Change, Inc.

by PaulAsaran

Rating: everyone
Tags: Thorax, Sunset Shimmer, Pharynx, Slice of Life, Alternate Universe, Human, Sad, Drama, Queen Chrysalis, Equestria Girls
Length: 44079

Chrysalis Chrysanthemum is a bad mother.

Chrysalis Chrysanthemum is one of the most powerful, feared individuals in the world of corporate business. There is nothing she can't do if she puts her mind to it. At least, that's what she always thought. Then a girl named Sunset Shimmer drops into her life. Chrysalis is set to discover that of all the ways she has succeeded, there's one thing she failed utterly at. Make that three things.

Now she must face the hard truth and find some way to fix it. If only she had the faintest clue how.

The story of Chrysalis as a mother in two parts. Inspired by a long-held and beloved headcanon of mine.

Pre-reading done by Wandering Twilight, Ghost Mike, ShiningBeacon, and AuroraDawn.

Cover art commissioned from AmazingPuffhair, who surprised me by getting it done perfectly in only one try.

Published 2021-05-22 17:10:03 UTC
Last updated 2021-05-22 17:10:03 UTC

Part I

The Rolls-Royce Phantom prowled the streets of Canterlot, a predator among prey. Chrysalis suckled on a piece of chilled dark chocolate and pointedly stared out the window. From the ceiling hung a small screen on which an overweight and eternally sweating man was finishing his excuses. She wasn’t wearing one of her low-cut suits today, so his anxiety had nothing to do with the view. This time. He was the sitting president of Change, Inc’s Eastern-European management. Had been for about a year now. She was already looking for his replacement.

Pulling the candy from her lips between her index and middle fingers, she interrupted his rambling. “I told you, we’re not going above twenty.”

The balding man, ironically named Mr. Gazelle, appeared exasperated. “Madame CEO, they almost walked out of the meeting! They won’t accept anything less than thirty-five million. If we want to purchase their—”

“You need to grow a pair, Gazelle.” Chrysalis at last deigned to look him in the digital eyes. The more than eight million pixels made his bobbing Adam’s apple perfectly clear. At any other time, his failure to hide his fear would have brought a toothy grin to her lips, but she was too bored with his poor performance to bother. “They’ll take twenty. They don’t have a choice. They need us, not the other way around.”

Her cool gaze went back to the window. “If they refuse us, we get the same services somewhere else, and they fail to find a buyer. I’ve already ensured that much.” Which he should have done entirely on his own. The fact she’d had to step in on something so insignificant was just one more part of why he wouldn’t be around for much longer.

“Miss Chrysanthemum—”

“The next time I hear from you, I only want to know whether or not you’ve made the deal. Which, I’m sure, you will have.” The bar of chocolate broke between her teeth with an audible snap. She tapped a button on the armrest and the screen winked out, cutting Gazelle off mid-retort. The screen silently folded into the ceiling, leaving Chrysalis to rub her forehead and try to keep her scowl from becoming too pronounced.

The violet eyes of Pharynx, her driver and bodyguard, glanced at her through the rearview mirror. “Is it safe to say ‘told you so’ yet?”

She shot him a glare even as she slipped the last of the chocolate between her lips. Though his eyes were already back on the road, she was certain he felt her gaze. “If you must.”

He nodded with a faint hum. “In that case: told you so.”

She huffed and turned her glare back out the window. “You’re not usually so good a judge of character, but I suppose even broken watches can be correct every now and then.”

“Ouch.” Despite her angle from him, she could just make out the start of a rare smile . It was enough to bring an upwards quirk to the corner of Chrysalis’s lips. “We should be getting home in about forty-five minutes, give or take five.”

“I didn’t ask for an update.”

“Got one, anyway.”

This was why Chrysalis liked Pharynx, aside from being good at his job: he had a surprising knack for knowing when to talk and when to shut his yap. It was nice having a bodyguard who did more than just loom in the background and didn’t have marbles for brains. She’d raised him well.

But had she raised him ‘right’? She wasn’t sure where that question came from, but it left a strand of uncertainty within her. She examined her adopted son. Subtly, of course. Didn’t want him to think she was displeased with him somehow. Though shorter than her by nearly a foot, he was a big man, muscular and broad. He looked good in his suit. Of course he did; she hardly cared what he wore outside of work, but when he was in public with her she made sure he looked his best.

Pressing the side of her head to the window, Chrysalis looked to the passenger-side mirror. Pharynx had it set just so that she could see her own reflection. Strategically placed webcam notwithstanding, she was not a vain woman. Even so, she felt she looked good for her age. She still got a few calls from would-be suitors. She was far out of their league – really, there wasn’t a man or woman on the planet who was in her league – but that didn’t prevent the occasional one night stand. It would never go further than that.

She had zero intention of marrying. Fuck that shit.

Chrysalis soon forgot the entire reason she was brooding to begin with, but brood she did while the Phantom stalked its way through downtown traffic. It eventually escaped into the quieter suburbs, but she barely noticed. She was too busy contemplating her existence and her business. Thoughts leapfrogged through meetings to be had, meetings already had, reports to read, numbers to crunch (truly the worst part of her job), and events to attend.

It was as the Phantom was cruising slowly through a T-shaped intersection that Chrysalis saw something to finally drag her out of her inner thoughts. “Stop the car.” Pharynx did as ordered without question, though the look he sent her through the rear-view mirror said enough.

She stared into an alleyway between a Chinese restaurant and a cheap clothing store. There were four people in there. Teenagers, by the looks of them, and only barely. A fiery-haired girl was backed into a corner, hands balled into fists and body crouched so low it was likely uncomfortable. It looked almost as though she were preparing to walk on all fours. Two boys and a girl were standing over her. The girl held a baseball bat.

When asked in the future, Chrysalis would always answer truthfully: she had no idea what she was thinking. Whatever was happening wasn’t her problem and she shouldn’t have gotten involved. Even so, she found herself opening her door and stepping out onto the cracked sidewalk.

Pharynx was at her side before she’d fully stood up. With her high heels on, she outright towered over him. He looked into the alleyway, agitated. “Never took you for the hero type.”

“Call it a curiosity.” She scowled as the girl with the bat took a downward swing at the redhead, who tried to dodge and was rewarded with a strike on her rear leg. She really did move on all fours, and with surprising swiftness too, but the blow had been enough to keep her from retaliating. Her recovering pause lasted just long enough for the standing girl to give her a sharp kick in the stomach, dropping her to the ground. “You’re not above giving whippings to children, are you?”

He cracked his meaty knuckles, inadvertently showing off the fang tattoos on the back of his hands as he did so, and grinned. Pharynx often grinned when he was allowed to get violent. “Nope.” He stomped into the alleyway, unnoticed by the leering, cheering kids. Chrysalis followed until she had the exit blocked, crossing her arms and watching.

The girl with the bat was snarling something about the redhead being a thief when Pharynx made his presence known. He pushed between the two boys, knocking them aside like bowling pins, and caught the baseball bat with one hand as she was winding it back for another swing. He ripped the bat out of her hands, then lifted her off the ground by the back of her shirt.

“Hey! Get your hands off her, you giant—” The boy who spoke froze as Pharynx tossed the bat in the air, caught it by its handle in the same hand, and swung it so that the blunt end stopped less than an inch from the youth’s nose. Whether in shock or fear, it was enough to make him freeze. The young woman continued to thrash a foot in the air from Pharynx’s hold.

Swearing, the other teen turned to abandon his companions, not stopping when he saw Chrysalis standing in his way. If anything, he picked up speed, clearly intent on ramming into her. His clumsy manner tempted her to yawn theatrically, but she resisted.

At the last second, she sidestepped and swung her hand, striking him in the side of the neck in a chopping motion. The boy stumbled, groaning, but before he could fall she caught his ear, twisted, and lifted. The boy howled and clung to her wrist, tears running down his cheeks and sneakers barely touching the ground.

Chrysalis hadn’t expected much, but this was downright pathetic. She looked to the remaining, abruptly pale boy, who couldn’t decide whether to look at her or Pharynx. The girl was kicking and shrieking like a banshee, unable to break free from the bodyguard’s hold. The redhead remained curled on the ground, covering her head as though expecting another blow.

With a sigh, Chrysalis said, “Go back to your mommies and change your boxers, boys.” She released her victim’s ear. He was out the alley in an instant, and she did nothing to impede his buddy from following. That just left the girl, who at this point was threatening to tell dear old daddy about this transgression against his princess. Chrysalis approached, stopped a few feet away, and pointed at the ground. Pharynx got the message; the teen landed unceremoniously on her butt in between them.

The girl shot to her feet and got in Chrysalis’s face. “You bitch! Do you have any idea who I am? When I tell my—”

The smack of Chrysalis’s backhand echoed through the alleyway, and probably beyond. It was more than enough to shut the makeup-encrusted loudmouth up. She stared up at Chrysalis, a trembling hand touching the red mark on her cheek, eyes lost in shock and disbelief.

Hands on hips, Chrysalis observed the girl cooly. “You need to learn manners, child, and some restraint. Right now you are only a phone call away from a widely publicized video of you being handcuffed and thrown in the back of a squad car as the petty criminal you clearly are.”

The shock wore off and the girl found her voice. “Criminal? She’s the one who stole my purse!”

Chrysalis crossed her arms, cocked her head, and set her chin atop her hand, one finger cradling her cheek in a thoughtful pose. She didn’t stop giving the little hellion that cold look. “Are you really so stupid as to think that misdemeanor theft is more damning than aggravated assault?”

“Listen, lady, I—” A preparatory shift of the hand was all it took to make the girl flinch and raise her arms in defense of a blow that didn’t come.

“Yes, clearly that stupid.” Chrysalis said it with all the disdain she could fit through her lips. There were former employees of hers who could attest that it was indeed a lot of disdain. She extended her arm past the girl and snapped her fingers. A second later, Pharynx deposited a business card in her hand. She held it before the blinking, alarmed girl’s face. “If you’re so convinced of your cause, then go and tell dear old Daddy what happened here. Please, spare no details. Then, give him my card. I’m sure he’ll enjoy discussing the matter with my lawyers.”

The girl soundlessly mouthed the word ‘lawyers’ to herself, possibly in alarm at the plurality of it. She looked at the card presented before her and gained the complexion of the deceased. Perhaps finally getting the message, she took the card and left at a shaky walk, which worked nicely with the undead metaphor. Chrysalis didn’t bother to watch her departure, instead focusing on the only remaining teen in the alley. She stepped beside Pharynx to get a good look at the girl.

Alerted by the sound of Chrysalis’s clicking heels, the girl finally dared to raise her head from under her arms. The very first thing Chrysalis noted was the expressiveness of her cyan eyes. There were a great many things fighting for dominance within them, the clearest being a battle between fear and anger. The immediate impression was of someone who desperately wanted to lash out yet lacked the means to do so. She would have been quite the attractive creature, especially with that complexion, but the bruises, dirt, torn up clothes, and wild, unkempt hair ruined the effect. There was something… familiar about her.

Chrysalis was nothing if not intrigued. “So,” she casually asked, “what do we have here?”

Perhaps realizing that no further attacks were imminent, the girl attempted to stand. Trying to put weight on her leg found her collapsing to hands and knees with a pained grunt. She used the wall for support on her next try. “Why did you do that?” she demanded, eyes fiery with suspicion.

When Chrysalis said nothing, Pharynx decided to throw in a grumpy “You’re welcome.” Then, to his employer, “Why did we do this?”

Once the girl was more or less on her feet, Chrysalis got a better look at her. She was a thin thing, clearly malnourished. Probably around 13 or 14 years old. She held herself strangely, upper body a little low and hands in loose fists. The former could be explained away by the injury to her leg. The hands? Maybe it was something kids were doing these days. Not an issue. “Did you steal that girl’s purse?”

The redhead snorted, her free hand rubbing against her stomach where she’d been kicked. “I gotta eat somehow.” Her eyes narrowed. Her fists tightened. “What are you gonna do about it?”

Indeed, what was Chrysalis going to do? There’d been no plan when she’d left the Phantom. She wasn’t even sure why she’d done so in the first place. Was it merely a whim, a momentary insanity that made her think it would be worth her time to intervene in the lives of people she didn’t know? Chrysalis was no bleeding heart. Saving this girl from one beating did nothing to prevent similar incidents throughout the world happening at this very moment. There was nothing in this for her, no reason to be out here, no excuse to even step out of the car.

But step out of the car she had. It would be a waste of all their time and energy to have done this for no reason. And this girl, whose glare dared her to try something, who just took a beating and seemed ready to risk another, was certainly interesting. Those traits were part of it, but there was something else, something she couldn’t put her finger on. Perhaps she could be worth something.

The decision was made. Chrysalis snapped her fingers and pointed behind her. “You. In the car.”

The redhead straightened up as much as she probably could considering her injuries, her eyes all the more fiery… but not enough to hide the fear lingering beneath. “Why should I go with you?”

A raised eyebrow. Crossed arms. “Have you anything to lose?”

The redhead shuffled backwards, a fox ready to run. “I’m still free.” Where she’d go with the fence behind her was unclear. Perhaps she merely preferred to put up a fight than come easily.

Chrysalis found the idea appealing. Perhaps a test of her intelligence was in order. “You can get in the car on your own and be my guest. Or, if you prefer, I can have my driver throw you in the trunk, in which case we’ll take you to a hospital and make sure the authorities are waiting there for you.”

Silence ensued. The girl looked to Pharynx’s bulky form. Then to the space around her. Then back at the fence. The whole time, Chrysalis could see her dissecting the situation. At last, grimacing, she pushed away from the wall and faced them properly, still favoring her injured leg. “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”

So she was smart enough to recognize the best course of action when it was presented to her on a silver platter. Chrysalis was starting to feel most pleased with the idea making the rounds through her mind. It wasn’t until she was back in her seat, the dirtied and hurting teenager sitting opposite her, that the implications of that idea struck her. At last, she knew what that one niggling little thing in the back of her mind had been: this girl reminded her of herself. The fire in her eyes had been not unlike what she often saw in the mirror.

“So which is it, boss?” Pharynx settled in the driver’s seat, meeting her gaze through the rear-view mirror. “Police station? Hospital?” The girl froze, not looking at her savior but clearly listening.

If asked at a later date, Chrysalis would claim the pause was intended for dramatic effect and to impress upon the girl the power held over her head in that moment. In truth, she had been struck by the potential implications of what she’d been thinking about doing with that teenager with the fiery eyes and hair. There were plenty of potential downsides, far too many considering she had nothing save her instincts to go on.

Then she realized that she didn’t get as far as she had by avoiding risks. And really, how much damage could this one girl cause? Worst case scenario, it would be over in a couple days and she’d move on. Her decision was reaffirmed.

“Home, Pharynx.” She ignored the surprised look on the girl’s face. “Take us home.”

Chrysalis was in a good mood, or as good a mood as she could have. Today’s string of meetings had gone well into the evening, and they mostly involved positive things for Change, Inc. It might have had something to do with snatching up that software company before Dis Corp got the chance. No, it definitely was that. Any opportunity to get one over on that whackjob owner of theirs. Just the thought of that smug grin getting slapped off his goateed face was enough to get her smirk on.

Chrysalis was all alone in her home. Which was exactly what she was after. She’d given Pharynx tomorrow off. She had decided to give herself the same luxury, a truly rare event that she’d most certainly pay for the day after. Still, things had gone so unusually smoothly today that she felt one day of lazing about the house would cause no harm. She’d get herself some wine, maybe some cheese and crackers. Then she could sit down and read. She hadn’t just read for the simple pleasure of it in months. Of course, starting something new would require her to finish it in one day or try and fail to finish it in the ensuing days. Not an appealing proposition. Maybe she could watch movies, instead?

It dawned upon Chrysalis, as she stood alone in her kitchen pouring herself a glass of Chinese Cabernet Sauvignon, that she had no idea what to do with this thing normal people called ‘free time’. This whole day vacation thing had been spontaneous; how was she supposed to decide what to do without having set it in her schedule weeks or even months in advance?

She sat on her cushioned dining chair, staring at nothing and sipping her drink. Her thoughts drifted to her teenage years, the last time she’d been able to just… do things. Back then she’d been something of a free spirit; rebellious and wild and the cause of many a condemning glower from well-to-do parents not wanting their impressionable sons and daughters caught up in her hooligan ways. The very thought brought a playfully wicked smile to her lips. Perhaps she could go looking for a man to spend time with. Or a woman. Those worked too. The right woman could work even better than a man.

“You’re home late.”

Such naughty ambitions disappeared in a puff of smoke. Right. She wasn’t really alone even in her own home anymore, was she? She turned her attention to the owner of that voice, a fiery-haired teenager in pajamas whose colors Chrysalis could never come up with an adequate descriptor for. Were they pink? Purple? Purple-pinkish? “Meetings went late,” she responded coolly.

Then she noticed something new. She peered at Sunset Shimmer, her ward for about eight months now. Noticing the scrutiny, the girl set hands to her hips in a proud pose and took on a grin so broad it was a wonder her cheeks weren’t in pain. Atop her head was a crown, likely plastic and painted gold, with what was probably a fake amethyst as the centerpiece.

“I won!”

Chrysalis scowled, more for her lack of understanding than anything. “Won what?”

Sunset’s smile wavered, but didn’t go away entirely. “The Fall Formal. It was tonight. Remember? I was competing for Fall Formal Princess, and I won. Isn’t it great?”

Great? The only thing Chrysalis felt was annoyance. It was a stupid high school dance. How was this supposed to impress her? That did seem to be the point of this little exercise. Leaning back in her seat, Chrysalis made sure to take her time with her next sip, savoring the wine’s flavor while emitting as much casual disinterest as she could muster. “Yeah. Sure. Wonderful.”

Now Sunset’s smile was gone. Her hands hung at her sides as though she weren’t sure what to do with them as she stared at the woman who had taken her in from the streets. “Hey, this is an achievement for me.”

“Is it?” Swirling her glass, not deigning to look at the child, Chrysalis asked, “Was it a challenge?”

“Yes!”

“How?” She met Sunset’s gaze, judging, expecting, collected.

“I…” For only a second, her ward shrank under that stare. But then her hands hardened into fists and she stood her ground. “I got rid of the competition.”

Chrysalis blinked. Then blinked again. She’d been expecting some saccharine story about being the most popular girl in school or something similarly juvenile. She sat up a little straighter, now giving her full attention. “Explain.”

Crossing her arms in a pose almost certainly plagiarized from Chrysalis herself, Sunset gave an even response. “A certain girl was in the lead. Her name’s not important. She’s not important, not anymore.” Though she was fighting to appear confident, the lie was revealed by the slight hunch of her shoulders and how she turned her eyes away. “So I spread some rumors. You’d be shocked at how easy you can get an entire school to believe a blatant lie.”

“No. I wouldn’t.” Setting the glass aside, Chrysalis crossed her legs and eyed the young woman. Yes, clearly conflicted about her actions. Yet she still won. Sure, it was a crummy school title that wouldn’t mean anything later in life, but everyone has to start somewhere. “How do you feel about this success?”

“Proud, of course!” Briefly, Sunset even reflected that claim, with her bright eyes and warm smile. The effect faded as quickly as it came. “And… maybe a little ashamed. What I did to that girl was pretty underhanded.”

As she took in the child’s squirming, hesitant posture, Chrysalis realized that Sunset Shimmer was in a key moment of her development. She was about to choose the direction that would decide how she earned her success in life. Or… No, that may not be right. She’d already chosen her path, but was still trying to figure out how to utilize it.

A lot of things came together for Chrysalis in that moment. She was uncomfortable with the vast majority of them. She had flashbacks of her sons, how the twins developed and grew, and the way she guided them along. This was another one of those times. Sunset needed a strong presence to point her down the path and say ‘this is okay’. Because that was the important thing: it was okay. As long as Sunset was a success and happy with her life, she could be the bully.

Happy. That was an… interesting thought. She did want Sunset to be happy. Just as she wanted Thorax and Pharynx to be happy.

She frowned. They were happy… weren’t they?

“Chrysalis?”

She took a sip of her wine, confident her posture and manner made her appear composed and imposing rather than lost in thought. Even if the way Sunset eyed her suggested the opposite. “Let’s not beat around the bush,” Chrysalis declared firmly. “I do not care about your petty social gathering and the silly crown on your head. What I care about are your methods.”

Sunset shrank back as if scalded. “Y-you don’t think I should have done it?”

“Do you?” When Sunset failed to answer, Chrysalis sat up straight once more so as to be as looming as possible. “Listen to me well, child. If you choose a path to move forward, you devote yourself to it. You do not hesitate, you do not falter. It doesn’t matter to me that you cheated, it matters to me whether you feel cheating was the best way to achieve your goals. It matters that you are satisfied with your methods. Are you going to stay awake at night, fretting pointlessly over what you’ve done, or are you going to own it?”

Her audience of one took in her words, wide-eyed and thoughtful. Sunset took the crown from her head and studied it quietly for several seconds, long enough for Chrysalis to refill her glass. Last one for the night; no need to do more than get buzzed. “But… What if I could have—”

“Stop.” Standing up, Chrysalis walked around the table so that she could be in front of her ward. Being tall had its advantages. She swirled her glass as she said, “When I found you in that alleyway, you had stolen some valley girl’s purse. Do you feel any regret about doing it?”

All hesitation fled in an instant. Sunset’s eyes narrowed, her expression taking on the shrewdness of a hawk and the fire that had caught Chrysalis’s attention all those months ago. “No. I needed money to eat, and there were…” She paused, lips pursed tight. It quickly became clear that she didn’t intend to finish the thought. Chrysalis silently cursed this, having hoped she would have the answer to a perplexing mystery involving this girl.

No time for that, there was a lesson to be learned. “That’s right. You own it. You made the decision, you live with the consequences, and you plow forward. You chose to cheat to win that crown. Own it. Live with it. Plow forward.” A sip of her wine. “Any questions?” Sunset opened her mouth. “Pertinent ones.”

“What happens if I get caught?”

“Then you have only yourself to blame,” Chrysalis coolly responded. “As I said: consequences.”

The two stood there, Chrysalis feeling good about imparting some sound wisdom while Sunset mulled over what she’d been taught. The girl observed the crown in her hand, turning it this way and that as she studied it. Then, with a hurt tone that grated on Chrysalis’s nerves, she asked, “You really don’t care about the crown?”

Really? What part of ‘pertinent’ did she not understand? Chrysalis’s first instinct was to snap at her for asking stupid questions. She didn’t. Though the words danced on the tip of her tongue, she looked into those hopeful, perhaps even pleading cyan eyes and found they refused to leap off and become real. Those eyes weren’t supposed to look like that. They were supposed to be strong, determined, fierce. Seeing them like that, knowing she was responsible… It hurt. Chrysalis didn’t know why it hurt, but it did. Some deep instinct told her that scolding the girl wasn’t the right thing to do to fix those eyes.

Grumbling at herself for turning soft, she used her free hand to take the crown from Sunset. She raised it to eye level, spun it around a few times, taking in its false cheer and sub-par glisten. Truly, there was nothing in it worth getting excited over. It was a children’s toy, nothing more.

But then, Sunset was a child.

Chrysalis had been a child, once. She’d been a doe-eyed freshman taking her first steps into adulthood. Those times seemed so distant, but there were certain things she remembered. Things like a bright-eyed, multi-hue-haired girl standing up on a stage and basking in the adulation of her peers, a self-righteous do-gooder with only the most pompous, patronizing voice who would never do anything save look down on creatures like her. She looked between the crown and the child standing before her, and she saw the same hope and hurt and threatening disappointment that had once haunted her in the mirror. Sunset was not that condescending bitch. She was…

Taking a long, heavy breath, she set the crown on the table beside them. “High School is a… a ‘training ground’ for life. At least, that is how I see it. It is the point where eager youths discover what options lay ahead and choose their path for the future. This.” She tapped a finger atop the crown, not taking her eyes off Sunset’s. “This is a test run. You passed. Some will question your methods, call them ‘wrong’, but you still achieved the goal, and they did not. So, you passed. It was a simplified version of reality. The real world is much harder, with risks far greater. But you’re on your path.”

The smile that came to her lips surprised even her. “No, Sunset, I do not care about the crown. But I do care that you picked a direction and used it to succeed. You understand?”

Now it was Sunset whose gaze shifted from the crown to her guardian and back. She bit her lip, eyes distant in contemplation. “I think so.”

“Good.” It was. Chrysalis felt far more pleased by this conversation than she would have anticipated ten minutes ago. What that meant, she couldn’t be sure, but now she felt more like celebrating than she already had. And since Sunset was the source of that pleasure, there was surely no harm in sharing it. “Now, I’m not doing anything ‘responsible’ for the next twenty-four hours but have no plans at all for what to do with my time.” Smiling over her glass, she asked, “Any ideas?”

Being a clever girl, Sunset caught on to the suggestion right away. Surprise on her ever-vivid face, the girl seemed at a loss at first, perhaps even disbelieving. Then, timidly, she asked, “Maybe we could, I dunno…” With utmost caution, as if dreading the response, she finished with, “…watch a movie?”

Oh, that they most certainly could. With only the wickedest of grins – something Chrysalis had proudly spent years perfecting – she replied, “I hope you like horror.”

Though she paled a touch, Sunset was still smiling. Chrysalis decided it was just as nice as the fiery determination.

Chrysalis tossed her coat onto her bed and stepped onto her third floor balcony, embracing the autumn winds passing through her thin business shirt. A chunk of chilled dark chocolate crunched between her teeth. She undid a few of the upper buttons to let even more of the cool air in. It was a stark relief from being stuck in the unbearable heatwave Australia had been going through this past week. Thank goodness for Canterlot weather.

There came a knock on her bedroom door. That could only be one of three people. “Enter,” she called, grabbing one of the lawn chairs and turning it to face indoors. As she sat and crossed her legs, a tall man stepped in. “Thorax,” she said in greeting.

Despite his height, the twin brother of her driver was a mousy individual, all twitches and shuffling feet. The two couldn’t have been any more different from one another. “Y-your things have been recovered from the vehicle.”

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. Thorax knew that she didn’t need to hear that. He was also smart enough to know better than to bother her about such trivial things. Which could only mean… “How is Sunset?”

He met her eyes. Thorax only did that when he felt very strongly about something. “Not well. Something happened while you were gone.”

A vague response, perhaps intended to catch her attention, as he also knew she preferred directness. And since this was related to her ward of the past three years… She felt an alien sense of worry that only ever came up when Sunset was involved. She still didn’t understand it, but she’d learned the best way to deal with it was to address the situation immediately. “Explain.”

Though he flinched at her tone, he didn’t break eye contact. “There was an incident at her school. Her principal handed down harsher punishments than usual. Whatever happened, it was enough to cause property damage.”

That was enough to pull a groan out of Chrysalis’s throat. She pressed a hand over her eyes. “Vandalism again?”

“I don’t think ‘vandalism’ captures the extent of it,” he admitted anxiously. “The entrance to the school is gone.”

Down went the hand, the better to give him an incredulous look. “What do you mean, ‘gone’?”

“I mean it’s been destroyed. Not just the front doors, but the brick wall itself. Like someone put a wrecking ball through it.” When Chrysalis failed to find an appropriate response to this troubling news, he added, “There’s also a crater in the school’s front courtyard.”

It was an extremely rare thing for Chrysalis Chrysanthemum to be rendered speechless, yet there she was, mouth opening and closing stupidly while she tried to picture such destruction at the hands of a single teenage girl. Even she never got into that kind of mischief as a teen. Was ‘mischief’ even the proper term for something like this? When she found her voice, it was only to mutter a single, stunned “How?”

Thorax’s brow furrowed and he scowled. He appeared… angry. Thorax only ever got angry over one thing: not having a good answer. “I don’t know. The staff all say that Sunset tried to frame the school magician for a fireworks show gone wrong, but I’m confident they are lying. There are tells. Whatever the case, I get the impression that they are letting Sunset off lightly, possibly because of… unusual circumstances.”

Chrysalis took all this in with an ever-deepening frown. That he wasn’t willing to describe these ‘unusual circumstances’ meant he didn’t know what they were. That probably added a touch to his anger. Pharynx was her bodyguard and driver. It suited his skills. Thorax was her butler… and her informant. It was his job to know things. More to the point, it was his job to know things for her. As skittish as he was, he took that role very seriously.

She looked up at him. He hadn’t lost any of his frustration. “Have you any leads?”

He shook his head. “The faculty and the students are keeping the event to themselves or sticking to the same story. More or less. It’s phenomenal that they were able to convince so many individuals to keep the secret. I did find some videos online claiming to relate to the event, but honestly what they depict is so ridiculous it can only be fake, maybe as a distraction. That being said…”

The anxiousness came back, opening with him rubbing his hands together and crescendoing with renewed feet-shuffling. “What I saw bothers me. They were posted by some of the students. They depict Sunset turning into a demon.”

Chrysalis blinked. “A demon.”

“Again, it’s ridiculous. Stupid, even.” He sighed and, yet again, found the strength to look her in the eyes. “But Sunset is distraught. She hasn’t left her room in two days save to go to school, and she always looks miserable when I do run into her. I think she’s aware of the videos. If that’s how her fellow students have come to view her…”

“She has only herself to blame,” Chrysalis noted sourly. “We all have the power to affect how others perceive us. She didn’t have to become the school bitch.”

“Frankly, Mother, that’s beside the point.” Thorax looked away when she tried to catch his eye, tugging at his collar and blushing lightly. “She’s hurting. She did something worse than usual, bad enough that she’s actually feeling remorse. Whatever it was, I think it finally pushed her over the edge. She’ll need some guidance. The kind she won’t take from me.”

And it had to come from somewhere. A cold feeling ran up Chrysalis’s back as she contemplated just what he was proposing. Thorax. The ‘good boy’ between himself and Pharynx. If anyone could have at least an idea of what Sunset needed right now, it would be him. Chrysalis trusted his judgement enough to know that it was better to do as he was suggesting. It was just… uncomfortable. A big part of her wanted to resist. She stared at nothing in particular, wondering what she had to do now. Or rather, how to do it.

Thorax took a small step forward. “If I may be so bold…?” Distractedly, she nodded. “If this really is a turning point for her, then maybe it’s time to ask the big question. She might finally be open to explaining herself.”

Chrysalis considered that potential path. It was one she’d debated for a long time, ever since Thorax’s strange discovery. But Sunset Shimmer had always been standoffish and guarded, even after three years. They hadn’t even bothered to ask, because they knew the teenager would get defensive over it. Worse, Chrysalis suspected that if she did ask, she’d wake up to find Sunset gone. She wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, but that possibility kept her up some nights.

Hesitantly, she asked, “Do you really think she’s ready for that?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted somberly. “I believe this is the best time to ask. I think the question should come from you.”

She wished he hadn’t said that. That icy chill refused to go away. It wasn’t unfamiliar. She’d felt it plenty of times from raising the twins. Adopting them had been just as much a risk as it had been for Sunset Shimmer, and to this day she wasn’t at all confident that she’d done right by them. She kept telling herself that them being in her employ was a sign of her failure as a parent, even though neither of them seemed unhappy with the arrangement. Well, Pharynx might be fine with it. He was hard to read a lot of the time. Thorax, on the other hand…

When she tried to meet his eye, he flinched, and the sickness returned to her gut as she realized that he was frightened of her.

When Sunset grew up and made her own way in the world, would she too flinch every time Chrysalis looked her way?

Gritting her teeth and ignoring both the chill and the sickness, she stood up. “You and your brother can head home now. I’ll deal with Sunset myself.”

“Of course. Until tomorrow, Mother.” She wondered if he wasn’t relieved to be out of the room.

Chrysalis stood before the door to Sunset’s bedroom. She had been for some ten minutes, the lump of ice formerly known as her heart trying to fly out of her throat. Her private laptop was tucked under one arm and her hand hovered an inch from the door handle. If Sunset was in there, she was being very quiet.

One might think the door to a teenager’s room would be boisterous, with signs declaring the area off limits and other such immature things. Sunset’s door offered nothing of the sort. It was plain, indistinguishable from its peers save for a small pin pad above the handle. Chrysalis pondered why that was. She hadn’t forbidden it. If anything, she wanted Sunset to express herself in whatever way she desired.

Maybe that was the problem.

Procrastination. Had she really fallen so low? Pursing her lips, she reached out to just barely graze the handle. That was all the pressure necessary to know that it was locked. Not that it mattered. It might be Sunset’s room, but it was Chrysalis’s house. With just a few button presses on the pad, she’d unlocked the door and pushed her way in.

Sunset’s room wasn’t decorated much. There were two ceiling-high windows, one opposite the door and one to the left. A guitar sat upon a stand next to some speakers, music being one of the very few things the young woman seemed to enjoy without qualifications. A bookshelf by the door held a wide variety of tomes, mostly non-fictional and historical in nature, as Sunset was voraciously studious. A desk held a tower desktop, a newer model that the teen didn’t use the full capabilities of. It had been Thorax’s idea to get such a strong rig, and Chrysalis had fully supported it, but alas, even the digital world couldn’t help the girl’s disposition.

The most important thing was the queen-sized bed covered in a fiery orange quilt. Or rather, the young woman sitting on the bed and staring out her window, the quilt wrapped around her shoulders and her brilliant red-and-yellow hair a mess. Sunset didn’t respond to Chrysalis’s entrance despite how aggressive it had been. There were no demands for privacy or anger at invading her personal space. She just stared at the last light of day through the window, a beam of sunlight illuminating her weary, unfocused eyes. Gripped in her hands was a thick brown tome, her personal red-and-yellow mark the only thing to serve as a title. She held the book as though she couldn’t decide whether to hold it close or throw it away. It was the only thing she’d owned prior to coming to live here.

Chrysalis stood in the doorway for some time, hand at rest on the door handle and wondering if it wouldn’t be better to go away. The thought made her feel like a coward, but that didn’t stop her from giving it a second, third, and even a fourth look. At last, she closed the door behind her. Pulling the rolling chair from under the desk, she moved it to the foot of the bed and sat, legs crossed and computer in her lap. Still, the girl didn’t react to her presence.

Chasing the moths away from her insides, she cleared her throat. No response. In that case… “Sunset Shimmer.” She barely kept from grimacing; that hadn’t come out near as gently as she’d intended.

Sunset shifted. She blinked. Her eyes gradually regained their focus, and she turned her head to look at the woman who had taken her in three years ago. “Oh.” A pause. “Chrysalis. Sorry. Didn’t hear you come in.”

That tanned face remained so very expressive. This evening, that expression screamed so many things at Chrysalis, none of them familiar. Pain. Confusion. Anxiety. More than anything, those brilliant cyan pools proclaimed ‘I have strayed from safe seas and have no idea how to turn the ship around.’ By themselves, these sensations declared so vividly with a look alone would have been troubling. Yet it was the melancholy – the total absence of that fierce fire that had always burned in this child’s every glance, motion, and act – that truly hammered home the seriousness of whatever had happened. These things crashed upon Chrysalis like a tidal wave, and she found herself at a loss for how to address them.

The moths were back. Oh, how she hated them.

Struggling to maintain her cool facade, Chrysalis spoke. “Thorax tells me you’ve had an interesting week.”

Sunset only sniffed, rubbing at her nose with a wadded up tissue that had been tucked somewhere within the depths of her quilt. At least she didn’t look away.

Annoyed by the lack of reaction, she tried again. “I don’t suppose you want to tell me about it?”

The young woman bowed her head. It was like watching a ship capsize. “You wouldn’t believe it.”

“I’d be willing to risk that,” she countered, though without any force. This provoked no response at all. Chrysalis massaged her temples and tried not to grimace. Why did the girl have to be stubborn even at what seemed like her lowest point? Maybe Thorax was wrong. Maybe this wasn’t the best time to ask the question.

“Aunt Chryssy?”

Instinct and three years of frustration nearly summoned her serrated tongue. The only thing that stopped her was the tone. Sunset had made up that stupid nickname ages ago. She knew Chrysalis didn’t like it and thus wielded it whenever she wanted to needle and annoy.

There was no needling this time. Chrysalis’s anger faded as she analyzed what she’d just heard. Sunset had used the nickname in a way that felt…

Sincere.

It stung. Strangely, it was a good kind of sting. It threw her off entirely, and she was glad her hand hid the uncertainty and pain that was most certainly plastered across her face. “Yes, child?”

She could hear Sunset shifting beneath her covers. The pause made that awkward sting fester.

“Am I a bad person?”

Chrysalis lowered her hand just enough to examine her ward from over her fingers. “Bad?”

Sunset was looking at the book on the bed beside her, bundled up in her quilt so that only her tear-stained, long face was visible. “You always encouraged me to have a commanding presence. To take what I wanted. You pushed me to—”

“Where is this coming from?”

Sunset flinched, although Chrysalis was sure she’d asked gently. She huddled up, as if trying to hide from her legal guardian’s scorn, whether that scorn was there or not. “I found out there was another way. What if I...” A glance, the briefest flicker of fear-filled eye contact. “What if I tried making friends instead of being a bully?”

A touch of ice came unbidden to Chrysalis’s tongue. “Are you suggesting this problem, whatever it is, is my fault?”

This time Sunset had every reason to flinch. “N-no, I didn’t mean it like that. I just… You never suggested I try making friends instead of taking what I want. Why?”

The question perplexed Chrysalis, which in turn led to a familiar annoyance. She knew Sunset was smarter than this. “I didn’t because I thought it was obvious.” Now Sunset looked at her, and that typically expressive face showed complete confusion. Did she really not grasp something so basic? “I encouraged you because I thought you’d made your decision regarding what you wanted your reputation to be. You’d selected your toolkit for life, and I wanted to encourage you to be a success in your own way.”

Sunset blinked. Wiped at her eyes. “You mean… you just let me be a bully?”

“I thought you wanted to be one.”

“That’s supposed to be an excuse?”

“An excuse?” Chrysalis would have laughed were she not so surprised that they were having this conversation. “I make no excuses. You decided you wanted to be a bully. There have been plenty of people throughout history who were great successes using such a route, and it was not my place to stop you. My only concern has been seeing you become the best at what you wanted to be.”

Sunset stared at her. Her focus faded as she thought about Chrysalis’s words. “I… I think I understand. But what if I don’t want to be a bully anymore? What if I’d rather try friendship?”

Leaning back in her chair, Chrysalis feigned studying her nails. “For starters, I want to point out that you are severely narrowing your options. Being a bully and making friends are not mutually exclusive ways to gain success, nor are they the only options. I’m still both surprised and a little disappointed that you seem to have not already known this. But if you really want to focus on being a paragon among social butterflies as your route to success in life, then I can only offer to assist.”

The incredulity in Sunset’s “Really?” was insulting, but not as much as her next question. “You mean to suggest that you know about friendship?” Chrysalis shot her a frigid look that immediately changed Sunset’s skeptical glare into contrite eye-avoidance. Which was another sign of just how strongly the mysterious events of the past week must have affected her.

Perhaps this was a turning point. Thorax did tend to be better at these kinds of things. She had no idea where he got such a talent for empathy. Certainly not from her.

“I want to show you something.” Chrysalis opened her laptop and, once it ‘woke up’, made sure the file she’d pre-opened was on the screen. “It is something that I’ve known for a long time. Something that I think only you can clarify.”

Heaving a sigh as only a teenager could, Sunset asked, “Can we just get to the important part? Like what kind of punishment you plan to give me for screwing up worse than ever before?”

“Punishments must fit the crime,” Chrysalis countered. “I don’t know what you did, so I can’t decide a fitting punishment, can I?” She didn’t bother to add that Sunset appeared to be punishing herself enough already. She offered the laptop to her. “Besides, we have more important things to discuss.”

If Sunset was pleased by not facing some comeuppance for her actions, she didn’t show it. With about as much enthusiasm as a snail might have for tasting salt, she wormed her way out of the cocoon of quilt and accepted the computer. She was still in her wrinkled pajamas despite the late hour. “Not sure what’s so important,” she muttered as she turned the screen to herself. “Hardly anything seems important… any… more…?” Her eyes widened.

Chrysalis didn’t need to say anything as the girl read what was before her. It was a report first written three years ago.

It depicted a black star captured before it had the chance to shine. Her first criminal act had occurred at the age of thirteen in the form of mere vandalism. That tiny act led to an avalanche of wicked behavior. So constant were her crimes that she was finally locked away at the age of seventeen, tried as an adult considering the intelligence, maliciousness, and intent. Many lives had been ruined. Two had been ended. She would take another, indirectly, before she was old enough to leave juvenile detention. Psychiatric evaluations showed no remorse, no concern, not even an acknowledgement that the actions had been wrong.

Thus was Sunset Shimmer doomed to spend the rest of her natural life in the penal system. Thorax had personally gone to visually confirm that, yes, she was still there. The latest update to the file was from a month ago.

The Sunset sitting on the bed was pale, a hand trembling before her lips. Chrysalis waited, hands on her lap, for the inevitable questions. She kept her manner cool and neutral. The concern and curiosity would not be known.

Sunset shoved aside the laptop as if it threatened her very existence. Her watery eyes met with Chrysalis’s. “You knew about this all this time? W-why didn’t you say anything?”

Perhaps the most predictable of queries. “Because I thought you’d see it as an accusation and run away.”

“Isn’t it?” Sunset demanded. When Chrysalis merely raised an eyebrow, she pressed, “Isn’t it an accusation?”

Chrysalis made a show of examining their surroundings. “If this is a prison, it’s an awfully pleasant one. I’d have to question the use of my tax dollars.” The tiny smile that won her felt like a greater accomplishment than any business acquisition. Perhaps now…? “It does lead to some questions.”

There went the smile. Haunted eyes darted to the laptop. Sunset shivered. “Is that going to be me?”

With a thoughtful frown, Chrysalis pressed a finger to her chin and looked to the ceiling. “My questions are more akin to how you are related to this girl currently sitting in a cell three states away. Long lost twin? A case of stolen identity? If that second one, who did the stealing?”

Sunset hugged herself around the shoulders, hunching slightly when Chrysalis turned her gaze upon her. “I guess I stole hers? Maybe?” Her ‘aunt’ offered no visible reaction, but the teen still shrank away as if expecting a blow. “I’m sorry.”

Chrysalis pursed her lips. Was she finally about to get a confession? “For what?”

“I’m sorry that I can’t tell you.” Sunset clenched her eyes shut and trembled. “Y-you wouldn’t believe me. I don’t want you to think I’m crazy. I don’t want to lose your respect. I d-don’t want you to see me as a failure.” She hid her face behind her hands, but they did nothing to disguise the quiet sobs.

So she still wouldn’t talk. That was a disappointment, and perhaps even an insult. But Chrysalis couldn’t voice that, primarily because she was distracted by the familiarly unfamiliar pain of hearing Sunset being so fragile. Thorax would do this sometimes when he was younger. Even Pharynx had done it on occasion. They were pitiful, terrible moments, made all the more so by Chrysalis’s total loss regarding what to do about it. She sat there, imperious and stoic, but inside she felt so hideously hollow.

What good was she as a parent if she couldn’t provide her wards the comfort and security they needed in times of crises? Money, shelter, security. These things she could readily provide, yet time and again they proved inadequate for that chaotic, tumultuous thing known as a heart. Not for the first time, Chrysalis wondered if she weren’t afflicted by some crippling deficiency that left her so helpless at times like this.

She wished she hadn’t sent Thorax away.

One thing was clear: Sunset still didn’t trust her enough to tell her the truth. The fact stung, but it was a fact. One she’d have to live with. Pinching the bridge of her nose, Chrysalis battled against the sick feelings of uselessness and failure. It wasn’t quite enough to fix the bite in her tone. “I have no intention of making you tell me anything you’re not ready to, so stop that.” She barely kept from adding a ‘please’ to the end.

Sunset eventually overcame her tears. She remained silent beyond a few sniffles, watching her with a morose, expectant look. Chrysalis forced herself to meet that gaze and speak firmly. “Would you like some form of support? Perhaps counseling?” Counseling? That made it sound like she thought Sunset was mentally deficient, didn’t it?

Before she could find a way to correct herself, Sunset shook her head. “I… I think there are some people at school who might be willing to do that for me.” By the slow way she said it, she wasn’t convinced that would be the case.

“Very well.” Chrysalis raised her hands, and Sunset returned to her the closed laptop. “But if you do need help, don’t hesitate to ask, and this—” she tapped the top of the computer with a finger “—remains a secret strictly for this family.” Sunset gained a peculiar expression, one Chrysalis had never seen before. Confusion and surprise mostly. She decided not to inquire about it. She stood, laptop tucked under one arm, and looked down at the nonplussed teen. “I was never opposed to your lifestyle before, Sunset, but I will note that I approve far more of this ‘friendship’ direction. If you’re serious about it.” She turned for the door.

“Aunt Chryssy?”

She froze, startled by the vice that had suddenly clamped around her heart. No words were said. Chrysalis couldn’t trust her voice right now.

“I don’t think I ever said it before, so… Thank you. For everything.”

A chain snapped somewhere deep inside Chrysalis. Indeed, Sunset never did thank her. For anything. Ever. Was she supposed to say something in return? Sit back down?

Unsteady, she left the room, not at all certain if it was the right thing to do. She should have answered. Why didn’t she answer?

The clicking of the closed door felt oppressive and anticlimactic.

Chrysalis knocked on the door before her nerves could get the better of her. It took all her willpower not to look back at the Phantom parked on the street, and more specifically Pharynx behind the driver’s seat. Not having him by her side was like having her arm amputated.

The door opened, revealing the pleasant smile so typical of its owner. That smile vanished to a neutral frown – a scowl barely masked – as purple eyes fixed upon her. “Chrysalis.” A hint of surprise under the coolness. “This is unexpected.”

“Celestia.” Chrysalis’s own attempt at polite neutrality probably wasn’t any better. “I apologize for appearing unannounced.” Please don’t slam the door in my face.

The principal of Canterlot High crossed her arms and studied the woman before her for several seconds. There was no small amount of tension in those shoulders. “You look well.”

No broadsides yet. So far, so good. Now if Chrysalis could control her own tongue. “Thank you. You’ve certainly changed for the better.” Now the olive branch. “Would now be a good time to apologize for all those years in high school teasing you about your figure?”

Celestia raised an eyebrow. “I’ve never known you to apologize for anything.”

At that, Chrysalis couldn’t resist a smirk. “I’m not an old dog quite yet. I can still learn some new tricks.” Yes, she knew the opening she’d just given her former rival. And by the way the second eyebrow joined the first, Celestia saw it too. More importantly, Celestia was savvy enough to know that she had created the opening on purpose. There could be no greater way to say Hold your fire, I come in peace.

With a sigh, Celestia leaned against the door and asked, wearily, “What do you want, Chrysalis?”

Not invited inside, but not turned away either. She would take that as a win. “I wanted to inquire about Sunset Shimmer.”

As if some button had been pressed in her mind, Celestia stood straight and offered her full attention. “Has she done something?”

“That’s what I’m here to ask you about,” Chrysalis corrected impatiently. “You’re her principal, after all.”

Said principal peered at her. “You usually have Thorax handle school matters regarding Sunset. And why not ask about this during school hours?”

Curses. The woman was every bit as nosey as she’d been when they were classmates. Now it was Chrysalis crossing her arms, hoping she looked annoyed rather than uncomfortable. “I wanted to get my information directly from you this time.” When Celestia didn’t move, she stiffened and added, “I also didn’t want Sunset to know I was asking.”

The response to that was a cocked head and a perplexed expression. Celestia tapped a finger against her arm idly. Chrysalis tried to not squirm under that look, even if it was entirely nonaggressive. Tried, and failed. The moths in her stomach began to circle as Celestia smiled. It wasn’t the wicked smile of years of comeuppance finally at hand or the awareness of an uncomfortable secret to be used later.

Celestia’s smile was warm. Somehow, that made it all the more terrifying.

“You want to come in and have some tea?”

“No.” The word came out sharper than she’d intended. Chrysalis stepped back, but managed to stop herself from fleeing like a spooked rabbit. She raised a hand to forestall any inquiries, even though Celestia hadn’t opened her mouth to offer any. “No, thank you. I think I’ll just go and… Go. Sorry for wasting your time.” She turned away.

“Sunset’s doing wonderfully.”

She paused, hands clenched into fists. “I-is she?”

“She is.” No footsteps. No change in the position of the voice. Celestia didn’t try to approach. That, at least, was a relief. “She has made huge strides since the Fall Formal. She’s become a better student and, I think, a better person.”

Chrysalis turned. Just enough to see Celestia out the corner of her lowered eyes. “Good.” She felt so horribly meek. Grimacing at her own weakness, she made her body turn and faced Celestia directly. She set her hands to her hips. Better than keeping them clenched at her side. “I noticed a change in her and wanted to make sure she wasn’t pulling the wool over my eyes. She’s done that kind of thing before.” She hated using that as her excuse. Even if it was true, it implied that she didn’t trust her ‘niece’.

Celestia still had that nausea-inducing smile. “I understand. I think it’s safe to say there’s nothing to worry about. Sunset has made some friends and they’ve done a remarkable job guiding her down a better path.”

Friends. New friends gained at the Fall Formal, during that big, ugly event that caused the sudden about-shift in Sunset’s behavior. Chrysalis pursed her lips and tried to shore up her posture; stiff shoulders, back straight, head high, eye contact. “I’ve been told something happened at the Fall Formal, something for which Sunset is still being punished for, despite it having happened more than a month ago.”

No quick, ready response this time. Celestia clearly considered her words, her manner abruptly less warm and more… cautious. “I offered to ease off on the detentions early since she’s been on such good behavior, but Sunset wants to go through with the whole thing. I see no reason to deny her that option.”

That was what Thorax had mentioned, but to hear it confirmed? Sunset really had turned a new leaf. But that was only one small part in all this. “I don’t suppose you could clear up some mysteries regarding what happened that night, could you?”

What Celestia said next was so quick that it had to be by rote. “Sunset Shimmer tried to frame Trixie Lulamoon for vandalism and reckless endangerment. Even if you don’t trust Sunset enough to take her word for it, it was all over the news.”

Chrysalis could feel the tightness forming around her lips and forehead. Tension grew through her whole body, and now it was Celestia who was fidgeting. “Do you honestly expect me to believe that some fireworks destroyed the solid brick wall at the front of the school and made a separate crater four yards wide?”

Celestia’s eyes darted about, as if seeking some escape. “Technically, fireworks are explosive devices.”

“Technically, Trixie Lulamoon is an amateur magician. What magic show uses enough fireworks to cause structural damage?”

“I thought you were here to inquire about Sunset?”

Throwing caution to the wind, Chrysalis snapped a hand forward to point at the insufferable woman’s face. “I am inquiring about Sunset! You’re accusing her of a crime. The fact you didn’t press charges doesn’t change the fact. If you’re going to go around telling the entire world that my child did something she didn’t, I swear I’ll do everything in my power to destroy you, do you understand me?”

The principal’s posturing came to an abrupt end, as punctuated by the shock on her face. “Chrysalis, I would never—”

“Don’t screw with me, Celestia!” The finger became a fist, which shook without any input from its owner. Chrysalis was used to frustration or annoyance or disdain, but the fire licking at her insides was something very unusual. She had an image in her mind of Sunset facing a lifetime of shame, of being turned away from the things she wanted to do in life because of a lie. That downtrodden face filled her with a need to lash out, and Celestia was more than just a convenient, familiar target. “Tell me the truth!”

Yet Celestia didn’t appear afraid of the superrich CEO with an army of lawyers and lobbyists in her pocket. If anything, she seemed… weary. “I’m sorry, but it’s not that simple.”

Chrysalis’s heel clacked against the cement path. “Then make it simple!”

“I can’t.” Grumbling under her breath and paying little mind to Chrysalis’s worsening glare, she said, “Sunset did do something bad. I promise, I wouldn’t have punished her otherwise. It’s just that, publicly, I have to stick to the fireworks story. For everyone’s sake. The things that went on that evening are unbelievable. My sister and I could lose our positions on the grounds of having lost our marbles.”

“I’m not sure you ever had any marbles to begin with, Cake Butt.”

“At least cake was the worst thing I stuffed into my mouth, unlike some girls I knew in high school.”

“It’s called a libido,” Chrysalis fired back through clenched teeth. “I hear it’s a perfectly healthy thing to have. What’s your excuse, you spinster crone?”

With a groan, Celestia massaged her temples. “The two of us are grown women. Can we stop with the childish bickering for just one encounter?”

Chrysalis gave a derisive sniff. “You only say that because you know I’ve the sharper tongue.”

Her oldest enemy shot her a judging scowl. “You’re here because you genuinely care about Sunset, aren’t you? How about focusing on that instead of how much we hate one another?”

Struck by the chill of some metaphorical ice water in the face, Chrysalis could only sputter and flail about her mind for some kind of rebuttal. Nothing came to her, mostly because of the ache that had suddenly formed in her heart. Gradually, she pushed her loathing of this woman aside. “I… Fine. For Sunset.”

There was that terrible, cool smile, the one Celestia used to get when she knew she was about to win. “So you do care for her.”

Chrysalis bristled. “Yes. Sure. Whatever. Can we stop harping on it?”

“I’m sorry.” Celestia had the audacity to feign sincerity. “It’s just that I honestly thought you were more concerned for the Chrysanthemum name than your adopted daughter.”

The snarl surprised even Chrysalis. “Excuse me?”

The principal shrugged. “I thought you were framing the questions as being for Sunset’s sake only because it made you look better.”

“How dare you!” Chrysalis took a menacing step forward, hands clenched into fists. “I know I’m not mother material. In fact, Sunset’s probably scraping the bottom of the barrel with the likes of me. That doesn’t give you the right to—” Her own words caught up to her, stuffing her throat with their weight and choking the air from her lungs. “To… Y-you don’t have the right to…” Her eyes were burning. Why were they burning?

“There it is.” Celestia’s tone was abruptly warm. “That’s the proof I was looking for.”

“Shut up.” It was a petulant, feeble response, but it was all Chrysalis could manage. She was suddenly very glad she left Pharynx in the car. “J-just shut up.” Where did that bitch get the right to expose her like this? She didn’t have to rub it in her face. It’s not like Celestia had any kids. Oh, so she ran a school, was that supposed to make her an expert in child-rearing? So what if Pharynx was mean and violent? What did it matter that Thorax was afraid of her?

Did everyone really think of her that way? She was an authority figure. A CEO! She had to maintain a certain image. She had to be tough, demanding, imperial. That didn’t mean she didn’t care! She was trying to do it right this time. That had to count for something!

“Mother?”

Shit! “I t-told you to stay in the c-car.”

Pharynx said nothing. Chrysalis wanted to confirm that he’d left, but the tears were coming too quickly. She kept her face hidden behind her hands, too ashamed to let him see her like this. The awareness that he’d witnessed her in such a pathetic state only made regaining her calm harder.

She felt a big, heavy arm around her shoulders. Someone began to guide her away. By the time she was able to control herself enough to get an idea of her surroundings, they were standing by the Phantom. Hiccuping, she accepted Pharynx’s help getting in her usual seat.

“Chrysalis?”

Celestia stood by the still-open door. Scowling, Chrysalis turned her face away, not wanting to see what would surely be a smug expression.

But Celestia’s tone was still warm. “Do you know about the Musical Showcase?”

As tempting as it was to let Pharynx close the door and separate her from that foul creature, Chrysalis begrudgingly acknowledged that Celestia probably had a Sunset-related reason for bringing this up. She raised her hand, stopping Pharynx before the door would close. She still refused to look at Celestia.

“It’s the next big school event,” Celestia continued, her words infuriatingly sentimental. “Sunset and her friends will be there. You should go. Support her.”

A school event? She’d never attended one of those. Too busy. But if Sunset would appreciate it…

Out the corner of her eye, she saw Celestia leaning a little closer. Pharynx loomed over her, but didn’t try to stop her. Yet. “Also, I have reason to believe that something special is going to happen. Knowing those girls, it will probably be your best chance at getting to the bottom of what really happened with Sunset at the Fall Formal.”

Chrysalis finally looked, but Celestia was already walking back to her door. Scowling, she rubbed at her eyes and glared at the headrest of the seat in front of her. Pharynx closed the door. A moment later, they were on their way back home. Pharynx didn’t say a word about her breakdown.

She wished he would.

It was over. Whatever it was. Chrysalis could only sit on the bench outside the theater area and reflect on the raw feelings pumping through her bloodstream. They weren’t natural feelings. They couldn’t be. She couldn’t look upon that mass of dancing teengers and feel such… companionship with them. Not that she had anything against them, or against teenagers in general. There was simply no reason to be so… so happy at the sight of them being happy.

The unexpected, unwelcome giddiness was fading, but gradually, and her knees had trouble supporting her. Thank the Goddess that Thorax and Pharynx were there to stop her from humiliating herself. Pharynx stood to her left, staring at nothing, his expression lost. Thorax was sitting by her side, his computer opened on his lap and his eyes wide while he muttered to himself in increasingly unclear mumblings.

The important thing now, however, was Sunset Shimmer. Chrysalis had seen it all. The colors, the phantoms, the giant pegasus unicorn thing, the music. ‘Battle of the Bands’, indeed. She was still reeling. They all were.

Swallowing to clear her throat, she spoke. “Thorax?” The frailty of her own voice startled her, but there were more immediate issues to deal with. “Were you aware of this?”

“They were videos.” He spoke as if in a state of mania, his voice quiet and his eyes not leaving the screen of his laptop. “Hoaxes. They had to be hoaxes. Th-there was no way it could be real. I… I th-thought…”

As he became lost in his mumbles again, she turned her attention to Pharynx. His gaping face turned slowly in denial.

Chrysalis wasn’t sure what to think. Was her adopted niece a – she couldn’t believe this term was the first thing to come up – superhero? Or maybe a wizard? That made even less sense. Yet she’d seen it, with her own two eyes. Sunset Shimmer with animal ears, the three girls with reptilian ghost forms, Sunset’s friends with wings and flashy powers and the music oh Goddess the music how it forced itself into her every crevice and made her want to do things that Chrysalis Chrysanthemum did not do, especially in public! She’d resisted, but only barely, and even now she could feel the energy driving her to tap her toes in rebellion. She allowed it, if only for fear that not doing so would make all the energy explode out of her in a most embarrassing manner.

This was it, wasn’t it? Something like this happened at the Fall Formal. It wasn’t some over-the-top stage magic. It couldn’t be, not unless Celestia was pouring a reckless amount of the school’s budget into special effects for what amounted to a very flashy party. As much as she loathed that woman, Chrysalis knew she wasn’t stupid. Even if she were, her imminently more intelligent and capable younger sibling with the tasty lips and hips would have reined it in.

So this was her answer, or at least part of it. It was all… She supposed the most accurate term would be ‘mind blowing’. The first step would be accepting it. A heavy demand, but… she could do it. In time. Now to capitalize. How to capitalize? She needed…. She needed…

“Pharynx.” He stiffened when she looked at him. The way he did that bothered her. He didn’t have to be so stiff. She looked to Thorax, who was pressing buttons and biting his lip, appearing on the verge of tears. It dawned upon her that on top of the shock of what they’d just witnessed, he was also scared. Scared because he’d let her down. Because he’d had evidence and dismissed it, giving her false information which led to tonight and weeks of confusion and frustration and…

Not now. An insidious desire overcame Chrysalis, and before she could stop herself she reached out to grasp Thorax’s shoulder. He froze, body going taught and eyes clenched shut. That reaction left her feeling… hollow.

“It’s alright, Thorax,” she whispered in his ear. “It’s okay. I’m not upset. Please, just relax.”

His eyes blinked open. He turned to stare at her as if not sure who she was. Oh, how she wished he wouldn’t look at her that way. How she wished she hadn’t driven him to look at her that way. Not wanting to see his alarmed expression, she looked to his brother and reached out. Pharynx moved as if to help her up, but she caught his hand and didn’t budge at his tug. The simple, innocent motion brought a confused expression to his normally stoic face.

Maybe it was the effects of that strange music coursing through her. Maybe her long dormant maternal instincts were finally manifesting at this most awkward moment. Whatever the case, Chrysalis decided to roll with it. “I’m proud of you boys.”

Pharynx and Thorax exchanged a look. She thought she detected a hint of panic in the both of them. “Mother?” Thorax asked.

“Are you feeling well?” Pharynx added.

Was she doing it wrong? Chrysalis bristled, bit her tongue. She knew her frustration wasn’t their fault. “I’m fine. I just…” Letting out a long, slow breath, she calmed down and bowed her head. “I just thought you should know. I…” She closed her eyes so as not to see their stares. “I don’t know how to say what I mean.”

A long, uncomfortable, awkward silence. She held onto Pharynx’s meaty hand, gave Thorax’s shoulder a squeeze.

“I…” Pharynx coughed. Her stomach dropped as he let go of her hand. He spoke haltingly. “I’m… gonna go find Sunset. L-let her know we’re here.” His retreating footsteps echoed in the hollowness of her insides.

After a time, Thorax’s hand brushed her own. She held on tight, afraid he’d try to pry her fingers away from his shoulder. “Mother?” For perhaps the first time ever, it was Chrysalis who flinched between them. “I don’t understand. What’s wrong?”

What was wrong? What was wrong was that he was afraid of her! That Pharynx was so shocked by her words he fled instead of face them. That this was the lump sum of her skills as a parent, and she had no idea what to do about it! “It’s just…” She rubbed at her eyes. “Th-the music hit me pretty hard. M-making me say things.” No, that was wrong! Or right? Right in that the music had made her frustratingly emotional, wrong that it wasn’t making her say these things. He wouldn’t believe her if he thought—

Horror flooded her. She turned with a jerk to face her adopted son, but the words faltered when he braced as though expecting a blow. Back came the anger, the annoyance, the uncomfortable, hateful awareness, and with it came a whole new set of words. “Stop that! Stop acting like I’m some banshee going to light you on fire! I’m your mother. I’m not going to hurt you.” The tears started to fall. She paid them no mind. “I don’t mean to hurt you. I n-never meant to… Please, stop looking at me like I’m one wrong word away from tearing your head off!”

All Thorax could do was stare at her. Stare like she was some stranger he’d never met before.

Chrysalis jumped to her feet and started walking. She only got a few steps away before the energy left her, so she just stood there, staring at the forest behind the school, staring at nothing as fresh tears dripped from her cheeks. The cool air caressed her hot face and blew her long, cerulean hair about her shoulders. She felt so… empty.

“I’m a terrible mother.”

She faced the blur that was Thorax. “W-would you like to resign? To go and work for someone whom you aren’t terrified to be in the same room with? Would that help you to relax? To be happy? To feel…” She sucked down a shuddering sob. “To feel l-loved?”

“Mother, please!” The blur approached. He took her hands in his. “I can’t resign. Where would I go?”

Chrysalis sniffled and held tight. His hands were so warm… “I can think of p-plenty of businesses that would love to have someone as sm-mart and talented as you. Or m-maybe you could go independent.”

A long breath. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“I know,” she muttered, head bowed. “I know. It’s my fault. I should have said so earlier, but I…”

This time, he returned the squeeze. Things were quiet between them for a while, save for the music still playing somewhere in the distance. A celebration underway for a victory well-earned. Chrysalis didn’t feel like celebrating. She felt like hiding, preferably in her room with an industrial crate full of dark chocolates.

“You’re right,” Thorax said at last. “You terrify me.” He gripped her hands, preventing her from turning away. “You were always so strict, so demanding, so unforgiving. I thought you didn’t like me, that you saw me as little more than a failure. I can vividly recall the times you’ve praised me, because it’s such a rare event. Frankly, I’m not convinced this isn’t just a moment of weakness and you’ll go back to hating me once that weird music is out of your system.”

A fresh sob. Curse him, and she had almost recovered!

...He thought she hated him.

Before she could correct the record, he spoke again. “But while you’re still in this… mood, I guess I’d be willing to…” A beat. “I don’t know, make amends? I guess. I never really considered leaving Change, Inc. I never thought you’d let me.”

“I couldn’t stop you,” she countered feebly.

“Oh, yes you could, and you would.” The confidence of his reply shook away whatever certainty had allowed her that rebuttal. “You would have destroyed me. Squashed me like a bug. Within a month I’d be homeless on the street and seriously considering begging for my old job back, but you wouldn’t have given it to me. I’ve seen the way you deal with traitors.”

It was too much. Chrysalis jerked away from him, ripping her hands from his. “If you hate me that much then leave!”

“I can’t.”

“What do you want me to do, fire you?”

“No.” He approached. She retreated. “No, I absolutely don’t want you to fire me.”

“Wouldn’t that make you happy?”

“I don’t know!”

That Thorax raised his voice to her was enough to end her arguments. She brushed the tears from her eyes yet again, just to get a look at his conflicted, frightened face.

“I don’t know what would make me happy,” he said, quiet once more. “I don’t know how to… to be happy.”

She’d done this. This was her fault, and it was too late to fix it. It was too late, wasn’t it? It had to be. Her belated, desperate attempt to help had been pointless. She held her stomach, knees knocking, on the verge of—

“Chrysalis!”

She looked towards the theater gates. There stood a young woman, a purple teenager with wings and pointy ears, glaring at her as if she were the source of all the world’s problems. Maybe she was.

The newcomer struck a threatening pose. “I don’t know what you’re doing in this world, but if you think I’m going to let you—”

“Whoa, whoa, down, Twilight!” Sunset jumped up behind the girl and pulled her back. “This is my Aunt Chryssy. She’s not some evil bug queen out to conquer the world or anything. She’s just… Aunt Chryssy.”

She had animal ears. Sunset Shimmer had animal ears that flicked and twitched. Sunset had animal ears and Thorax hated her and Pharynx didn’t know what to do with her and this strange girl thought she was evil and… and…

Chrysalis’s dinner splattered across the sidewalk.

“Yikes!” The two girls jumped backwards from the mess. Chrysalis stumbled away, well aware that a second wave was coming. “Ick. Thorax, what’s going on?”

As dessert made its traumatic reappearance, he answered with all the excitement of a weekly staff meeting. “I’m not sure, but I’m starting to think Mother is having a genuine existential and moral crisis.”

The back of the Phantom. A private place. Chrysalis had finally managed to clean her face using a nearby water fountain. The twins were outside. Perhaps Pharynx was comparing notes on her breakdown in front of Celestia with this recent one in front of Thorax. Across from her sat Sunset and this other girl, this… Princess Twilight. Who was a pony. In a human body. Who just helped Sunset and her friends fight ancient sea beasts called Sirens. All that, and Chrysalis couldn’t stop looking at the purple dog in her lap. The dog that talks.

“Just to make sure I’ve got this right,” Twilight said, still glaring daggers at Chrysalis, “you’ve spent the last three years living with this businesswoman, Chrysalis, who just so happens to be the mirror world version of Queen Chrysalis from my world.”

The dog opened his mouth and, against all that was natural, spoke. “And she’s not some shapeshifting bug thing planning to suck out all our love until we’re emotionless husks?”

The words were like an anvil being gradually lowered onto her shoulders. Chrysalis, hands clasped in her lap, leaned heavily forward and stared at her knees.

Sunset groaned. “Yes, and I’m sure she’d appreciate you not comparing her to the ugly bug lady to her face.”

Twilight shook her head, pony ears flapping gently. They’d reassured Chrysalis that the ears would go away ‘once the magic calmed down’, whatever that meant, but for now they served as a stark reminder that this was real and she probably wasn’t going insane from stress. “I’m sorry, but it’s hard to reconcile. I know I shouldn’t project, but the Chrysalis on my side of the mirror is…” She pursed her lips, perhaps looking for the most polite way to word her intentions. “Not very nice.”

“By ‘not very nice’, she means Chrysalis brainwashed her brother, kidnapped her sister-in-law and left her for dead, and tried to turn all of Equestria into—Ow!”

Twilight had knocked her knuckles gently atop the dog’s head. “They get the picture, Spike.”

So. She was a villain in another world. A hideous bug horse thing. A monster. Chrysalis couldn’t look any of them in the eyes. After all that had happened since the Fall Formal, she wasn’t sure she could call herself an improvement.

Sunset leaned forward. “You know that’s not a reflection of who you are, right?”

Chrysalis scowled, but still didn’t look her way. “Don’t patronize me. I think it’s pretty clear by now that I’m a rather rancid creature in my own right.” She recalled Thorax’s words. Another bout of nausea struck, but not enough to make her do more than tense up.

“That’s not—”

One hard look shut the redhead up. Elbow on the door, palm against cheek to effectively hide her trembling lips, she muttered, “You two should go back to your friends. Celebrate your victory.”

“Uh, excuse you, but there’s three of us,” Spike growled.

“Whatever.”

There were mumblings and grumblings. A door opened. A door closed. At last free of any prying eyes, Chrysalis allowed her shoulders to sag once more. Not that Sunset and her friend hadn’t already seen her at her worst, but it was the principle of the thing. With a sigh, she turned forward, fully prepared to bask in her own misery.

Then she noticed Sunset was still in the car.

In an instant, Chrysalis threw her defenses back up. Or maybe not an instant. She was under a lot of strain after all. Once sure her neutral expression was locked in place, she said, “I told you to go.”

Sunset, as Chrysalis well knew, could do the whole stoic ice queen thing just as well as she could. In fact, she may have even learned it from her. “I’m not going anywhere until I know you’re okay.”

Sitting ramrod straight, the better to loom, Chrysalis firmly declared, “I am fine.”

Her prodigious, intelligent niece from another world raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I just watched you spill your Tortellini all over the parking lot.”

Chrysalis could feel her eye twitching. “Sunset, now is not the—”

“I turned into a she-demon.”

And now Chrysalis’s eyes were crossed. “What?”

Sunset fidgeted, her cool demeanor gone as quickly as it had come. She hugged herself, anxious and uncertain. “That’s what happened. At the Fall Formal. I got my hands on some Equestrian magic and it… sorta went to my head in a really bad way. Flames, wings, claws, the whole works.” She averted her eyes from Chrysalis’s gaze, voice going quiet. “I also snuck back to Equestria and stole Princess Twilight’s very magical crown. I was… planning to attack Equestria. She came here to stop me and… well, you know about the crater.”

Chrysalis tried to connect all the dots presented to her, she really did, but her mental pathways were all knotted up around trying to imagine this child as a horse. The consequences of Sunset being from this ‘other world’ hadn’t quite sunk in until now. Knowing there was a lot she hadn’t been told yet, she nonetheless found what she deemed an appropriate answer. “I guess that explains why you spent a whole week hiding in your room until those friends of yours came to drag you out into the sunlight.”

Sunset smiled sheepishly. “I didn’t think of them as friends at the time.”

Chrysalis returned the smile, but only briefly. With the tension somewhat alleviated, she allowed herself to relax a bit, leaning back and draping an arm along the backrest of her seat. “So. You’re an illegal alien, in multiple forms of both words.”

The redhead shrugged. “More or less.” Then, more tentatively, “Don’t you have anything to say about the whole ‘turned into a demon and tried to take over another world’ part of the story?”

“I can’t say I’m thrilled about it,” Chrysalis admitted with a shrug of her own. “At the same time, it does fit in with the aggressive direction you’d been taking ever since I took you in, and I already told you I wasn’t opposed to that, at least in principle. Had you succeeded and become… queen?”

“Princess,” Sunset corrected. When her aunt cocked her head, she added, “They don’t do ‘kings and queens’ in Equestria. Ponies have had bad experiences with those.”

Strange, but who was Chrysalis to debate someone’s culture? “My concern is that you succeed and that you’re happy. I’d prefer you get there in a way that isn’t so volatile and at risk of causing problems for people you’ll never know exist, but I care more about your happiness than theirs.”

A frown slowly formed on Sunset’s lips as her eyes fogged up. She looked at Chrysalis, but not at Chrysalis. After a few seconds of this, she muttered, “I don’t think I would have been happy. I think I’d have pretended to be, maybe even come to believe it at times, but I’m pretty sure it would have been a lie.”

An opportunity had been presented, and Chrysalis felt a strange warmth at the chance to take it. “That’s the trick, isn’t it?” She waited for Sunset to refocus on her, that ever-vivid face broadcasting her confusion. Was it odd for Chrysalis to relish that expression in this moment? “The trick of achieving what we want in a way that satisfies us, that makes us happy. It’s the greatest goal in life, isn’t it? To succeed, to do what we want, and to do it in a way that minimizes our regrets.” She leaned forward slightly, glad to see she had Sunset’s full attention. “You would have regretted that route, wouldn’t you?”

Sunset gave no answer. She didn’t need to. The pain on her downcast face was enough.

Chrysalis reached out to touch the girl’s cheek. “You once asked if you were a bad person. I maintain that life isn’t so black and white as that. But if I were to limit myself to such terms, I think this is proof you aren’t.”

The girl cringed. She grabbed Chrysalis’s hand, perhaps intending to push it away. Yet the motion was weak, unable to do so. Her hand was warm and made Chrysalis’s skin tingle. A lingering effect of the magic, perhaps? Or maybe it was just Chrysalis and the mysterious happiness bubbling through her.

“I think you forgot about the whole ‘demon invading Equestria’ thing.”

Chrysalis would have smiled were she not already doing it. “I encourage you to achieve happiness in whatever way that works for you. That dominating another world through force wouldn’t achieve that happiness says much about you. That you tried and failed is beside the point. Now that you know what won’t make you happy, you can turn your attention and efforts towards something that might.” She lifted her other hand, holding both of Sunset’s cheeks in her palms. She made sure Sunset was looking her in the eye. No effort was needed on the smile. “And I will support you every step of the way.”

Then Sunset, teary eyed and blubbering, did something she’d never done before: she embraced Chrysalis in a breath-stealing hug. It wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable, and Chrysalis returned the motion with a grin on her lips and her heart humming.

Maybe she could do this whole ‘mother’ thing after all.

Chrysalis sat at the desk of her home office, her two sons and niece sitting across from her. Well, Sunset and Thorax sat. Pharynx wasn’t happy if he wasn’t looming over someone, even if he wasn’t trying to be threatening. She took a sip of her coffee, expertly prepared by Thorax as always, before addressing the trio. “Now that things have calmed down, I think it’s time we addressed what happens next.”

Sunset nervously raised her hand, speaking when Chrysalis’s eyes shifted her way. “You’re not planning to take advantage of Equestria and its magic, are you?”

“An excellent question, and the first thing I would like to address.” Leaning back in her office chair, Chrysalis looked to Thorax. “We need to understand what this ‘magic’ is, and learn more about this ‘Equestria’.”

“Aunt Chryssy…”

“Let me finish, child.” Though Sunset’s ever-expressive face screamed her displeasure, she went silent. “Thank you. Thorax, my primary concern now is information control. You originally thought the whole ‘magic’ thing was a hoax. I want you to do whatever is within your power to make that the perspective of anyone not from Canterlot. Let them think everybody in this town is crazy if that’s what it takes. That includes employees of Change, Inc.”

Thorax blinked. “Wait, so we’re not gonna take advantage of this?”

Sunset’s face abruptly stopped radiating anger.

“We don’t even know what ‘this’ is to take advantage of it,” Chrysalis replied coolly. “I’m not about to be responsible for a disaster because I tried to apply a volatile, dangerous product to a free market so that any idiot can accidentally turn house flies into flying piranhas.” That one got a chuckle out of Pharynx.

She turned her attention to Sunset, easing her tone as she did. “I want to communicate with this other world. I want to know what magic can and can’t do. Our first priority is making sure it’s safe and keeping it out of the hands of those who would abuse it.”

Sunset’s earlier anger was now naught but smiles. “I’ll help in whatever way I can.”

Chrysalis returned the smile. “As our only guaranteed contact with Equestria, I’d hoped that would be the case.”

“It’s not feasible to prevent all information from spreading,” Thorax noted, his manner entirely businesslike. “Eventually the word will get out.”

“Which is why we’ll need to also focus on our second concern: claiming the rights to use it for our business.” The worry shot back into Sunset, prompting Chrysalis to add, “If we don’t do it, someone else will. Be honest, who would you trust more, us or the military?”

Sunset’s brow furrowed, nose scrunching as she took that question in. After a few seconds of consideration, she relaxed. “I see your point. Just promise you won’t abuse it?”

“To do what, start a new line of wizard hats?” Chrysalis offered what she hoped was a reassuring grin. “Honestly, Sunset. If I wanted to, I don’t know, conquer the world? I’d have gone into politics.” She shuddered at that ghastly idea, prompting a few more chuckles from her audience. “Let’s keep this to as few people as we can. Close inner circle. I don’t care how high up in what hierarchy they are, this stays between us and those who already are aware at the school.”

Pharynx raised an eyebrow. “Nobody from the board of directors?”

“Hell, no.”

“In that case,” he continued seriously, “how is Thorax supposed to figure things out? It sounds like you’re robbing him of his resources.”

Thorax, shifting in his seat but keeping his head high, declared, “I don't intend to be using Change, Inc’s resources ever again anyway.”

Silence. The younger twin couldn’t stop fidgeting. He adjusted his collar with a finger.

It was Sunset who finally spoke. “Thorax, are you quitting?”

“I think the term he’d prefer is ‘resigning’.” Pharynx had the biggest grin on his face. It might even have been deemed proud.

Chrysalis said nothing. She was too busy watching the emotions of horror and joy wage war within her to offer anything up other than a long, uncertain stare at her youngest son.

Thorax visibly swallowed but, to his credit, didn’t take his eyes from hers. “Y-yes. I’m resigning.” His entire body tensed, waiting for what he likely saw as an impending disaster.

A million thoughts were running through Chrysalis’s head. Where would she get her information from now? She’d never be able to hire a butler half as good as him. An entire information network would be lost! Maybe she could offer him a higher pay? No, that would defy what she’d told him before, wouldn’t it? And she couldn’t get in the way, not after she…

She was so proud of him.

Chrysalis couldn’t have stopped smiling even if she’d wanted to. “You’re putting me in a rather difficult spot.”

Slowly, perhaps realizing he wasn’t about to become the target of her wrath, he offered a smile in return. “I don’t know about that. I’ll just have to send you a bill.”

So he was going independent. Chrysalis’s cheeks were beginning to get sore. “You wouldn’t overcharge your own mother, would you?”

Now he was grinning too. There was something in his eyes, a certain… appreciation. “I might. She did teach me to take advantage of every opportunity presented.”

“She must be a savvy, intelligent, capable woman,” she pressed, grin becoming a smirk.

“Oh, she’s the best.”

Pharynx spoke up, his dry tone emphasized by a scowl. “Are we gonna need to give you two a moment?” Sunset giggled.

“No, no.” Chrysalis took a moment to brush some dirt out of her eyes. “We’re good. I’ll settle this latest development with Thorax later. Let’s move on to topic number three, shall we?” Another sip of her coffee, just to give her time to calm her emotions. That little buzz of happiness refused to stop, but she decided it wasn’t worth trying to shoo it away. Smile still on her lips, she announced, “I’ve decided to reduce some of my responsibilities to the company.”

This was met with less fanfare than she’d hoped. Pharynx was back to his typical stoic demeanor, whereas Thorax and Sunset merely appeared confused. It was Sunset who asked, “I thought you didn’t trust others to handle most of the top-tier business decisions.”

Thinking on her direct employees, Chrysalis growled harshly, “I don’t.”

Sigh. Sip. Breathe.

“But the last few days have helped me to realize that maybe I’m too controlling. Perhaps I need to learn to relax. As much as I want to keep an eye on everything, Change, Inc. won’t collapse if I loosen my grip on the reins. Even if it did, I – we, the four of us – are in a position to live the rest of our lives in comfort and security. I don’t…” She hesitated, and felt foolish for doing so. “I no longer need to act like the queen bee I’ve been for the last two decades of my life.”

The three before her shifted and shared strange looks she couldn’t decipher. It was Thorax who asked, “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

Was she sure? No. But also yes. Chrysalis had been thinking about it ever since the Battle of the Bands. She still wasn’t fully confident in her chosen direction. It was rife with potential pitfalls and risks.

Chrysalis Chrysanthemum didn’t get as far as she had by avoiding risks.

“I want to spend more time with you three. I haven’t been very good at that. Ever.” She smiled to Thorax. “More time to be something other than your boss.” To Pharynx. “More time to be your mother.” And to Sunset. “More time to be an aunt.”

A long, drawn out pause.

Pharynx looked to Sunset. “You’re the one who knows how to read people. Is she sick?”

Thorax slapped his shoulder. “Pharynx!”

Chrysalis cringed. They didn’t believe her, did they? Had she been so bad at this? Of course she had. That was why she’d decided to do this in the first place. Had that been a mistake? Maybe this was a step too far, too early. But if there was a way to ease into this kind of thing—

Sunset was at her side, hand gently squeezing her shoulder. She met Chrysalis’s gaze, her eyes kind and welcoming. “I think it’s a wonderful idea.”

“Me, too.” Thorax leaned forward, an uncertain smile on his face. “I admit, I’m having trouble reconciling this with the mother I’ve known all my life, but I’m willing to give this a try if you are. Who knows, maybe we can find you a hobby.”

Chrysalis blinked, smile fading. “A hobby?”

“That is an excellent idea,” Sunset declared. Chrysalis wasn’t sure she liked the amount of glee in her tone. “Can’t let you get bored with all that free time you’re suddenly going to have.”

Too fast. Too fast! “C-can’t we just talk during those times?”

“We won’t always be here for you to talk to us,” Sunset reminded her, beaming as if this revelation shouldn’t fill Chrysalis with the terror of incoming boredom.

“Don’t worry, Mother.” Thorax at least had enough awareness of her growing anxiety to sound reassuring. “It’ll be fun. We’ll help you.”

Thorax and Sunset looked at Pharynx. Pharynx looked back. A pregnant pause ensued, Chrysalis looking between him and them.

Pharynx – sturdy, self-assured, tank-like Pharynx – shifted from foot to foot as he blanched. “Why are you both looking at me like that? No. No, wait. Don’t you dare!” He was ambushed, caught up in a pincer-attack hug. “G-get off me! Don’t get me involved in your, your goody-goody feelings party!” When neither of them let go, he shot Chyrsalis a panicked look. “Mother, help me!”

“You care about this just as much as we do, and you know it,” Sunset accused with a wicked grin.

“Search your feelings, brother,” Thorax threw in melodramatically. “You know it to be true!”

“You act tough, but you’re a big softy,” Sunset declared as he wriggled and squirmed under their snuggly barrage. “Don’t think I don’t know who was slipping me ice cream the whole time I was hiding away in my room.”

Pharynx’s eyes boggled, especially when he spotted Chrysalis’s wicked smile. “It’s a lie! I would never do something that nice!”

Chrysalis could only laugh. She laughed and laughed, and when it felt like she would run out of air she laughed some more. Even when that stopped, one little thought kept things warm inside:

It was good to be a mother.

Part II

The Rolls-Royce Phantom crept to a stop in the Canterlot High parking lot. Chrysalis looked up from her laptop, mildly surprised at having made it there already. Her attention went to Sunset, who was already stepping out the door held open by Pharynx. Not waiting on him to get to her side, she opened her own door, her boots crunching faintly on the mushy snow.

Canterlot High School was as familiar as it was different from her memories. The main building was identical save for a few obvious touch ups. The real surprise was that it was no longer the main building, that honor going to a much larger structure beside it. Now her old school looked more like the little brother of a nicer, more expensive, more pampered sister.

She still felt some nostalgia. Just a touch.

They had a good twenty minutes before Sunset had to go to class. More than enough for their purposes. “It’s this way,” the redhead declared as she guided the two adults across the snow-covered schoolyard. They rounded the corner of the old building and went straight for the large horse statue in front. Chrysalis knew that statue well. It had been there when she’d been going to school here. According to what information Thorax had been able to scrounge up, the statue predated the school by at least two centuries. Supposedly there’d originally been three statues, but time and urban progress brought an end to the others. It had only been through a public outcry that this one had survived the school’s construction.

Also there, and worth so much more nostalgia, was Vice-Principal Luna. She saw them coming and approached, her merry smile contagious. “Chrys! It’s been far too long.”

“Indeed it has, Loony.” The two exchanged a warm hug. Chrysalis didn’t miss the nonplussed expression on both her son and her niece. “Look at you, a vice-principal! If Principal Study Session knew the Little Nightmare would become one of the leaders of his school, he’d have probably committed himself to an asylum.”

“If I had known, I might have joined him.” Luna’s giggle only made Sunset’s gaping more pronounced. “You planning to pester my sister while you’re here?”

Chrysalis’s grin could have made a nun blush. “Depends. That janitor’s closet between rooms 203 and 205 still available?”

Luna was no nun, but she was still red around the cheeks. A hand over her lips failed to stifle her laughter. “It exists, but I’ve gotten adept at shooing students out of there over the years.”

With a dramatic gasp and a hand to her chest, Chrysalis recoiled. “Such hypocrisy! After all the hours you and I spent there, you would deny other eager youths from exploring the joys of nature?”

“Okay!” Sunset stood between them, pushing them away from one another with outstretched arms. Chrysalis was sure the girl’s face was steaming. “That’s enough of that, thank you.” She hunched slightly at Luna’s and Chrysalis’s giggles. “We’re here for a mirror portal. You two want to reminisce, do it when Pharynx and I aren’t around.”

Reminded of her elder son’s presence, Chrysalis couldn’t resist taking a look. He appeared frozen in place, eyes staring at nothing and cheeks possessing a luminosity that somehow failed to melt the snow at his feet. His hands were making little twitching motions. Even when she snapped her fingers in his face, he was unresponsive. Chrysalis sighed with a grin and turned back to the others. “Guess we’ve lost him for a while.”

“Miss Shimmer raises a good point,” Luna admitted with a sheepish, apologetic smile to her student. While Sunset tried to cool down, the vice-principal turned serious, though she maintained that warm expression Chrysalis had such fond memories of. “I’ve spoken with my sister and some of the faculty, and we’ve all agreed with your proposal.”

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. “How hard was it to convince Celestia?”

“Not hard at all.” Luna raised her arms in a shrug at her ex’s stare. “I know, I was as surprised as you are. Regardless, we’re all going to try and keep the story under wraps and let you assist in whatever way you can. Let’s just hope there are no more surprises involving Equestrian magic anytime soon.”

Finally recovered, Sunset stepped in. “My friends and I are doing our part, but let’s face facts: there’s no way to stop every student from spilling the beans.”

“Then it’s good we have Thorax on our side.” Chrysalis looked to Luna, sliding into the familiar attitude of a woman in charge. “I assume he’s come by to speak with you on things?”

“A few times, yes.” The vice-principal crossed her arms, also taking on the typical commanding presence her students were more accustomed to. “We’ve given him the information we have on the subject, but it’s not much. Even our resident Equestrian can’t give us all the answers.”

Sunset’s blush was more subdued this time. “Yeah, the magic back home doesn’t behave the same way here. I’m stumped. Maybe if I had my horn I could get a better grasp of what it’s doing, but for now it’s mostly guesswork.”

Once again, Chrysalis tried not to focus too hard on the idea of her niece having a horn – to say nothing for being a horse from another dimension. “What about that princess friend of yours?”

“Same problem,” the redhead replied with a shrug. “Even a powerful alicorn mage like her can’t do much without a means of controlling the magic in the first place. A few big spells were possible at the Fall Formal and Battle of the Bands, but we barely understand how we did that. It sorta just… came to us as it was happening.” She turned to face the statue, annoyance plastered vividly across her features. “All we know for sure is that magic is leaking from there to here through the portal, even when it’s closed. We don’t know why, or how to control it, or what it may do in the future. We did some research. Given the lack of weird magical anomalies in the last few centuries the leak is probably a new thing.”

With a thoughtful hum, Chrysalis approached the statue. She paused before the mirror surface, taking in her own sharp features. So this is where all the trouble has been coming from. To think that the old thing held a secret like this all along. “How do we know if the portal is open?”

Sunset stepped up beside her and tapped the surface with a finger a few times. “Not open.”

That was it? No visual queues, no flashy lights, no deep concentration and meditation? How boring. She’d really been hoping for more. Then again, if it were something obvious then surely someone would have noticed in the last two hundred years.

“I’ve got to head to class,” Sunset announced. “I’ll see you later, Aunt Chryssy.” Unaware of the happy moths swarming in Chrysalis’s chest at the nickname, she left the two women alone before the statue. Pharynx was keeping his distance, having developed a wariness to be anywhere near this so-called ‘Equestrian Magic’. He may have also been giving his mother a chance to be alone with an old friend. Though he’d deny it fervently, he was considerate like that.

Luna stood beside Chrysalis, hands on hips and eyes on the horse statue rearing above them. “Your help in keeping this under wraps is appreciated, Chrys. Even Celestia is grateful to you.”

Chrysalis caught Luna’s eye through the mirror and smirked. “Won’t admit it to my face, though?”

A scoff precluded the response. “She won’t even admit it to my face. But I know Celestia. This situation scares her, and she’s willing to accept any aid she can get, even if it’s from the ‘vile seductress’.”

“‘Vile seductress’?” The smirk became a wicked grin as Chrysalis ran a slow hand up from her hip to the curve of her waist, stopping at the ribs. She’d have gone higher, but this was a school. “I had no idea she thought so highly of me. Did she warn you not to get lured into my charms?”

Now it was Luna that was smirking, despite her renewed blush. “She might have made certain insinuations about me potentially succumbing to temptation.” She took a long, deep breath, inhaling and exhaling in the manner of one sampling the fresh air. “I missed pushing her buttons with you around. It lets me go to bed with a smile on my face.”

There were words on the tip of Chrysalis’s tongue, words about other things that could be used to make her smile. The only things holding her back were not wanting to traumatize Pharynx if he happened to be in earshot and a quiet worry that it might be too much for Luna. Even so, she couldn’t stop eyeing the woman who skipped more than a few classes with her in a certain notorious janitor’s closet. Among other places. Luna certainly hadn’t lost any of her physical appeal over the years.

If she noticed the ogling, Luna gave no indication of it. Her features darkened as she ran a hand along the smooth surface of the statue before them. “As appreciated as your help is, it won’t solve the bigger problem. This ‘magic’ that keeps happening is a threat to the students and faculty of this school. The Dazzlings didn’t cause any permanent harm, but the way Sunset got possessed is a different story. What if more dangerous things come through next time?”

Pursing her lips in mild disappointment, Chrysalis allowed her thoughts to leave her ex’s physical form. She was technically here on business, after all. “We’re going to have to rely on Sunset and her friends on the other side for that part. Equestria’s princesses are… wary of my intentions. Apparently there is another Chrysalis in their world who is not exactly on friendly terms with them.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “Is she a queen?” She laughed at Chrysalis’s wide-eyed stare. “You’ve got the manner of one. Face it, if we lived a thousand years ago you’d probably be the ruler of some kingdom, storming around threatening to invade whatever neighbor happened to offend you that week.” There came a familiar clamorous sound, the kind that some deaf or dumb individual decided to call a ‘bell’. “Ah, right. Classes. I’ve got work to do. I’ll see you around?”

An unmistakable undertone laced Luna’s query: hope. Though she knew it shouldn’t have, it still caught Chrysalis off guard. She regretted the extra second it took to form a response, not sure how Luna might take it. “Yes. Probably. Maybe we can have lunch together soon.”

She didn’t look back. Tried to make it seem she was distracted studying the statue. Yet she didn’t miss the happy smile forming on her old flame’s lips as Luna turned away. It made her nauseous. The moths were back, welcome and loathsome at the same time.

She closed her eyes and tried not to think on it. She had work to do, meetings to attend, numbers to crunch. That last part killed the moths entirely as a quiet dread filled her. Not for the first time, she considered hiring someone to do that part of her job, but no. There was nobody she’d trust to do it, not after the fiasco from a decade-and-a-half ago. Always check the figures. Always know what is where and why. Don’t let anyone take advantage of your ignorance. Nobody could…

Her eyes opened as a fresh thought struck her out of the blue. Her gaze went to the stone horse above her. Turning around, she stared at the school, now quiet since the classes for the day had officially begun.

Sunset was good with numbers. Math was one of her better subjects, and she was a Grade-A student even in her worst years. If there was anyone who she might trust not to screw things up or rob her—

It happened quickly. Too quickly for her to react beyond a startled yelp. There was a flash of light from behind, then arms grabbing her around the waist. Before she knew it, Chrysalis fell through something hot, and then the world was a hideous kaleidoscope of pastel colors. Though there was no pain, Chrysalis could feel her body warping and reshaping itself. It was hideous, as if her insides had become a writhing, wild mass of worms. Her world had become incomprehensible on even the most basic level. She screamed, screamed because she had no other way of displaying her terror.

Just as quickly as it had begun, it was over. Chrysalis rolled across a hard floor, limbs flailing and scream fading. She hit something just as hard as the floor, pain flaring up her side.

“Quick! Silence her before she wakes up the whole town!”

Chrysalis grit her teeth, only to open her mouth wide as she became aware that those were not her teeth. They felt odd, unnatural. She felt odd and unnatural. She tried to raise her head, to open her eyes. Before the swirling room could become clear, she found a solid black appendage flying at her face.

The first thing Chrysalis noticed when she awoke was how warm it was. Not uncomfortably so, but impossible to miss. The headache was similar and far less welcome.

Groaning and wondering how she could have a hangover when she had quit excessive drinking in her teens, she tried to roll over. This didn’t go at all as planned, mostly because her arms didn’t move like she meant them to. They felt, for lack of a better descriptor, long. Hoping to grab her sheets, she tried flexing her fingers and was rewarded instead with a peculiar tightening sensation in her palm. Not even out of bed yet, and today was already threatening to be a long one.

When a second attempt failed to roll her over, Chrysalis finally realized how odd she felt. Her legs weren’t… positioned right? Sticking forward, like her arms, and on top of one another. She didn’t sleep like that, did she? Come to think of it, she couldn’t remember her bed being so hard. At last succumbing to the inevitable, she opened her eyes in hopes of getting a better grasp of her situation.

What she saw in place of her arms was… incomprehensible. Her mental faculties screeched to a stop as she took in long appendages, thin at first but thicker towards the bottom, and covered in holes. Holes. Holes, in her body.

Heart hammering, she moved the things that were now her arms. They obeyed, rotating in odd ways as she positioned them closer to her face for inspection. Despite what she could only assume were gaping wounds, she felt no pain. Carefully, tenderly, she touched one of the holes, jerking back in expectation of an agony that didn’t come. This was enough to reduce her heart rate a little, and with it her alarm.

If she had holes in her legs, did that mean…? She bent her head down to take in her body and once again came up short on thought. Black, hard material around a green middle. When she tilted her head slightly, she could make out damaged, insect-like wings pressed flat against a solid green carapace. There was a tail, cerulean like her hair and with odd holes that only made her sense of reality fragment even more. The ways the hairs randomly stopped and seemed to start again to form such neat cutouts boggled the mind. And the legs… no, hind legs.

She was a horse. But a freaky, half-bug monstrosity of a horse.

Then it all clicked. The mirror, the flashing lights, her headache (which gleefully made its return now that she was kind enough to think of it again), it all made sense. Chrysalis had been pulled through the portal.

She was in the horse world.

The moment this comprehension fell upon her, the panic ended. Not entirely, there was still a niggling little terror in the back of her mind. Yet the fact that she had a real, definitive, logical answer to her situation allowed her to calm down and focus on the important things.

Like figuring out how to use this body. Squirming and kicking and grunting, she eventually managed to roll onto her stomach and get her feet – hooves, she reminded herself – under her. It took a half-dozen tries, two of which resulted in humiliating pratfalls, to stand on all fours. Not trusting her wobbly knees and wanting to avoid further indignities for at least a few minutes, she opted to take in her surroundings.

It was a prison cell, as far as she could tell. And a cave too. All around her were pale blue stone walls, smooth and dry. The only opening available was blocked by a green substance she couldn’t identify. There were no commodities of any kind: no bedding, no toilet or sink, not even a chair to sit on. “W-well,” she muttered shakily, “no one’s wasting tax money on this place. Wonder if there’s a proper legal system I can use to sue for better accommodations.”

There came no answer, not that she expected one. She sighed and got to work figuring out how to walk on four legs. Embarrassing as her stumbles and near-falls were, they proved a great distraction to the little voice inside her head noting over and over again that she was imprisoned in an alien world by what were most likely the sworn enemies of the Princesses of Equestria. What had Sunset called them again? Changelings? At least, she assumed changelings were responsible. It could be anyone, really. She was by no means an expert on Equestrian races, much less race relations.

But even that frightening prospect gave her fuel. Why would these creatures want to kidnap her? What did they hope to accomplish? Maybe she was a hostage being held for some kind of political ransom. Or they could simply be seeking information about the human dimension. After all, they apparently snatched her directly from the portal, which means that grabbing her specifically may have been a matter of chance. But wait, wasn’t the other side of the portal located in the private estate of Princess Twilight? So how did these creatures get to it?

Assuming the portal’s location hadn’t been moved, this had to have been planned, and carefully. You don’t sneak into an enemy stronghold just to sit in front of a door and hope something juicy comes within grabbing range, especially considering the need to get out with the prize unnoticed. These creatures had something very specific in mind, but they probably hadn’t been targeting her specifically.

Having walked a few dozen circles around her prison, Chrysalis was reasonably certain she wouldn’t be performing any epic faceplants in the near future. She concluded there was no point in waiting around to have the truth revealed to her, and so approached the green material blocking her exit.

The last thing she expected was for it to open the instant she was directly in front of it. Blinking away her surprise, she stepped out and took stock of her surroundings. It was some kind of hallway, albeit a twisting one with no straight lines in sight. More important was the lone four-legged creature standing on the other side of the hall.

It was tiny compared to her, sharing her black colors and bug-like features. It came with a sharp-looking, pale blue crest on its back, a pair of wicked fangs, and a short, curved, pointy horn. Its alien eyes were the same blue as its spines, save for white spots that may have been its irises. Despite its diminutive size, it had quite the dangerous appearance.

Which was ruined entirely by its dropped jaw, gaping eyes, and ear-like fins (ear-fins?) folded down on its head like a dog caught misbehaving. Chrysalis’s immediate alarm was promptly replaced with a dry amusement. “I’m going to assume you’re supposed to be my guard.”

The creature managed to pick its jaw up off the floor. It sputtered for a few seconds, looking between her and the door she’d just exited. “H-how… How did you get it to open? You can’t do that! It only opens for Queen Chrysalis!”

Changelings confirmed. Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. With theatrical slowness, she looked down at her strange equinoid body, then back to the creature. Though she wasn’t used to this new face (What did she even look like?), she was pretty sure her disdain was shining through loud and clear.

“Oh, no.” The creature pressed its black hooves to its equally black cheeks. Despite its strange features, it was still perfectly capable of displaying its panic for all the world to see. “Oh, spit! We put the wrong one in the cell, didn’t we?” The creature, presumably a ‘he’, fell on his face before her, little bug wings spread wide. “I’m so sorry, my Queen! Please forgive this humble servant, I didn’t know! I only started my shift an hour ago, I had no idea of this mistake, I swear!”

Well. This was not at all how Chrysalis expected things to go. Not that she had any intention of complaining. Putting on what she hoped was an aloof, distant expression among these things, she took on her most commanding tone. “And where is the other… me?”

Without raising his head, the creature hastily replied, “We already sent her back through the portal. She’s in the hoo-men world!”

The human world? Was replacing her the whole point? For a brief instant, Chrysalis imagined a corrupt version of her living in her home, running her business, fooling her family.

Then she burst out laughing. She laughed so hard she fell on her haunches and had tears coming out of her eyes. Oh, but this was rich! There wasn’t a chance in Tartarus that some doppelganger could just waltz into her life and expect to go unnoticed. Her children would be on that bug like a trio of flyswatters. Whatever this Queen Chrysalis had been expecting, she was going to be in for a very rude awakening.

All concerns for home confidently disregarded, Chrysalis recovered her senses and focused on her immediate situation. Home was safe. Whether she was or not remained to be seen. Her attention went back to the changeling, which remained bowed but was also staring up at her like she’d grown a second head. She had him (unintentionally) fooled. Best use him while she still could. “What is your name?”

“My… name?” He blinked. That he even could was legitimately surprising. “But you never ask—” With a gasp, he brought his head down so fast Chrysalis winced at the thwack of it hitting the floor. “I-I am Ricinidae, Your Majesty.”

“Ricinidae.” A curious name, but it rolled off the tongue nicely. “Has there been any news from Equestria since the… botched kidnapping?” As an afterthought, “Rise.”

Ricinidae did so, smoothing over the crest on his back with a lone hoof in apparent anxiety. “My apologies, my Queen, but I am only a drone. I am not given information relating to such important matters. I have not heard any rumors of such, at least.”

So they had some sort of class system? Would Queen Chrysalis be offended that they thought so little of her that they assigned someone of apparently lower class to watch over her? Pushing those questions aside, she considered her next course of action. She had at least the element of surprise, and with the real queen missing…

Chrysalis eyed Ricinidae. He seemed outright terrified of her, all shifting hooves and knocking knees. It reminded her, unpleasantly, of how Thorax used to be until oh-so recently. No time for that now, she could use this. “Consider yourself my escort for the time being. Go, lead me to—” Her throne? The exit? Whatever they used to communicate with the world at large? “–my room. I would consider my options.”

If anything, the changeling appeared even more terrified, scrambling backwards as if to avoid an attack. “I-I am merely a drone, Your Majesty! Surely I am not worthy of escorting someling as prestigious as—”

Chrysalis had always possessed one great advantage over others: ferocity. When she first entered the world of business management, that world saw her as nothing more than a pair of tits. The technique she unleashed had not only let her terrorize and bowl over any who dared underestimate her, but would now serve to get her out of the mess she’d found herself in. Her words were like fire spat from the barrel of cannon, and no less loud. “I didn’t ask for excuses, you little grub! When I give you an order I expect it to be fulfilled before the saliva finishes exiting my throat and splashing on your sniveling face. Now do as I command!”

Ricinidae needed no further prompting, though Chrysalis had to hurry to keep up.

They didn’t get more than twenty feet before a squishy sound caught Chrysalis’s attention. She glanced to her side at one of the other cells, the only other one with its ‘door’ sealed. Just as she did, another one of the changeling creatures appeared, slamming into the green material with enough force to make it bend slightly. Although it was the same as Ricinidae in most ways, she couldn’t help but notice the different colors on its crest and plates. That it was the only other prisoner was enough to make her stop entirely.

“Ricinidae. Why is this changeling imprisoned?”

The drone turned sharply, wings buzzing to arrest its forward momentum, and returned to her side. He looked into the cell as the prisoner shouted obscenities, clawing at the surface of the green... goo. Or whatever it was. “They told me this one came through the mirror from the other side. Very vicious, very angry, but also clumsy. They subdued him and brought him back here.”

Chrysalis could feel her heart in her throat, assuming these things even had such an organ. This could only be one person, but she would need to be cautious. “Go on ahead, Ricinidae. I would question him alone. Wait for me past the exit.” Her escort hesitated only a moment before obeying, buzzing away on vibrating wings.

As she couldn’t be certain how good these creatures’ hearing was, Chrysalis waited to take the risk until Ricinidae was around the furthest corner. She kept her distance from the cell’s entrance, not wanting it to open automatically as it had for her own cell. “Pharynx? Is that you?”

The creature in the cell paused, peering up at her with fangs bared. A forked tongue slithered between his black lips. “Where is my mother, bitch?”

Yep, that was Pharynx. Chrysalis chuckled at his choice of greeting. “When you were six, you cried because I scolded you for tearing up a very expensive suit I’d gotten for you.”

His strange eyes went wide.

“At twelve, you punched a girl named Fairy Circle for kissing you on the cheek. You admitted to me later that you’d panicked because the thought of girls actually liking you was terrifying.”

Even through the green film, his face visibly paled.

“And when you were fifteen, I caught you in the bathroom—”

“Okay, okay!” He sat back and waved his little hooves at her. “No more, I get it. Yes, Mother, it’s me.”

Smirking and satisfied he didn’t plan to attack her at the first opportunity, she stepped close to the green wall. Like hers before, it promptly opened, and Pharynx was quick to scurry out of the cell. Huh. Turned out these creatures blushed in green.

Pharynx was distinct from Ricinidae in a variety of ways. Though his body shape was identical in both form and size, the fin-like spine on Pharynx’s back was longer and a little taller. It was also a deep red, and the plates on his back were a dark purple, whereas Ricinidae had no change in coloration anywhere in his plates. His eyes were a similar purple, and his fangs were noticeably larger than the drone’s. Perhaps it was a quirk of a human passing through the mirror portal, but she had to wonder at the odds of both of them being changelings in this world. Considering her sons were adopted, she’d have expected them at least to come out as horses.

Perhaps Pharynx had some great insight into her appearance as well. If so, he decided to sum up all his thoughts into a complaint. “Oh, come on! Why do you get to be the tall one here too?” He examined his hooves with a scowl. “Look at me, I’m a damn dwarf. If I had a pickaxe I’d feel obligated to sing Heigh-Ho.” It was enough to get a fresh laugh out of Chrysalis, which only grew stronger when he glared up at her with his weird purple eyes. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, ya giant. How’d you get out of your cell?”

It took a few more seconds to recover, but when she did Chrysalis took in her eldest son. He was entirely unrecognizable. She wondered if that were the case for herself. It was strange enough seeing him as a quirky horse-bug thing. She wanted to take a closer look, but then she recalled Ricinidae, who might come back if left to wait too long. “I convinced the guard that I was their Queen Chrysalis. Apparently they were trying to body-swap me with her.”

Pharynx’s eyes widened in alarm, then narrowed in uncertain curiosity.

Then he burst out laughing. “Oh, Sunset is going to go to town on her! I only wish I was back home so I could watch. A thousand bucks says we get there to find this other you tied up to a chair.”

Chrysalis grinned and decided not to challenge that bet. Yet it only lasted for a second or two. The visage of her son looking like… She doubted even the Equestrians would appreciate the term ‘monster’ in this context, but he was certainly different. At any rate, his appearance was a stark reminder of their current, potentially dangerous situation.

Back to business. “We need to keep up the illusion while we form some kind of plan. For now, you’ll have to refer to me as ‘Your Majesty’ or some other such nonsense.”

“I can do that.” He sobered up instantly. His uncanny ability to appear cool and intimidating served him well. He might be small, but Chrysalis doubted she’d want something that looked like him coming after her. “They knocked me out shortly after I went through that blasted portal, and I woke up in here. Sorry, I know about as much as you do. Probably less.”

“Perhaps. Come.” She turned and marched down the corridor, and Pharynx was quick to join her, not exactly beside her but still pretty close. His usual bodyguard position. Only for the sake of the ongoing illusion did she avoid smiling at his presence. Suddenly, this whole situation felt a lot less challenging.

They found Ricinidae through an opening into a larger chamber. The little drone was being grilled by another changeling that shared Pharynx’s colors. Not just his colors; they were practically identical. Some sort of warrior class, perhaps? Maybe all changeling in a class shared appearances, like identical siblings.

The newcomer whirled upon them as they arrived, to the clear relief of Ricinidae. “You! What are you doing out of your cell, you—”

“Do not speak to your queen in such a disrespectful manner,” Chrysalis snarled in its face. “Why are you pestering my escort?”

Her gamble worked; the creature backed off with wide eyes, all aggression gone in an instant. “I… But you…” It shook its head forcefully, then peered at her. “You can’t be Her Majesty. She went to that hoo-mun world.”

Chrysalis did her best to manipulate her face into an expression of utter scorn. She even managed an eye twitch, something she’d not been confident her new body could pull off. Speaking with exaggerated slowness, she asked, “Are you questioning me?”

The creature snapped like a twig, prostrating himself before her with wings spread wide. “N-no, Your Majesty! I was only confused, that’s all!”

Wow. This was going to be far easier than she thought. “‘Confused’. I should not be as surprised as I am. You’re lucky I’m in too foul a mood right now to deal with your sorry hide. Leave my sight!” He was gone in a purple-and-black blur, only the fading sound of his wings hinting that he was ever there.

Knowing she had to maintain the facade, she looked upon Ricinidae with haughty authority. “This creature from the other world is going to be my guest. Lead on.”

“O-of course, Your Highness.” The changeling, whom Chrysalis was starting to think was very young, appeared relieved to be free of the presumed warrior.

This reminder got Chrysalis glancing back at her son once more. Though he was doing a decent job of maintaining the stoic mask of professionalism she’d hammered into him since he’d chosen his career, he was still glancing around at their surroundings. Not that she blamed him; this place was strange, like they were in a living cavern. She swore she saw some of the stone tunnels opening and closing entirely on their own. But at least he was able to mask his curiosity by appearing watchful of threats.

This all led her to a new idea. “Ricinidae.”

“Y-yes, my Queen?”

“I doubt I have to tell you, but our guest is new to...” To what? The hive? The colony? The castle? “This world. I’m sure he is curious. Treat this as a guided tour. Take the long route. Show him everything. Tell him everything.”

Ricinidae paused to look back, uncertainty plain in his features. “Everything, Your Majesty? Forgive me, I do not wish to give away the wrong things.”

A perfectly reasonable fear, and so Chrysalis decided feigning anger was unwarranted. She maintained her indifferent posturing, however. “I will be with you stop you from saying anything stupid.” She would let him think the actual act of explaining everything was beneath her.

Ah, changelings’ throats also had an Adam’s apple, perfectly visible when they swallowed their anxiety down. “Of course, My Queen. This way, Mister… uh…”

“Pharynx,” her son replied sharply. “My name is Pharynx.”

“Ricinidae. Come, this way.”

And so the tour began.

“So, wait. You don’t control the walls?”

“Nope. They open and close entirely on their own. Only our Queen understands how they do it.”

Ah, that was her queue, wasn’t it? “And no, I’m not explaining it to you.”

“Then how do any of you get around?”

“We can detect when holes are about to open and close. Part of being a changeling, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Never really thought about it.”

“But what if you need to get to the opposite side of the place in a hurry and there are no holes leading straight there?”

“We… make do.”

Chrysalis’s frown was probably interpreted by Ricinidae as a warning not to be critical of his queen’s choices. In reality, it was in disgust at the sheer inefficiency of such a system.

“O-on the plus side, any enemies who try to sneak in will get really confused, making them easy to pick off!” Their guide shot Chrysalis a hopeful look. She was tempted to remain aloof, but decided a small nod of approval would work, even if delivered with the impassive mask. Ricinidae tried to hide his sigh of relief. Chrysalis had to wonder about this constant anxiety he displayed around his monarch, but shrugged it off as the typical alarm of a higher official watching a lower employee do his job.

They stood on what Ricinidae called a ‘balcony’. It seemed more like the opening before a cliff face to Chrysalis. The land all around the changelings’ home was bleak and unwelcoming. It did little to reassure her that escape would be easy.

It seemed Pharynx was focused on different topics. “So it’s a hollow mountain?”

“A ‘castle’.”

“Looks like a mountain to me. Maybe a termite mound.”

“We’re not bugs!”

“Sure you shouldn’t call it a ‘hive’?”

“We are not bugs!”

Chrysalis stopped gazing at the desolate landscape stretching as far as the eye could see to place a hole-speckled leg in front of Ricinidae. The poor changeling appeared somewhere between infuriated and terrified, the former likely for his people and the latter perhaps of his ‘queen’s’ reaction to what might be a slur.

She didn’t want to make Pharynx look like the villain here, but she also had to maintain an image. That in mind, she turned her aloof gaze upon her transformed son and said, imperiously, “Do recall that you are a guest in my home, human. We can be outstanding hosts.” She set her expression to one of judging authority. “We can also be terrible hosts. It is up to you which one we end up as.”

Chrysalis underestimated Pharynx’s acting talent. That he could so effectively affect pretending to pretend to be aloof and uncaring while letting a little contrition slip out? Marvellous.

The strange look Ricinidae was giving her, on the other hand? Not sure what to make of that.

“And this is our military training grounds.”

“There’s an awful lot of them.”

“All our people are trained to fight to some capacity.”

“Why? Is it some sort of warrior culture?”

“No, it’s just…” Kneading his lips with his fangs, Ricinidae glanced at Chrysalis, who imperiously nodded. “There aren’t many of us left. We’re the last stronghold of our kind, and the ponies could attack at any time. We all need to be prepared.”

That confession left a strangely hollow feeling in Chrysalis’s gut. She gazed upon the training grounds, a large cavern with a series of flat outcrops on the walls. Every surface had changelings doing something. Over there, some kind of marching drill. On that outcrop, what appeared to be an armor inspection. Through the air, some kind of formation practice. The very bottom of the cavern was filled with changelings sparring amongst themselves.

Pharynx glanced back at his dark red crest, then looked at the changelings below. “I notice there’s not a lot of red ones, and all the teachers are red.”

Ricinidae nodded. “The red ones are part of the Home Guard. Elite warriors. They are among the less common.”

Chrysalis saw no reason not to speak up regarding her thoughts on this account. “It is my understanding that the human world possesses alternate versions of most, if not all, of us.”

Catching on to her meaning, Pharynx grimaced. “So there may be another Pharynx in the hi—” Ricinidae shot him a warning look. “In the castle who is a member of the Home Guard. That’ll be awkward.”

“Then perhaps we should move on,” Chrysalis offered, making sure to phrase it more like a command than anything. As she cast one last look over the training grounds, she wondered about what Ricinidae had said about their race being so close to extinction. Was her royal doppelganger of this world responsible, or had it been a problem long in the making?

They stood in a long, thin corridor that stretched a good four stories high. There were at least a dozen similar corridors on both sides of the one they were in. Each path was lined with egg-shaped gaps in the walls, most of which were empty.

A few held green pods, in which floated more changelings. Some were adults. Most were not.

“I’m sorry,” Pharynx said, not bothering to mask his incredulity. “Did you say ‘programming’ chambers?”

Ricinidae walked along the corridor, eyes following one of the pods as they passed it. If he felt any horror for the tiny changeling trapped inside, it didn’t show on his face. “That’s right. For programming. Don’t humans do programming?”

Seeing Pharynx at a loss for words, Chrysalis spoke up. “It may be easier for our guest to hear a suitable explanation of how it works.” She silently hoped that this was just an alien way to educate.

“Of course, My Queen.” Ricinidae paused before another pod, this one with a slightly older changeling suspended within. He touched the surface with a hoof, the thick membrane curving slightly at the contact. There came the sound of liquid sloshing within. “The young ones need to understand their place in society. They must learn, but they grow quickly. How long does it take humans to reach maturity?”

Pharynx, grimacing at the pod, replied stiffly. “It depends, but generally around eighteen to twenty years.”

Their guide nodded in understanding. “Not dissimilar to a pony. Changelings mature within three years.” He paused for a few seconds, appearing thoughtful. “We don’t have that kind of time to teach our young, but we adapted biologically to account for it. With the programming pods, the children can learn everything they need in their decided field in about a year.” Then, as if in afterthought, “They spend about a week at a time in the pods. Technically they can stay for two, but there are risks for going longer, and a week gives us plenty of leeway in case a caretaker makes a mistake.”

Pharynx raised an eyebrow. Or at least the part of his face where an eyebrow would be. “Caretaker?”

Ricinidae pointed upwards. Following the motion, Chrysalis spotted a trio of purple-crested changelings resting in a large alcove near the top of the wall on their left, all appearing to be in deep meditation.

“The caretakers are linked mentally to the students, teaching them all they need to know.” Chrysalis couldn’t help but be fascinated! It was hard to fathom how education in her world could be revolutionized with such a method. Maybe, if the Equestrians could ever have peace with these creatures…

Pharynx’s words cut her musings off. “You said ‘decided’ field, not ‘chosen’.”

Ricinidae frowned at the accusing tone. “Children cannot be allowed to choose their own path. They tend to choose poorly. We barely number above five thousand. Every child of our Queen must be directed to a life task in order to preserve our people as a whole.”

While the idea of a child not being permitted to make their own way in life appalled Chrysalis, she knew from experience the necessity of micromanaging very limited resources. She doubted the concept was any different for a race on the very edge of survival.

After some scowling and mumbling, Pharynx too seemed to accept the explanation. Yet he still appeared unsatisfied. He turned and pointed to a pod ahead of them, which housed a much bigger changeling. “What of the adults? Why do they need to be here if their path has already been decided for them?”

Now it was Ricinidae who was scowling. “Because sometimes even adults may stray. Those who disobey, who learn dangerous things, who become too friendly with the ponies. They need to be reprogrammed, to be reminded that their loyalties are to Queen Chrysalis.”

There was the horror Chrysalis had been dreading. Maybe trying to learn this educational system wasn’t worth it after all.

Chrysalis, Pharynx, and Ricinidae stood atop a ledge high over a dark cavern. A sickly green glow emanated from growths in the walls. It wasn’t a large chamber, maybe fifty feet across and wide. At the bottom, set in seemingly random clusters of a dozen or so at a time, were eggs. Green, fragile-looking things, all being tended to by four yellow-crested changelings wandering from place to place. Other changelings they passed bowed at Chrysalis’s presence, but these? She might as well not exist.

None of that mattered. For Chrysalis, she saw only one thing: the egg. It was nearly four times as large as the others and set atop a dark grey growth, like some display in a museum. The egg’s surface was black as pitch, but shiny. When she shifted her head she could see radiant blue and green reflections of the light, like living auroras. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever laid eyes on, but that didn’t explain why she couldn’t look away. She tried. She couldn’t.

Ricinidae held a nostalgic smile as he waved a hoof at the sight. “The hatchery.”

Pharynx stared at the eggs below them, ear-fins flat against his equinoid skull. After several seconds of this, he tentatively asked, “I don’t mean to be rude here, but… these are changeling eggs, right? They don’t belong to some domesticated creature?”

At first, their guide appeared confused by the query. Then awareness dawned and he smiled. “Humans give live birth, I take it?” When Pharynx nodded, he shuddered. “That must be terrible. Yes, these are all changeling eggs. Their growth rate depends on how much love we feed them. They can stay in a static state perpetually if we leave them be.”

As… distracting as the black egg was, Chrysalis could pay enough attention to agree that giving birth did sound horrible and she wanted nothing to do with the task whatsoever. It wasn’t the only reason she chose to adopt, but it was certainly a big one. Looking upon the sheer size of the black egg, to say nothing for the sheer number of normal ones in each cluster, she couldn’t help doubting that the oviparous route was any more comfortable.

“Right.” Pharynx shook himself, as though to rid himself of a sudden chill. “Okay. Gotcha.” He looked to Ricinidae. “So families just bring their eggs here for care? Some kind of… collective daycare?”

Ricinidae chuckled at the query. He shook his head with a silly smile. “No, no, individual changelings are infertile. We cannot have young.”

Pharynx blinked, clearly at a loss. “Then where do the eggs come from?”

Ricinidae looked to Chrysalis. Pharynx followed his gaze.

Chrysalis was suddenly very happy that the black egg held her attention. The very thought of what was being suggested made her want to squeeze her legs – her hind legs, she idly corrected herself – closed.

Pharynx appeared nervous enough for the both of them. He gazed down at the eggs one more time. “So, when you called the changelings Chrysalis’s ‘children’ earlier, you meant…?”

“That’s right,” Ricinidae said. He didn’t sound pleased. His tone was, at best, coolly neutral. “It was literal. Queen Chrysalis is not just our queen, she is our mother.”

Chrysalis reeled in place, the world spinning. Five thousand changelings. All her children. The rational part of her mind reminded her that, no, they were not all her children. Yet the thought still staggered the mind. And with her history…

“And…” Pharynx asked this next question with eyes darting fervently between Ricinidae’s stoic face and his own mother. “Does she… love you?”

Ricinidae paused, eyes going wide. He looked to Chrysalis, but only for a brief second before lowering his face away. “O-of course. Our Queen loves all her children. Unconditionally.”

The blatant lie shouldn’t have hurt half as much as it did.

“Mo— Your Majesty?” Pharynx stepped closer. In the corner of her eyes she saw his peering gaze. “Are you alright? Is there something about that egg?” She wanted to respond, but wasn’t sure how. Thinking beyond the black egg was challenging enough without the swirl of unwelcome thoughts these revelations had launched in her mind.

Ricinidae made an anxious sound. “M-maybe we should go now. I don’t think—”

“No.” Chrysalis thrust a hoof at him. “Tell him.” She wanted to know.

She needed to know.

Ricinidae’s eyes narrowed. His ear-fins folded back against his head. After a few quiet seconds, he nodded. Though he spoke to Pharynx, he didn’t stop looking at her. Neither did Pharynx. “It is the Royal Egg. There is always at least one. It serves as a fail-safe. If anything happens to the current queen, a new one will be born from that egg. It and the Queen are connected. I do not know how. I doubt even the caretakers know how.”

Connected to the queen? What did it mean that she was feeling so… protective of it? She was not a changeling, body notwithstanding. She was not their queen.

“The Queen has never liked coming here,” Ricinidae muttered, his gaze still piercing her.

Was it because of this strange lure in her mind? Did Queen Chrysalis feel this every time she came to... lay eggs? Chrysalis wondered if she was turning green, and if doing so would be misconstrued as a blush instead of nausea.

Pharynx stepped before her, but was far too short to interfere with her view. “I think I’m ready to move on.”

Chrysalis bit her lip, flinching at the feel of fangs. “Yes. Y-yes, let us move on.”

She didn’t want to be in this room any longer than necessary.

“What am I looking at?”

The question came from Pharynx. Chrysalis was glad, because she’d been tempted to blurt out the same thing. Which, needless to say, would not have been conducive to retaining their cover.

Before them were three large… sacs? She could think of no better term. They were similar to the pods in the Programming Chambers, except suspended from the ceiling. Like those things, these had creatures in them. Except they weren’t changelings. Chrysalis might not have seen any of the denizens of Equestria in the flesh before, but she was pretty sure these not-quite-horses were what Sunset Shimmer referred to as ponies.

Ricinidae cocked his head to the side much like a dog trying to understand why its owner was pointing a finger in a random direction. “Uh… Ponies?”

Pharynx nodded slowly, not taking his eyes off the presumed prisoners. “I can see they are ponies. I asked about the cafeteria. Or the kitchen. You know, a place that serves food?”

“Exactly.” Ricinidae gestured with both forehooves at the ponies above them. “Food.” His gaze went to Chrysalis. It wasn’t the usual fretting and concern. There was something… searching in that look.

“I…” Pharynx looked pale. “You eat ponies?”

“What?” Ricinidae gaped, blinked. A long pause. Another blink.

Then he burst out laughing. “Oh, I get it! I’m so sorry, you look like a changeling so I forgot. No, no, we don’t ‘eat’ ponies.” Grinning from ear-fin to ear-fin, he amended, “We eat love.”

By his prolonged silence, Pharynx was clearly at a loss. He looked to his mother blankly, this latest revelation a bit too much for him.

Though she was just as clueless as he was, she at least had a way to keep the conversation going. “I think he needs a more thorough explanation.” She was proud of how firm that came out. In truth, her own insides were squirming at what she was seeing and what her imagination was conjuring up as potential reasonings.

Ricinidae’s eyes narrowed at her again, but he nodded. “While we can eat food like other creatures, that food provides us only very limited nutrition. We see it more as a luxury.” Then, in a whisper Chrysalis probably wasn’t meant to hear, “Not that we ever get luxuries here.” Raising his voice once more, he continued, “Changelings get their nutrition from the energy produced by the emotion ‘love’. It’s… hard to explain to non-changelings. You’d need to talk to an expert or the Queen herself to get a full grasp on the biology of it.” He sent a pointed look Chrysalis’s way.

He was getting braver. She scowled at him. “Do not look at me. I’m not about to share something like that. The last thing I want is the Equestrians getting their nasty hooves on such information.”

Their guide bowed. “Of course, Your Majesty.”

He knew. His tone was just a touch too flippant for him not to. Chrysalis felt her pulse rising, but she pushed down the urge to panic. They weren’t in trouble yet. They were alone in this chamber of… victims. They could work something out.

Pharynx, either ignorant of their cover being blown or trying to buy time, asked, “If this is the traditional way to deal with outsiders, why did you put myself and your queen in those prisons?”

Ricinidae sat up once more. The white portions of his eyes moved up in what had to have been the changeling version of an eye roll. “Changelings can’t produce love. Well, we can, but not in a way that other changelings can consume. Since the two of you became changelings in this world, the feeding pods would have been wasted on you.”

‘Since you two became changelings.’ If Chrysalis hadn’t been confident before, she certainly was now.

She was just starting to consider a violent solution to the problem when a wall to their right opened up as if by magic. This was becoming less startling by the hour since it kept happening no matter where they went in this castle – for that matter, how did the changeling know for sure the cells she and Pharynx had been locked in were secure from that kind of thing? What was startling was the seven red-crested changelings that promptly burst through the new opening. They formed a v-pattern, all wearing spiked purple armor and appearing ready for a fight.

Despite the flashy entrance, no blows were thrown. Instead, the newcomers stood at what Chrysalis assumed was their version of ‘attention’. The leader removed his helmet and addressed her directly. “Your Majesty, my apologies for being late. Had we known you were back at the castle, we’d have come sooner.”

Okay. Not attacking. Still fooled. Chrysalis needed only to play along. Ricinidae was still a problem…

The changeling in question stepped between her and the probable royal guard. “Her Majesty is giving her guest a tour of the castle. I am her escort for the time being.”

“You?” The leader’s eyes narrowed, which was enough to make the more lightly-colored changeling fidget. “You’re a drone. Do not get in the way of the Home Guard.”

Though confusion had slowed her down, Chrysalis was able to regather her wits quickly enough. “And you will not presume to know my desires. I will not have you intimidating my guest.”

The armored changelings muttered among themselves, at least until the leader recovered from his shocked expression and snapped at them. Turning back to her, his eyes took on a look of hurt. “Have we displeased you, My Queen, that you would send us away? Are we to be replaced by this…” He scowled at Ricinidae. “...civilian?”

How to solve this? Chrysalis knew that saying the wrong thing now could reveal herself as a fraud. She couldn’t rely on Ricinidae to provide an answer this time. She glanced down at Pharynx, who had planted himself firmly in front of her despite his diminutive size and being heavily outnumbered. Worry ate at her. If she said the wrong thing now, they wouldn’t get to go home—Ah-ha!

Her attention snapped to the leader, her full commanding presence back in action now that she had a plan. She spoke her words slowly. “Would you be so proud as to declare yourselves the most loyal of my guard?”

As one, the seven stomped their hooves in a single loud beat, heads held high and bodies stiff. “We serve Her Majesty, the Queen,” declared the leader. “We are Her Home Guard, we are Her Shield! Command us, Queen Chrysalis, and we shall die to see your will done.”

She smiled. Sweetly. With a hoof, she guided Pharynx aside, then did the same to Ricinidae. Approaching slowly, she said, “Then there is a special task I have for you. Something that has become very important to me recently.”

The leader tilted his head back to maintain direct eye contact as she approached. His face was firm as steel. “We obey.”

“Good.” Studying the back of her hoof as she might the back of her fingernails – and hoping it had the same effect – she casually continued, “When we attempted the kidnapping from the human world, someone botched things up. They let the target go. That’s not what bothers me. What bothers me is that I woke up in one of my own prison cells. Someone knocked me unconscious. Someone among the team doing the kidnapping. Seeing as the strike came by surprise, I didn’t get to see who it was.” She dropped her hoof. Met the leader’s gaze. Maintained her sweet smile.

Then she was in his face, all teeth and fire and ferocity. “Find the fool changeling that dared to strike your Queen! Find him, throw him in a cell, and then let me know so I can personally mount his head on my wall!”

Her ploy worked like a charm. Within five seconds the soldiers were gone, off on a hunt for some poor changeling who was likely only following orders. Granted, their queen did get hit, it was only in a roundabout way that made sense if you didn’t look too closely. Chrysalis saw two possibilities: either they’d quickly find the culprit and the matter would be closed with some harsh words and a pardon, or the Queen’s Guard would tear itself apart from the inside. The first bought her time. The second would buy her time and cause Queen Chrysalis some well-deserved headaches.

She turned from the hole in the wall, which chose that strangely convenient moment to close, and looked upon Ricinidae. His smug smile was hardly what she’d expected. For a moment the two merely stared at one another, Pharynx in the middle and seeming quite uncomfortable for it. He carefully sidestepped out of the way.

“I think,” Ricinidae stated pleasantly, “that it’s about time we showed our guest the Queen’s quarters.”

Raising an eyebrow, Chrysalis replied, “I do hope you mean the more luxurious ones.”

“That I do.” He sauntered past her, moving towards the original exit that, unlike its peers, didn’t seem interested in leaving anytime soon. “If you’ll follow me, please.”

Pharynx sidled up beside her with a scowl. “We’re caught, aren’t we?”

“Indeed.” After some hesitation, she did as their guide suggested. “At the moment I think it best we played along.”

He let out a little snort, but didn’t object, keeping by her side as he always did. When this was over, she had every intention of telling him how grateful she was for that.

They were mildly surprised when Ricinidae kept his word. Though the path was winding and occasionally led to what felt like backtracks thanks to the strange habits of the castle tunnels, they eventually found themselves in the throne room. It was a disturbing sight, featuring a massive throne Chrysalis was sure she could have laid down on without difficulty. The throne itself was a black monstrosity of seemingly random spikes nestled among a miniature mountain range of similarly jagged rock. It sat in a cavern dotted with numberless holes which did not seem to share the random opening and closing nature of their brethren throughout the rest of the castle. High above was a collection of a couple dozen of the ‘feeding pods’ they had been shown earlier, all filled with ponies.

For a frightening moment, Chrysalis feared that they’d been led to an ambush and would soon be trapped in one of the pods up above, a gift for when her more ‘royal’ version came home. Pharynx looked about ready to grab her and flee, though she doubted he could given the size difference. Yet Ricinidae did not stop in what may be the least royal or luxurious throne room in any world. Instead, he led them to a seemingly random hole among the myriad that littered the walls, this one only differentiated by being a bit smaller in size.

A few twists and turns brought them to the first and only traditional doors they’d yet to see in the castle. Chrysalis was no stonemason, but she suspected the black things were made from ebony, or perhaps some kind of dark granite. There were no decorations, nor were there any handles, but they were more than tall and wide enough to permit her towering frame.

Ricinidae stopped and turned to his guests, gesturing with a hoof to the doors at his side. “The quarters of Her Majesty, Queen Chrysalis.”

There was a long, awkward pause. Chrysalis’s eyes went to the doors, then to him. He merely watched her, still with that pleasant, expecting smile.

Pharynx grumbled under his breath. “What, not gonna open it for her?”

The changeling’s smile widened. “I can’t. The doors are enchanted. Only Her Majesty can open them.” He looked pointedly at Chrysalis. “With her magic.”

Magic. She was supposed to have magic. Chrysalis couldn’t resist letting her eyes cross as she finally looked up at the long, jagged thing poking obnoxiously out of her forehead. There were eyesores, and then there was that. She hadn’t tried to use it to do anything since they’d arrived. The thought hadn’t even occurred to her.

They were so boned.

“We are so boned.” Pharynx stood before her and planted his hooves, readying for a fight.

“Now, now, hold on.” Ricinidae raised both hooves in what was probably meant to be a placating gesture. “Yes, I figured it out. No, this isn’t some ambush or scheme to prove it. But you are going to want to figure out how to open these doors. It’s the safest place for you in the whole castle.”

Pharynx growled and scuffed his hoof on the floor, which Chrysalis found comically similar to how horses and cows did such things in cartoons. “How can we trust you, bug?”

The smile faded, though Ricinidae did not appear offended by the apparent slur. “Because, frankly, you two have the run of this place.” He looked to Chrysalis. “I’m pretty sure that, for all practical purposes, you are Queen Chrysalis right now.”

Chrysalis took this in, but her brain couldn’t put the pieces together. She set a gentle hoof to Pharynx, both for his comfort and to hold him back. “What do you mean?”

“There are many ways for the Queen to control us,” their host answered, fidgeting and biting his lip. “Fear. Ferocity. Punishments for slight offenses. But by far the most effective way is the Programming Chambers.” He tapped the side of his head with a hoof. “In here. It’s not just learning how to disguise ourselves or basic algebra. We are instinctually made to obey the current queen. Queen Chrysalis didn’t start this, mind you, it’s been part of our way for centuries.”

Eyes narrowing, Chrysalis felt she understood what he was getting at. But to make sure… “I am not your queen, though.”

“Aren’t you?” Ricinidae shrugged. “I can’t tell the difference. When you first gave me orders, our Chrysalis or no, I felt compelled to obey, in exactly the same way I was compelled to obey her. With what I’ve seen so far, I think that is the case for every changeling.”

He brought his forehooves together with a light clop. “The changelings need a queen. When the Queen left on her little mission in the mirror world…” He pulled his hooves apart. “...there was suddenly a hole in need of filling. And since you happen to fit that hole perfectly in every conceivable way…” The hooves came back together. “...we have our queen again. Our instincts are incapable of telling the two of you apart. So, yeah. You rule the kingdom now.”

Ricinidae dropped into a low bow and uttered, with absolute seriousness, “Queen Chrysalis.”

Chrysalis opened her mouth. Closed it. Her thoughts, in order:

Son of a bitch, I ended up in politics anyway.

Is this really all that different from being the CEO of a major international company?

Sunset is going to find this hilarious.

Pharynx was sitting now, seemingly in a daze. He shook his head slowly. “But wait. You know we’re not from your world. If you can figure it out, the others will too. Won’t that be a problem?”

“Hmm…” Ricinidae scratched his chin with a hoof in a thoughtful pose. “I’m sure there will be some loyalists who will want the old queen back, but they also have the programming. They can’t oppose the Queen, whoever it is right now, at least not directly. Or openly.”

“But indirectly?” Chrysalis asked.

“There are those of us who… ‘don’t agree’ with the direction Queen Chrysalis has taken us,” Ricinidae admitted. “Their best bet is always to keep their heads down and not be noticed. If any are, they get sent to be reprogrammed. It works for a while, but the reprogramming can’t permanently change what a changeling is on the inside. Eventually, the old thoughts and feelings return. So unless the Queen decides to start slaughtering the dissatisfied, we’ve only stopgaps.” He shivered, voice abruptly going low in the dark, narrow hallway. “I think Queen Chrysalis would be using such tactics were we not already so few in number.”

The sound that came from Chrysalis’s throat was more of a hiss than anything. It startled her, but not enough to keep the vehemence from her tone. “I would never subject someone to… to reprogramming. The very thought is sickening.” Pharynx shot her a look. Once again, she couldn’t read it, and she really wished she could. “Alright, one step at a time. Door. What would you propose?”

Ricinidae shrugged. “Use your magic?” Her scowl only produced a sheepish smile from him.

The next twenty minutes were a practice in frustration and, though she was loath to admit it, anxiety. Yes, Ricinidae said that she basically ruled the castle now, but the idea of the others knowing she wasn’t their Chrysalis was an itch that couldn’t be scratched. She focused on the doors and her horn, thinking of whatever lay beyond as a safe place where she and Pharynx could ride this storm out. Ricinidae tried to offer helpful tidbits. Even Pharynx had a few words to offer, though it was obvious he was only shooting darts in the dark. She tried calming her thoughts, focusing on herself, thinking about the doors opening, everything short of kicking the stupid things down, but alas, nothing worked.

At last, she surrendered to the inevitable. “I just can’t,” she grumbled, head hung low. She snapped when Ricinidae opened his mouth. “Yes, yes, I know! I should ‘feel it inside me’ or whatever. I don’t. I feel no different than I usually do, except that now I’m famished.”

Ricinidae’s little ear-fins abruptly perked up. “Famished? You’re hungry?”

Catching the hint of excitement in his tone, she raised her head so to eye him curiously. “Yes?” Now that she stopped to pay attention, she really was hungry. Very much so. She could really go for some red wine chicken ciccioneddo right about now.

“Ah-ha!” Their host clapped his hooves sharply, a grin sprouting on his face. “Maybe that’s it. The Queen’s magic is fueled by love. She needs to eat in order to use her magic, and you’ve not had a drop of love since you arrived. We just need to get some food in you.”

Chrysalis could feel the blood rushing from her face. “You… You want me to eat…” She couldn’t stop from looking back down the corridor. Though she couldn’t see them from here, she could easily view the pony-filled pods in her head.

“Don’t worry.” Clearly unaware of the source of her discomfort, Ricinidae started walking for the exit. “Queen Chrysalis only keeps the ponies with the sweetest, more innocent love. It’ll be the tastiest treat you’ve ever—”

“There is no chance in Hell I’m feeding off another sentient creature.”

“But I promise, it’s—”

“No.”

Ricinidae turned to her, his expression the very definition of conflicted. He looked to Pharynx, who offered no response, not even a shrug. Then he looked at the door. Then to Chrysalis. Then back down the corridor. At last, he heaved a sigh and sat. “Well, you’re going to be very hungry. As Queen, you can’t really ‘starve’. You’ll just be very uncomfortable and unable to use magic. We don’t really have any of what you’d call ‘normal’ food.”

“I don’t intend to be here long enough for it to be a problem,” she replied, hoping her cool tone masked the discomfort still roiling around her insides. “My son and I are going home.”

Her guide – and now, she supposed, advisor – sat up straight and frowned. “How? The portal to your world is all the way in Ponyville. The Queen merely teleported herself and a few soldiers near Canterlot and took a train. Without your magic, it would take weeks to get back.”

Ah, but that was a puzzle she’d been thinking on for quite some time, and by now she felt she had a solution. “If things on the other side of the portal are going how I think they are, then the Princesses of Equestria may already be aware of my presence in this world. I need only make my whereabouts known.”

Ricinidae cocked his head. “Again, how?”

The answer, she felt, was obvious. So obvious, in fact, she had to question why he was even asking. “By contacting them, of course. Does your Queen have a way to communicate with them directly, or could we simply send a lone changeling to carry the message?”

Ricinidae’s pale, glowing eyes went wide, his semi-transparent wings snapping open as he jumped to his hooves. “You want to do what? But the Equestrians are our sworn enemies!”

Another question with an obvious, if decidedly more challenging solution. “I am your queen while I am here, am I not?” At Ricinidae’s hesitant nod, she smiled. “Then as acting queen, I consider it my job to make them not your enemies.”

Just as quickly as it had risen, Ricinidae’s flank fell to the ground. By how his forelegs wobbled, his front was at risk of something similar. “Y-you… You want us to make peace with the Equestrians?”

Chrysalis stared at the dumbstruck changeling. She turned her head to Pharynx, who met hers with a look of plain disinterest. With a hint of annoyance, she said, “Please tell me I’m not going to have to explain how stupid it is to remain in a state of war against a superpower when your entire civilization consists of only around five thousand people.” Surely the changelings as a whole weren’t that stupid. Ricinidae in particular seemed quite the intelligent individual despite being a ‘Drone’, which seemed to suggest being low-born or a commoner or whatever term they used here. Surely, surely, he would understand the intelligence behind this direction. Unless their culture was really that backwards…

Despite the wobbling, Ricinidae managed to raise his head once more. “Y-you have to understand, the ponies hate us. Not that I blame them, what with us briefly conquering their capital and all. It’s just that any messenger you send will be… I mean, it’s a suicide mission!”

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. “I think you overestimate the ponies’ nature.”

“I do not! They’ll kill any changeling that reveals itself. I know it!”

“They will do no such thing,” Chrysalis snapped back, causing the trembling creature to flinch. “They wouldn’t harm a messenger for no reason. At the very least, they’d want that messenger to send a response.” Granted, this all depended upon Equestria following the same code of diplomatic ethics as civilized nations did in her own world. She was also basing her interpretation of Equestria’s reaction entirely upon what she’d been told of it by Sunset Shimmer, who was hardly an unbiased source.

Pick your path. Own it. Face the consequences.

“I need two things, Ricinidae. I need the throne room banned so that Pharynx and I can have a place to rest and cope with this situation without interruption, and I need to talk to the fastest messenger present in the castle.” She grimaced as a fresh discomfort ran through her insides. “And I know it’s a long shot, but if you have any food that doesn’t come from sucking sentient creatures’ emotions out through a straw, it would be appreciated.”

They did have something that could, in the most technical of terms, be deemed ‘fit for consumption’. It was some sort of purple mush that somehow combined the texture of sand with that of slime. She’d say it didn’t taste bad, but that would require it to have a taste to begin with. She still ate a small bowl of the stuff, if only for the hope that it would put her insides at ease.

Pharynx had resolutely refused any of it. That worried her, but she chose not to press him. He could make his own decisions.

While waiting for Ricinidae to complete his tasks, they settled in the throne room. Chrysalis decided to spend the time testing the wings she now had, and was startled to discover that they could lift her off the ground despite their ripped appearance. Being able to control herself in the air was another matter entirely, though she doubted that had as much to do with the wings as it did her total lack of experience with them. Still, the knowledge that she could experience self-sustained flight, even if that was merely wobbling a foot off the ground, was too big an opportunity to pass up. She’d go home and be able to boast that she’d flown.

In private. With her family and maybe an in-the-know outsider or two.

But still, boasting!

As she struggled to make herself move in a single direction, she noticed Pharynx watching her with curious eyes. She smiled at him invitingly. “Are you sure you don’t want to try it? It’s a lot of fun once you get used to the lurching in your stomach.”

He kept staring at her, his expression gradually falling. Abruptly, he turned away.

Part of Chrysalis was tempted to leave him be. Pharynx had always been guarded about his feelings, and she’d never pressed in respect to his privacy.

Yet there was an instinct. It wasn’t an unfamiliar one. She’d known it for more than a decade while raising the boys, but always ignored it. It had frightened her, that emotion, that strange need to know. It had felt so… alien. After her recent revelations however, she finally had a name for that little ache in her chest: motherly concern. No wonder she’d been so terrified.

Not anymore.

Okay, maybe a little.

Maybe a lot.

Shaking her head to clear it, she eased the buzzing of her new wings and landed with a finesse she was mildly proud of. “What is wrong, Pharynx?”

“Nothing is wrong, Mother,” he replied without turning to her. She didn’t miss the strain hidden beneath the firm tone. “I’m merely wondering when the poison they fed you will kick in.”

“If you were truly worried about that, you wouldn’t have let me eat it in the first place.” She took a step nearer, but avoided getting too close. “You’ve been deep in thought for a while now.”

“You know I don’t think much.”

She scoffed, which finally prompted him to look back at her with a scowl. “The only thing you ever do is think. You’ve probably spoken more words in the last couple hours than you have in the entire past year.” She smirked at the green blush forming in his cheeks. “I understand you’ve filled your quota for the next decade, but I’d still appreciate it if you spoke to me.”

He bowed his head, brow furrowed and lips set in a ponderous frown. After a moment of this, he turned to her, but didn’t meet her gaze. “You really like flying?”

Though she wondered at his choice of subject, she couldn’t help but grin. “Who wouldn’t want to be able to reject their physical limitations, even for a minute?” For an instant her thoughts turned to the silvery jets in the skies and all she could do was sigh. “When I was a little girl, I was absolutely fascinated by airplanes. Especially the small, nimble ones. Had I not become so devoted to working in business, I probably would have been a pilot.”

He blinked up at her, jaw loose. “A pilot? You?”

She shrugged. “I was determined to defy my limitations in one way or another. Ultimately, it came down to the limitations of my body or the limitations of my social standing. I went with the latter, and I don’t regret the choice. Still…” Her smile turned wistful as her wings buzzed for a few beats. “Sometimes I lament that I never learned how to fly.”

He took this in, took her in. Once more, his head bowed. “In all the years you raised Thorax and me, never did I see you smile so brightly as you did just now, hovering in the air like that.” His expression, already sober, turned grim. “Except for that time you and Sunset had that talk after the Battle of the Bands. You smiled like that then.”

The pleasant moment fled Chrysalis. She wasn’t sure how to take that statement, but it certainly felt like something she should be inspecting closely. She pushed it aside for the moment. Her attention was better devoted to her son and the hurt look on his face. “Pharynx?”

He turned his head from her, his typical stern frown returning. There was a more defensive touch to it than usual. “Forget it. I understand. No point talking about it.”

“I disagree.” When he said nothing, she glowered. “Pharynx.” He hunched his shoulders and kept quiet.

Oh, so he intended to sulk, did he? “Boy.”

His entire body tensed. His head snapped towards her so fast it was a miracle he didn’t crack any bones – or whatever changelings had if not bones. He bared his fangs in what she suspected was an instinctual act for his new body. The glare in his narrowed eyes was pure venom.

Works every time. Somehow avoiding a chuckle at his predictability, she kept her voice soft. “Tell me what’s bothering you. Please.”

He let out a snarl. “Don’t say ‘please’. You shouldn’t pretend like what comes out of your mouth for us is anything but an order. That’s why you never said it before, and I’m not falling for it now.”

Chrysalis felt as though she’d been slapped in the face. The sheer vehemence in his words… “W-what?”

“Stop it. Stop faking it! You think I don’t know how you see me? How you see Thorax? I accepted it a long time ago, Mother.” He might as well have spat in her face. She certainly felt like he had. With eyes narrowed, he passed a hoof around as if displaying their surroundings. “You ‘programmed’ us into our roles, right? We’re your henchmen. Your drones. Your…” And here he threw in some extra venom. “...employees.”

He felt that way? He’d always felt that way? But… But they always had such a rapport! He was her strong right arm, her best support, the firm presence when she was weary or struggling. Did he not understand that? Had she been misinterpreting him all these years? “Pharynx, I don’t see you as—”

Rearing back, he slammed both forehooves into the ground, his wings spread wide and red sparks flicking off his horn. “Stop lying! In all these years you’ve always only been brutally honest with me, so don’t stop now!”

Shock gave way to anger, and if there was anything Chrysalis knew how to wield, it was anger. She took a threatening step closer, lowering her head to match his and better see into his eyes. “Stop acting like a child. You are my son. Thorax is my son. I get that I was a crappy mother to you both, and I’m sorry about that, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t care.”

Body heaving like a bellows, he met her glare-for-glare and didn’t back down. “If that were true, then why did you never smile that way for us? What makes Sunset Shimmer so fucking special that in just three years she can turn you from the ice queen to… to…”

Pharynx hadn’t shed a tear in Chrysalis’s presence since he was eight years old. To see them forming in his strange, purple changeling eyes took her breath away. “Pharynx?”

He wasn’t looking at her anymore. His gaze was at something distant, something only he could see. “I made my peace with it. I understood my place. But coming here, seeing these creatures, realizing how shitty they are being treated and knowing that they’re all your children... You really are the same in both worlds.

“All we wanted was to know that you loved us. That you were proud. We tried so hard. Thorax worked day and night for years building his information network, swearing off his own hobbies. He even gave up a girl over it. I learned three different martial arts, won five tournaments, and broke my arm three times. Do you have any idea how much that hurts?” He closed his eyes, and a lone tear slipped down his cheek. “I even took those fucking etiquette classes you insisted on so I wouldn’t embarrass you in front of your peers. All so that once, just once, you’d acknowledge us. And you. Didn’t. Care. Then Sunset Shimmer swoops in and suddenly you want to be a mom?”

He turned away from her. Which was good. Now he couldn’t see the agony that was sweeping through every square inch of her strange, four-legged body.

“Fuck that. Fuck you. Fuck Sunset Shimmer!” His next breath was a slow, heavy shudder that brought him to his haunches. “And f-fuck me, too.”

He might have been quiet about it, but his trembling shoulders and painful hisses were enough. The struggling effort to keep her from hearing his weeping left Chrysalis’s legs feeling like rubber. She wanted to say something, say anything, but all she could do was look back and recall every moment that he’d gone above and beyond for her, the work he and his brother put in. Back when they were little, she recalled how they’d always sought her attention, always distracting her from what seemed so much more important. Hindsight made things so obvious, and she felt foolish for not realizing at the time just what they needed from her. When they’d stopped being so needy in their teens, she’d assumed they’d merely grown up and become independent.

But they’d never really stopped trying, had they?

Oh, Goddess, she was going to start crying too. She was such a terrible mother. “I-I…”

“Your majesty, this is Anisoptera, our fastest messenger.”

Quickly rubbing her eyes clear, Chrysalis turned to find Ricinidae standing in one of the throne room’s many entrances. At least, she thought it was him. Those with the same colors were practically impossible to differentiate. At his side was a changeling almost identical in appearance, though there was indeed a certain, barely noticeable sleekness to its form. Its crest and eyes were a bright orange.

“O-of course. If you would give me a—” When she turned back, Pharynx was just disappearing through one of the myriad exits. Chrysalis suddenly understood what certain authors meant when they talked about a heart being torn to pieces. Sucking in a ragged breath, she brought her attention back to the newcomers.

With no small effort, she forced her voice back under control and took on a commanding tone. “Anisoptera. I have a task for you.”

Hours passed. Chrysalis paced the throne room, fretting and uncertain. Pharynx had yet to return, and this held all her attention. Not the plan she’d put into motion, not her curiosity about what Sunset and Thorax were doing with the Queen, not even that blasted egg in the hatchery. Pharynx. Where was her son?

Did he hate her?

This felt like her confrontation with Thorax all over again, only more time consuming. More raw. She cared for Thorax, she really did, but it was Pharynx who was always at her side wherever she went. Was this jealousy over Sunset a new thing, or had it been stewing for years? He felt he was nothing more than an employee. An employee! This couldn’t be, and yet it had to be.

Had she really ‘programmed’ her sons into their roles? Did she do things in the distant past to encourage them to be what they are now? It sounded so wrong, so horrible, so unmotherly. She couldn’t remember, and that only made the emptiness worse. What if Pharynx was right?

She’d been such a success in her life, but in this she was as capable as… as…

“Your Majesty.”

She froze. How long had she been pacing? Without a view of the sun in here, there was no way to know. She turned to find a green-crested drone watching her from one of the many entrances. Green. That color belonged to the Planners. That was what Ricinidae called them. An overly broad term for what amounted to the changeling equivalent of secretaries and middle management. Pushing her thoughts of Pharynx into the background, she asked a quiet but hopefully firm “Yes?”

The changeling bowed. “I am to inform you that they have found and imprisoned the one who dared to strike you during the mission. He is being kept below.”

Oh, thank the Goddess, a distraction! “I would see him immediately. Go, lead me.”

As they descended once more to the prisons, Chrysalis reminded herself that the changeling she was going to meet had only been doing his job. Of course she had feelings regarding what that job had entailed for her, but she would try not to begrudge him that. She came up with fifty different ideas for what to do with him. Most were ridiculous and conjured up solely so that she wouldn’t have to think of everything else happening.

The green changeling brought her to the prison, where two Home Guard changelings stood in waiting, their expressions grim. They took over, guiding Chrysalis down the somewhat familiar prison passage to a cell not far from where she’d originally been imprisoned. The cell in question was flanked by two more Home Guard.

Chrysalis peered into the cell. What she saw was yet another member of the Home Guard, settled on his haunches in the middle of the room and glaring at nothing. When her hoosteps ceased, he glanced up, then jumped into an aggressive stance. “You! How dare you take the mantle of our queen in her absence!”

That voice. That voice. She took a step closer. No matter how she eyed him through the green barrier, she couldn’t tell him apart from his peers. Yet there could be no mistaking what her ears – ear-fins? She needed a mirror – told her. “Pharynx?”

He bared his fangs, a long, split tongue slithering out of his mouth as he hissed. “How do you know my name, usurper?”

The glass shards that had once been her heart stirred. More internal bleeding. Just hearing the anger in this creature’s tone made her feel weak and stupid. But no. This was not her Pharynx. Hers was… gone. Missing. Brooding, perhaps. What to do with this one?

“What’s the matter, usurper?” not-Pharynx growled. “Afraid I’ll let your little secret out? When the real queen returns from your world, she will unleash such pain upon you that you will beg her for—”

This was more Chrysalis’s speed. The words came with a subtle harshness. “Be silent.”

Not-Pharynx’s mouth clamped shut with an audible click of teeth. He glared at her with intense hatred. She reminded herself that this wasn’t her son, but that didn’t make his expression hurt much less. Still, she forced her face to maintain its impassivity, studying him as one might a bug before squashing it. Not-Pharynx fumed and fidgeted and growled, his wings even buzzed, but he said not a word.

This, she realized, was an opportunity. “Can you do it?” She queried with genuine curiosity. “Can you disobey?”

He sat, slowly, with a clear intent that said ‘I am doing this because I chose to’. His shoulders heaved once and steam snorted from his nostrils. He said nothing, only glared.

A sick feeling entered Chrysalis’s guts. “You may speak.”

He wasted no time. “How are you doing this? You are not my queen!”

So. They had no free will. If she said jump, they wouldn’t even pause to ask ‘how high?’ Ignoring not-Pharynx’s ranting, she considered the horrible implications. These creatures, they were little more than slaves. Pharynx was her subordinate on paper, but he could at least talk to her as an equal. If he really wanted to, he could say ‘no’ to her.

When was the last time he had?

Had he ever in his adult life?

Had Thorax?

Not-Pharynx slammed into the barrier separating them, the effect diminished by the soft, squishy sound the green material made. “Pay attention to me, usurper!”

“Oh, hold still,” she snapped, and he promptly sat down on the hard cell floor. “Let’s begin with the obvious: I am aware you only struck me because you were following orders. As such, I don’t intend to give you any harsh punishments. You will stay locked in here for now, until such time as I can think of something better for you.”

Not-Pharynx snarled at her. “You have no right to keep me in here! You are supposed to be the one imprisoned, you wretched creature. How are you able to fool everyling? How did you get the Queen’s power of control?”

Though she had some answers, she decided there were better ways than merely voicing them. Chrysalis turned to the Home Guard directly to her right. “You. What is your name?”

The armored changeling blinked, clearly unaccustomed to being spoken to directly by its queen. When it spoke, it’s voice had a certain feminine quality. “Phyllophaga, Your Majesty.”

Interesting names these creatures had. “Phyllophaga. What do you think of Pharynx’s claims?”

Phyllophaga’s eyes widened. Was that panic Chrysalis detected? The armored changeling glanced at her – Chrysalis assumed it was a ‘her’, at least – red-crested companions, then to Pharynx, who was watching her like a shark might watch a tuna. After some hesitation and a bit of shifting from side to side, she finally ventured, “You are our queen. Just not the… previous queen?”

Curious. Sparing the soldier anymore of her gaze, Chrysalis looked to the one on her left. Immediately recognizing her attention, he looked straight ahead in the manner of one desperately trying not to stare and stomped a hoof. “We obey!” Following his lead, the other two unnamed Home Guard stomped and echoed his sentiment. Phyllophaga was just a beat behind.

Not-Pharynx let out another hiss. “Traitors. You’re all traitors! Do not think our Queen will go easy on any of you fools!”

“I think I’ve made my point.” In truth, Chrysalis had not been sure of what would happen. She’d mostly expected the soldiers to think Pharynx insane and she their regular Queen Chrysalis. But now she understood that they knew about the swap and had no intention of doing anything about it. Because of their instincts and programming? Then why was this Pharynx so devoted to the queen? Ricinidae said the ‘programming’ wore off after a time. Maybe this Pharynx was legitimately loyal.

She could use this.

“Your Majesty.” The green changeling was back. Or maybe it was a different one. She felt a little guilty that she couldn’t tell. “The messenger has returned from Equestria.”

Already? Chrysalis must have been pacing in the throne room longer than she thought. She’d been told it would take three hours to reach Equestria by flight, so the messenger had to have left at least seven hours ago, maybe eight.

Eight hours. Where was her son?

It was night. Chrysalis was told it had been for two hours now. She was also told the timing of her message was fortunate, because the target of the letter was nocturnal. Thinking back to her renegade teenage years, Chrysalis had every reason to believe it.

Not-Pharynx and Ricinidae stood to her sides, Anisoptera a little ahead, and some Home Guard were behind them a few dozen yards. They stood atop a cliff overlooking what the locals of this world called the Badlands, right at the point the world started to become green and clean again. This was deemed necessary, as Queen Chrysalis’s throne was apparently made of some sort of anti-magic stone and this put them beyond its influence. The location served to put their coming guest on even footing. Supposedly. With Chrysalis lacking any form of magic, she imagined she and her changelings were going to be hopelessly outclassed.

The sky, lit by a full and brilliant moon, was also paradoxically covered in stars. Never in her life had Chrysalis known a sky like it, and she had to admit it was quite the beauty. Combined with the quiet of the forest before them and the cool winds of the Badlands behind them, it was an altogether pleasant evening.

“Why am I here? Planning to make me a scapegoat? Sacrifice me to your pony gods?”

Not-Pharynx had to try and ruin it, of course. She dearly missed her own son, who had far better wit than this guy. She ignored his complaining in favor of watching for their visitor, who had promised to come at around this time. “Do we have the timing wrong? Are we early?”

It was Anisoptera who spoke up. Her voice never failed to surprise with its gentility. “The Princess Luna isn’t one to abide by the schedules of others. By our expectations, she’s twenty minutes late. By hers, she’ll be right on time.”

In other words, Luna’s pony counterpart was making them wait just to prove she could. Chrysalis scowled and said nothing. She tried to keep her thoughts on the coming meeting rather than her still-missing son.

How long they waited, she wasn’t sure. She only became aware of a presence when the sounds of the night life came to an abrupt halt. The changelings around her went stiff, Pharynx himself lowering into an aggressive pose. Chrysalis turned her head about, seeking any sign of danger, but there was nothing, not even movement.

A voice, shockingly familiar, echoed through the trees like the whisper of a ghost. A ghost with a lovely voice, but a ghost nonetheless. “Greetings, Chrysalis. We must ask: how are you enjoying your reign so far?”

Luna. Chrysalis had to remind herself that this wasn’t her friend and ex, but an entirely unknown entity that may not take well to her. Straightening her posture, she gazed directly forward and into the dark forest. “It has been… enlightening.”

“We are sure.”

Abruptly, the shadows a dozen feet ahead of them coalesced. Chrysalis watched in quiet awe as it coagulated and took solid form. Princess Luna emerged, her coat a lovely blue and her mane… Oh. Oh, wow. Chrysalis couldn’t help trying to imagine her own Luna with hair that looked and moved like a night sky. That would be amazing.

Before she could get over her shock at the sight of her human friend’s equine counterpart, the princess smiled pleasantly. “Before we begin, we should warn you that Sunset Shimmer has contacted Princess Twilight Sparkle with news.”

Chrysalis couldn’t help but smirk. “How long did it take her to figure it out?”

Princess Luna’s smile turned into a proper grin. “To quote her directly: About as long as it took to see her fall on her face in the school hallways. It seems watching creatures walk on two legs is very different from having to do it yourself.” Chrysalis couldn’t help but giggle, which became proper laughter when Luna added, “Apparently they have her tied up in a janitor’s closet. We were told the numbers 203 and 205 will mean something to you.”

“That is priceless,” Chrysalis declared between giggles. “Now I’m glad I didn’t take that bet!” She looked to Pharynx as she said it, grinning wide. He shot her a glare that could have melted a glacier. It did a wonderful job ending her mirth, though not for the reasons he probably would have liked.

“We are curious,” the princess said, losing her smile as she eyed Chrysalis’s entourage. “How did you convince these changelings to help you escape?”

Right. Business. She turned her attention to Princess Luna. “I didn’t have to. They are – and this is their terminology, I note – programmed in such a way that they cannot disobey me. The entire castle is aware of who I really am, but I am so much like their queen that their instincts have effectively replaced her with me in her absence.”

“You are nothing like our queen,” not-Pharynx spat. “You are a pathetic excuse of a—”

“Yes, yes, you’ve said this before.” Rolling her eyes, Chrysalis shot him a disdainful look. “Be silent until I say otherwise.” There was that glacier-melting look again. Too bad for him she was immune after the first few hits.

The princess thought on this with a deep frown. “Fascinating. Disturbing. It’s like they are slaves.” Shaking off her contemplation, she refocused on Chrysalis. “We suppose you’ll be wanting to go home immediately.”

Chrysalis felt her own lips slipping into a conspiratorial smile and made no attempt to prevent it. “In time. I didn’t get as far as I have without noticing an opportunity when it punches me in the face, and what we— what you have right now is a brilliant one.” She stepped forward, ushering Anisoptera aside so as to have an unobscured view of the princess and vice versa. “I am in control of the Changeling Kingdom for the time being. They must do as I say. And I say it is time for the changelings and the ponies to make peace.”

Princess Luna had such lovely, vivid eyes. Like Sunset’s. Maybe it was a pony thing. Right now they were wide open. “You are serious?” When Chrysalis only nodded, she was apparently rendered speechless. She took in Chrysalis, then the changelings surrounding her, then looked over her to the Badlands beyond. Eventually, she replied, “What you suggest is not a simple matter. It will take time. There are risks. Ponies are frightened and paranoid of changelings since the invasion, and many will hesitate to accept them. What of the changelings? Would they be willing to make peace if you are not there to force it upon them?”

“That’s...complicated.” Chrysalis turned her gaze left. “Pharynx?”

He leapt to his hooves in an instant, wings abuzz. “The changelings will never make peace with the ponies! We don’t want their soft, weak ways! Making peace with them is a mistake, and isn’t what our real queen desires. Queen Chrysalis is the only one who knows what we need, not some hair-brained clone from another world that doesn’t even have magic, much less know anything about us or our society!”

He started taking a breath to continue, but Chrysalis cut him off. “Thank you, Pharynx. That is enough.” Then she turned her head right. “Ricinidae? Your thoughts.”

The drone nodded anxiously, unable to stop glancing at the princess as if afraid of being devoured whole. Apparently she had a fierce reputation among the changelings. “There used to be many different changeling tribes with their own queens spread throughout the world. Now there is only us. If we keep following Queen Chrysalis’s ways and the ways of those who came before her, we are sure to go extinct. We need the love of other races to survive. Getting that love by force is starving us. We…” He finally met the princess’s gaze, though he remained crouched low as though preparing to flee. “We need a new way.”

“Thank you, Ricinidae.” Her attention went to the last of the trio surrounding her. “Anisoptera?”

The messenger blinked, clearly not having been expecting this. She looked from Chrysalis to Luna and back, then shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I just follow orders.”

“The point is effectively made,” Luna admitted once Chrysalis looked back to her. She seemed puzzled, as though she’d just been introduced to a whole new concept and was trying to wrap her head around it. “We – and this time I mean Equestria as a whole – know precious little about changelings. We assumed they were of one mind in regards to us.”

“That’s one thing that changes now,” Chrysalis declared firmly. “I intend to have the changelings open up about everything. Their culture, their philosophies, their abilities. You cannot befriend them if you don’t know them, and it is not fair for them to have to live in hiding all the time.”

“What?” Pharynx, who had been glaring at nothing this entire time, abruptly whipped around to face her. “You can’t do that! The ponies cannot be allowed to know our secrets!”

Chrysalis smirked at him. “You won’t try and stop me.”

He let out a choking sound, undoubtedly well aware of why she’d phrased her response in such a way. “Y-you’re dooming our race. The ponies will slaughter us!”

Ricinidae stepped in, his voice firm. “We either risk a fast extermination at the hooves of the Equestrians or guarantee a slow, lingering death at the hooves of our ancestors. At least with the ponies we stand a chance!”

“Madness! This is not what our mother wants!” He leaned towards Ricinidae, all fangs and hisses. “Don’t you care about what mother wants?”

Chrysalis was prepared to intervene, but the sudden explosion that was Ricinidae’s response cut her short and made everyone, even Pharynx and the dreaded princess, jump. “Our mother?! Don’t talk to me like she cares about us as her children! We’re nothing but tools to her, bodies she can and will sacrifice on a whim if it means getting her way. Queen Chrysalis is insane! She would rather see our race, the thousands of lings she gave birth to, die in searing agony than admit her ways are wrong.”

Pharynx recovered swiftly despite his surprise, taking advantage of Ricinidae’s pause to breathe. “We are her children! It is our duty to die for her if need be to see her will done. She does love us, and she doesn’t see us as tools. Do not talk as if you know what that’s like for her, because you don’t!”

“I—!”

“That is enough.” At Chrysalis’s sharp command, both changelings went quiet, though they continued to shoot fire and ice at one another with their eyes. “All of you will remain here. I intend to speak privately with the princess.” Without awaiting acknowledgement from them or Princess Luna, she turned for the forest and began to march. To her relief, the princess didn’t hesitate to walk by her side.

As soon as they were deep enough in the woods to have some privacy but still be visible to the changelings, Chrysalis let out a low groan and rubbed her forehead with a hoof. Which was tricky to do considering the horn poking out of it. “And I once thought having three children was a chore.”

“They are certainly a lively bunch,” the princess noted with a hint of mirth. “Are they really the queen’s children?”

“Yes.” Chrysalis made sure her tone was dripping with frustration. “Every. Single. Changeling.”

Luna frowned at this. “That’s a problem.” At Chrysalis’s curious glance, she elaborated. “If Queen Chrysalis is the mother of all changelings, and neither she nor you are here to birth more…”

“I know.” She sat and sighed, her eyes drifting to the glimmering starscape that made up the princess’s mane. Goddess, but that was incredible. “And from what Sunset told me, you people aren’t exactly into capital punishment.”

“True.” Luna lengthened the word, giving it a wary, suspecting edge. “Are you proposing we kill her?”

Chrysalis pursed her lips. Was she? It seemed like a terrible thing to suggest, but if it was one life against that of an entire race… “There is a ‘Royal Egg’ in the castle. If Chrysalis dies, the egg will hatch into a new queen. One that can be raised to be friendly with Equestria. She could be the key to peace.”

“But only if Chrysalis dies.” Luna nodded her understanding. “I am afraid it is not something we can condone. I have a reputation as a warrior and have plenty of blood on my hooves, but I only perform such actions when necessary in the heat of battle. I have no intention of killing a defenseless former queen, and I am sure my far more peace-loving sister will feel the same way. Queen Chrysalis’s hair-brained scheme to enter the human world has bought her a one-way ticket to Tartarus at worst.” At Chrysalis’s raised eyebrow, she added, “It’s a prison for the worst enemies of Equestria.”

So they’d take Queen Chrysalis and seal her away. She had to assume the place was warded against magic or something. Whatever the case, she would have to trust the Equestrians to handle the queen. There were no good options against her in the human world, except perhaps incarceration in a mental asylum. If the queen were half as smart as Chrysalis herself, that wouldn’t impede her for long. Then again, her counterpart had tried to replace her in the human world without adequately understanding the repercussions, which was a pretty stupid move. Almost insulting, really.

Why had Queen Chrysalis done that?

Princess Luna was studying her. She’d been silent too long. “I suppose this is just another problem to deal with. I am sorry for dumping these things in your lap, but I have my own responsibilities back home. I can’t be queen of these changelings and run a multinational business back in my home world at the same time.” To say nothing for how she didn’t want the royalty job in the first place. Or how she really wanted to spend more time with her three children.

“Which reminds me.” Luna’s expression turned uncertain, as if she didn’t know if what was about to come out of her mouth fit the situation properly. “Sunset mentioned that she’d like you to return soon. That she and Thorax have been using… ‘emails’? To mask your absence, but the illusion won’t last forever.”

Chrysalis couldn’t stop from smiling even if she wanted to. She had made sure Thorax would be able to access her accounts in an event where she was somehow indisposed. To know they were doing exactly what they should in this time of crisis was heartwarming. Then again, this wasn’t really a ‘crisis’, was it? No matter, she was still proud of them.

But things weren’t over yet. “They’ll have to wait a little longer. My son, Pharynx, is also here, but has gone missing. I must find him.” And have a long, painful talk. Possibly with Pharynx tied to a chair so he couldn’t storm out when his anger got the better of him.

Luna raised an eyebrow before turning her head back to the clearing. They could still see the group of changelings waiting on them. Ricinidae and Pharynx were pointedly facing away from one another. “I assume the ‘Pharynx’ who joined us tonight is this world’s version of him. He seems very much devoted to his biological mother.”

Chrysalis followed her gaze, focusing on the red-crested changeling with the purple eyes. He was sitting on the ground with his forelegs crossed. It was amazing how that creature could so perfectly imitate her son’s pouting scowl and posture without actually being human. It made her miss her own Pharynx so much more. But he had… run away…

Abruptly, the words of this Pharynx replayed in her mind. She thought on his tone, on his anger, on his seemingly compulsive defensiveness. She thought of her son’s. “Are we so sure about that?”

The princess gave her a curious look. “You have reason to believe otherwise?”

Chrysalis felt sick. What she was about to do felt wrong. Yet, no matter how hard she analyzed it, she couldn’t help but think it needed to be done. She met Luna’s lovely, big eyes. “I have an idea.”

Schools were eerie places at night. Chrysalis could never be certain of why, but she wouldn’t complain. One didn’t become a horror junkie by jumping at shadows. She walked through the empty hallways, Pharynx close to her side and glaring at every corner and crevice.

They turned a familiar corner in the old building and were greeted by the sight of three individuals. Sunset Shimmer, sitting on the floor and her face aglow from the light of her phone, was the first to notice their approach. She hopped to her feet and jogged forward to meet them, all smiles. “Hey, Aunt Chryssy! Enjoy your vacation?”

“‘Enjoy’ isn’t the word I’d choose to describe it,” Chrysalis replied, accepting the welcome hug. “But it was certainly an eye-opening experience. I’m glad to not have holes in me anymore.”

“I can imagine.” Pulling back from the hug, Sunset grinned at Chrysalis’s shadow. “Hey, Pharynx. What was it like being a bug?”

His eye twitched. “It was…” He glanced at Chrysalis. His glare stung. “Enlightening.”

“I imagine so,” Thorax said as he caught up, hands in his pockets and a wry smile on his face. “I’m almost sorry I missed—” He froze when Chrysalis pulled him into an abrupt, tight hug. “...it?” She wanted to chide him for acting so surprised, but reminded herself that they were still making repairs to the bridge that was their relationship. When he finally returned her embrace, it was in awkward, jittery motions, but she felt a little warmer for it nonetheless.

Stepping back, she gripped both his and Sunset’s shoulders. “Thank you both for watching things in my absence. I’ll want to look over those emails you sent in my name, but know that I have every faith in you.”

The sound of footsteps drew her attention to the last person standing guard in the hall. Luna. No stars in her hair. Oh, how Chrysalis wished to put some there somehow. Not that the Vice-Principal didn’t look fetching without them. Not that she ever failed to look fetching.

Luna, unaware of Chrysalis’s traitorous thoughts, had a smug smile on her face and hands on her hips. “I’ll be honest, Chrys: I never thought I’d ever get you in that closet again. You are full of surprises.”

Ignoring the blanching faces of the others, Chrysalis laughed heartily. “Thanks, I do try. Is she still in there?”

Thorax answered quickly, perhaps in hopes of avoiding any further reminders of his mother hiding in closets with other women. “We moved her to the Vice-Principal’s office once classes were over and the faculty had all gone home.”

Sunset, frowning, mimicked Luna’s hands-on-hips posture. “What are we supposed to do with her? She’s not a threat here. She has no magic, no transforming abilities, nothing. And kidnapping aside – which we can’t prove without revealing Equestria to the world – she’s not committed any crimes.” The frown deepened as she looked at her boots. Her next words were much quieter. “I’d hate to unleash her back on Equestria, though.”

Ah, to the point already. Good, Chrysalis didn’t want to procrastinate. This was already uncomfortable. “I may have a solution, but it depends upon… certain factors. I intend to talk with her.”

The three makeshift guards shared a questioning glance. Luna shrugged. “Be my guest. The office is this way.”

Chrysalis was mildly surprised that said office was in the old school building. She would have expected the primary faculty of the school to move their offices to the new one. As they approached, Chrysalis decided to make her intentions clear. “I’m going to need some privacy. Just me, her, and Pharynx.”

Thorax raised an eyebrow at his brother, who said nothing and maintained his scowl. “I guess that’s fair. He did jump through that portal into who-knows-what for you, after all.”

“Not that we wouldn’t have done the same thing had we been there.” The way Sunset said this made it sound almost as if there was some doubt towards her and Thorax. Chrysalis chose not to correct her. For now. Or mention that she was touched by the sentiment.

“Here we are.” Luna unlocked the door to her office and stood aside. “Don’t worry, she’s still tied up.”

“But if you need us, we’ll be right outside,” Thorax reassured her.

Chrysalis smiled for him, even though her insides were swirling. “I think we’ll be fine, but thank you.” She grabbed the door handle and pushed forward before her doubts could get the better of her. Not looking at Pharynx was imperative.

The room was dark, masking most of its contents. Even so, there was a certain… confining feel to the room. Which made sense; Luna had always been one to favor smaller, darker spaces. There was a single light on the vice-principal’s desk, a lamp that pointed slightly to the right of the chair. It provided enough illumination to see the unmistakable figure of Chrysalis’s horse-world doppleganger. The resemblance was truly uncanny, complete with the cerulean hair, grey skin, and sharp eyes. The woman wore a simple green dress, dark in color with only one shoulder and a slightly brighter sash around her middle. It wasn’t anything like what Chrysalis might have worn even in her younger days. Indeed, it seemed almost… plain.

Of course, she was also tied to the chair she was in. Not Luna’s, that was on the other side of the desk. No, this one was one of the folding kinds. The queen’s legs and arms were tied tight with what appeared to be jump rope, and an extra set connected her slim waist to the back legs of the chair. The only thing that could move freely was her head, which was turned sharply so as to glare at the new arrivals. She didn’t try to speak, probably because of the rubber band ball held in her mouth by what appeared to be a pool towel. Growling, however, was not out of her vocal range, as she made sure to let them know.

Chrysalis signaled for Pharynx to stay back, then approached the queen. She couldn’t stop smiling. “Well. This is almost exactly what I envisioned. If you promise not to bite, I’ll remove that gag so we can have a discussion like rational adults.” The queen kept glaring, but she made a sound that might have been agreement, so off went the towel.

Queen Chrysalis worked her jaw and licked her lips for a moment while her human counterpart sat in Luna’s chair on the other side of the desk. Her first words were biting. “How did you come back? You’re supposed to be locked up in a cell.”

With a shrug, Chrysalis leaned back in her seat and crossed her legs. Oh, it felt so good to have just two legs again! “That mirror portal is so good at its job that it was able to slip me in neatly as your replacement in the minds of the changelings. They pretty much obey me now.”

The queen jerked in her seat with a snarl, face twisting into fury. “Impossible! I am their queen! They’d never scrape and bow to a pathetic, magicless human.”

“Say what you want, this is the reality.” Elbows on the arms of the chair, fingers interlaced, Chrysalis eyed her counterpart. “I have to ask: Why in the world did you think replacing me was such a good idea?”

At first, it seemed the queen wasn’t going to answer. She squirmed against her bonds – the redness of her wrists suggested this was hardly the first time – and muttered under her breath. Just as Chrysalis considered a different approach, the queen responded. “It wasn’t originally meant to be you. I figured I could be anyone I wanted. You were an opportunity to be myself.” Another low growl. Her next words were begrudging. “I didn’t expect this world to rob me of my gifts.”

“Or for my niece to catch on so quickly?” A sour expression was all the answer she needed, but her smirk didn’t last long. “But still, what could possibly make you want to come to the human world? What did you hope to accomplish?” She noticed the shift in Pharynx’s head towards them, his features blank but his eyes sharp.

“Are you kidding?” Queen Chrysalis rolled her eyes. She was very good at it, complete with an air of frustrated disdain. Was that what Chrysalis looked like sometimes? “An entire civilization completely unaware of the threat at their doorstep. It’s a feast waiting to happen. I thought it would take nothing to conquer a race so stupid they didn’t even know how to wield magic.”

That made Chrysalis cock her head. “You thought we were just ignorant of magic, rather than that there was no magic.”

The queen let out a huff of annoyance. Her cheeks even turned a little pink as she glanced away. “In my defense, I knew the Elements of Harmony worked here, so I assumed it was the people who were the problem.”

At last adding to the conversation, Pharynx asked, “Why do it yourself? You have changelings who would have come in your stead.”

He was answered with a scalding look that made him flinch and look at his feet. The queen held her glare for only a second or two before turning back to Chrysalis, head held high. “You should teach your minions to only speak when spoken to. Does he not know I am a queen?”

For however much longer that would be the case. Noting how Pharynx’s eyes stayed glued to his shoes, Chrysalis bristled slightly. “His question is valid.”

“As is my point,” the queen snapped, not losing her haughty air. “My changelings are idiots. All of them. I can’t trust them to be the first to enter this new world.” Pharynx’s whole body stiffened.

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. She looked down at her counterpart’s bindings. Looked back at her.

The queen sighed. “Ha-ha. Yes, I know. Feel free to rub it in, I’m sure you want to.” A wicked grin formed across her cheeks. “After all, you’re me. So tell me, Chrysalis: What kind of power do I hold in this world?”

Smiling at the obvious attempt to stroke their mutual egos, Chrysalis sat back and got comfy. Luna apparently had an eye for good chairs. “Quite a lot. I’m no queen, but I am in charge of a great many people. I’m one of the infamous sorts.” ‘Infamous’ in that a lot of pundits spoke of her as though she were evil without even considering that she might have a perspective of her own, but the queen could interpret the answer however she wanted.

“The infamous sort, hmm?” The hum was practically a purr. “I know what that’s like. Pathetic creatures with petty views on ‘morality’. They don’t know their place, do they?”

Chrysalis shrugged and inspected her nails. Was it just her, or did they appear better now than they had before she’d left? “Unlike you, I live in a free country. People can say what they want. Doesn’t stop me from having customers.”

The queen leaned forward as much as her bindings would allow. “But what if you didn’t have to put up with them? What if you could use all that power to—”

“Are you going to bore me now?” Chrysalis sent a disinterested look her doppleganger’s way. “Whatever you’re about to offer, I’m not interested.”

Now it was Queen Chrysalis’s turn to cock her head. Once again, Chrysalis had to wonder if that was how she looked sometimes. “I’m offering you even more power. How could you say no?”

“I don’t need more power,” Chrysalis replied easily. She smiled at Pharynx, who puffed his broad chest out not unlike a bird trying to look more menacing. “I wish to focus more attention on my family.”

This was met by harsh, sharp laughter from the bound figure before her. “Family! How rich! As if I’d ever let myself be chained down by something so trivial.”

Pharynx deflated, unnoticed by the giggling changeling queen.

Chrysalis, on the other hand, felt her anger start to boil. She schooled her features. Kept them neutral. “I learned that all the changelings are your children. An entire race. I imagine it must be hard to care for so many. I understand why you’d prefer to be… distant.”

“Excuse me?” Queen Chrysalis’s laughter came to an abrupt end as she peered at her. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s okay.” She was reaching. Deep down, Chrysalis hoped her equine self was merely playing up a role to protect herself. That would be the ideal scenario. Maybe then… “I know what it is like to have trouble managing family. I’m not the mother of five thousand, of course. Can’t imagine what it’s like having to love and care for so many—”

“Love?” The queen barked a laugh, but this one was cruel and piercing. “And here I thought you might be my equal. Clearly, being a human comes with a lot of negative side effects. Just like being a pony.”

Chrysalis scowled in defense of the chill seeping into her heart. Surely, this woman couldn’t be that cold. “They all depend on you.”

“Yes. Yes they do.” The queen’s teeth were flat as any human’s, but Chrysalis was sure her wicked smile was meant to bear fangs. “Without me they are nothing. The entire race wouldn’t survive a month. It is my guidance that has kept them going for this long. That is why they serve me. Because it is necessary. They are little more to me than tools.”

She couldn’t mean that. Chrysalis didn’t want her to mean that. If this… ‘mirror version’ of her could be that cold, what did that say about herself? She thought of Pharynx, of Thorax, of Sunset. No, she was better than this. And if she was better than this, then… “Some of them see you as their mother. Why not give them what they—”

“I never knew I could sound so pathetic.” The queen shook in her seat, perhaps trying to dislodge her bindings again. When that failed, she resorted to talking. Harsh, hard, and with an ever-sharpening edge. “What are you hoping to gain by this conversation? I get to not be bored for a few hours. You? You’re just spouting nonsense. Did you think if you dug deep enough and asked the right questions I’d break down and give you some sob story? ‘Oh, they didn’t raise me right!’ ‘Everyling hates me, so I decided to show them what hate really is!’ ‘All I wanted was for someone to love me!’ Pah!” She spat on the desk between them.

“You think I care what those simpletons think of me? Or anyone, for that matter. I’ll tell you what I care about. I care about waking up to know my enemies will soon be destroyed. I care about being able to see something killed with nothing more than a look. I care about having slaves who will do what I need them to do when I need it! After all, I am forever. Those pathetic creatures are not. In three decades not a single one of the changelings alive today will be around, the lot of them replaced by new, fresh subjects. Why should I get attached to such short-lived, painfully simple creatures? They exist for no other reason than—”

“Stop it!”

The two Chrysalis’s turned as one. Pharynx stood by the door, hands clenched into fists and entire body shaking. Though his face was dry, his eyes were not. They channeled a hideous blend of anger, horror, and despair that tied Chrysalis’s stomach into knots. “Don’t you care? Don’t you care about any of them?”

The queen rolled her eyes and turned her sour expression on her human counterpart. “You really need to teach your slaves proper behavior.”

“I am not a slave!” Pharynx stomped. Seemingly unsatisfied with the result, he did it again, then slammed his fist against the wall. All without taking his eyes off the queen. “I have a name. It’s Pharynx. I’m Pharynx!”

Queen Chrysalis stared at him, face blank. When he only stared back, shoulders rising and falling with his heavy breaths, she asked, “Is that name supposed to mean something to me?”

He fell back as if he’d been punched, eyes going wide and face pallid. “Y-you… I was always there. Every day. I stood at your side. I protected you. I maintained your privacy, watched over your room when you slept. I… I… I’m Pharynx. Mother—”

“Oh, stop it!” The queen turned away with a huff. “Nice try at deception, honey, but there’s no way they’d let one of my changelings through the mirror now.”

“Stop ignoring me!” Pharynx took a step closer. His hands rose, but he didn’t seem to know what to do with them. His knuckle was raw. “Mother. Please. I’m one of your Home Guard. I-I trained day and night for years to be among the best. I was by your side when they ejected us from Canterlot. I helped n-nurse you b-back to—”

The queen groaned and rolled her head back melodramatically. She refused to look at him. “I do not care. Even if you were one of my changelings, why would any of that matter? You would have been doing what you were meant to do, not out of any love for me and certainly not because of any love I might give you. It’s all instinct, you miserable creature, and if you somehow were a changeling whining about these paltry things I would consider you defective. You wouldn’t even be worth reprogramming.”

He stood in place, perfectly still. He gazed at the side of her head. The look in his eyes was haunting, the product of a life ripped away and shredded to bits. For a time, Chrysalis had to wonder if he was even breathing, until his voice cracked on a faint, sickeningly pleading “Mother…”

The queen said nothing.

She looked at nothing.

Her face exposed nothing.

Then Pharynx was gone. He ran, the door slamming against the wall so hard there’d probably be a hole from the handle. Chrysalis wasted no time in following, not giving the wretched queen so much as a glance. She could rot in Tartarus forever. She passed up a startled Luna, Sunset, and Thorax with a quick shout of “Stay here, I’ve got him!”

He was easy to follow. Unaccustomed to two legs, he spent more time struggling to stay on his feet than running. He shoved out the front doors into the frigid night and was moving for the statue. Chrysalis burst through the doors herself just in time to see him fall to the ground, hard, at the bottom of the steps. “Pharynx!”

“L-leave me alone!” He tried to climb to his feet, slipped on the icy concrete, collapsed once more. Crawling came next, but Chrysalis was already on him. She knelt down to grab his shoulders and was violently shoved off. “I said go away!”

“Pharynx, please, I only want to—”

“You are not my—!” He whipped around and jumped up, only to overbalance and topple forward, landing at her feet. The impact with the concrete stunned him, and for a few precious seconds he merely lay there, staring at her shoes.

And then he screamed. The sound was so hideous, so loud, so sharp that Chrysalis knew she would remember it for the rest of her days. She watched, helpless, as the big man curled into a ball and wailed like a child needing his mother. The irony wasn’t lost on her.

This was her fault. She’d known it was risky, but she felt if anyone could get to the heart of the queen, it would be someone as loyal and devoted as Pharynx. She’d imagined she might disappoint him, but to crush him so brutally? It had been beyond any of her wildest expectations. And now a son lay crippled at her feet, his entire life bleeding out of him in the form of blubbery, pitiful sobs.

She could really be a monster sometimes.

“I c-can’t feel her,” he wailed between hacking cries. “I can’t feel her! M-my head’s so empty. Mother. Mother! Make it right! Tell me what to do! Help m-me. Mother! Come back!”

Thorax appeared at her side, face torn by horror. “Mother! What’s wrong with—?” He moved towards Pharynx, arms stretched, hands grasping.

Chrysalis, her own face wet, stopped him with a hand to his chest. “He’s not ours,” she said, voice devoid of any emotion. “He’s… He’s not our Pharynx.”

He looked at her, tears threatening to break out of his own eyes as his brother’s equine counterpart continued to weep and utter hopeless pleas at the world. Then he pushed Chrysalis aside and went to the bigger man. Crouching low, he wrapped his arms around his not-sibling. “It’s okay, brother. It’s going to be okay.”

Pharynx’s head rose sharply, eyes wide above soaked cheeks. “Th-Thorax?”

“Yeah. It’s me, Pharynx.” Pressing his forehead to the changeling-turned human, Thorax whispered kindly. “I’m here.”

“She doesn’t know my n-name. Thorax. Brother. Mother doesn’t know my name!” He pulled himself up just enough to wrap his meaty arms around the smaller man.

“It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay, brother.” Thorax patted and rubbed Pharynx’s back and continued to whisper kind nothings in his ear.

All Chrysalis could do was stand there. Feeling useless. Feeling guilty. Wondering where her real son might be right now. Wondering if she had ever caused him to break down like this. Wondering if she might do so in the future. Body shuddering, breathing hitched, she turned and walked away. Away, to the school. Away, to where Sunset and Luna were waiting to hold her as she cried.

She’d never been more grateful for a mere hug.

It was done. Queen Chrysalis had been returned to Equestria, where a veritable army, all four princesses, and an apparently superpowered being known as Discord were waiting to take her to Tartarus. The Equestrians weren’t playing around. Whatever their history with the queen, they were forgoing no precautions. Now all Chrysalis could do was wait until word came through that it was safe to return and finish her business there. Which should be any minute now.

She’d feel a lot better about that if she weren’t waiting beside Pharynx. The two of them sat on the now-dry steps of Canterlot High the next morning. It was Saturday, so at least they didn’t have to deal with gawking school kids. Luna, Sunset, Thorax, and even Celestia were there, though the latter kept as far away from Chrysalis as possible. At least she wasn’t sniping her with sour looks, apparently aware that things were too delicate for their usual feuding.

Pharynx had stayed with Thorax that night. Even if he knew it wasn’t his Thorax, he seemed to take comfort in the man’s presence. Now he sat on the steps a few feet away, emotionless, his gaze vacant and muscular body sagging. It was as if all life had left him. Thorax kept by his side, but otherwise left the man to his thoughts. Chrysalis didn’t want to look at them. It didn’t stop her from doing so on occasion.

For her part, Chrysalis had been up half the night. She spent a lot of it going over what Thorax and Sunset had been sending out to the company on her behalf. It was impressive; they’d handled things so well she was now confident that, should she want it, she could go on vacation for a few weeks and trust them to take care of the entire business in her absence. It was one more quiet confirmation of her faith in them. Perhaps someday soon she’d start… ‘training’ her niece. With her and Thorax working together, and maybe Pharynx too, they could easily replace her. And with three heads instead of one, they could do it without having to devote their every waking moment to it like she had for so many years.

She was distracting herself. The moment she realized it, her eyes were drifting back to Pharynx.

“Are you going to be alright?”

She flinched and jerked her gaze away from the changeling. Luna had settled on the steps beside her. Though her expression was calm, she made no attempt to hide her concern. She’d asked the same question last night before they parted, but Chrysalis hadn’t answered. She had not had an answer to give.

“As ‘alright’ as I can be, I suppose.” Trying not to imagine the woman with stars in her hair, Chrysalis turned her gaze to the statue a couple dozen feet away. “Just worried.”

“The Chrys I know would never admit to something like that,” Luna gently pointed out.

“The ‘Chrys’ you knew didn’t have a son missing.” She clasped her hands together on her lap to prevent them from doing anything that might further give away her anxiety. “She didn’t just face her evil twin from another world.” She shrank a little as she said the next words. “She didn’t have to worry about how similar she is to her counterpart.” Curse her eyes, they were back on Pharynx.

A moment’s pause. “Do you love your sons and niece?”

No hesitation. “Yes.” The word hurt coming out Chrysalis’s throat, almost so much as to bring tears to her eyes. “At least, I think? What if I’m wrong? What if I only think I love them, and… and then something comes along and I realize it’s more important to me than them? What if I abandon them? What if I make them feel like… like…” Damn it, why couldn’t she stop looking at Pharynx?

Luna leaned forward so that Chrysalis could see her despite where she was looking. “I think if you’re that worried about this, you have nothing to worry about. You’re not Queen Chrysalis, you’re our Chrysalis. You’re not one and the same.”

“How can we be sure?” Chrysalis looked down at her hands. Even clasped, they were shaking. “How can I be sure?”

Luna’s hand, gentle as velvet, landed atop hers. It sent a cold, not unwelcome chill through her body. She looked up, and Luna was smiling at her. Pony or human, those eyes were lovely. “I am sure.”

Good Goddess. Why had they broken up again?

“Got a message.” Sunset’s voice snapped Chrysalis out of her momentary, far-too-brief reverie. They looked to the teen, who stood close to Celestia as she opened her magic journal to the other world. Relief swam across her features as she reported, “Looks like things went okay, save for a few last-ditch efforts from the bug queen. Chrysalis is officially in Tartarus.”

“We’re not bugs.” Pharynx’s complaint had no fire at all. It was hollow and distant. Perhaps he’d said it purely on instinct. Without looking at anyone around him, he asked, “Does that mean I can go?”

Sunset, already writing in the journal, nodded. “Princess Twilight and a few others are already on the other side waiting for you.”

The changeling-turned-human let out a long, low sigh. He turned to his not-brother and whispered a few words, which Thorax responded to with a pat on the back. Then he stood and started for the portal, his pace slow and his entire body slumped.

Grudgingly pulling away from Luna, Chrysalis stood and looked to her niece and son in turn. “I’ll be back once I’ve found Pharynx and cleared things up.” After a moment’s uncertainty, she added, “I’ll try not to be too long.”

Sunset nodded, her smile warm. It seemed she had little doubt in her ability to solve this problem. “We’ll keep the business from blowing up until you get back.”

Thorax stood and took a step closer, his eyes drifting to the portal. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come?”

Smiling for him, Chrysalis reached over to give his hand a squeeze. “I need you here with Sunset. I promise, I’ll get your brother back.” He opened his mouth. Closed it. With a heavy breath, he stepped back.

Knowing that was the best acknowledgement she would get right now, Chrysalis straightened her posture and started for the portal.

“Chrys.” She paused to look back at Luna. The Vice-Principal shared the same smile as Sunset: confident and trusting. “Good luck.”

Chrysalis was not blushing. Suggestions to the otherwise were slander. Ignoring the dark look Celestia was suddenly sending the two of them, she nodded and resumed her walk. She moved faster than Pharynx, and soon they were side-by-side. He didn’t look at her, and when she tried to touch him, to offer some form of support, he flinched away as though from living flame.

Restraining a sigh of defeat, she stepped through the portal with him.

She liked to think she was getting better at handling it after two tries. The strange warping feeling throughout her body didn’t make her feel that nauseous, and when all the flashing colors and weird sounds ended she didn’t instantly fall on her face for transitioning to four legs, although it was a close call. The first thing she noticed was that she wasn’t in some building but standing on a wooden platform in an open field.

Then there were the ponies. She counted a dozen of them at first glance, most prominent being the purple one with wings and a horn, which she instantly registered as Princess Twilight Sparkle. She looked adorable as a pony, not that Chrysalis intended to admit it.

The third thing she noticed was a deep, inexplicable pull to the south. Something was there, demanding her presence. It was very insistent.

“W-what?” Pharynx was the one who spoke, despite having collapsed immediately upon arrival. His head whipped up and to the south, his purple eyes going wide. “The egg. The Royal Egg! It’s activated. Why?”

The egg? Chrysalis followed his gaze but saw nothing save a green field and Ponyville in the distance, all thatched roofs and brick chimneys. Except for the crystal castle. Still an eyesore, not that she’d dare tell the princess that.

Twilight was at the bottom of the steps already, worry across her features. “Welcome back, you two. Sorry about the steps, we moved the portal to make room for Queen Chrysalis’s military escort. Is something wrong? Was the trip through the portal uncomfortable?”

Blinking back her surprise, Chrysalis shook her head and stepped down from the platform. “No, it was the same as the last two times. It’s just…” She looked to Pharynx the no-longer human, but his attention was rooted to the South. “If what he’s saying is true, then apparently the Royal Egg back at the castle has ended its hibernation and is preparing to hatch.”

Twilight’s ears perked at this, her expression the definition of scholarly interest. “Oh? Chrysalis – er, Queen Chrysalis – did keep ranting about an egg and how it needed to be destroyed. We all figured she was just trying to distract us.”

Chrysalis felt her lips pulling up in a gradual grin. Of course! If both versions of Chrysalis were in the human world, then they were both disconnected from the Royal Egg. It would only make sense for its biological(?) programming to assume there was no queen anymore and activate itself. If she recalled what she’d been told correctly, what she was feeling was its call to all living changelings to come and protect it until it could hatch in a month’s time. It also made perfect sense that Queen Chrysalis, who had ambitions of immortality and eternal rule, would want the egg destroyed before a new queen could be born to challenge her authority. That the egg had existed at all was likely down to nothing more than primal instinct to have one around at all times.

Chuckling at the queen’s expense, Chrysalis fought down the egg’s call with no small effort and turned to face Twilight properly. “I think our ‘no queen for the changelings’ problem just solved itself.”

Clearly not understanding, Twilight cocked her head – disgustingly cute, Chrysalis was absolutely not smiling because of it – and replied, “That’s... good? I guess you can explain later.” She promptly brightened, practically bouncing in place. “We all wanted to thank you for capturing the queen for us! Chrysalis has been a pain in the flank for what seems like an eternity. I brought all my friends and some of Celestia’s assistants to help us come up with a definitive plan for making peace with the changelings. I can’t wait to start!”

Certainly a little go-getter, wasn’t she? Any other time, Chrysalis would have been happy to work with someone so eager and, if all she’d heard about this pony was true, capable of getting the job done. Yet even Twilight’s cheerful grin couldn’t bring any enthusiasm to her heart. “I appreciate your candor, Princess, but I’m afraid I can’t help you now. I still have a son missing. My first and only priority is him.”

“You mean Pharynx?” As if it were the most obvious thing in the world, Twilight turned in place and pointed. “He’s right there. Showed up at the castle last night.”

Standing among the other ponies, innocuous and appearing bored, was a big red pony with a short, wild violet mane. His purple eyes shot wide open when the princess’s hoof aimed his way. He met Chrysalis’s gaze and appeared ready to run for his life.

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow at him. “That’s not Pharynx.”

Slapping her hoof to her head, which Chrysalis would have thought to be a painful experience, Twilight said, “Right, right.” She waved her hoof at the red stallion with an encouraging smile. “Come on, Pharynx. Just like we practiced.”

His gaze darted between Chrysalis and Twilight, his body a bundle of twitching nerves. After a few seconds of apparent indecision, he closed his eyes and scrunched up his face in concentration. Chrysalis waited, not sure what to expect. Was this some sort of Equestrian joke? A prank intended for those crossing the portal? She looked to the Pharynx by her side, hoping for some sort of clue, but he was too busy staring South to notice.

Just when Chrysalis turned back to observe again, the stallion burst into green flames! She watched in mute shock as the fire roiled across the stallion’s body, yet there were no screams. Soon the stallion was gone, replaced by…

By Pharynx. She stared at him, and he stared right back with those strange eyes. Right, she thought, changelings. It’s in the name. She approached him, paying no mind to anyone else around them.

Pharynx – her son, not some otherworld fake – watched her approach in silence, but he was far from still. His whole body was tense, yet his eyes jittered as if struggling to hold her gaze. He looked so… so guilty. What did he have to be guilty for? None of this, not even his outburst, was his fault. Chrysalis felt her heart thudding against her ribs as she closed the gap between them, long legs quickly making up the distance. Just as she was standing before him, Pharynx finally lost his internal battle and looked at his hooves.

Which meant he didn’t see when she practically dove into him, snatching him up and crushing him to her chest in the strongest hug she could offer. He squirmed, clearly having no idea how to react. At least he didn’t try to escape as she pressed her face into his small shoulder.

It wasn’t until her tears started to drip off his shoulder that he spoke, his voice hesitant and confused. “Mother?”

“Shut up, you stupid boy,” she hissed through her teeth. “Shut up and let me hold you.”

He obeyed. He didn’t have much choice. Chrysalis relished his presence in a way she didn’t know she could. In her mind, she could hear his screams. Not his screams. Not his crying. But still his. Still his. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, Pharynx. I’m sorry. Mother’s here. I’m here, and I love you, and I missed you, and I’m sorry.” Sniffling, she tried to brush her tears away with the back of a hoof. It didn’t help much. It may have made things worse.

There was no way to know how long they remained like that, her whispering what she hoped were comforting words in his ear and rocking back and forth. His tiny size compared to her brought her back to when he was three years old and first adopted. Had she ever held him like this back then? She didn’t know. It stung that she didn’t know. That was something a mother was supposed to know, wasn’t it? But she didn’t know, and that made her cling to him all the harder.

“M-Mother,” Pharynx finally ventured. When she didn’t say anything, he continued. “Mother, it’s okay. I’m sorry. I was… I was just angry. I… I m-mean…”

She pulled back at last, just so she could look him in the eye. “It wasn’t just anger, Pharynx. It was something more. When we get home, you, me, and your brother are going to have a long, overdue discussion.” She chuckled through a hiccup. “Sunset can supervise.”

Despite the moisture on his cheeks, he gave her a smile. It was frail, and didn’t last long, but it was genuine, and that meant more to her than he could possibly imagine. “You’re going to try and get me all mushy, aren’t you?”

Her second attempt to clear her eyes was more successful. She grinned down at him. “Consider it punishment for disappearing on me. If you ever scare me like that again, I’m going to make you sit through a whole season of one of Thorax’s Mexican soap operas. Subtitles only.” His shudder only made her smile stronger. “I love you, you meathead.”

He blinked up at her, seemingly at a loss. Then his cheeks gradually turned green. Despite a vicious attempt to fight it off, he was smiling again. “I l-love you too, Mother.”

They held one another’s gaze for a few more seconds. Then there came a cough, and both abruptly remembered that they were in public. Much blushing was had, and a formal agreement between the two of them that Sunset and Thorax would never learn of this.

They would later regret neglecting to include Princess Twilight in that arrangement.

With Pharynx back at her side, Chrysalis worked with Twilight and her companions to draft some new rules for the changelings. She even brought the princess to the Changeling Kingdom so that she could make her queries directly with creatures who actually knew all the answers, which they had to give since their presiding queen demanded it. It wasn’t the kind of work Chrysalis was used to, and the more she did it the more convinced she was that she didn’t want to. Fortunately, for their part she mostly had to merely instruct the changelings as a whole to obey Twilight until the new queen currently growing in the Royal Egg was old enough to lead on her own. That queen would, of course, be taught by both changelings and ponies so that she could help bring a lasting peace between the two races and, hopefully, save the changelings from extinction.

Not every changeling was happy with the arrangement, but enough of them were that the rest were convinced to at least give the whole ‘peace’ idea a try. This world’s version of Pharynx was, in fact, one of the most vocal supporters of the new system. His dramatic about-face was met with suspicion by some.

The Thorax of this world, who had apparently been exiled from the kingdom for wanting to make peace with the ponies, returned. Chrysalis had witnessed the reunion of the changeling brothers. There had been tears on both sides, despite Pharynx’s attempts to hide it. Seeing them reconciling what she gathered had been hard differences was enough to convince her that it really would be okay to leave the peace process in the hooves of the changelings and ponies.

The whole process took a week, which was shockingly fast, but Princess Twilight was nothing short of obsessed with the idea of making an entire race of new friends. With somepony (Chrysalis had to pick up some of the lingo) like her in charge there was no question that the project would succeed. She and her son were ready to go home and stay there this time.

It was morning, not even an hour before they were set to leave the kingdom for good. Chrysalis was testing her wings again. She planned to fly to Ponyville this time, and no well-meaning pony princesses or sons would stop her. What good was having wings if she weren’t going to use them? Chrysalis was not going to miss such an opportunity. Wings were the primary thing that made her consider this world for future vacations.

A knock echoed through the royal bedroom – which she’d finally managed to open thanks to Princess Twilight’s help understanding how horns work. The place was sparse, with only a large bed, a few cabinets that were mostly filled with what appeared to be wines, and some rather ominous pictures depicting ponies in states of distress. The former queen might have been a monster, but she was by no means lavish. Then again, maybe she couldn’t afford to be.

Pharynx was off saying goodbye to a few friends he’d made here, so Chrysalis had to answer the door herself. She landed with grace; she’d long come to assume that her talent for flight was instinctual of being a changeling queen. “Enter.” With a flick of her horn, she opened the doors.

Pharynx stood in the doorway. Right away, she knew this wasn’t her son. The way he didn’t meet her gaze, how he hesitated at the threshold, the uncertain expression in his purple eyes; yes, this was definitely the Pharynx of this world. She sat in the center of the room facing him, cocking her head in curiosity. She’d not seen much of him since they’d returned from the human world, and what times they did meet had been brief, strictly formal affairs. “Hello, Pharynx. What can I do for you?”

His eyes met hers. It was the briefest of glances, lost in an instant as he looked at his hooves once more. Yet it was enough to see the fear. It hurt, but it was a shadow of an ache. Chrysalis thought she knew where the pain really came from, and so didn’t hold it against him. She reflected on how he’d been when they’d first met, a demanding and confident changeling attempting to display strength in his every motion.

Pharynx was but a shadow of his former self. She couldn’t help feeling responsible for that. “This is about her, isn’t it?”

He tensed, then looked back as if expecting to find someone listening in on the conversation. Then, eyes still set firmly on the ground, he approached her. His steps were slow, but the closer he got the more firm his motions became. She said nothing, not wanting to interrupt as he visibly built up his confidence with every clop of hoof against stone. He stopped a few feet away and planted his hooves shoulder-width apart. He didn’t look up.

Seconds passed in silence. It was just a little awkward for her, but Chrysalis said nothing. She felt it important that he get the first word.

At last, Pharynx found his voice. Still looking down, he said, “You’re not her. You’re a weak human from a weak world with no magic and silly ideas about peace with the ponies.”

She raised an eyebrow at his harsh tone. She was pretty certain his support was a big reason those ‘silly ideas’ were getting on so well with his brethren.

“You’re not her,” he repeated with conviction, even if he still didn’t look up. He stomped, perhaps to emphasize the point. “You’re not my mother. You’re not even a changeling!”

He sucked in a long, slow breath. His eyes glanced up, not enough to meet hers. “But you’re as close as I’m gonna get. To her. I know she didn’t love me, but I…” He closed his eyes and hunched his shoulders. A tremble shook him.

Chrysalis took all this in with stoic calm. “But you still loved her.”

“This is stupid!” He shifted, as if trying to turn away but unable to. “I told Thorax, it’s stupid. You’re not her. She’s in Tartarus, and she can rot there! She didn’t love me, didn’t care, so I don’t need to be here. Stupid. I-I told Thorax…” Biting his lip with those wicked fangs, wings giving off light buzzes, he risked a quick glance at her face. “I know it’s stupid, so why am I…?”

“Pharynx.” Chrysalis touched his shoulder. He flinched, but didn’t pull away. “What did you want to say?”

He met her gaze. He held her gaze. In his stare, Chrysalis saw so many emotions at war for dominance. Fear. Anger. Love. Disgust. Regret. Hope. Disappointment. Confusion. More than anything else: a deep loss. It was enough to make her want to hug him again, to let him know that everything was going to be okay, that his mother was here.

She wasn’t here. She never would be. Reminding herself of that was… painful.

“Goodbye.”

He was gone, lost on buzzing wings as he fled her sight. Chrysalis could only watch him go, uncertainty filling her to her core. She raised a hoof as if to stop him, but there was no one there to stop. She remained there for some time, wondering if she couldn’t have done something different.

Then Pharynx trotted into the room, Princess Twilight not far behind. “Morning, Mother.”

Twilight, smiling as always, started off chipper. “Hey, Chrysalis! Are you ready to… go?” She took in Chrysalis’s face, smile fading. “Is everything alright?”

She knew how she must look. Concluding there was no point in masking her uncertainty, she said, “I just got a visit from Phar—” A pause. A glance at her son. “…this world’s Pharynx.”

Pharynx and Twilight shared a concerned look. It was Twilight who asked, “I take it the meeting was awkward.”

Sighing, Chrysalis looked to her boy. He met her gaze, expression curious. “I know he’s not you, Pharynx, but… but he’s still you. That makes sense, doesn’t it? I want it to make sense.” Please, let it make sense. She hoped, dearly, that he wouldn’t misinterpret her meaning. There was a niggling fear in the back of her mind, steadily growing louder, that he’d mistake her emotions for this other Pharynx as reflective of her feelings towards him. Maybe they were. But not in a way that meant… That meant…

She didn’t know what she meant. The whole subject was mind-numbingly confusing.

And scary. Very scary. She looked into her son’s eyes and begged him to understand.

To her unparalleled relief, he smiled for her. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

Twilight looked between them a few times before tentatively adding her own opinion. “He’s got the rest of the changelings. They’re all going through so much right now. But if they stick together, they’ll get through this. Pharynx included.”

Chrysalis focused on her, words coming out sharper than she intended. “Can you say that with certainty, Princess? Can you tell me, right now, with absolute confidence, that they’ll be alright?” That he will be alright?

To her credit, Princess Twilight didn’t flinch at her scrutinizing look. She countered with a warm smile. “No. But I think his chances are really good. Especially with that brother of his.”

Pharynx proved he could still surprise his mother by developing a warm smile that, in the future, he would probably deny his muscles were physically capable of. “Yeah. This world’s Thorax is a pretty good guy.” Then he noticed Chrysalis’s stare and coughed into his hoof, cheeks going green. “If you ever tell my brother I said that…”

Grinning, Chrysalis dramatically set a hoof over her heart. “I’ll take it to my grave.”

He let out a quick breath of relief. “Good.” He didn’t immediately fall back into his usual poised indifference though, instead looking up at her with care. “Are you going to be alright? Do we need to stay another day or two?”

This was why Chrysalis liked Pharynx, aside from being good at his job: he had a surprising knack for knowing when to talk and when to shut his yap. It was nice having a son who was coming to learn when to express what he really cared about. That in the moment what he cared about was his mother only made her feel blessed.

For his sake, she resisted the urge to snatch him up in a hug in front of the princess. Again. A grateful smile did the job well enough. He certainly received it well.

Turning to Twilight, Chrysalis said, “I think I’ve had enough of this world for a while. We’re ready to go home, Princess.”

They had their little family meeting. It lasted hours. There were snacks and drinks to make it more tolerable. They helped immensely when the tears started up. Thorax and Pharynx, after great amounts of encouragement and a few promises from their mother, finally got some long-held complaints off their chests. Chrysalis dumped her guilt and fears all over everyone present. She was very apologetic about it. Assurances were made, embarrassing secrets uncovered, and bonds reaffirmed.

Sunset supervised.

Thorax and Chrysalis made supper at the end and they all enjoyed, for perhaps the first time ever, a family meal around the table. There was a general sense of weariness. A good weariness, made welcome by the general sense of warmth and familiarity they all shared. Pharynx even dropped his tough guy demeanor entirely for the night, though he assured all it would be back come morning. Reputations to keep and all that.

The boys slept in their old rooms, the first time they’d stayed the night under their mother’s roof since they were teenagers. With the dishes and leftovers stored away and a shower had, Chrysalis sat on her lawn chair on the balcony, watching the winter stars glitter and sipping hot chocolate from a wine glass. Alcohol before bed? Don’t be absurd.

There came a knock from her open balcony door. “Mind if I join you?”

Not bothering to look down, Chrysalis smiled and gestured to the chair next to hers. Sunset, her purple-pinkish pajamas partially hidden beneath a thick jacket, did as she was bid. She had a steaming cup of tea in her hands. From the smell, some sort of mint. “How are you feeling, Aunt Chryssy?”

The little nickname, once so effective at making her bristle, now never failed to make her feel a little warm. Smiling, Chrysalis pondered the question. The stars above twinkled like so many little candles. She was reminded, pleasantly, of Princess Luna’s mane. That, in turn, made her want to see her own Luna. They had much to talk about.

Her attention went to Sunset. The first thing on her mind was to ask the big question. Sunset had already put this family on a new, better path. Perhaps, if she wanted to, she could do the same for Change, Inc. At the very least the little prodigy could help her run the accursed numbers. Only if she was willing, of course.

No. Not now. They still had much to learn among themselves, and Chrysalis didn’t want to think about business. She had a family. That was more important. Business could come later. For now, they had the stars, the chill of the winter night, and each other.

“Nostalgic,” she said at last. “Hopeful.” With a smile at her niece, she finished with, “Loved.”

Sunset returned the smile. Sipped her tea. They remained in comfortable silence on that balcony, talking about nothing at all until the need for sleep sent them to their beds.

It would be the best slumber Chrysalis had had in years.

Author's Note

For a very long time (roughly November of 2015, to be exact), I've had this peculiar headcanon. In it, Sunset Shimmer was discovered and taken in by the Human World's Chrysalis shortly after she arrived through the mirror. I envisioned this Chrysalis as being a powerful businesswoman and not evil at all, but certainly hard to get along with. The headcanon stewed in my head all that time, struggling to find some way to emerge as a proper story.

The fundamental problem was that I envisioned it as being related to my old hit story What is Missing, What is Lost. I kept thinking it had to relate to that in some way, but making the two completely disjointed subjects work together kept frustrating my efforts.

Then, about a month ago, it struck me: this idea is good enough to stand entirely on its own. It didn't need any connection to WiMWiL! As soon as I had that epiphany (painfully obvious in hindsight), everything came together. And so we have, at last, Change, Inc.

A big thank you to Wandering Twilight, Mike Cartoon Pony, ShiningBeacon, and AuroraDawn for pre-reading this and helping me identify potential trouble spots.

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