Grogar stared at his crystal ball. With Sombra’s expulsion from the group, he was left with three failed villains to do his bidding. The mighty centaur, Tirek, was the muscle. With his ability to drain magic he’d leave the ponies they fought powerless. Chrysalis was the infiltrator. A spy to gather intelligence before setting their plans in motion. And one ridiculously adorable foal with a silver tongue.
Thus far the only one of the three making herself useful was Cozy Glow. She understood the power of friendship. She was trying her best, but her best efforts were trying the patience of Tirek and Chrysalis.
From a tactical standpoint, Cozy Glow was going to be an absolute liability in combat. Cannon fodder. A mere pawn to be sacrificed. But from a strategic standpoint, she was the ace up his sleeve. She trained under Twilight Sparkle herself, eventually becoming her assistant helping to run the School of Friendship. Cozy knew how the mare worked. She grasped the concepts of teamwork and cooperation. And it would be up to her to bring the other two on board. And while there was something oddly satisfying in watching the others smack her around, he needed Cozy Glow intact if his plans were going to succeed. That meant it was time for an intervention.
“Chrysalis. Cozy Glow. Your presence is required.” The changeling queen and pegasus filly gathered around Grogar’s crystal ball as it flickered to an image of red cardigan sweater.
“I need the two of you to bring back the Rogers Sweater.”
“Oh! I know where that is! It’s in the School of Friendship with a bunch of other old artifacts. I catalogued it myself!”
“Right under Twilight’s snout. This will be challenging to recover. If only we had a master of disguise great at infiltration and someone with intricate knowledge of the object we seek and where it’s being held. Oh. Wait. We do.” Grogar looked at Chrysalis and Cozy Glow in turn. “Your mission is to retrieve this.”
“Golly, gee, Mr. Grogar, sir, Chrysalis can change shapes, but I’m pretty sure they’ll recognize me if I try to sneak in.”
“Who says you to sneak in? March right into Twilight Sparkle’s office like you own the place, head held high.”
“That sounds like a one-way trip back to Tartarus.”
“Improvise. You almost took over Equestria as a small child. You can’t tell me you don’t have at least three contingency plans.”
Cozy put a hoof to her chin and smiled mischievously. “Maaaaaaaaybe.”
“I could pretend to be Celestia and drop you off at school and insist that Twilight reform you.”
“That would never work. Twilight Sparkle and Celestia have known each other for a very long time. I have no doubt you could convince almost any other pony in Equestria, but Twilight would see through your disguise within minutes. While you may look and sound the part, you lack the knowledge of the years they’ve spent around one another. No, I think this calls for an unconventional route. You will pretend to be Cozy Glow’s mother.” He turned to Cozy Glow. “Describe your mother to Chrysalis.”
Chrysalis shot Grogar a look asking if this was really necessary. The daggers he glared back insisted that yes, it was, and promised pain if she didn’t. So she started shifting herself to mimic Cozy’s description of her mother.
“Mommy was pink. Pinker than that. Like almost as pink as Pinkie Pie, but maybe two shades darker. A little lighter than that. With blue eyes. Really bright blue, like an electric blue. And her hair was lilac and turquoise. With a pair of intertwined hearts as her cutie mark.” She grabbed a stick and sketched a rough drawing into the dirt. “Like this.” One was pink and the other heart was red. Nope, you’ve got them backwards.”
Chrysalis rolled her eyes. Cozy Gow’s mother was sickeningly adorable. But with each remembered physical attribute, Chrysalis could feel the love flowing from the filly intensify. With as enthusiastic as Cozy was, she was practically an all-you-can eat buffet of love. It was the first truly satisfying meal she’d had in quite some time. Satisfying enough to clear the fog that had enveloped her mind in recent months. Clarity returned to her.
“Mommy!” Cozy wrapped her forelegs around Chrysalis’ foreleg. The surge in love was so instantaneous it would’ve overwhelmed any other changeling, but Chrysalis wasn’t queen for nothing. She consumed the love that was being given to her freely by the filly. She’d been so focused on revenge she’d forgotten what it was like to take the place of a loved one and soak up the affection. She’d forgotten to feed.
“What was your mom’s name, kid?”
“Golly gee, I don’t know. I just called her ‘Mommy’ because she was my Mommy.”
“What did other ponies call her?”
Cozy Glow shrugged in response and Chrysalis snorted in frustration. It didn’t matter what she called herself. None of the others in the school had any idea what Cozy’s mother was named, or even what she looked like. She could just as easily have gone in with her Shutterbug disguise. But that would’ve ignored the gift that had been thrust upon her.
The love a child held for a parent, or the love a parent held for a child was a different flavor of love than that which lovers felt for one another. It was sweeter in taste than the spicy meal she’d feasted on thanks to Shining Armor, but no less potent. She was rapidly returning to full strength. This kid had a lot of love in her. That, in turn, gave her an idea for a name. “Then I’m going to call myself Love-A-Lot. You, however, can continue to address me as ‘mommy’.”
Grogar allowed the slightest of smiles to grace his face. He’d personally powered-up Tirek, and now Cozy Glow had recharged Chrysalis. Even without Sombra, his team was shaping up to be formidable opponents for Twilight and her friends.
“Golly! It’s good to be going back outside! We've been here for months now, and I feel like I was cooped up in Tartarus forever before that.”
“You were there for all of three days before I summoned you here.”
“Oh, I assure you, those three days seemed like forever.” Tirek cringed at the memory of being cooped up next to Cozy Glow.
“Hey, you really have been in Tartarus for like forever.” Cozy Glow stuck her tongue out at Tirek.
“I assure you that they were the longest three days in the hundreds of years of my incarceration. It was even worse than when Twilight Sparkle and her friends were trapped there.”
“That was totes your idea, Tirek.”
“Not my best one.”
“And that’s why I’m in charge of the ideas from now on.” Grogar interrupted, not to mention ended, their bickering. He looked at Cozy Glow. “I believe you have somewhere else to be.” He touched a hoof to the bell around his neck and Cozy Glow and Chrysalis were teleported back to Equestria in a blur.
Tirek watched them disappear then turned to Grogar. “What does this Rogers Sweater do?”
“Brings beautiful weather to the neighborhood of anyone wearing it.”
“And how, exactly, is that useful to us?”
“As a team-building exercise. Whether they succeed or fail depends not on if they bring back the sweater, but rather how well they work together. I trust I can count on you to work with them. Even Cozy Glow. Even when she’s at her most annoying. Or do you also require a team-building exercise?”
“I’m good.”
Grogar chuckled. “I sincerely hope not, or I’ve recruited the wrong centaur as a minion.”
At the School of Friendship Starlight Glimmer was up to her eyebrows in paperwork. Which, while she was good at it, wasn’t as much her thing as it was Twilight’s. Twilight could do it in her sleep, and had Spike to help. And, until recently, Cozy Glow. She pondered promoting a student to fill the filly’s position. Her thoughts were interrupted as the door to her office chimed and a bright pink pegasus mare ushered in a filly wearing a dark hoodie.
“Can I help you?”
“I’d like to enroll my daughter in your school. Despite her protests to the contrary, I think she’d benefit from an education in friendship. She ran away from home months ago and she just came back this week.”
Cozy Glow fidgeted under the hoodie. It was difficult to act nervous when things were going better than planned. Starlight was the new headmare? She couldn’t have asked for a better setup.
“Cheer up, sweetie. She’s not usually like this. She’s a precocious, charming little filly. But she’s been acting like this ever since we got close to Ponyville.”
Cozy Glow sighed and pulled the hood down, revealing herself. “I suppose saying ‘I’m sorry’ is a good way to start this conversation. Maybe followed by a ‘please hear me out’ before seeing me out. And let’s throw in a ‘please, please, please don’t send me back to Tartarus’ for good measure.”
“Tartarus? What the hay were you doing in Tartarus, young lady?”
Cozy Glow sighed again. “Well, Mommy, I may have glossed over a few things… Like that whole ‘trying to eliminate all the magic in the world’ as well as ‘taking over Equestria in the power vacuum created in the chaos’.”
“That was you?!?” Chrysalis was playing the part of a completely oblivious, yet overprotective parent perfectly. “Anything else you’re not telling me?”
“Well… I was sorta sent to Tartarus as punishment. And then I escaped from Tartarus in just three days.”
“You just wait ‘til we get home, little missy.”
Cozy cringed. “Sorry Mommy.” She looked down at her hooves.
Chrysalis turned to Starlight. “All right, since I obviously can’t trust my own daughter, why don’t you tell me what happened?”
Starlight gave a brief description of the events leading up to Cozy Glow’s downfall. She conveniently left out the part where Cozy Glow had completely played her for a fool and trapped her in the magical field as it was slowly draining from Equestria. Partially to save the filly from further wrath from her mother, and partially to save herself from the embarrassment of having been outwitted by a kid.
Chrysalis in turn played her role perfectly, looking ever angrier and concerned as the tale went on. With just a hint of misplaced pride that her daughter was smart enough to get that far. Changelings might not be able to feel emotions personally, but they could read them, and hence imitate them, better than any pony could ever hope to. Each emotion had a distinct flavor, and the more powerful the feeling, the more potent the flavor. And since it was possible to convey multiple emotions at once, it was the ability to taste emotions that gave changelings their edge in manipulation. Blink and you might miss a crucial facial clue, but taste would never let you miss anything.
As for the emotions of the two ponies in the room, Cozy’s excitement and happiness had increased upon entering the room. That told her something was going better than anticipated before a single word was spoken. Starlight, on the other hoof, was a smorgasbord of emotions. There was anger, resentment, pity, sadness, and a trace of relief. Starlight had some semblance of concern for the miserable little filly. She could work with this. And if the little mastermind was half as clever as Grogar claimed she was, she would be able to do so too.
“Well, this could have gone better.” Chrysalis stood up to leave. “Come on, Cozy. We’re going home, and you’re grounded until Tartarus freezes over.”
Cozy sighed. “Still beats Tartarus as long as you’re there, Mommy. I was so lonely with just those vile villains and monsters to keep me company. And Tirek. Tirek didn’t like me very much.” She pouted.
Starlight rose from behind the desk and her magical aura lit up the doorknob, keeping her visitors from leaving the room. “Speaking of Tirek, where, exactly, is he? You didn’t let him out of Tartarus, did you?”
“Well, golly Starlight. Tirek’s my friend and Tartarus is awful. Of course I let him out. But he promised to go far away and never steal another pony’s magic ever again if I promised to never speak to him ever again. Which wasn’t very friendly of him. I built him a friendship statue out of pebbles and everything!”
“I can’t let you just trot out of here you know. You committed a grave crime and then escaped from your punishment.”
“Oh, I assure you, she hasn’t escaped punishment. Not when I’m done with her.”
“So you’d rather throw a little filly in Tartarus, while other ponies who won’t be named, but who committed similar crimes, are free to go about their lives as if they did nothing wrong? It’s not like someone can almost destroy Equestria with equality and time travel and then get off scot free just by apologizing.”
Starlight sighed. “Look, Cozy. I know what you’re implying. About Trixie. Discord. Princess Luna. Even me. Especially me. Your modus operandi is manipulation and I’m not falling for it.” She added ‘again’ under her breath.
Cozy waited for it. Starlight was always the easiest of the staff to manipulate. Even when she was expecting it. Even when she saw through it. She carried a lot of guilt for her actions.
“But. You have a point. They were far harsher to you than they were to any of the rest of us. Not counting the thousand years Luna spent imprisoned in the moon or the centuries Discord spent as a statue.”
“I’m just a kid. You’re all adults.”
“You’re way too clever to pull that off. At least now that we know better…”
“So I can go home with Mommy? Please?”
“No.”
“Nuts.”
“However, I think we could come to some sort of arrangement. I could be persuaded to plead your case to the princesses.”
“You would do that? For me? After everything I did to you? There’s a catch, isn’t there?”
Starlight grinned and Chrysalis nearly gagged on the overwhelmingly rotten flavor of smugness. “Of course there’s a catch. You’re going to stay here.”
“Here? Around everypony that hates me?”
“Yup. You don’t have to convince me that you’ve turned over a new leaf. You have to convince your peers. All of them. I don’t want even a single pony or creature to object to your presence here.”
“I can’t even convince myself that I’ve turned over a new leaf. Let’s just save ourselves the time. Can I at least go home to pack for my return trip to Tartarus?”
“The master of deception is afraid she might deceive her classmates once more?”
“How do you know this isn’t just some scheme on my part?”
“I don’t. To the contrary, I’m betting that it is.”
“I just want to go home with Mommy. If I stay here the other students will beat me up.”
“That wouldn’t be very friendly of them, would it? I like to think we teach our students better than that. It’ll be just as challenging for them to accept you as it will be for you to stop thinking of them as chess pieces to be played with and disposed of.”
“You’ll do what the mare says, Cozy.” Chrysalis dialed up the bitterest of flavors: disappointment. “You’ve made a lot of mistakes and you need to atone for them. You hurt ponies, and you need to make it up to them.”
“But Mommy!”
“No buts. She accepts your terms.”
Starlight Glimmer picked up the intercom. “Attention all students and faculty. Mandatory unscheduled assembly in the auditorium in five minutes.” She stood up. “We’ll wait here until the students have gathered. No need to start a panic.”
As ponies trotted past the office, Cozy Glow pointed some of them out to Chrysalis. She motioned to a pink pony with raspberry hair and a cutie mark consisting of a rainbow linking two clouds. Chrysalis nodded and memorized the mare’s look. “That’s Bifröst! She’s from the far northern parts of Equestria. I mean, if she was any further north she’d live in the Crystal Empire! She talks with a heavy accent.” Cozy did her best to imitate it. She quickly sank down out of sight of the window. “And those six are the ones who defeated me.” She whimpered and Chrysalis took a good look at Sandbar, Gallus, Yona, Silverstream, Smolder, and Ocellus. “They never liked me.”
“Well, according to what they said after the incident, you tried to break up their friendship not long before you went mad with power.”
“Golly, I wasn’t trying to. Honest.” She looked up at Starlight with puppy eyes.
“You’re going to have to cut the cutesy act out if you’re going to stay here. No one is buying it any more. We’ve seen the real you.” Starlight opened the door to her office. “Every creature should be in the auditorium now. We shouldn’t keep them waiting.”
Cozy Glow took to the air and Chrysalis stayed about a length and a half behind Starlight. The urge to strike her while her back was turned was overwhelming. The pony most responsible for her downfall was at her most vulnerable. She’d never see it coming. For a moment she forgot about the mission, forgot about Grogar, and stared at Starlight Glimmer’s backside with fire in her eyes.
Cozy Glow snapped her out of it with a hug. “C’mon Mommy! We shouldn’t keep my friends waiting!”
Starlight chuckled. Cozy’s enthusiasm wasn’t faked. She was truly passionate and determined. Perhaps the main reason she made such a formidable enemy for one so young. She’d only first started making her own plans when she was Cozy’s age, and it had taken her well over a decade to put them into motion. And her own attempt at creating an equal Equestria was far less ambitious than a complete coup d'état. Cozy Glow had a brilliant mind, of that there was no doubt. The key was going to be getting her enthusiastic about being good and keeping her away from her darker instincts. Twilight had failed, but perhaps Starlight could reach her. They had much in common. Memories of her own revenge against Twilight and her friends popped into her head. She glanced over her shoulder and the two ponies were still following her. Her momentary panic subsided. Cozy was a different pony. She wouldn’t necessarily go for revenge like she had. Still, the filly had to be planning something.
When the headmare turned a corner, Chrysalis changed disguises, continuing her pace behind Starlight as the similarly colored Bifröst. Cozy Glow banked at the same intersection, heading in the opposite direction, towards where the artifacts were kept.
When Starlight reached the auditorium she paused. “All right, I want you two to stay out here until I motion for you to come on stage…” She trailed off as Bifröst looked at her in confusion. “Did you see any other ponies?” Chrysalis-turned-Bifröst shook her head. Starlight’s mind raced. She couldn’t go chasing after them with everypony waiting for her. She briefly considered sending Bifröst to do it, but decided against it. The student was holding the door open for her, so she trotted into the auditorium. Once Starlight’s back was turned, Chrysalis took to the air and raced back towards the intersection where Cozy had left them earlier.
Starlight scanned the ponies gathered in front of her from the podium and sighed. “Everypony deserves a second chance. Celestia knows I’ve been given more than my fair share of chances to change my ways, and I’m a better pony for it.” There were stomps of approval from the audience and Starlight continued, “Hypothetically speaking, if I were to request Cozy Glow be turned over to our custody, instead of rotting in Tartarus, do you think you could give her a chance to prove herself?” A few heads were nodding, but the vast majority were shaking back and forth. “This is the School of Friendship. Would we turn our backs on a pony who needs friendship? Quite possibly the pony most in need of friendship in the history of Equestria. We failed her once, would we fail her again?”
“Never!” It was Silverstream who spoke up. “If we turn our backs on her we’re no better than she is.”
Gallus grumbled. “It would be stupid to let her back into the school. How could we ever trust her again?”
“Twilight trusts me. I nearly destroyed Equestria because I was so caught up in wanting revenge against her. And here I am, standing in front of all of you less than a year later. She’s entrusted all of you to me. And I won’t fail her, or any of you. I feel like I’ve failed Cozy Glow and I think we should give her another chance.” There was some stomping, though it was decidedly not as enthusiastic as the previous round. She cringed. “This is, of course, completely hypothetical. I’d have to convince the princesses to release her in the first place. But I don’t feel right asking this if the rest of the student body isn’t on board with the idea. She hurt all of us. She confined me to a magical bubble for two days. I can forgive her for that. Can all of you forgive her for what she did to you?” There were more nods now.
More than half the audience was on board with the idea. She would send her request to Celestia, who would then discover the filly had somehow escaped in the interim. There’d be an Equestria-wide search for her and Tirek, and eventually they’d be found. Tirek could be disposed of in any way the princesses saw fit – most likely returned to Tartarus, though she wouldn’t be opposed to trying to teach the centaur friendship too. But with his ability to drain the magic from ponies, there was no real safe way to let him loose. Cozy Glow, however, was merely a pegasus filly. And while underestimating her before had nearly proven to be Equestria’s downfall, the simple truth remained that Cozy’s natural magic was weather-based: cloud-walking, weather manipulation, and the like. Only with the aid of magical artifacts could she ever hope to accomplish her plans. Starlight felt confident that she could keep the young pony in line long enough to learn real friendship if just given the chance to.
Grogar looked at the sweater proudly held up by Chrysalis and Cozy Glow. “I see your mission was a resounding success.” He slipped the sweater on. “Yes, this is much better.”
“That’s it? You just wanted the sweater to wear it?”
“Yes. I’m old, I get cold in this dank and musty lair.”
Chrysalis worked her jaw back and forth a few times but no sounds came out. A tiny hoof prodded her in one of the holes in her foreleg.
“Chrysalis, do you think you could maybe stay disguised as my Mommy just a little longer? Please?”
Cozy looked up at her with an expression that was probably extremely effective on ponies. But for a changeling, it was all about emotions. And now Cozy was feeling desperate. The sourest of flavors, an emotion changelings would eat only if absolutely forced to. Were she capable of her own emotions, she might feel pity for this pathetic wretch of a filly. Instead, she saw an opportunity for a bountiful feast. She’d certainly done worse things for less satisfying meals. “Sure, kid.” In a flash of green Cozy’s mother once more stood in Grogar’s lair.
“Yay! Mommy!”
Cozy attacked her leg again. Attacked? No, that wasn’t the right term. Hugged? That was it. It was only then that she grasped how well and truly broken Cozy Glow really was. Tirek was her idea of a surrogate father, and now she was taking the place of substitute mother. It gave a whole new meaning to the term ‘broken family’. She sighed. She looked down at Cozy Glow trying her hardest to hug her tight enough to cut off the circulation in her leg. “Come on, kid, let’s get you some ice cream.”
“Yay! Ice cream! Best Mommy ever!”
Yup, life was weird.
