Politics. Never got into them, never wanted anything to do with them. I mean, either way you go most of the time, you get fucked. So you must be lucky to know that in between working, training with one of my guards(Chrysalis was preoccupied. You will know why soon), and planning the next items to sell along with pizza next time I rent out a food cart, I was sitting in a bunch of political meetings. What were they about?

Changeling integration. On one hand, apparently Luna and Chryssy are best friends. On the other hand, apparently Chrysalis and changelings feeding on love is very problematic. Because, despite there being proof(me) that changelings don’t need to drain ponies of emotions for substance. What? A changeling can just get emotions through cuddles, which is the strongest method, or just by idly absorbing emotions while being in the background.

I would know, I’m only dating a changeling queen. I hit my head against the table as the talks seemingly went nowhere. For once, I just sat and listened instead of knocking myself out.

I groaned as Celestia pointed out another horrible thing that changelings apparently did in the past. Something about destroying the landscape by draining emotions from everything, plants, animals, anything, which destroys the environment of an area apparently. Everypony at the table looked at me as the table shook from how hard my head hit the damn thing. It was something outlandish and stupid sounding too, like how changelings had stolen all the socks from a village once.

“Fruit. If you are going to act like a child, we will have you sit out on these meetings,” Celestia said in a warning tone. That would be a mercy, pinky.

“Why am I here again?”

“You are a foreign, national leader’s consort. As such you have to sit in these meetings to remain informed. Can you act your age and not pretend like these meetings go on for too long?” Luna, Cadance, and Shining Armor were present. Something about how they are all rulers of Equestria or whatever, so they have to attend. Luna looked like she was only up because of the cup of coffee sitting before her, which was more like jello because of how much sugar she dumped into it before the meeting.

Cadance and Shining Armor just didn’t like Chrysalis; she ‘ruined their wedding’.

“Celestia, you keep pointing out bad stuff in history books, and that’s all this meeting has been about. The things that changelings have done in the past, regretted, and have likely learnt their lessons already. My marefriend is here because she wants to actually be allies with you. Yet you drag these meetings on, all week, almost everyday since the wedding, and get nowhere! I get it, changelings fucked up, but-“

“Fruit, the changelings have killed ponies in the past.”

“Because those ponies attacked us!” Chrysalis snarled.

“Shut the fuck up, the two of you! Seriously, shut up.” Chrysalis stared at me in shock, while everypony except Celestia looked equally as shocked. Celestia was just surprised. I rubbed my forehead for a good minute, just wondering why I haven’t jumped out of a window yet. Seriously, being in the hospital would be more fun than these meetings. “Celestia, does everypony in this room know what I actually am?” The Princess nodded. “Okay cool. Wanna hear some of the shit my previous species has done? Because I guarantee-“

“Fruit I doubt your species has done anything nearly as bad as destroying the environment,” Cadance tried to argue.

Keyword: Tried.

I just started laughing like an idiot. In fact, the laugh went from idiotic, to almost maniacle because of how fucking funny that statement was. By the time I had stopped laughing, I was wheezing, and Chrysalis was rubbing my back. I wheezed again, and suddenly I had enough room in my lungs to begin speaking again. I chuckled a couple more times, because… Humanity as a whole? Yeah, killing a pony or two will look like child’s play. I looked Cadance in the eyes.

“Yeah, sure. Let’s go with that. Did you know that the highest kill count in human history is six million? All of those guys weren’t of a different species by the way. We humans love killing each other. By the way, it’s a number that’s just accredited to one guy, right? Yeah, men, women, and children. It doesn’t matter, if you existed and didn’t like the guy, poof, dead, mysteriously disappeared.” Everypony blinked before shaking their heads. “Cool, has anypony ever gotten close that?”

“The highest death count from a war nearly a thousand years ago… barely even a thousand. Though that isn’t the same as a genocide… That would have a death toll of twenty thousand.” Celestia answered.

“Neat. Highest death toll from a war with humanity, before anyone asks, amongst ourselves is at least fifty million. My point is, humans are worse than changelings and I get to walk freely.”

“But you didn’t commit any of those crimes, did you?” Celestia nodded when I didn’t answer. “I rest my case-”

Celestia’s muzzle was then clamped shut by Chrysalis’s magic.

“Fruit, I appreciate you making an attempt to get us on the path towards negotiations, but your efforts are all for naught.” Everypony in the room shushed Chrysalis, but that didn’t deter her. “Seeing as you hit your head on the table, so hard that you knock yourself out when you do it, every meeting, we all figured that it would be a fun prank to see how long it would take for you to notice our meetings were for nothing.”

“But-“

“We had a treaty made and signed in three days. The Royal Sisters are only older than calendars, while I’m nearing two thousand years old. We can work out treaties reasonably well, even if I am personally rusty on the matter. Whenever you knock yourself out, our yelling and disagreeing quickly turns to catching up!” Chrysalis grinned at me as my face probably screamed this:

“Bruh, what the fuck?”

“C’mon Chrysalis, we wanted to see if we could reach a month!” Shining Armor groaned.

“Well, excuse me for wanting to spend time with my coltfriend alone, outside of a meeting room, instead of watching him waste away while we continued to make a fool out of him.” Chrysalis stuck her tongue out. “Now,” Chrysalis happily turned to Cadance. “Wish to trade stories of times where we broke our lovers?”

Cadance grinned. “I knew we’d get along just fine, Queen Chrysalis. I bet Fruit is embarrassed easily!”

“This one time I caught Fruit singing in the shower-“

Kill me.

It’s been nearly a week since the last meeting, and thank god that it’s over. Like holy shit, it was awful, and then it was all for nothing! Leave it to three of the smartest, and oldest people I know, to play an elaborate prank on me, and then proceed to keep the prank going on for three weeks straight. Like that was kinda funny, but that’s three weeks I coulda spent… doing anything really.

I got to work, train some, even have plans made for the next food cart with the goal to be able to buy whatever I rent out. And next week I’ll be seeing real, potato fries as a side to my pizza.

Also that whole ‘let’s embarrass our husband and coltfriend’ meeting Cadance and Chrysalis had right afterwards left me and Shining Armor as red as tomatoes. So I’m glad that that very political meeting is over and is forever behind me! On the brightside, more time for training! Training is always super fun, and my teachers are the best. And today would mark the first month into my near constant training for the month!

Can’t wait-

“Fucker!” I fell on my side and clutched my stomach. Skitter was just sitting off on the side, Scatter had found popcorn, and both of them had watched Pharynx kick my ass. Apparently I was getting ‘good enough’, but not ‘good’ because I, like a man, broke down and stopped any sparring matches I had the moment I hit Skitter or Scatter too hard. Like, I know my buggy friends can take the punishment, but I don’t like hitting them.

It made me feel bad.

Pharynx on the other hand? Fuck that guy, always calling me stupid, kicking my ass, and hitting me so hard that I often get knocked out by the fourth sparring match. Today, I managed to last six sparring matches, and even managed to pin Pharynx down during one of said matches. As in the last match I pinned Pharynx down, so said Pharynx put a dent in my pride really quickly after I managed to do that.

And my stomach, my stomach also has a dent in it too now.

“Not bad, pony. Not many can contend with me for very long,” Pharynx actually helped me up for once! “Especially ponies…” Pharynx didn’t even shove me back into the dirt, even if I wanted to go lay down somewhere. The changeling got really nice and close to one of my ears. “I actually kinda respect you. You best make good use of this training and keep Her Majesty safe, though. Or I will-“

“Kick my ass?” Pharynx nodded as he backed away.

“Pfft, if something touches Chrysalis, it’s because we all died trying to protect her,” I looked Pharynx dead in the eyes. “I will not hesitate to fight for Chrysalis’s well being, trust me.” Pharynx simply nodded.

“C’mon, training drill for the day is over, let’s go get some water, and go get some rest for the day.” The drone started on his way over to a bench where our things were.

Now that, is something I can get behind.

“So how do I actually rank?” I asked. The two of us sat on a bench, I quickly emptied my bottle of water while Pharynx only took a sip from his bottle. Now we were alone, aside from my bodyguards lurking somewhere in the bushes.

Now my stomach feels better! Thank you, magical water!

Pharynx shrugged. “In terms of technique, you’re just shy of some of the Hive’s more skilled fighters; I would say… just shy of Skitter after Skitter had trained for just over three months. Even if I can read your movements, whereas Skitter was nigh unreadable.”

“Oh neat.” Better than I thought I was!

“However, you seem to lack raw power in your strikes, which can be problematic. Now, for changeling martial arts, it’s not that big of a deal, and you’ve got the speed to make up for it. Work on magically augmenting the power behind your punches, pony. That will go a long way.” I nodded, before saluting the drone. While I don’t thoroughly enjoy the guy’s presence, he is straight with me. If I suck, he lets me know, and will tell me how to improve.

The fact that this guy and Thorax were brothers shocked me.

One was a giant teddy bug, and the other was a massive asshole.

“Also, I will not fully blame you on this, since you can’t be fully taught in the martial arts you’re learning, but you’re using rather basic, to moderately advanced techniques even if your speed more than makes up for it. And you are a bit predictable, so work on that; predictability gets you killed in a fight. Mix up your sequences from time to time, say instead of a right uppercut every dodge, a left hook.”

“Now, I could work on that, or I could kill the threat to death before it can recognize any patterns in my fighting style.”

Pharynx actually smiled! “I suppose you’re right, and you probably can kill someling before they become a threat…”

“Say, why don’t you changelings enhance your speed, or even strength while fighting?” I asked.

“We changelings simply cannot do so.” What. “We can transform, make illusions, heal, and use telekinesis. And even then, aside from transforming and illusions, our magic would be very comparable to… an untrained unicorn at best that had just learnt how to use their magic. Heck, at best, Chrysalis only rivals The Princess of Food in terms of raw power. Hence why the magic used in our martial arts forms is so… simple in application. Because most changelings, just ignoring transformation and illusions, can’t do more than a simple application of telekinesis.”

“So a changeling’s martial arts plus-“

“Magically enhance your strength and punch me,” Pharynx instructed. I did as told, and the changeling grinned. “I know what your question is, and yes, magically enhancing your strength while doing what you usually do in a fight, is a deadly combination with your speed. Keep working on that magical augmentation.”

“Been doing it at work to make sandwiches faster.”

“Good. You can only enhance your strength so much, however, so I will be gaging how well you can hold the augmentation spell while preoccupied. As in I throw things at you, and you dodge them while holding an agility spell.”

“Just… tennis balls with those tests, right?”

“... Yes. I would use bricks if I didn’t have to return you to the Queen unharmed….” Thank fuck! Pharynx pushed me off the bench, and disappeared when I sat back up.

For once in my life, I had a day off of work, and was given the option to not train. Did I say option? I meant that Chrysalis had taken notice of how I pretty much only worked or trained, and forced me to go do something else. So, like a smart man when given a day off work, training, or exercise, I decided to rent out another food cart. This time, I plan on buying the fucker so I did my best to stock up on ingredients for pizza, potatoes, and a pot along with some cooking oil. Something about this cart, while it sucks, makes some amount of sense when you think about it.

You see, the oven in this thing is a tiny bit weaker than the other cart I rented out. Instead of twenty minutes, because portable ovens in Equestria are shitty, it takes about twenty five minutes to cook a pizza, and thirty for extra crispy crust. Now, I only found this acceptable because the food cart also had a stove built in, so I could use it to fry… well, fries. On top of that, the portable oven had more racks, so more pizzas could be made at once even if making only three at a time gave the best results.

Also the cart had a built in open and closed sign that worked on neon lights! I didn’t even know Equestria had the technology for neon lights!

So here I am, waiting to fry my first batch of proper fries, none of that stupid hay fry bullshit, but actual french fries. I had three pizzas under heating lamps, and I was now sitting in one of the many food courts in Canterlot. It was still around eleven, so the lunch rush was about to begin. Low and behold, a few ponies in the food court, slowly turned into a dozen, and that slowly turned into a shit ton of ponies. Then that downgraded to a fuck ton, did I say downgrade? I meant upgrade. Anyways, the food court was packed now, and ponies seemed to default to their favorite restaurant.

Logically, I closed my cart for a bit to whip up a batch of my secret weapon:

Brownies.

Meanwhile, Celestia was in the middle of doing paperwork, and then a knock on her office door caught her attention. “Yes, Ms. Inkwell?” The diarch asked as her secretary walked in the room.

“Your highness, it has been reported that Fruit Punch has opened up another food cart, would you like me to clear your schedule for lunch, and the next hour?” Ms. Inkwell asked, looking up from her clipboard. The two of them sat for a moment while Celestia contemplated such a hard decision. “If you do, we will have to move Day Court back an hour,” Ms. Inkwell informed.

“I’m sure the nobles will understand if we postpone Day Court. Would you like to join me, Ms. Inkwell?”

“Of course,” Inkwell clicked a button on her pen and it turned into a fork.

Okay, it only took about twenty minutes, but I now have a line, and I wasn’t nearly as stressed out. This time around, I knew I had more than enough ingredients to last me the day, and Skitter and Scatter had joined me in putting pizzas together, and chopping potatoes up respectively. So all I had to do was greet, sell food, and wish a customer to have a good day. It was awesome, seeing so many ponies in the food court sitting with my food, and even more ponies widening after they bit down on a fry.

Mostly because it looked like they had just took a hit of LSD before they scarfed down the rest of said fries and got back in line. And, I was beating everywhere else in the food court in terms of price to food. Two bits for fries, three for a slice of pizza. A combo of the two was four bits. Five bits if you wanted a drink, because I guess a third drone came in with a couple barrels of non alcoholic apple cider and a barrel of orange juice. Where they got said barrels, I won’t know, but I’m not complaining.

Everywhere else was charging five bits just for a thing of pretzels, or whatever was the main thing they were selling to ponies. So compared to everywhere else, I was providing a nice deal, and hopefully something tasty. Given how many ponies came back specifically for fries made me grin like an idiot, yes! Abolish hay fries! Now, bow down to a proper french fry, you bitches!

“Have a nice day!” I waved as a pony bought two things of fries and a pizza. A fifth changeling came out of nowhere and was constantly putting pizza boxes together. As for why there are so many changelings helping me, I don’t know, but I can’t really complain since they seem to just want to help me for some reason. Like, no paychecks promised, no job applications. A changeling just saw me, saw what I was doing, waltzed over, and started doing something.

Hell, one nearly tried to start taking orders until I told them to just sit and look cute, so he turned himself into a plush version of himself, and sat next to the food stand right afterwards.

Then somebody stole him and nobody really minded, heck, the plush changeling’s smile got even bigger when he got stolen.

Well, the line’s cleared, and-

“It’s Celestia!” Wat

“What is she doing here?” Oh.

So now there’s an even bigger line for my cart, and Celestia along with her secretary were at the front of it…

Celestia tried to buy my whole stalk. And she did… That daughter of a fucking ass!

Author's Note

Celestia had managed to spend six hundred and seventy four bits on pizza and fries by the way.