Hi Dad?

Hi Dad‽

I travel over one thousand miles (and mother knows how many kilometers), and ‘Hi Dad’ is the best I could come up with‽

The other ponies in the room jumped back, startled, as the young changeling smacked her forehead on the interrogation table.

“Oww,” she whimpered as quietly as she could. As far as introductions with her estranged father could go, this was probably one of the worst. Peleides slumped, giving in, leaning her head on the cool, steel table.

You really think that stallion will have anything to do with you?

Peleides peered through her fringe and looked intently at her dad. He was kind of a mess: his eyes were twitching, his breathing erratic. While the changeling was not an expert on reading pony facial expressions, the painful contortion his features were making suggested he was not happy.

Go to him, find out! Have him clap you in irons, throw you in prison.

She looked at the manacles still around her hooves, then to the room around her.

Stupid dumb bug bitch fat old scarab bug-faced bitch! Peleides cursed her mother’s foresight.

“Aha!” Shining Armor shouted. Peleides shot back up. “You can’t be my daughter! Cadance can’t have children.”

Peleides looked at her father askance. She was not the only one; many of the less-disciplined guards gave him an incredulous look.

“I-I don’t think she is implying Cadence is her mother…” Flash Sentry began, warily.

“What? Of course not,” Peleides laughed. “No, my mother is Queen—”

“Noooooooo!” Shining Armor shrieked. “No no no no no!”

“—Chrysalis,” Peleides finished, despite the interruption.

“Deport her!” Shining Armor shouted. “This is nothing but a changeling trick, an attempt to… uhhh… subvert the Crystal Throne.”

“Umm, Your Highness?” Flash Sentry interrupted. “I’m sorry, Your Highness, but if she is attempting to subvert the throne, the case would have to go to high court… which is presided over by your wife.”

“I am your Prince!” Shining Armor argued. “Do my orders not count?”

“Prince-Consort, Your Highness.” Flash Sentry rubbed a golden-armor shod hoof on the back of his leg nervously. “A-and no, in this matter they do not.”

“Pay raises! Everypony here will get a raise!”

More nervous shuffling from the Captain of the Guards. “Umm, while I am sure my guard would appreciate that, the guard’s salaries are determined by myself…” Shining Armor grinned at his new best friend. “… and ratified by Princess Cadence.”

Shining Armor scowled at the bastard pegasus who ever dared to think he was good enough for the Prince’s little sister.

“What if she is telling the truth?” Winter Kiss asked. Shining Armor glared at the mare. “What’s more, she is evidently royalty, and even with royalty of a rogue nation we are required by the Equestria-Zebrica concordat to detain her in lodgings appropriate her station.”

“Wait, does that mean…?” Peleides looked up to the mare who was her new best friend.

Flash Sentry nodded to one of the unicorn guards in the room, who stepped forward and removed the steel manacles. Peleides smiled appreciatively to the vice-captain.

“Princess Peleides Blue Morphos of the Changeling Empire,” Flash Sentry addressed the changeling. “In accordance with the Equestria-Zebrica concordat: you will be escorted from this room, henceforth you shall be remanded to one of the guest rooms here in the palace, under the watch of no fewer than four guards at any one time, pending trial and judgement. You will not be permitted to leave your room unless approved by myself or Vice-Captain Winter. Should such approval be granted, you shall be escorted under the watch of no fewer than ten guards. Do you understand these conditions?”

Peleides nodded in agreement, trying to hide the fact she had caught only half of what the captain had said; he had lost her at ‘guest room’ and ‘palace’.

Peleides was bored out of her mind. The room was amazing; as beautifully adorned, if not more so, than the waiting room she had been escorted to. Sans broken stained glass window.

Sure, she was finally out of that cell; but the presence of the Guard in her room had been a constant reminder that she was less a guest of her estranged father and more his prisoner. She had little to do but lay upon her bed, brooding.

Peleides had hoped in vain that her father might come visit and talk with her; surely the captain and the vice-captain would approve his visitation. But then she had not seen hide nor hair of him since the interrogation room two days earlier… Maybe they were stopping him, maybe he was trying this very moment to appeal—

You really think that stallion will have anything to do with you?

“SHUT UP YOU STUPID BUG FACE!” Peleides screamed into the silk-brocade pillow.

“Excusez-moi?”

Peleides lifted her head from the pillow, and saw a pretty pink unicorn standing before her. Peleides looked the mare up and down. She was particularly pretty: she had a rather long, flowing mane of pink, purple and gold. She was rather beautiful, for a pony, Peleides could admit… and it was not helped by the obscene maid’s outfit she sported.

“Vell, I did not expect to zee a changeling in zee palace.” The maid politely held a hoof to her mouth. “Please allow me to introduze myzelf. I am Coda; I have been azked to attend to your needs while you are in zee castle.”

Peleides struggled to understand the mare’s accent. “Ummm, okay.”

“Iz zere anyzing joo need vhile you stay?”

Peleides blinked a few times, staring at the maid, until she had worked out what the mare had said.

“No… I mean, ‘No, thank you’.”

“Very vell, I shall just go on with zee cleaning zhen.”

Peleides laid back down as the maid went about her cleaning duties. Every so often, she would catch the maid staring at her with curiosity out of the corner of her eye. Peleides felt very much like a caged animal.

Why don’t they start charging bits for this? Come see the amazing Changeling Princess. Watch in awe as she shifts shape for your excitement and fright.

“Scusami, I ‘ope you do not mind me azking…” the maid interrupted the princess’ moping, “but why ‘ave joo come to our little empire? Iz strange for a changeling to be zis far north, iz it not?”

Peleides sighed. She was dreadfully bored, and the guards had offered her no conversation. Not even her ex-best friend, Vice-Captain Winter Kiss, had spoken more than what was necessary to her. Court date this, legal representation that.

“I came to meet my father,” she admitted. “Though, it didn’t quite go to plan, as you can see.”

“Joor fahzer?” the maid asked, sitting on zeethe armchair next to the bed. “I vaz not avare zere were any changelings in zee Crystal Empire. Zis is qvite zee shock!”

Mother’s carapaced plot, it’s getting worse. Where is this pony even from‽

“My father is a pony,” Peleides explained, ignoring the gasp from the maid. “I probably shouldn’t say anything…”

“Nonzenze! I am a member of zee royal ztaff, and ve take a zolemn vow to never zpeak a word of vhat iz zaid in zee castle!”

Peleides considered the mare’s words and her contrasting body language, which even in changeling culture expressed a serious desire to hear some juicy gossip. Then she thought about her dad wanting to deport her—

“My father is Prince Shining Armor,” Peleides said, waiting for the shocked gasp of the maid.

She did not have to wait for long.

“Iz scandalous! Our good Prince haz a changeling paramour, and a hidden love child!”

“He hasn’t seen my mother since before I was hatched.” Peleides slumped back to the bed. Truth be told, she was always jealous of her half-sisters and the fact that they had their fathers around, even if they were just the Queen’s concubinus.

“Joo mean zee invasion? Zee Prince mated vith zat ‘orrible bu— oh, I am zorry, my dear. Zat iz joor mother I am talking about, no?”

Peleides let out a sharp laugh. “You mean the bug-bitch from Tartarus? Yeah, that’s her, and don’t worry… there is no love lost between her and I. It’s… it’s kind of why I’m here.”

“Joo poor dear. Vell, I must keep on wiz my rounds, but if you need me, just ask for Coda.”

Peleides watched as the friendly maid skipped out of the room. When she was alone again (if she ignored the guards, who did an excellent job of ignoring her), she relaxed into her bed, and allowed herself to drift off into sleep.

Cadence sat patiently in the armchair as Shining Armor paced the room. Cadence’s ‘naughty maid roleplay’ outfit was folded neatly over the back of her chair.

“She seems lovely to me.” Cadence smiled, watching her husband pace. “Maybe we should give her a chance.”

“She is the spawn of that monster!” Shining Armor shouted at his wife. “Deport her! She doesn’t deserve a chance!”

Cadence stood and crossed the room to her husband, placing a hoof on his shoulder. “Shiney,” she whispered, “You can’t mean that. She is your daughter, I am certain of it.”

“You don’t know that!” Shining Armor pulled away from his wife.

“Well, she certainly has House Sparkle’s noble mane colourings,” Cadence giggled, flicking his fringe with her hoof. “… it’s especially close to somepony’s.”

The mention of ‘House Sparkle’ made Shining Armor’s blood boil. It was not fair— he was the first of the family to become royalty. It should have been House Armor; that would have been a suitably bad-flanked name for a noble house, even if it were a little inappropriate for a family that mostly consisted of an ex-librarian, an author and an astronomer.

“Just give her a chance. You’re letting your feelings about Chrysalis cloud your judgement—”

“And you’re letting your want for foals cloud yours!” Shining Armor snapped back.

It is of course known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated.

For instance, a stallion named Shining Armor, who because of a Changeling daughter he knew nothing about, once said, “And you’re letting your want for foals cloud yours!”; caused a ripple across the fabric of spacetime.

Guard stallions throughout the Castle instinctively tucked their tails between their rear legs, protecting the more tender parts of their anatomy.

Then, like a stone tossed into a lake, those ripples spread, outward from the Crystal Castle, to the Crystal Empire, then to Equestria as a whole.

Dreamers, poets, artists, writers and stallions of a sensitive nature would remember the terrifying time; of the horrendous prophetic visions they would later come to call “The Great Gelding”. The affected would go on to create many disturbing works of art, poetry, theatre and several hundred men’s self-help books written on the values of agreeing with everything one’s wife might say.

Several hundred miles away, a regal white alicorn stumbled to her hooves, and her purple-coated alicorn ‘friend’ raced to her side.

“Celestia! What is it? What happened, are you okay?”

The solar princess’ reply was but a simple one: “I felt a great disturbance, as if millions of stallions cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I fear somepony has said something very stupid.”

Meanwhile, at the epicenter of the great disturbance, the stallion known as Shining Armor watched his wife’s face in horror as those accursed words escaped his mouth; wishing for all his might that the hoof he had so thoroughly jammed in his muzzle had stopped the words before he’d spoken them.

“Guard…” Princess Cadence seethed.

The stallion guard she had summoned nervously shuffled his way over to the imposing princess, tail tucked between his legs.

“Y-Yes, Y-Y-Your Majesty?”

“Have the maids prepare the Royal Couch!”