis' ultimatum gave as an option Cadance taking Cheval - in other words, even if it was nominally "optional", Amaryllis has now directly targeted Cadance's family, and also revealed at least something of what she really wants. Why would Cadance choose to remain, given what we know of the loyalty of crystal ponies? Why would she stand stock still as a noose tightens around her childrens’ necks? Why would Shining Armor? The two of them were already bad leaders. I saw no reason to indulge in the idea that they’re bad parents, too. Anyway. Like I said, I'm done. I mean, I know where I'd go with this, personally, but again: I'm not enough of an asshole to hijack an entire series.
Foreword/Author's Really Long NoteAuthor's Note Listening to the soundtrack for The Last of the Mohicans as I type both this essay and the story that follows. It…fits. Don’t ask me how or why, I’ve actually never seen the movie from start to finish, but the soundtrack is beautiful and sad, and what follows is certainly one of those things. In particular, “The Gael”/"Promontory" is a tune that feels like it keeps trying to rise up and become more than it is, only to be continuously beaten down by its own nature. I didn’t want to write this. I actually kind of hate myself for doing so. It doesn’t feel great, being That Guy who can’t just unfollow a story that I no longer like and leave it alone. I mean, I can…I have, in fact. There’s been stories that I’ve lost interest in, or which took plot turns or made characterization choices that I couldn’t jive with, and so I dropped them quietly and without rancor. A standout example of this is probably the otherwise excellent fic Sunshine and Fire, which I dropped due to a line from Celestia – up to this point, acting in all ways like the canon Celestia we knew and loved – to Twilight, who was distraught at the idea of having to kill to survive and get home, saying what amounted to “Oh, Twilight, sometimes you just have to pop a cap in some nigga’s ass.” Still, I just left the reason for why I was leaving in the fic and left. I didn’t go off and write an entire fix-fic for Sunshine and Fire, and honestly I don’t think it needs it – it’s a pretty good story, it was just one particular line that somehow managed to ruin the whole thing for me, and I fully admit to that being my problem. But for some reason I can’t do the same thing here, with A Foreign Education. I guess I was just more emotionally invested in it, and the series it was part of (The Third Wheel and Courtesans). So when A Foreign Education took such a nose-dive into dark territory and, more, left me with the impression that I was stupid for having expected it to go any other way, it hit surprisingly hard: that my failure to anticipate where it would end up going was my fault for getting my hopes up, for actually believing in the ideas put forth by the previous two fics, particularly Courtesans, with its themes of forgiveness even for the worst of monsters and how that forgiveness can change them, earning your happy ending in spite of all you may have done, and ending on a positive note that things will eventually turn out alright if you just try hard enough. Pulling a tonal shift in a work of fiction isn’t easy. It can be done, and done well. Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Til Dawn is a good example of this, a crime thriller that, at exactly the halfway point of the movie, suddenly and without any warning or possible way to see it coming, transforms into a vampire survival horror movie. It pulls it off because the turn is so out of left-field that you are left just as gobsmacked as the characters, utterly unprepared, and then it fully engages and revels in the dark, comedic absurdity of its change. But probably the best-known tonal shift in modern storytelling is the shift in the Star Wars series from A New Hope to The Empire Strikes Back. A New Hope is a schlocky sci-fi fic, optimistic to a fault, where the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad (and even have the decency to dress like Nazis so that we know they’re bad), and in the end the good guys win and the bad guys are sent running. The Empire Strikes Back is by contrast a much darker film that starts off with Our Heroes having already lost their secret base and scattered across the Galaxy, then one by one all the characters lose essentially everything they have except for their lives. Friends betray friends and the Empire is stands triumphant. Yet, at the same time, the movie ends on a hopeful note. The Empire has won, but the Rebellion continues. Han is captured, but his friends will find him. Luke lost badly to Vader, but has learned from the experience. You are not punished for having believed in the tone and theme and message of A New Hope. Whatever you invested emotionally in the first movie is tested and beaten and bloodied and bruised, but by the end of it you are at least left sure in the knowledge that it was right, and that you will see everything pay off in the end. A Foreign Education doesn’t do that. It’s my understanding that GaPJaxie intends for his next work in the series to more properly follow up on Courtesans, and in that sense A Foreign Education is basically like the Empire Strikes Back of this series. But in that, it fails. Partially, it fails on a technical level. GaPJaxie has, to put it mildly, stumbled in his world-building, creating an intractable geopolitical situation that cannot have a believable happy ending behind it, and which further should never have come into being in the first place assuming that the various nations of his world were run by even average leaders. GaPJaxie has gone out of his way to establish that Cadance is inept as a ruler, but by logical necessity this must apply to any nation’s rulers that borders the Northern Changeling Hive, but especially Equestria and Celestia. In historical fiction circles we call this a “wank” (Yes, the double meaning is intentional). GaPJaxie has wanked Queen Amaryllis (here, I’m not certain the double meaning isn’t intentional). But maybe that’s just me; I’m a student of history and sociology primarily. I realize that works of fiction don’t have to conform to reality (it’s not like Star Wars’ Empire makes much sense when you try and examine it), but generally the more “realistic” a work is intended to be, the less forgiving I am in lapses of that realism. Still, that is just basically nitpicking, and it’s something I could have learned to live with…but… The other problem is tonal. A Foreign Education is predicated entirely on the idea that you cannot change who you are or what you will become, that happy endings cannot be earned unless they were destined to happen anyway and that the world can actually be worse for trying to pursue them if they weren’t “supposed” to happen, and that there are things you can do that cannot be forgiven even if you only did those things because you were incapable of making other choices, for reasons of circumstance and information available to you verses things you did not and could not be reasonably expected to know. Monsters will always be monsters by their very nature, ignore that a running theme of My Little Pony since literally the first episode of the Generation 1 cartoon has run counter to that. In sum and to pull on some bad memories from my past, it takes the message of Courtesans, and actually My Little Pony as a whole, like they were a childhood toy and then stomps on them like an emotionally abusive parent, breaking them, disciplining you for having had the audacity to actually believe that nonsense. As you can tell from the phrasing up there, existence of this essay, and the following fic, I may have had a bit of a problem with that. And while a later fic may attempt to reverse course on this and restore us to where we were at the end of Courtesans, it will always run into the problem of A Foreign Education existing, lurking just behind it and saying “things only turned this way ‘cause the author willed it, otherwise you’d still be here with me.” That is, things can only change at this point as a result of deliberate and obvious authorial contrivance. A change to a more positive tone cannot feel natural. Obviously every story is the result of the will of the author, but a good story progresses in a way that feels natural. Bad stories progress because of transparent author fiat. A Foreign Education ensures that this is the only way the series can progress. So, I’m trying to fix that. I don’t expect this fic to really even be noticed. I don’t expect a grand uprising or boycott of GaPJaxie, who otherwise was a good author until A Foreign Education (you’ll note that, tainted by association though they are, I still have The Third Wheel and Courtesans in my “favorites” folder). If it gets noticed at all I actually expect it to pick up far more hate than praise, on the grounds of this whole thing being what amounts to an eloquent temper tantrum by a guy who just doesn’t like that a story didn’t end the way he wanted it to. Still, I actually feel that on principle it has to be written. I have to reject what GaPJaxie did to the fullest extent of my ability and I have to try and deliver the ending to A Foreign Education that feels right, the kind the characters deserved for what they’ve suffered. So, here it is, and here we are. Oh, and on a tonal shift note I’m also making one minor edit completely unrelated to my beef with the story or GaPJaxie, but rather it’s just something I noticed as I was gearing up to write some changeling stories of my own a few months ago: changelings don’t have nostrils! No, seriously, check them out: no pre- nor post-reformation changelings of any kind are ever depicted with nostrils in any scene or official image, despite most other creatures (ponies, griffins, yaks, dragons, etc.) clearly having them. Weird, huh? Maybe officially they don’t have a sense of smell or something (have we ever seen a changeling smell something?), though I’m going to depict them as having one, but it’s much weaker than a pony’s, and they smell via their mouths and tongues rather than non-existent nostrils. Again, unrelated to GaPJaxie and not something I’m in any way condemning him for, just something I noticed and feel kind of special for possibly being the first one in the fandom to notice, so I like to include it in changeling stuff I write. …see how much that paragraph took you out of where we were emotionally and psychologically? That’s what I’m talking about with tone. Foreword/Author's Really Long Note
Chapter SevenAuthor's Note This fix begins immediately after Chapter 6 of A Foreign Education; essentially a replacement for Chapter 7 and beyond. Also, I’m not going to attempt to ape GaPJaxie’s style of writing, I have my own, so this may be a bit jarring at first. Chapter Seven Cadance, Shining, Flurry, I’m a rapist and a murderer. The words were there, right on the tip of Cheval’s tongue, and she should have been saying them. They should have been the first words out of her mouth as soon as she arrived home. She shouldn’t have broken down in tears, she shouldn’t have let them take her into the palace and into her bedroom, she shouldn’t have let them get anywhere near her. On the theory that she was still a princess of the Crystal Empire with some level of authority, she should have called for the guards and had herself arrested on the spot. Or executed. But she didn’t do any of that, because it wasn’t enough that she was a rapist and a murderer, she was a liar too – lies by omission, outright falsehoods, misdirection, she’d used them all on herself and others. So the changeling that had been forced on the nominal rulers of the Crystal Empire wore Flurry Heart’s form and lay on a bed she didn’t deserve with her pillow in stolen hooves and a stolen face buried in the pillow. The tears were real enough. She didn’t know how long she spent crying, but the sun was sinking beyond the horizon on her bedroom window by the time she finally lifted her head from the pillow. Flurry was still there. She’d known, of course, since a mixture of worry and anger and love had been pouring off of the alicorn the entire time. Cadance and Shining Armor weren’t there…which was stupid of them, given what she’d looked like when she stepped off the train, what she still was behind the illusion. She shouldn’t have been left alone with anypony. Flurry had noticed Cheval’s movement, and looked to her. She didn’t smile, and Cheval was glad of that. “You…kinda’ smell,” Flurry said. Cheval was less glad of that, even though she could sense that the grim attempt at comedy was soaked in worry. She looked away from Flurry and at a crystal wall instead. “You do,” Flurry continued. “I’m not surprised, you never notice how you’re smelling, even when you – ” “Where’s Mo – where’s Cadance? Shining Armor?” Cheval interrupted. She could feel them, their love for her, somewhere in the palace. Flurry took several seconds to answer. “Mom and Dad,” she said. That was it. Just who they were to Flurry and who they couldn’t be any longer to Cheval, not where they were. “Where are they?” Cheval felt movement on the bed, then hooves on the crystal floor. “Reading Amaryllis’ ultimatum. Talking it over. Figuring it out, deciding what’s best.” Flurry had come up alongside her, knelt down so she was eye level with Cheval. “I can get them.” Cheval looked to Flurry, the sister she had been forced on. A normal pony would have felt the love coming off of her, nevermind a changeling. The undeserved love. Flurry Heart loved her. She really was the stupid one, wasn’t she? Cheval sloughed off Flurry’s stolen form, took on her real one, the one with a carapace and holes in her legs and fangs. Her bed creaked a little at the sudden change in mass. Flurry opened her mouth to speak, but Cheval beat her to it, the words pouring out as quickly as they could, before she had any chance to think about stopping herself. “I’m a rapist and a murderer. I raped a griffon. His name was Gideon. I made his ex-girlfriend watch…her name was Gia, and I’m the one who broke them up. I’m pregnant too. I enthralled griffons I pretended were my friends, I don’t even remember who, to make sure no one interrupted me. Then when Amaryllis came to get me I made them all attack her, but it wasn’t Amaryllis, they just killed a drone she had sent. And then Amaryllis’ other drones and some Revolutionary Guard I think she enthralled but maybe not killed them all. That’s why I stink. I’m covered in blood and cum.” Flurry froze after the first word, and all the love that Cheval had felt sputtered and faded to nearly nothing. She remained still for a few more seconds as Cheval continued, but eventually stood and turned around, walking away at a deliberate, quick pace. The last words that Cheval said to her were as the youngest alicorn was going out the door. Cheval was alone. She buried her head in her pillow again, reaching out, feeling, wondering where the unicorn and alicorn she’d been forced on were. Sometimes if she tried hard enough, followed the feeling of love enough, she could pinpoint where it was in the palace… Half an hour later, by the time Flurry would have made up her mind about what to do with what Cheval had said and then gone to find her parents, she lost the sensation of Shining Armor's love. She sucked in a breath and held it. Moments later – for the first time in her life when both her mother and her were in the Crystal Palace – she felt Cadance’s love fade beyond her ability to feel it. They’d hate her now. She’d be sent back to Griffinstone on the first train tomorrow, tried for what she’d done, executed. Either that, or they’d decide to turn her over to Amaryllis, give the monster she was back to the monster that had birthed her. Either way, they’d hate her, and she’d stop hurting them by her mere existence, being a weapon that could be used against them simply by being alive. Cheval breathed out. It was difficult. It came out ragged, hardly getting by the lump in her throat. It felt as hard as breathing was after she molted. “Good...” she began, but even as she started to say the words, she felt it again, a faint tickle the back of her throat that she reflexively swallowed and recognied the sensation of immediately...love. Love tinged with disgust and fury, but still love, getting closer to her room. First from Shining Armor, then Cadance. Cheval's eyes were as wide as they could get when she heard the angry hoof-stomps on the floor of father and adopted mother entering the royal apartments and making their way to her room. Feeling...feeling like they did whenever they'd come to scold her after she'd done something wrong. The anger was multiplied a thousand times over, yes, but the love...somehow it was still there. It was all still there, even after what she'd told Flurry...what she'd told them. They still loved her. They still loved her. Cheval screamed a sound no equine creature could reproduce. Her wings buzzed in fury. She put her fangs to use on the pillow underneath her and tore it apart, then tore apart her bed. The pair of Crystal Guard that patrolled the royal apartments rushed to the door, beating Cadance and Shining Armor to her as they sought to protect their sovereigns, but she hissed at them and used telekinesis to shove them away and back outside. That was about when her conscious thoughts ended for a time and there was just a vague sensation of noise and thrashing and destruction. When she finally came back to herself, she was in her bathroom, clutching a piece of broken crystal-glass and trying as hard as she could to jam it into her throat at the soft gap in her carapace where the neck met the head. But her hoof was seized in a blue effervescence, halting it from doing more than mildly stinging while powerful white forelegs were physically trying to pull her own from her throat. In the shattered mirror, she saw Cadance behind her and Shining almost on top of her, both crying and shouting something, but she didn’t hear them. “Don’t stop me!” Cheval screamed. Her horn glowed green as she tried to put her newfound magical ability to enthrall others to use. “Don’t stop me! Don’t stop me! DON’T STOP ME!” But it didn’t work. Shining Armor had been enthralled by a changeling queen once, one much older and stronger than Cheval, and it was never going to happen to him again. Her attempt didn’t work any better on Cadance. Pink hooves joined Shining’s. Flurry Heart was there now, and Cheval wasn’t a match for the three ponies. Flurry grabbed the crystal-glass shard and yanked it from Cheval’s hoof, a slight spray of red blood hitting Cheval’s eyes as Flurry cut herself on it, adding pony blood to the griffin that still stained her. The blue glow of Cadance’s spread across all of Cheval’s body, and was joined immediately by Shining Armor’s and Flurry Heart’s, freezing her in place. They tried talking to her, but Cheval didn’t listen. She screamed and struggled. She called them every single insult she could, the gist of which was calling Shining a whore and Cadance a moron and Flurry a retard, anything to get them to hate her so she could stop hurting them, but it didn’t work. Tears started falling from her as she shouted. Cheval had been sure she’d cried all the tears she possibly could have had left in her last night, but apparently not. At some point, the palace physician arrived, and the Crystal Guard, taking over for the unicorn and pair of alicorns in holding her still. There was a needle and one-one millionth the pain that Cheval deserved. Then everything was dark.
Chapter NinePublicly, Princess Cadance agreed to the first of Amaryllis' ultimatums. The Crystal Empire would cease to exist, becoming instead the Crystal March of Queen Amaryllis' Northern Changeling Hive, severing all formal ties with Equestria in the process, including Cadance's claim to being a member of the Equestrian Royal Family. The title of Crystal Princess would be destroyed, and Cadance would be created as duchess - ostensibly a kindness, to lower Cadance's title so little - of the Crystal March. The March would have some of its former lands restored to it, including its border with Equestria, but it would henceforth be the duty of the duchess of the Crystal March to guard against Equestrian incursion into the lands of the Northern Changeling Hive. The crystal ponies didn't mind. As far as they were concerned, it was just a de jure recognition of what had de facto been the case for twenty years. It was formalities, an excuse for a parade, but nothing more. Princess Cadance wasn't much of a ruler and never had been. It had been a mistake to ever make her the sovereign of her own nation. But she wasn't stupid, and she knew that even this state of affairs would last only as long as it amused Amaryllis. One day she wouldn't wake up, poisoned in her sleep, or perhaps all pretenses of subtlety would be dropped and Amaryllis would have her hauled in chains before her to be executed. And she knew that all that would be required for the crystal ponies to accept this was the right wording and the right excuses from Amaryllis. The Alicorn of Love was the alicorn of all love, and though she loved the crystal ponies, she also knew that while they loved her, they loved Amaryllis more, and between their loves, they'd choose the changeling queen. And Cadance loved her family too much to let her love of the crystal ponies put them in danger any longer. And so, on the night before Amaryllis was to arrive to begin the formal proceedings, Cadance and her family left the Crystal Empire. For any other group of beings, it might have been a harrowing experience, one that required weeks or months of planning ahead of time, using agents that could be trusted and moving from safe house to safe house across the northlands, always on the lookout for the agents and spies of Amaryllis. But they all of them knew Twilight Sparkle, so instead all it had required was for them to gather together - a normal enough occurrence that raised no red flags - an undetectable message sent by dragonfire, and five minutes of waiting for Twilight to teleport to them, rest a moment, then teleport them all back to Equestria. They took the Crystal Heart with them. The following morning, Queen Amaryllis came to the Crystal March to find no Cadance to create as duchess, and no Flurry Heart or Cheval to take the title in her place, and no Crystal Heart to claim as a prize. There was a delay of several hours before a pony named Robust Core was found who may or may not have been only eight steps removed from the old royal family - King Sombra had been thorough in his extermination of the bloodline - and created as the Marquess of the Crystal March, not having done anything to earn a higher title than what his fiefdom required. Despite the theft of the Crystal Heart, Robust Core and Amaryllis promised that the whole of the northlands would be scoured for it, and it would be found, as would anypony who had aided in its theft. Cheval had looked like her old self again, before her trip to Griffonstone, for the journey. It had been decided it would be easier than explaining to Twilight what had happened, at least until they were all out of danger. But none of her family would leave her alone...and though Cheval could taste that it was out of worry that she might relapse and try and hurt herself, she could also taste that it was out of a resolute determination to ensure that she didn't hurt anyone else. Cheval didn't intent to hurt anyone else...but then she had never intended to hurt anyone in the first place. Twilight's castle in Ponyville had been marginally closer to the Crystal Empire than Canterlot, and given how long-range the teleportation had been even saving a few miles had helped Twilight immensely, so the family had ended up there. Flurry and Cheval shared a room. Without having to be told, Cheval decided not to leave it, grounding herself. Flurry stayed with her. Without knowing they were thinking the same thing, both marveled at how easily Twilight accepted the excuse of fleeing the Crystal Empire as the reason for Cheval seeming so depressed and the family as a whole being so out-of-sorts. It was, at least, a partial truth. Cadance and Shining Armor went with Twilight to Canterlot to discuss with Celestia what had happened, what Equestria's response to the Crystal Empire situation was going to be. Amaryllis' outright annexation of it was not going to be recognized as a matter of course - there was no such place as the Crystal March as far as the government was concerned, and Robust Core was a pretender to the throne. The fact that Equestria possessed the Crystal Heart would likewise remain secret for now, as would the whereabouts of Cadance and her family - officially, Equestria suspected Amaryllis had slain them, but perhaps they would miraculously turn up alive somewhere. But that was it. With the forces of the Second Storm still resurgent on Equestria's southern border, and the eastern ocean being threatened by a monstrous being calling itself Squirk and wrecking ships and drowning whole islands in its search for the legendary Flashstone Amulet, Equestria simply did not have the resources to reclaim the Crystal Empire without stretching itself dangerously thin and leaving its shoreline and southern border vulnerable. Despite the official condemnation, status quo was, one again, to be the official policy. It didn't surprise any of them. Nor was Cheval surprised when Cadance, Shining Armor, and Twilight returned to Ponyville that night, and without even being in the same room or the same floor she could sense that Twilight's love for her had shifted and twisted, that the love was now tainted with anger and disgust and shock, and probably always would be forevermore. Her mother and father were honest to a fault, of course they had told Twilight what she had done, and probably Celestia too. Not that they should have done any different. Cheval's ear-fins flicked when the door to her and Flurry's room opened. She had resumed her other form, her real form now, and glanced at the door without turning her head. She saw and she tasted the sudden shock from Twilight at the sight of her, could tell how Twilight was trying to reconcile the little innocent changeling nymph she'd known with the rapist queen that was now lurking in her castle. "Twilight, can you give us a minute?" Shining asked. It was all Twilight could do to mutely nod, and turn and walk out of sight. Once she was gone, Cadance and Shining entered the room, and closed the door behind them. And then there they were. Three of the best ponies in the world...and a monster who didn't deserve them. Shining spoke first. "I don't...know how to deal with this," he said. "I don't think...I don't think any parent could. All I keep doing is trying to find excuses for what you did and why you did it, but at the same time I keep realizing that if you weren't my daughter, I wouldn't be trying as hard, or even at all." Cheval shifted, looking down. "There's no excuse," she mumbled. "There's reasons...but no excuse." Cadance breathed out sharpy. She stepped forward. "As...as a family, we can't handle this. No real family could, no real family is mentally or emotionally equipped to be objective towards each other. So I...I spoke, with Princess Celestia. She always seems so wise, seems to always know what to do...and she reminded me that I'm not just your mother. I stated the intent to, but I never formally, actually surrendered my claim on the Crystal Empire, or my claim to the Equestrian Royal Family, and Equestria doesn't recognize the Crystal March and neither do I. So I'm not just your mother and you're not just my daughter. I'm your Princess, your liege, and you're my subject. I need to view this, to approach this, like that. And I've never been a good princess but damn it all, I need to...need to try." Cheval stiffened, but nodded. She felt Flurry grab her hoof, and she grasped it back, as tight as she could. Cadance continued, though she reached out a wing and draped it over Shining Armor, leaned against him for support. "S...so, as your Princess, and with the permission and on the advice of my liege, the Solar Throne of Equestria, I am stripping you of your own title as princess of the Crystal Empire. I am rescinding my recognition of your bastard claim and disinheriting you as a member of the Royal Family of both the Empire and of Equestria. You have no claim and no right to anything. And...and I am disowning you. You are...you are officially not my daughter, not Shining Armor's daughter, not Flurry Heart's sister. You are not family, you have no family." She closed her eyes and took in a shuddering breath, holding it. "And, and I must wish...that you should die naked and alone, despised by everypony whom you have ever loved." Cheval had shuddered at the start of Cadance's sentencing. By the end of it, by the last words that were part of Equestria's official rite of discommendation, her tears were flowing again and her own breath was hitching, but she nodded again. It was, all of it, more than deserved. "And..." Cadance continued. Cheval had to put a hoof to her mouth at that to stop a wail of contrition - what Cadance had just done was already the most painful thing that she could have done to her, no matter that it was what Cheval wanted and less than she deserved...what more could there be? Cadance gave her a few moments before continuing. "And I am banishing you, to the Badlands Changeling Hive. I've written to King Thorax and he has agreed to suffer your presence for as long as I will not. You will remain there until...until I can think of some way or you can do something for you to make up for what you have done. I think you will be there for a very, very long time." As exiles went, it was ideal. The Badlands Changeling Hive were all of them reformed changelings. There was nearly limitless love there that was given freely, so she wouldn't be hungry. There were three royal changelings there who all knew how to deal with a queen and so would not allow their subjects to be enthralled by her, even if she were to try. Really, it was where she should have gone in the first place, and maybe she could have avoided all of this if she had. But it was still banishment, for real this time. Still sending her far, far away from her family - from what had used to be her family. "I..." Cheval croaked, the simple word catching in her throat. She swallowed several times before trying again. "I...understand. I don't know what I could do or how I could possibly make up for what I did...but...but I promise I will spend every day trying." "And I'll help." Shining Armor started and Cadance's wings flared, and Cheval let go of the hoof she had been holding on to like it suddenly burned. All three turned to look at Flurry Heart. "What?" Shining Armor demanded. "No, Flurry, you're not - you aren't banished." "Of course I'm not," Flurry retorted. "But sending off Cheval on her own was what started all of this. I'm not letting it happen again, I don’t care if you say she’s not my sister, I’m not going to run the risk of this happening again under Thorax’s snout." Flurry reached out again and grabbed Cheval's hoof, holding it tight as she looked into her little sister's eyes. There was love there...but hardness too. “I’ll keep an eye on her, I’ll help her, and I’ll make sure she stays in line. No matter what.” She looked back to her parents. "And even if you say no, I've known how to teleport since I was a yearling, I'm nearly as good as aunt Twilight, so you can't stop me unless you want to lock me up somewhere." The two older ponies looked to each other, at a loss for words. Finally, Shining looked back, and nodded. "Fine," he said. "That's fine, Flurry, I'm fine with that. We...we can even visit, or you could visit us." Left unsaid was that King Thorax would be obligated by etiquette and protocol to lock Cheval in a cell out of sight of Cadance if ever and whenever she came for as long as she was there. It was something Cheval wouldn't mind in the slightest, in fact she fully expected to be locked in a cell out of Thorax's sight as soon as she got there anyway. Cadance nodded along with Shining. "Yes. Fine...just..." She closed her eyes, then stepped forward, reaching out and hugging Flurry. "Be careful, be smart. I trust Thorax with my life, when he lived with us I trusted him with your life, but as for the other changelings there...I think...I think we've all learned to not put any trust in the words reformed changeling." Flurry hugged her mother, then her father. For just a moment, with their love focused on their real daughter, all the anger and disgust they'd felt for Cheval slipped away and there was nothing but pure love. Cheval couldn't stop herself from eating some of it. She hated herself for it. Eventually, the hug ended, and the ponies parted. Cadance and Shining Armor looked to Cheval, and after a moment Cadance lifted a leg. Cheval almost thought it was inviting her into a hug as well, something to take with her, and she rose to go to it...but instead, Cadance pointed towards the door of the room. "Go. There's a pegasus chariot waiting. It's...it'll be big enough for Flurry too. They'll take you to the Badlands." Cheval hesitated a moment more, before nodding her head once and going out the door, and into her exile. Flurry followed her.
EpilogueA week after they had left the Crystal Empire, Cadance and Shining Armor had left Twilight's castle, since it was perhaps the most obvious place in the world for Amaryllis' agents to look for them. Hiding an alicorn and a unicorn of impressive height and stature wasn't easy, but with magical help it was achieved, the two settling down into an isolated cloud-home that hovered in the air six miles from Cloudsdale. Everything they needed would be brought to them by Twilight Sparkle herself via teleportation, and only the three of them plus Cheval and Flurry Heart would know where they were. Amaryllis finding them was as impossible as they could make it. A week after they had left the Crystal Empire, Flurry Heart and Cheval had reached the Badlands Changeling Hive. One of the words in its name was now a throwback and had been for years, for with the Protean Throne gone and no longer draining magic from the land, the lands surrounding the Hive had transformed into lush savanna, and the Hive itself was overgrown with moss and flowers and vines that turned it into a riot of colors. As the two sisters stepped from the sky-chariot that had brought them, they were met by King Thorax, Prince Pharynx, and Chrysalis. Flurry Heart was welcomed with open arms and embraces from all three. Cheval was looked at with and could taste something she hadn't expected and couldn't understand: pity. A week after Cadance and her family had left the land now known as the Crystal March, a dozen crystal ponies in the capital, members of the Society for Equestrian Harmony, had been rounded up by Robust Core and the Crystal Guard by the authority of Queen Amaryllis, suspected of having robbed or aided in the robbing of the land of the Crystal Heart and aiding in the flight of its renegade former rulers. They were marched to the empty dias where the Crystal Heart had been on display and, in full view of the city, executed for treason. The intent was to show the crystal ponies cost of treachery to the Northern Changeling Hive. But some of them, hearing their fellows’ protestations of innocence and ignorance, wondered instead if it was the cost of allegiance. Author's Note No, people who didn't want me to write this in the first place, I'm not going to write a sequel despite deliberately setting up for one, you won't have to suffer through that. I hijacked a fic already, I'm not quite enough of an asshole to hijack an entire series. So...I've gone on at great length elsewhere as to why I don't buy Amaryllis' military successes since Courtesans, or Flurry Heart, Savior of the Empire. Most notably earlier in this story from Flurry's own mouth. I could honestly go on for...hang on, let me check my notes...at least another two pages. But that's my worldbuilding issues, and it's obviously not the major point of divergence. Cheval is. Why did it feel more "real" to me that Cheval admits what she did? Fundamentally, it's simple. Amaryllis told her she's a liar, and Cheval hates Amaryllis and everything she represents. The tragedy of A Foreign Education is that in Cheval's attempt to become her own mare and get out from Amaryllis' shadow and stop hurting her family, she instead became more and more like Amaryllis. But at the same time, Cheval (supposedly) isn't stupid, and had Amaryllis herself tell her, to her face, that she was becoming like the Queen, and advised her on how to be a better liar, a better Queen. It's one thing for a teenager to make stupid mistake after stupid mistake when those mistakes follow one right after another in a way that clearly is spiraling out of their control and they just don't want to admit it. It's another when a teenager, out of defiance towards some authority figure they resent, makes a transparently dumb choice that they were told was dumb. But it's a whole other thing entirely when Adolf Hitler walks up to a teenager and says "You remind me of a young me. Keep it up. And keep on after those Latinos, it reminds me of what I said about Jews," and the teenager doesn't realize that they're doing something fundamentally wrong. Basically, I don't buy it. I don't buy Cheval hiding what she did from her family. Not because she's necessarily sorry, but simply because Amaryllis wants her to, wants her to be a better liar. Here’s the thing about a smart character: you have to show them doing smart things if you want the audience to believe they’re smart. Cheval and Flurry in A Foreign Education didn’t do that, even once, at least not in any way that matters. For all of Flurry’s supposed intelligence in the original fic, she blunders into choosing a power she could never realistically hold on to (and frustratingly unlike Cadance’s plan at the end of Courtesans we’re never given even the slightest sense of how she intends to do it - nearly everypony goes on about how she could save the Crystal Empire but no one stops to say how). Likewise original Cheval makes dumb choice after dumb choice after dumb choice even when directly confronted with those choices, recognizing how dumb they are, and having ample opportunity to make intelligent choices. Do you know what you call someone who only makes dumb choices? You call them fucking dumb, no matter how well-spoken they are or reflective they seem. From Cheval’s change, the other changes fall into place. Being honest with her family necessarily means hurting them with what she's done, or in other words, catastrophically failing in everything she'd tried to accomplish by going to Griffonstone to begin with (becoming her own mare, escaping Amaryllis' shadow, stopping hurting her family). She is, from her perspective, left as nothing but dead weight for her family. Which helps Amaryllis, so of course she'd want to try and remove herself from the equation, first by hoping to get them to hate her and send her back to Griffinstone, then in trying to kill herself. The other major change, Cadance finally deciding to get out while the getting's good, likewise feels more natural. Amaryllis' ultimatum gave as an option Cadance taking Cheval - in other words, even if it was nominally "optional", Amaryllis has now directly targeted Cadance's family, and also revealed at least something of what she really wants. Why would Cadance choose to remain, given what we know of the loyalty of crystal ponies? Why would she stand stock still as a noose tightens around her childrens’ necks? Why would Shining Armor? The two of them were already bad leaders. I saw no reason to indulge in the idea that they’re bad parents, too. Anyway. Like I said, I'm done. I mean, I know where I'd go with this, personally, but again: I'm not enough of an asshole to hijack an entire series.
