Falling Feathers
TF Changeling to Pegasus, Primary theme: Freedom
Becoming a pony was not hard, for a changeling. But there was an art to becoming one to a deeper level. To tap into pony magic fully, and to lose yourself in the identity that you crafted.
With the complete failure of the invasion of Canterlot, Membari thought it was as good a time as any to make a go at learning that art.
It might also give her more options in her current predicament. She'd just watched her queen be blasted across the sky by a pink bubble, and more urgently that same bubble had thrown her into a brick wall hard enough to nearly kill her.
Her black chitin was broken, cracked in a dozen places.
She smiled a little as she limped down an alleyway and found a garden to collapse into, to avoid the guards.
‘Ah yes,’ she imagined her queen telling her with biting sarcasm. ‘When the skill is most needed, and failure means death, this is when you choose to take your lessons seriously, drone? Typical.’
She already missed the devil on her shoulder. It was all she’d ever known. For a changeling, the approval of the queen was the only aspiration they had in life. Unless they were selected to specialize and given a higher purpose. No, Membari barely had a name, and her short life had been filled with understaffed classes and frantic war drills on starvation rations.
But as she lay in the greenery, crushing someone’s lovingly tended flowerbed, she had to pick a path to go. A path that would allow her to blend into the ponies of Equestria, to hide long enough to get out alive.
Not that her odds were very good to begin with.
She could become an earth pony. They were easy enough until you had to actually interact with other ponies, at which point there was an unspoken quality to them that everypony noticed when it was missing. A potency that changelings struggled with.
After all, they were lying, and it was hard to embody any quality through and through when you were lying.
Unicorns were a bit harder to become, but easier to imitate long term. Unicorn magic and changeling magic only varied a little bit, and as long as you created a green unicorn, their green magic wouldn’t be suspicious.
But just minutes ago, Membari had been imitating a Pegasus.
Not a deep becoming, a true identity, but a quick combat form. She’d been imitating Rainbow Dash, one of the elements of harmony, and for a moment during the fight she had almost forgotten what she really was. It had been glorious to be free from the constraints of gravity, to soar and then to have that deep feeling in her heart that….
That she was fighting for something greater than a queen’s reckless ambition.
So, she would become a Pegasus.
With that decision made, she only had to craft an entire identity and physical form before she was found. Easy.
“Check down the alleyway.”
She heard the click of metal shoes on cobblestone.
Maybe not so easy.
With a soft hiss of pain, she forced herself back onto her hooves and snuck across the garden, looking for an exit. The back door of the house was unlocked, and though it was a gamble it was a lot less of a gamble than being crushed under steel hooves and finding out if her queen had lied about ‘living on in her heart’ being more than just a comforting euphemism.
The door slid closed and she slipped the lock closed before laying down with her body against the door so that it would be hard to see her through the window.
The marching hooves got close, close enough she could hear the pony breathing as they searched the garden, but after minutes of barely breathing they left and she could focus on the art.
The first and simplest step was to imagine a Pegasus, a colorless form with wings spread wide. Individual feathers were critical. They didn’t fly like changelings, who beat the air into submission with the rapid buzzing of their membrane wings. They touched on the air like someone might caress a friend, familiar with it’s every movement and each individual feather driving them forward.
Like a dance.
She fixated on that. It was like a dance. She’d once taken a High Society infiltration class, in which she’d learned to dance and found it more interesting than any of the many other classes she’d taken. It had felt… like freedom, for a moment.
So, her Pegasus was a dancer.
One of the dresses her teacher had displayed came to mind, a crimson thing with pale cream trim.
Free association could be a way to complete art, but it could also indicate brain damage if she couldn’t control her thoughts.
“I would die of head trauma after living through the banishment,” she snickered as she stood and walked through the kitchen of the row house, and found herself in the living room.
As she hesitated at the doorway, looking at the gleaming wooden fixtures and the railing upstairs, she settled on a back hoof in a way that split one of the cracks in her chitin, and she fell to her side in agony.
Writhing and twitching, she eventually emerged from the pain to notice that the sun had gone down.
She decided not to get up.
She decided she was going to be a Pegasus, a dancer with a red coat and cream mane, her eyes… Green. Within the false self, some part of the true self should remain.
Her cutie mark would be of a music box figurine, a ballerina with her wings spread and hooves held up high.
And her wings… Her wings would be the most important part.
She’d have broad sweeping wings, the kind which could catch the thermals and soar for hours, the kind which didn’t know limits or fear.
She wanted to be that pony, more than anything. She wanted to fly, and soar, far beyond the troubles of a queen and a war. Couldn't a soldier in a foxhole wish for more than just a petty god? Couldn't they wish for freedom?
“I might be losing it,” she whispered to herself with a smile.
But even as she was fading, she felt a bit more hopeful.
So she began the transformation.
Slow, creeping green fire up her broken legs, turning green ichor into violent splashes of red blood. Broken chitin became shattered bone, as she screamed, unable to keep the pain at bay any longer.
She clawed at the floor, dragging herself towards the front door as her fangs vanished and her fins flowed into delicate swirls of peach hair, already stained with blood even as they were first made.
The front door was locked, and she couldn’t reach high enough in her agony to undo it.
But that wasn’t as important as her wings.
Even as her vision blurred and faded, and her mind broke under the immense suffering, she poured her heart into those beautiful wings. The wings that would carry her away, far far away from here.
But as the individual feathers graced her arcing wings she realized the folly of her entire plan. The mistake that she knew would cost her life and her soul.
She hadn’t given a single thought to a name.
As the front door was beat down by guards, and the nameless Pegasus fell still on the rug like a droplet of blood that had fallen there by chance and became a pony, she smiled.
She could hear her queen laughing at her.
“You didn’t think of a name? What, did you think that they’d just give you one?”
Membari was falling, in the darkness. Fluttering through the air like a leaf, buffeted back and forth until someone grabbed her.
The Pegasus she would become.
Crimson hooves holding her carefully, wings slowing their fall so they were falling together.
“You’re going to have to leave me behind,” Membari whispered, touching the pony’s soft fur with her own jagged hoof.
“I can’t do that,” the Pegasus laughed, tears in the corners of her eyes. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“You still haven’t given me a name.”
Membari woke with a gasp, and she was once again a changeling. A monster destined to take. But she was still alive.
The hospital bed under her was soft and clean, and she could hear the buzzing of changeling minds nearby. Possibly in adjoining rooms.
It was a vague static, unlike the precise hum that she'd been trained to make, unlike the overwhelming power of Chrysalis.
Surprisingly, her legs and middle were bandaged with tight wraps of cloth that held her chitin to itself, keeping her body together long enough that it would be able to heal. She wasn’t even shackled to the bed, and hanging from the ceiling above was a wire with a button on it.
Printed in white letters on the button was the word “Help.”
None of this made sense to her. She’d failed to attain a perfect disguise, and she’d been captured. She should be dead.
So she pressed the button, not feeling that she had much to lose.
A moment later, an earth pony walked into the room. White with black spots, and a zebra-like mane, she didn’t look much like a nurse except for the hat on her head.
“Welcome to the world of the waking,” the pony said with a smile. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m… alright,” Membari said hesitantly, looking around. “Why are you concerned with how I feel?”
“Because you are a citizen of Equestria now,” the pony said as she sat next to the bed. “Her Royal Highness is very concerned that all of her citizens are well. Especially those who might be able to inform us of Chrysalis’s future plans.”
Ah. That’s what this was. Counter espionage, that made sense. She would be used for any information she could supply, and then discarded.
Yet the next question the pony asked was not so utilitarian.
“What would you like to be called?”
She didn’t have a name.
“I don’t know,” the changeling admitted softly. “I was trying to… make a new Self. A pony, so I could hide but I couldn’t come up with a name.”
“I could give you one.”
She looked up at this pony, trying to get a read on her. She wasn’t actually a nurse, but she had a caring demeanor and it was difficult to read her expression beyond a calm assurance. She exuded an aura of confidence and trustworthiness.
“I want to be a Pegasus. A dancer,” the changeling said softly. “Red and… and peach colored.”
The pony smiled, and tilted her head, listening.
Was she a therapist? Therapists were supposedly ponies who were specially skilled in discovering changelings, rooting them out of the relationships they’d embedded themselves in.
But she already knew that Membari was a changeling, so why would she be so intent?
“Go on,” the pony insisted.
The changeling cleared her throat and nodded.
“I… would have a cutie mark of a music box figurine. One of those pretty carved ones that plays the soft music, and… I don’t know what my name would be.”
“We all need a bit of help sometimes,” the pony nodded. “Celestia gave me the name Domino. I think… How about the name… Rhythm Tour?”
“Tour… like, to turn,” the changeling nodded quickly. “Yes. Yes, I…. I would like this name very much.”
“Good. Then let’s get you healed up.”
Domino brought Membari food, tasty but not very filling, and then she brought her castle staff.
Guards, who were surprisingly willing to play along with the fantasies that an injured changeling might spin, and to give the care and love that would sustain her.
Nurses, who asked her about her coloration and biology as a war drone, taking notes and feeding her with their fascination.
Domino never offered a connection to Rhythm, and since she believed the monochromatic mare was a changeling like herself, it only made sense that she wouldn’t have love to feed her.
But she did bring one of her own friends. A shy mare who talked softly of gardening and botany, and who gave Rhythm a feeling of comfort and safety instead of nourishment. This wasn’t love, but this was something she’d never had before. Friendship.
It took a month before she was able to take her new form, and she stood in the gardens of the hospital with her wings spread.
The wind kissed her nose and cheeks, and ruffled her feathers.
She felt more alive than she’d been in a long time.
“You can fly,” Domino told her, smiling. “Go ahead.”
Rhythm nodded, giving her a grin in return before lifting her wings and breaking into a run.
The air caught her, wrapped her up, and in a surge of motion she leaped into the air.
More real than any disguise she’d ever taken, more important than the frantic orders from her queen. Flying as a pegasus was an art, as much as becoming one in the first place. She felt the artistry of her new body, and she knew the joy of being a Pegasus.
Rhythm Tour was free.