Short 1: Color. Set at the same time as Sixteen Hours (chapter 32).

Luna’s alarm rang in her ear, rousing her from the night’s dream. Before even opening her eyes, her horn lit up as she lowered the moon. Slowly, the princess of the night raised herself from the bed. Blinking the fog from her eyes, she slowly crossed her darkened bedroom and entered the adjoining bathroom.

Upon activating the light crystals in the ceiling, Luna blinked. She blinked again. A third time, she blinked.

Her screams were heard across Canterlot.

The two night guard stationed outside her room burst inside, followed seconds later by Celestia. “Your highness! What is the matter?” the guard on the left said.

Luna, meanwhile, paid them no attention. Hurriedly, she ran back and forth across her room, snatching up items and throwing them into a pile in the center of her room. The only common feature to all of the objects was that they were gray or yellow. During the whole time she ran back and forth, she muttered, “wrong, wrong, everything is wrong.” Upon finally noticing the presence of the others in the room, she glanced over. “Oh, ‘Tia, YOUR MANE!”

“Luna! What has gotten into you?” Celestia cried.

“EVERYTHING IS WRONG!” Luna bellowed. “All of my things have turned that color! THAT BUCKING! IMPOSSIBLE! COLOR! I see everything so clearly now, but it’s all wrong!”

“Luna… what are you talking about? Nothing has changed,” the elder sister said.

The younger’s eye twitched. “Nothing… has changed?” Luna asked.

Suddenly, Celestia found herself being dragged across the room and out onto the balcony by her sister’s magic. “Look at Cloudsdale,” Luna said. “Look at the rainbows pouring off from the factory. Count the colors.”

Not seeing her sister’s point, Celestia looked towards the normal-looking rainbow. “Violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow. There are five colors, as always.”

“No, there are two others. That impossible color, and a mixture of it and yellow!” Luna declared.

“Red and Orange,” A new voice said from the hallway outside Luna’s room. Turning, the royal sisters saw that it was the Griffin ambassador, Gavriil. “I did not mean to eavesdrop, but I was curious as to your predicament. Imagine my surprise when I find the princess of the night has ceased to be colorblind.”

Short 2: Game.

After a long afternoon of playing for tips in the park, Lyra was glad to be home. Her thoughts wandered to her changeling marefriend, Bon Bon; Lyra wondered if her shape-shifting partner was up for some kinky roughhousing. However, upon reaching the stares, Lyra heard a voice roar, “WHY WON’T YOU DIE ALREADY?”

Panicking, the mint green unicorn bolted up the stairs. Expecting to see the worst, Lyra burst into her shared bedroom to find…

… Bon Bon. Just Bon Bon. The cream colored mare was screaming in rage at the glowing box she held in her… claws? The changeling had warped her hooves into the same strange limbs that the librarian’s dragon assistant had and was using each digit to manipulate the many buttons and knobs covering the box. From the box trailed a cord that was attached to a pair of earmuffs that Bon Bon was wearing despite the day’s warm weather.

“Bon Bon?”

“GO AWAY, LYRA! I’M BUSY!” she yelled without taking her eyes off of the glowing box. “DIE DIE DIE!”

She snatched the box out of her marefriend’s grip with her magic. “HEY! Give it back! I was almost at level seven!” the changeling whined.

Lyra said, “What has gotten in to you?”

“Oh… sorry,” Bon Bon apologized. “I was playing my new Joy Station Portable 4 and I guess I just got a little too into it.”

“Joy Station what?” Lyra asked, examining the glowing box. On the front was a moving image of two tall, minotaur-like figures, each of which was wielding a sword. When Lyra pushed one of the buttons, the figure on the left swung its weapon at the other, causing blood to splatter on the ground. Dropping the Joy Station in disgust, Lyra looked towards her marefriend.

“It’s a game from the humans,” Bon Bon explained. At the mention of Lyra’s hobby interest, the unicorn mentally revised her opinion on the device. “It’s one of the games that appeals to their predator nature. We got a few of these systems from the human world. The queen decided to have a lottery for them. I won this one.”

“Bonnie, that’s so cool!” Lyra cheered. “So, what all can that thing do?”

And so Equestria’s first lesbian gamer-filly couple was born. Among nerds and closet-perverts everywhere, there was much rejoicing.

Short 3: Traitor.

“However, I’m not heartless. You know changelings can sense emotion, right?” The changeling king grinned wickedly. “I smell the signature of a pony preparing herself to murder in cold blood. Good day.” With those parting words, the Gate connecting his world to Equestria sealed shut.

Gasps rang out through the ponies in the airship dining room. The three converted members of the Elements of Harmony, however, were confused; they could sense no such thing among any of the ponies on the air ship.

“IT’S YOU!” Pinkie Pie suddenly shouted, her hoof pointed at Rainbow Dash.

“Me?” Rainbow Dash asked, shocked. “Why the hay do you think I’m going to kill somepony?”

“Because, you’re after my Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness cupcakes!” Pinkie shouted, pulling a tray of the aforementioned cupcakes out from behind her back. “Well, you’ll have to pry them from my. Cold. Dead. Hooves. Or you could just ask for one~”

“Pinkie, be serious,” Twilight scolded.

“How can I be Sirius? He’s over there,” Pinkie replied, pointing to the scruffy black diamond dog janitor standing by the doorway. The dog waved over to them, and then continued on his way. Rainbow Dash snickered.

Rolling her eyes, Twilight ignored her friends comment. “Somepony might be about to murder somepony else and we have no idea who!”

Rarity stepped in, saying, “Oh, do stop worrying so much, Twilight darling. Has it occurred to you that he could be lying? He is the king of the changelings, a monster,” Rarity put a strange emphasis on the word, “as you so eloquently put it.”

“Yeah,” Dash agreed, “That sounds just like something a bug would do. There’s no way any of us could kill somepony!”

In the group hug that followed, none of the Elements of Harmony noticed the shared look that passed between the alicorn sisters, the only two killers in the room.

Short 4: Catherine.

Sarah walked up to the newest officer to join the Atlanta Police Department, who had just been handed the keys to her squad car. “Hey there, newbie, how’s life? I’m Sarah Shrader. Who’re you?”

“Catherine Nord,” the young officer replied.

Smiling, Sarah asked, “You getting settled in all right?”

“Yep, sure am,” Catherine replied.

“Hey, walk with me,” The older officer said. “I’ll buy you lunch. I do that for all the newbies.”

“Oh, well, that’s nice. Thanks.”

Sarah waved her hand dismissively. “Don’t mention it. I love helping others. That’s why I joined, after all. So what’s your story?”

Catherine chuckled. “You’ll never believe me. Hell, I don’t even believe myself sometimes, and I have proof.”

Raising an eyebrow, the senior officer said, “Ok, now I’m curious. Spill.”

“My boyfriend, William… well, either he’s been kidnapped by a horrible monster, or he is a horrible monster. I’m not sure which,” the twenty year old recruit said.

“Well… that’s a new one. You didn’t file a missing person’s report?”

Catherine shrugged. “I haven’t seen him in two years. Then again, when I saw him last, he was actually a shape-shifter, so he could have been a fake. If that’s the case, then I don’t know when or where the last time I saw him was.”

“Ok, stop. You know you sound crazy, right?” Sarah asked.

Catherine nodded. “I’m aware.” She reached up to her neck and withdrew a necklace from underneath her uniform. Dangling from the chain was the largest emerald Sarah had ever seen. “But it gave me this to try to buy my silence when I saw what it really was. Obviously, it overestimated my ability to keep a secret.”

“Damn, that’s a big rock. How much is it worth?”

“About eighty grand,” Catherine answered. “If that… thing really took my William, I’m going to shove this rock down his throat and hope he chokes on it. I joined the police force because how else am I going to find someone who could literally be anyone? Someone who can do honest-to-god magic? You know I saw him teleport, once?”

“No way,” Sarah said, disbelievingly. “Wait, you’re not joking, are you?”

“Nope. This is vengeance for what he did to my William.”

Author's Notes:

*Bing* Have a... Ok, what the hell is going on with my bell? It used to go 'Ding,' but now it goes 'Bing.' Anyone know how to fix that?

Anyway, have four short stories.

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Colors:

Real world ponies are colorblind (no red for them) and have 20/33 vision (see here). This means that humans have better eyes than ponies. I mentioned earlier that Gatekeepers are all transformed by their partner. Chrysalis got a taste for meat and Luna got an extra color set to sense, as well as sharper vision. I would expect that getting a modification to an existing sense would be quite disturbing, especially if you have no word for what you are experiencing.

Also, I can't get it out of my head that Griffins have this whole 'North-Eastern European' thing going on, even though the specie should be African by definition (African variety of eagle + lion = African), hence the name "Gavriil" (Russian variant of Gabriel).

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Game:

Gamer!Bon Bon and Gamer!Lyra. Yay! (I have no idea why I wrote this.)

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Traitor:

I needed a followup for the last chapter, but didn't want to devote a whole chapter to it. Ponies are weird, by the way.

Look! A Harry Potter cameo!

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Catherine:

Well, she's back. I told you that I would bring Catherine back, and now she's a human police officer.

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Meanwhile, Rex continues to do his hive thing. Off-screen, he is formally adopting Selene and going about hive business. I'll explore one of his average days next chapter.

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EDIT: Oh dear, I forgot the trivia!

Trivia:

-- There exists a rank below gatekeeper: the transformed. They have all the same powers and abilities as a gatekeeper, minus the ability to move matter to the other universe. The only transformed at this time was a chicken in South America who bound with a cockatrice, petrified her farmer, and starved to death while trapped in her coop.

-- Gemstones naturally collect ambient magic as they are formed over millions of years (hundreds on Equa). This is why gemstones are a delicacy to dragons and diamond dogs; they eat gems for the magic. However, gems can also be used as a magic battery for living things and machines. Any crystalline structure can be used to store magic (even bone calcium), but the more regular the structure, the better.

-- While it takes nearly 100 pegasi to create a waterspout strong enough to carry water to Cloudsdale, a team of two dozen strong pegasi can create an EF2 tornado. The ancient Pegasus Empire often used tornadoes to devastate their enemies before attacking directly. Changelings can mimic this ability, but it takes 50% more changelings per EF rank to achieve the same damage due to their decreased magical output.

-- All magically-empowered souls have a magically augmented talent that only manifests upon acknowledgement of said talent (saying "I like singing" permanently augments vocal ability). Only ponies and Zebras have a physical identifier of their talent, receiving their cutie mark upon acknowledgement. This talent persists even if converted into a changeling and cannot be shared by the hive mind.