Sonata Dusk, Professional Bureaucrat (Changeling Welfare Office)
With A Song in Your Heart
As Sonata knotted her blue striped necktie, she hummed a happy little tune. She turned away from the mirror, facing the other two Dazzlings. "So how do I look?"
Adagio put her hand over Aria's mouth. "Good! You look great. Really professional."
Sonata giggled. "If I'd known how much fun it is to be a bureaucrat, I would have tried it a long time ago!" She spun around, spreading her arms out wide. "It feels so good to help people!"
Aria growled, "You're helping CHANGELINGS. Not PEOPLE."
Sonata shrugged. "Potato, tomato. Anyway, I don't want to be late for work!"
Adagio handed Sonata a package wrapped in a cloth which matched her necktie. "Don't forget your lunch."
"Thank you!" Sonata kissed Adagio's cheek. "We three get along so well now. It's like a dream come true!"
Aria gritted her teeth as Sonata went out the front door.
***
Sonata walked down the street towards Canterlot High School. She wasn't a student there, not anymore, nor a teacher. She just wanted to take a very special shortcut, across the school's front lawn.
Sonata skipped along the path towards the Wondercolt statue, and tapped the plinth with one hand. The plinth's stone face softly glowed, and Sonata walked right through.
"Wheeeeee!" Sonata squealed as an interdimensional warp space sucked her through its innards. "Best ride ever!" The warp tumbled and shook Sonata as her form changed. A minute later, she flew out the front of a magic mirror, landing in Equestria.
She'd become an amphibious pony, her four legs sporting fins on their backsides.
"Hi, Spike!" Sonata waved.
"Hi, Sonata. On your way to work?"
"You know it. Got a lot of hungry changelings to feed."
Sonata walked along a crystalline hallway, and out the castle's back door. She went about fifteen chariot lengths away from the building, towards the center of a grassy field, and concentrated very hard. She chanted:
"Magic merhorse
Queen of skies
How I love
Sweet apple pies!"
Aria had always told Sonata her version of the Siren Transformation Spell was "utterly stupid." But it still worked, just the same as when Sonata was a little girl and her mother first taught it to her!
Bright light wreathed Sonata, shielding her transformation from mortal eyes. When the glare subsided, Sonata was a full size giant merhorse (but still wearing a shirt collar and necktie.) Sonata's new gem glowed with ruby light. (After the Rainbooms had broken her old gem, the replacement had grown back in just a few weeks, just like a healthy siren's gem usually does after that kind of accident.)
Sonata levitated herself into the air, and flew across the countryside.
***
As Sonata sped over the Whitetail Woods, a goofy-sounding voice beside her said, "Hi!"
Sonata turned her head. "Dulcinea! Good morning!"
The gray coated, blonde maned pegasus mare smiled at the siren. "Can I ride on your back?"
"Of course!" Sonata agreed.
Dulcinea gained just enough altitude to crest the siren's back, and grabbed on with all four limbs. "This is so fun!"
"For me too! Hang on!" Sonata swooped left, then right, and flew several loop-the-loops. "Look at me! I'm a roller coaster!"
"Yaaaaay!" Dulcinea cheered.
"I wonder just how many loops in a row I can fly, with a pegasus mare riding on my back!"
A minute later, when Dulcinea lost her recent breakfast all over steed and countryside, Sonata took the mishap in good spirits. "Don't worry, Dulcey! I can just take a quick lake bath before I go inside the office. Because I'm a merhorse!"
"I think I might need a bath too."
***
The formerly barren landscape surrounding the Changeling Hive showed signs of greening. Sonata said cheerfully, "Coming in for a water landing!" Dulcinea struggled to get out of her saddlebag harness, just before Sonata abruptly dove.
With a huge splash, Sonata crashed through the lake's surface, wriggling towards the sandy bottom. She looked back over her shoulder. With her voice making bubbles in the water, she asked, "How you doing, Dulcey?"
The pegasus mare had one leg caught in her saddlebag harness, which was tangled around Sonata's rear neck fin.
"Oh! Sorry!" Sonata reached up to help support the mare, and wriggled furiously to rocket back up to the air, breaching nosily. "Are you ok?"
Dulcinea smiled sheepishly. "I think so."
"Good!" Sonata swam to a sandy beach, where she lay down to drip-dry and bask in the sun. "Let me know if you need any help getting loose."
Dulcey sighed, as she looked at her sopping mailbag. "I just don't know what went wrong."
***
Inside the Hive, Sonata arrived at her workplace with a minute to spare. "Hello, everyling!" she called out sunnily. "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you!"
The spacious conference room's sofas, chairs, and most of the floor were almost entirely covered with wall to wall changelings. Lings groaned and grumbled, rubbing their aching tummies.
"I'm so hungry!"
"I wish we could go out and forage like we used to, before the peace treaty!"
"I want to find somepony who's dearly loved, beat them up and trap them in green slime, and take their place. Just like we did before."
"I just wish my tummy would stop hurting."
Sonata nodded, a serious look on her face. "I understand. I'm sure it hurts a lot." She looked around the room. "I guess if I didn't have anything to eat, that might make me feel angry too. Resentful. Lots of negative feelings there."
"Yeah," a changeling admitted.
Another changeling said, "I want to go beat up Queen Chrysalis. Because she failed us, and let us get taken over by that stupid Thorax."
Chrysalis stuck her head up from behind a sofa. "You pathetic creatures all failed to do your jobs right! If you weren't weak and incompetent, we would have won, and all the love in Canterlot would be ours."
Sonata surveyed the crowd. "Does anyling feel...kind of upset?"
"YEAH!" some changelings called out.
"Does anyling feel...peeved?"
"I FEEL PEEVED!"
"Does anyling feel...like you want to call someling else a bad word?"
Changelings shouted and screamed a chaos of angry, rude remarks.
"I want to call all my disgusting underlings bad words," Chrysalis proclaimed. "Because that's what they are."
"Mmmhmm," Sonata said. "I can feel your pain, you know? Because your pain leads to fear, and fear leads to anger, and anger leads to hate, and then I can just eat all those feelings up, yum yum yum!" She smiled sunnily. "It isn't even ten o'clock yet, and I already just ate second breakfast!" She patted her own stomach with one forefin. "Good thing I get so much exercise commuting to work, or I would be FAT."
"Why should YOU get to eat when WE don't?" a changeling shouted. "Unfair! Unfair!"
Sonata nodded. "It IS unfair. Don't you just HATE it?"
"I do! I do hate it!"
Sonata said, "But don't you feel for your fellow lings at least a little? When you know you're all suffering together?"
"No!" Chrysalis sneered. "It's all THEIR fault! None of this is MY fault at all! It's because of my underlings' failings. And that disgusting Trixie and Starlight and Discord. It's everycreature's fault but mine!"
Sonata reached out and patted Chrysalis' head with one fin. "You are SO GOOD at hating, Chryssy. You're just the absolute BEST! But I think now I've gotten a big enough power up from you. Time for stage two!"
Sonata craned her neck upwards, and sang.
"Sometimes we feel angry
Sometimes we feel mad
Sometimes we want to punch someling
But maybe we're really just sad?
Sometimes we feel hungry
Sometimes we feel alone
Sometimes we want to conquer the world
But what about our home?"
"False rhyme!" Chrysalis screeched. "You can't rhyme alone with home! That's cheating!"
But Sonata kept singing.
"When you look at the changeling next to you
And you know they feel hungry too
A changeling just like you
Don't you care about them too?
Do you feel you could make a friend
Do you feel you could find a way
To care about and love each other,
To hug each other this fine day?"
Entranced by Sonata's siren magic, the changeling crowd filling the conference room started hugging and nuzzling each other.
"Well, then!" Sonata said. "Good job, everyling!"
Sonata went back out to the lobby, where she pulled all the paperwork out of her inbox and spread it across her desk. Using her extra big set of crayons (eighty-four colors!), she filled random checkboxes, and drew pretty pictures all over the forms. She could even color outside the lines, if she wanted to!
It wasn't like anycreature would ever fire her. Her department was a special intergovernmental project, and at least three different governments needed her special skills far too much.
Behind Sonata, several changelings slipped out of the conference room, tiptoeing to try not to disturb what they were sure was Sonata's very important government work.
One of them, though, stepped in front of Sonata's desk and softly cleared its throat. It whispered, "Miss Sonata?"
Sonata looked up. "Yes?"
"I and my three spouses just want to say...we think you're the best marriage counselor ever. Unorthodox, sure. But look at the results!"
Sonata smiled so vigorously she grew a new dimple. "Thank you! I'm so happy for you!"
The changeling hugged Sonata, and five other changelings piled on. "Thank you too, Sonny. We like you a whole lot."
"I like YOU a whole lot too!"
***
Sonata came through the apartment's front entry. "Hi, I'm home!"
Adagio glanced up from her cellphone. "So you are." She threw Aria a look.
Aria groaned, and slowly got up off the couch. "Sonata...I'm sorry I'm such a bitch. It's just a big change, you know? Learning that you can be good for something. I mean, that you're not a COMPLETE idiot."
Sonata beamed. "I know, right? It was a big change for me too!" She waved her fists in the air jubilantly. "And today I was promoted to department head! So now I get an assistant to do my paperwork for me." She pouted. "But I really liked doing paperwork. It was my fifth favorite part of the job! Super relaxing."
Two crayons fell out of Sonata's pants pocket, landing audibly on the floor. "Oops. I didn't mean to take anything home with me from work. I hope I'm not in trouble."
Adagio snorted. "You're amazing, Sonata."
"Thanks! I think you're amazing too!"
Sonata grinned at the other siren.
"No!" Aria said. "No way! I'm not going to say it!"
Sonata pounced on Aria, giving her a big hug. "I love you too, Arie."
Author's Note
I've long been fond of the secret optional storycanon that after the Dazzlings' gems were shattered by the Rainbooms, the gems just naturally grew back. But the Dazzlings' destructive attackers never happened to find out, ha! Unless someday they do, and isn't THAT part of a story premise?
I also enjoyed getting to write Sonata's 'good enough for government work when aided by A LOT OF siren magic' lyrics. It's not often I get to write bad poetry in character!
You know who's written at least three other stories on the theme 'mostly redeemed Sonata likes not having to be evil all the time, and turns out to be maybe better at non-evil real life than the other two Dazzlings?' THIS horsewords writer!
For Dulcinea's name, please credit Estee.
