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TWO YEARS LATER
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Princess Celestia smiled as her sun rose into the sky. Somehow, even after a thousand years of the same ritual, day in AND day out, she never grew tired of that moment when the sun hit the falls running off Canterlot just right, and a rainbow flickered into existence just before the sun hit its starting position in the morning sky. To her, that rainbow was everything she needed to start her day. For the last thousand years, that had been enough, but recently, something new had been added to the morning ritual.

“Splendid as always, dear sister,” Luna said with a smile and a barely-stifled yawn, nonetheless drinking in the way the sun’s rays lit up the ivory towers of Canterlot like . “We only wish we could be responsible for such a display at times.”

“Hmm, the grass is always greener,” Celestia hummed knowingly. “Here, I was thinking how lovely it would be to bring the night’s stars out as you do. Just once, mind you.”

Luna smiled and shook her head. “You’re still the wretched liar you were a thousand years ago, dear sister.”

Celestia smiled back. “As one who raised the stars for a thousand years, I think I’ve earned a lie or two.”

A few years ago, such a statement might have earned a quick downward glance from her sister, but instead Celestia was nearly beside herself with the light chuckle Luna gave. “Apologies for that, sister.”

“Apology completely unnecessary,” Celestia said, nuzzling Luna. “As always.”

“Either way, we are glad to be leaving you to this job, sister,” Luna said as she returned the nuzzle. “Especially today.”

Celestia sighed and rolled her eyes. “You know what Luna, why don’t you take…”

“Afraid not, sister!” Luna replied cheerfully, skipping away like a filly. “We’re sticking you with the buffoon for today!”

Celestia groaned. “Luna, please? I’ll take your duties for a week!”

“Nope!”

“A month?”

“Not on your life!”

“A year!”

Luna actually paused, stroking her chin in thoughtful consideration. Celestia leaned towards her, wings splaying out in hope; only to fold them back again as Luna shook her head. “We would rather raise the moon while receiving a hoof massage from the gaping maws of a dozen manticores than deal a single day with yon fool.”

Celestia sighed. “When did you become such a wise-flank?”

“For that, you have yon fool to blame,” another, disembodied voice chimed in. Celestia groaned, a hoof slowly rising to her face and massaging her temple. Luna, meanwhile, never broke stride, picking up the pace as she barreled towards her private chambers. Celestia couldn’t blame her.

“Hello, Discord,” she sighed.

As if that were his cue, Discord materialized before her, first his torso, then his arms came running along the railing to link up with it, then a blank blob landed on the body’s shoulders, which promptly grew a snickering, snaggle-toothed mouth, a set of mismatched eyes, a long snout, and a tail and legs, which promptly leapt off and wriggled on the floor.

“Ugh, the bottom parts,” he sighed, scooping up the missing appendages and attaching them to himself with a little pop. “For some reason, they always have trouble making it home to daddy.”

“Discord,” Celestia said with a light, though genuine, smile playing on her lips. “I trust you’re doing well?”

“But of course, Tia,” Discord replied with the same sort of grin he would use just before causing a chocolate milk downpour on some unsuspecting pony. “I’m going to have all of Canterlot eating out the palm of my hand, soon! Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Discord, this is a celebration of your contributions to Equestria, not an excuse to lord yourself over everypony,” Celestia said half-heartedly, her mind already drifting to more important things, like whether she had allocated enough funds for the banquet being held, and whether Discord would turn the seat of honor at her table into pastries, and whether he would pull pranks on the nobility (one could only hope). Of course, one couldn’t blame her for getting distracted. There was so much to do, and it was the umpteenth time she’d said almost that exact sentence to him since announcing her intent to throw this ball in his honor.

And like the other umpteen times, his response was the same: he tossed a claw and rolled his eyes, with a snarky comment thrown in for good measure. “Pish-posh, princess. Don’t I deserve that much? Doesn’t the guy who spends his Saturdays entertaining entire orphanages deserve this banquet? Or how about…”

“…the time I saved that hospital from foreclosure, or those three little fillies I pulled from the manticore’s jaws,” she finished for him in a poor imitation of his voice, that little smile still playing on her lips.

Discord’s jaw opened, then closed. He scratched his whiskers consideringly. “You know, you would make a wonderful impressionist,” he said finally. “The kind that really annoys ponies, I mean. Have you ever considered it? Could get you out of the more boring meetings.”

Celestia’s little smile grew slightly as she shook her head, trotting from the balcony. “If you’ll excuse me, Discord, some of us have to attend to the setup.”

“Ah yes,” he mused swooping through the air alongside the Princess. “I hear you’ve got little Sparkle-butt and her friends helping out with that.”

“You heard correctly.”

“You sure that was such a smart idea? I’ve seen her when she’s under enough stress,” he said, a shiver racing up his long, gangly spine. “I do not wish to see that again. I mean, there’s chaos, and then there’s horror.”

“She’s a princess, Discord: one who has held the safety of Equestria in her hooves more than once and performed admirably every time,” Celestia said, her mind obviously less focused on her surroundings and more focused on her mental checklist (which was even more detailed than the physical, laminated one Twilight had made up for the day). “I think she can handle a celebration, even one of this magnitude.”

Discord paused in mid-air. Sighing, he crossed his arms and propped himself up against a wall while Celestia continued on, trotting towards the doors of her throne room. “Five, four, three, two…” he counted out.

Right then, the throne room doors burst open, clipping Celestia’s snout. Twilight Sparkle rushed by, nearly bowling her mentor over in a frantic dash for the balcony. “Oh no,” she whimpered under her breath as she rumbled down the halls at a dead gallop. “Oh no oh no oh no…”

“Twilight!?” Celestia called in shock.

“A bit early,” Discord mused quietly. “You’re losing your touch, old bean.”

“Princess!” Twilight gasped, scanning the balcony with the eyes of a man wandering the desert who could’ve sworn that sand dune had been an oasis with hula girls in grass skirts serving martinis just a few seconds before. “Princess!?”

“Right here, my dearest student,” Celestia called over her shoulder, massaging her snout.

“What…oh,” at a pace that made Discord’s head hurt thinking about it, Twilight switched from frantic to confused to realization and back to frantic again in the same amount of time most ponies took to blink, rocketing towards her mentor as a purple blur trailing stress-induced, molting feathers. “Princess! I’m really sorry to bother you, I know you entrusted me to handle this for you, but the nobles are yelling about budgets and the caterers are yelling about some spice from Prance or Neighpon or someplace and Blueblood’s being a butt and Pinkie’s been screeching like a banshee for…”

“Twilight! Twilight, calm!” Celestia ran a hoof under the young princess’s chin. Then, she pulled out a pink, frilly, lace handkerchief, dabbing the stress-tears off Twilight’s cheeks before offering it up. Twilight took the kerchief gratefully, blowing her nose in a loud, ungraceful, and highly unprincess-like honk. Celestia smiled evenly and balled up the kerchief again when Twilight held it out to her.

“Thank you,” Twilight whispered.

“Now, what’s say we continue with the preparations, hmm?” Celestia said in a calm, completely even tone. “I’m sure we can reach some consensus with some of the ponies you’re bickering with.”

“R-right,” Twilight sighed, her shoulders slumping in both embarrassment and relief as Celestia took the reins, the purple Alicorn trailing just behind the larger princess as they trotted back to the throne room. Discord took one look, and a wicked grin crossed his face.

“Aww, cheer up, Sparkle-butt,” he said enthusiastically, reaching into a pocket on his long, slender form and pulling out a daffodil. “Look! I have a little snack for you!”

Twilight pursed her lips as he held the flower up to her face, her eyes scrunching up. “What’s this!?” Discord gasped in shocked disbelief. “Distrust!? On a day celebrating my reformation!? All this time together, and you still don’t trust me when all I want to do is offer a little pick-me-up?”

Twilight kept her lips sealed, but glared up at him, a single eyebrow arching.

“Alright fine, good point,” Discord sighed, tossing the daffodil over his head. It floated evenly to the ground and landed with a little puff of cotton candy dust, vanishing harmlessly. “I guess you’ve just gotten too smart for ol’ Discord, Sparkly.”

Twilight sighed in relief with the flower gone. “It’s not that I’ve gotten smarter than you, Discord,” she said, trotting into the throne room. “I’ve merely gotten wise to your jokes. I’m not gonna fall for them anymore.”

“Oh, really?” Discord asked, visibly trying to stifle laughter, a paw covering his snout.

“Yes, and I only hope that means you’ll wise up and finally allow yourself to reform completely,” Twilight said, her neck craned over her shoulder, leaving her oblivious to the gaping pit in her path. “I mean, without all the silly little…”

At that moment, she tumbled head over hooves into the trap, plummeting into the dark hole. “PRRAAAAANNNNnnnnnnnkkkksss…”

Discord hovered over the hole, his barely-contained chuckles now rolling off the walls as loud, cacophonous laughter. “Wh-what was that about not falling for my jokes anymore, Sparkle-butt!?” He guffawed, slapping his knee as he shot away, his laughter chasing after him.

“Twilight!?” Celestia gasped, dashing to the edge of the pit. “Twilight!?”

A loud sigh answered the Princess of Day, followed by the flapping of wings. A few minutes later, Twilight appeared out of the darkness, her forehooves crossed over her chest as she lit upon the tiled floor. Celestia smiled down at her, licking the tip of her hoof to smooth a curl back down.

“I hate it when he does that,” Twilight pouted.

“Oh, he means well, and his heroics more than make up for it,” Celestia said, shrugging with that same, sheepish smile on her muzzle, the kind of smile that says “What are ya gonna do?”

“Maybe, but he still worries me,” Twilight replied, her glare melting into a resigned sigh as an answer to Celestia’s smile.

“You still distrust him?”

“No, no, nothing so serious. It’s just that he’s a being of power far greater than most anything and everything else in Equestria. Only the Elements of Harmony and Tirek can even come close, and even the Elements can just imprison him for a while, and Tirek had to drain the entire planet of magic before taking him on,” Twilight shook her head. “He treats his powers like a joke; he doesn’t understand how much damage he can do without even meaning it! I’m just worried that someday, he’s going to hurt somepony. Hurt them in a way that can’t be laughed off or fixed with a few months of chocolate milk clouds.”

“My dearest Twilight, it’s been five years since his reformation, and barring the Tirek incident, he’s been nothing but a model of friendship,” Celestia said. “If such a tragedy were to occur, wouldn’t it have happened by now? Or better yet, in the early days before Tirek?”

Twilight sighed. “Maybe…” she shook her head. “Either way, he is expecting this celebration now. And I suppose I am looking forward to what he has planned for the nobility.”

Instead of asking her how she could know for sure Discord had something planned for the nobles in attendance, Celestia leaned down by Twilight’s ear and whispered: “So am I.”

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I turned over in my sleep, my shoulder blades aching. That’s kinda what you get from sleeping on the ground, I know, still doesn’t make it any less painful. As I turned though, the ground fell out from under me, and I let out a sharp cry as my face hit hard rock.

“Fucking…ow…” I groaned, turning over and clenching my nose, blood running from my nostrils. Pain shot through my face as I tried to hold back the flow. It was intense, but I didn’t hear anything pop, hopefully I had just bruised myself.

Hold on, why was that lip there, anyway? I didn’t remember going to sleep on a cliff’s edge. Or in a cave, for that matter, yet I was completely surrounded by rock when I opened my eyes. A cavern? Shit, I’ve spent the last three years in a cave, why would I crawl into another one to go to sleep? Especially with a clear night like...

Like last night was…when I went to sleep looking up at the stars…

Oh shit. I didn’t crawl in here to go to sleep. Someone had brought me here. Okay, okay, I couldn’t panic, panicking would just get me killed. I didn’t panic last winter when my fire went out in the middle of the night, I didn’t panic when that herd of manticores stopped by the mouth of my cave and I had to hide for my life, and I didn’t completely panic when Rainbow Dash’s wingbeats filled the air and I had to run or take a lightning bolt in the ass. I had to think, that was all. So, I wasn’t captured for food, I’d be in something’s stomach already if I was. Or just dead. I also wasn’t captured for ransom, look at me! Any robbers could take a single glance and know I didn’t have jack shit of any value to them. So, it wasn’t ponies, it wasn’t some wild animals, what else did I know that might hide out in…

Oh no.

“Oh shit,” I gasped out loud. I finally did it, didn’t I? Wandered too deep into the Everfree, and got too close to what’s on the other side: the Changeling Badlands. Oh God, out of the frying pan and into the fire! I had escaped from being the local whipping boy of Ponyville, only to wind up a prisoner of the changelings! Goddammit, no! This was supposed to be my escape! This was supposed to be a change for the better! This wasn’t…wasn’t…

“Oh, what’s wrong, little one?” A deep voice asked from the darkness in my cell. My blood froze. I knew what this was.

“D-don’t come any closer!” I gasped, trying to sound as big and tough as my thin, emaciated body would allow. There wasn’t any way I could pose any sort of threat to the creature in there with me, and they must have known it.

“Oh, but darling,” a flicker of green flame, and somebody stepped from the shadows. “Is that any way to talk to me?”

I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help myself. It was as if something seized control of my eyes, forcing them open, and my neck muscles were simply too stiff from spending the night on a rock in a cave to turn away. I had no choice but to watch as a familiar, humanoid form stepped into view.

“M-mama?” I whispered, my joy at seeing another human, and a familiar one at that, overriding my suspicion.

The stout, curly-haired woman held her arms out. “Come give your mommy a hug,” she whispered.

I wanted to. God, how I wanted to. Even later on, I wouldn’t be able to figure out if it was some sort of changeling spell, or if I was just that desperate for loving contact, but at that moment, I wanted more than anything to believe the woman standing before me was exactly who she appeared to be. Even with that little voice at the back of my head screaming it couldn’t be her, that it was one of them, I found myself stepping towards her, moving stiff-legged like a zombie.

“You’re not her,” I whimpered, even as I pulled the creature into my bone-thin arms.

“Oh, but I can be,” the creature smiled, its green eyes flashing. I shuddered, but made no attempt to push her or him or it or whatever away. “I can see your memories; I can be anybody you want, Jason.”

A few, silent tears started rolling down my cheeks, following familiar paths that they had traced after countless nights spent with them on my face. “Oh, don’t cry Jason,” the “human” said, wiping the tears off my cheeks with the same little flick of the wrist my mom used to have. “After all, you and I want the same thing.”

I paused. “Wh-what?” I gasped shakily, my breath a pathetic, hyperventilating pant.

“I just stated the fact that we both wanted the same thing: to make them pay,” the woman hissed “them” as if it were a curse, and when her grip tightened, I felt something well up from within my chest…

Nightfall. I journey out into the river, hoping my makeshift fishing lines might have caught something. I’m almost there, when I hear that same flap of wings. I don’t even have time to look before pain shoots through my entire body.

All at once, my tears stopped. I started to return the death-grip the woman had on me.

Dawn. Another winter day. I pull myself up from beneath the pile of rags that is my bed and shiver, my breath condensing out in front of me. I just want to sleep, but I know if I don’t get the fire started up again soon, I’m dead.

My teeth clenched. The tears were practically a distant memory at that point.

Mid-afternoon. I quietly sneak out of my hiding spot towards the nearest dumpster, hoping for a little something to act as a snack, something to take the edge off the hunger gnawing away at my guts. Just a little something from the garbage, that’s all I want, please…but no, I’m not quiet enough and catch the attention of one of the ponies in the street. I turn and run before the first rocks or pieces of garbage or whatever can start flying in my direction, cursing the continued hunger pangs as they rack my shriveled form.

My breath started coming in long, jagged gasps. Tears were gathering in my eyes again, but not out of desperation or sadness this time. These were anger tears, and the woman in my arms grinned on feeling one of them drop down into her hair.

”Why?” The burnt orange pony whispers, gazing up at me with those big, green eyes. As if she didn’t know. As if she couldn’t even comprehend. As if she didn’t remember the hell she and every single one of those goddamned, evil little shits have put me through for the last three years! As if…

“Do we want the same thing, Jason?” The woman whispered. “Do we want to make them pay?”

It took a full minute for me to reply. “Yes. Yes we…”

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“Sir?”

My eyes dart open, banishing the memory. I growl from the back of my throat and turn to the source of the voice, earning a quick cringe as the changeling quickly bows at my feet. “Drone 457,” I grumble. “What do you want?”

“Terribly sorry, my lord, I know you didn’t want to be disturbed in your meditations, but the last squad of changelings just reported that it is in place,” the drone says. He disguises the shaking in his spine well, even if his wings still quiver.

I sigh. “Very well, thank you, 457.” The drone nods and turns, taking off into the massive cavern. I shrug off my mild annoyance at being interrupted as I watch him go. 457 meant well, and besides, he called me “lord.” I may have ordered all my soldiers to do that, and it may have been months since any of them referred to me as anything else (the last schlub to forget having spent two days in solitary without food as an example to the others), but it still gives me a charge to hear that title. Besides, the whole reason I was meditating on that memory was to stir some of that old fire I’d felt in the fields outside Sweet Apple Acres, and again in that cavern beneath the Badlands.

I pressed a hand to my chest, and grinned at the old rage that blossomed within me. I was more than ready.

To think, in a land of peace and harmony, I was a slave, but in the land of the supposedly evil changelings, I was a lord. In Equestria, I had been forced to wear rags, my body wasting away beneath me. Now, I wore a tunic of reinforced lace with warm, heavy leggings, my well-muscled body swinging around as I strapped on my weapon to lead my army into battle. I swung the weapon around into my hands, working a small lever on the wooden stock with a satisfying and well-practiced click. It had taken months of experimentation and more than a few maimed soldiers, but I finally had a working musket, a single charge of crude gunpowder already loaded and waiting for a rubber stun slug. I grin down at it, feeling way too good about the weight of such a powerful device in my hands. It’s amazing what you can accomplish with nothing but some fuzzy memories of documentaries on the History Channel and the resources of an empire behind you. It can even help you bring the weapons of another world into existence.

“Mr. Wright?” Another voice asks behind me. I grin. Not too long ago, I might have cringed at that voice, but my days of cringing in fear for the next blow are long behind me, thanks to the mare at my back.

I turn, meeting Chrysalis’s gaze. She flashes a nice, big, toothy grin at me. “Do we want the same thing?”

I think back on the events of the past five years. The pain. The hunger. The loneliness. Applejack’s painful blows. Rainbow Dash’s unprovoked strikes. Pinkie’s avoidance. Fluttershy’s fear. Rarity’s insults.

The rejection of the Princess of Friendship herself.

“Yes, Chrysalis,” I reply as that old anger boils up within me. I can tell she feels it coming off me, because that grin gets wider. Predatory. It matches my own. “We both want the same thing.”

“Then don your true face and let us begin.”

I nod, then reach into one of the pouches sewn into my tunic, pulling out a gas mask I had modified from a pony’s facial structure to match my own. I pull it on, my disfigured features covered up by the rubber. I gaze out from the tinted glass as my breath rasps through the respirator in an intimidating, ragged wheeze, like the breath of a madman.

She leads me to a massive cavern, where the army – my army – is gathered. Twelve columns of highly-trained changeling soldiers, gathered beneath a sparkling cavern, the dim light reflecting off their highly-polished chitin. Changelings all gather, talking amicably about what they’re going to do when they get up there and how easy this was gonna be and how the ponies wouldn’t even see this one coming, and I can’t help but smile behind my true face. Time to get them really riled up.

“Changelings!” I bellow, the specially-modified rebreather on my real face hardly muffling my voice at all. In an instant, the entire army forms into columns, just as trained. Chrysalis flashes a fine, predatory grin. I return it, though I know she can’t see it. Just can’t help myself. I turn my gaze on the perfectly-formed rows and columns before me, a wave of black bodies just waiting to be unleashed upon the world up above. The so-called world of light, the…the…

And to think, I thought I would have trouble coming up with a speech.

“My dearest soldiers,” I hissed, my voice just above a whisper. This was met with hushed whispers and excited chittering from the younger recruits, though the older soldiers were smart enough to keep their gaze upon me and say nothing. “Today is a glorious new day, do you know why?”

This was met with silence, all changelings too afraid to respond. I wished I could chuckle at that, but I had to maintain the illusion. “Because this is the day of liberation. This is the day that the world is finally released from Equestria’s reign.”

Again, more excited chitters, quickly hushed by the changelings around those doing the chittering.

“You see, this is the day that at long last, the world will see the truth. This is the day that all masks are cast aside. And not just our masks: not only will we be able to hunt in the open, but we will tear off the mask that Equestria has worn for hundreds of years.” I step to the edge of the crowd, my gaze sweeping over the thousands of black bodies gazing up at me. “For hundreds of years, they have claimed to be the righteous, the paragons of friendship. For hundreds of years, they have enslaved the world, bending even nature to their will, all in the name of ‘friendship!’ Well, no more!”

I scream the last word and sweep out to every changeling here. “Today, we tear down that image! Today, we burn it away and let the world see the true Equestria! A land of wickedness! Of bigotry! A kingdom where their decadence and complacency is only overshadowed by their bigotry!”

I’m met with a choir of boos and hisses. It’s a sound that makes my heart soar.

“But not anymore!” I finish. “On this day, we finally set things right! On this day, we change up the order! On this day, we make a strike against bigotry and hate, because on this day, Equestria falls!

The enthusiastic roar that meets my ears is like music. Two years ago, I would never have dreamed of having warm clothes on my back again, much less the means to strike back, to hit where I’ve been hit and claim any sort of revenge. Now, I can only grin behind my true face and tilt my head to gaze up at the city above. Finally, after five long years, Equestria would know justice.