1: A fight with a changeling
Twilight crouched behind a shrub, breathing hard. Chrysalis would hear it and find her any second, which made it all but impossible to stop as the stress overwhelmed her thought.
Can't breathe have to breathe can't hide have to hide, her instinct screamed at her. Like she'd been dreading, a set of ink-black hooves landed hard enough to crack the earth in front of her.
HAVE TO RUN. RUN THEN HIDE THEN RUN AGAIN.
Thankfully for Twilight, teleporting was easy enough to be instinctual for her when she needed to run. She jumped through space to the furthest point she could see, well away from the clearing she’d been caught off guard in.
“Twilight?” she heard from the woods in Applejack’s familiar drawl. It had come from even further out than her teleport had taken her. Rescue had arrived!
Twilight ran to her friend, then ran past her without stopping. “No time to talk, AJ! Chrysalis is here! We need to leave!”
“Oh, is she now,” Applejack said in a tone that made Twilight’s skin crawl. When she spoke next, her accent thickened to the point of parody, and Twilight’s blood ran cold. “Yer far too trustin’, ya know that?”
Suddenly, Applejack leapt at her as another flash of green filled Twilight’s vision. Before she could react, Twilight was pinned.
“I do so enjoy tricking you ponies like that,” Chrysalis said with a sneer. “You're so eager to see a friendly face, you forget it might be me smiling at you.”
Chrysalis leaned in so close that Twilight could smell each breath Chrysalis took. They stank like something which had been festering in a corner somewhere, unnoticed. “You were never going to win this, little princess. You don't have the guile. Or the guts to truly fight. None of your kind do! And what fight they have in them will be beaten out when I rule Equestria.
“You'll get to see it all, too. Having you captured and broken is too valuable to make killing you worth it. Thankfully, your little student doesn't have that going for her. You'll watch her die, Twi-"
Her monologue was cut off by a beam of pure energy slamming into her head. Twilight panted as the fear and adrenaline refused to leave her system. She couldn't see clearly because of the light from her spell. It felt like Chrysalis had stopped moving entirely, but hadn't been thrown off despite the blast.
As her vision began to clear, she felt liquid seeping through the fur on her chest. When she could finally make out what was in front of her, she understood why. There was simply nothing left where Chrysalis's head was supposed to be, and a sickly green fluid was dripping from the remains.
A few moments passed in silence before the body collapsed on top of Twilight with a soft thud. She took the body in her telekinesis and threw it off herself. As her mind finally slowed with the fight over, she could only think about one thing.
I killed her.
It had been automatic. Chrysalis had pushed just hard enough to finally break Twilight's resolve, and now the changeling queen was dead.
Twilight sat on her haunches, took one ragged breath in, and let a sob back out. She'd just crossed a threshold, one she had hoped to never cross. She would be a killer for the rest of her life. And some slightly more rational part of her that she wasn't listening to told her it was necessary. That Equestria would praise her for this. It had come down to a Princess of Equestria or one of the greatest monsters to ever live, and she had survived. And yet here she was, weeping
A strange, disgusting gurgling noise coming from the body snapped Twilight out of her despair. It was twitching, with air coming out of the neck making the wretched noise. It was almost like… laughter?
Another flash of green overtook the corpse, and then Chrysalis was whole again, cackling.
“Did you, heh! I mean, really! Ha! You honestly thought that a master shapeshifter would be idiotic enough to keep her vital organs in her head?” Chrysalis stood, ready to continue the fight.
“And really, what was with the sobbing? You thought I was dead and you start crying!? Your enemy is slain! You should be celebrating! You ponies really don't know how to fight worth a damn!”
Twilight breathed heavily as she got back on her hooves. This was already the worst fight she’d ever been in, and it wasn't about to get any easier.
Author's Note
So this is an idea for a fight that just didn't fit in anything I've written or intend to write. I just really loved the idea of somepony getting into a fight with a changeling, landing a blow that would mortally wound anyone, and then the changeling laughs it off because the major organ that's supposed to go there was in their left hind knee or something.
2: The Old Homeland: Prologue
Author's Note
So, this was going to be the prologue for a story idea that stalled out fast, sadly. The idea went thusly:
The founders of Equestria, at least roughly as the story is told to us the viewers, were from... somewhere indeterminate before they founded Equestria. But clearly a different land. A different land which appears to go otherwise totally unmentioned in the show canon. Now, it's reasonable to assume that the mass emigration wasn't total. Whether by bad luck, stubbornness, or inability, ponies were presumably left behind. Unable to reconcile their differences, the windigoes froze the denizens of the ancient pony homelands alive, leaving them as a constant source of anger and hate for them to feed on, which is why when you go significantly north of Equestria it's a frozen wasteland hellscape. Cut to 1000+ years later, when this prologue occurs, and an archaeological dig manages to free to ponies in the ice. The story would have proceeded with Twilight being asked to survey the site and act as an interpreter since she canonically can speak Old Ponish at a rough conversational level. Twilight, wanting to bond with her new friend and have some help with interpreting, asks Starswirl to join her. From there, faced with the environment he had gone out of his way to leave alongside the other unicorn migrants, Starswirl regresses back to the way ponies were before the unification, causing tensions among both the ancient ponies and among Twilight and the archaeological crew. This would then threaten to destroy them all in the windigoes frenzy over new anger and hate to devour.
I might still try to continue this, but I doubt it. I know where I want to place the stops on this railroad, but not how to align the tracks to get there.
2: The Old Homeland: Prologue
Tink. Sandy Gem did not care for this job. Well, she did like the work, just not where it was taking place currently. Her name alone should tell anypony that she preferred deserts to the frozen north, but somepony had discovered some pottery during a poorly advised ski trip, so here she was.
Tink. Her pick swung, cracking the ice beneath her. “Hey Sandy, any luck over there?” called one of the other archaeologists.
Tink. She put the pick down. “Gee, Buried Treasure, have you heard me yell ‘thank Celestia?’”
“Um, no?”
“Well how about ‘Luna’s wondrous dotted flank?’” Sandy didn’t actually think Luna’s flank was that wondrous, but it was a common enough expression.
“I get it, you haven’t found anything,” Buried Treasure said defensively.
“No no, I think we need to go over this just in case I do find something, Buried.” Sandy wasn’t even sure where this was coming from at this point. She liked Buried Treasure. They’d worked together amicably for years. But her frustration with her situation was boiling over at this point. No stopping it now.
“In the event that I find something in this Tartarus-forsaken wasteland, you will definitely hear me say something wildly inappropriate and disrespectful to our oligarchs. Basically, if you hear something that sounds vaguely sexual in the same sentence as a Princess’s name, assume I have finally found some damned piece that justifies this dig!” In the back of her mind, Sandy knew that this was absolutely uncalled for. She’d be apologizing for it the entire rest of the night. She’d probably even need to throw in one of her few remaining packets of cocoa because a warm drink would help smooth this over. But right that moment, she needed to be heard. She needed to vent.
“In conclusion, I have not found anything.” She picked up her pick and slammed it down into the ice between them. “And if you will refrain from asking going forward, then I promise you will be the first to know when I do find some scrap of evidence that anypony was dumb enough to live here!”
The cracks in the ice surrounding her pick radiated outward as she stomped. After a moment, the area rumbled, and the cracks gave way to an opening beneath them. Sandy Gem and Buried Treasure fell into the hole below, only to see several huts in what appeared to be a village square around them. The area beneath the ice was hollow. Only a few feet of ice and snow had separated them from their goal.
Their argument nearly forgotten, the two ponies dusted themselves off, and immediately went to investigate the nearest of the homes. Inside, there was remarkably well preserved furniture. A table, chairs, several cabinets. There was even food within, all frozen solid. The pair opened the door at the back of the kitchen, and came face to face with a pony, encased in a solid block of transparent ice.
“Luna’s wondrous dotted flank, this is big,” Sandy mumbled as she surveyed the pony in front of her. Had she been looking closer, she would have noticed the mystery pony’s eye follow her around the room.
Pinkie's Streaming Career
"Twilight," Pinkie said with a sigh, "I don't think the other girls appreciate that I started streaming on the human internet."
Twilight turned to face her friend. "What makes you say that?"
"When I told them I made an account to start streaming, they all ran! And started looking for cover!"
Twilight frowned. "Maybe it was something about the way you told them?"
"No way!"
"Well, what did you tell them?"
Pinkie huffed. "All I told them was that I have a Twitch!"
Author's Note
I came up with this terrible, awful, no good very bad idea for a punchline at work today, wanted desperately to make a full fic out of it for Admiral Biscuit's Not-A-Contest, and realized basically immediately that any attempt at turning this into a 1k+ word fic that meets minimum standalone post requirements would be futile and agonizing to attempt. So enjoy this terrible joke where the chapter A/N is longer than the "chapter."
