“―I’m not sure what you expect me to do about it,” the sage green unicorn mare grumbled into the comm as she leaned on the railing of her apartment balcony overlooking the lake, “I’m not their boss anymore,” Squelch didn’t make even the slightest effort to conceal the irritation that she felt towards that new aspect of her life. While the scenic view from the new accommodations which had been provided for her were just that―breathtakingly scenic―a gilded cage was still a cage.

The last week spent in this place had done nothing to dull the sensation of being a prisoner.

Her ship, her crew, her company, had all been effectively stripped away from her upon her arrival on the homeworld of the so-called “Celestia League-in-Exile”, or “Dragon Clans”, or whatever it is they were calling themselves. It honestly seemed to be dependent on who she was speaking to. The only thing that she had been made clear on so far was that they weren’t the “Disciples of Discord”. Apparently that was the label reserved explicitly for the units they had operating in the Harmony Sphere.

All that she had left now was an―admittedly―nice apartment with a view of the lake and a living stipend that was designed to keep her at least moderately comfortable. Not the worst retirement that she could have found herself with, especially if the Steel Coursers had ended up going bankrupt at some point. But it was also a far cry from the plan of amassing a few billion C-bits and settling down with a mansion somewhere by her forties.

Honestly, the most frustrating part was that she didn’t have nearly as much to complain about as she could have. The apartment was nice―even luxurious by the standards of some larger cities in the Sphere. The compound that the Galloway’s crew had been confined to possessed all sorts of recreational facilities and quality-of-life accommodations that were usually only found at high-quality vacation resorts. A good number of her former crew actually seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Most of those who weren’t happy were primarily concerned with their family back home, but they’d been assured that measures were being taken to safeguard them, and had even taken up their hosts on the offer to have said families smuggled here as well. In a few months, Squelch was convinced that most of her former crew would be perfectly content to live out the rest of their lives in this little community which had been furnished for them.

At least a few weren’t likely to settle in any time soon though. Case in point, “look,” she said into the mic, “I don’t know how they got ahold of the tools either; but let me ask you one question: does it run more efficiently?” there was a reluctant response in the affirmative, “so then what’s the problem?

“You have two options here: either do a better job of locking up your shit, or―and this is my recommendation―just let them tinker with whatever they want. Because, trust me, you do not want those two to get bored. When they get bored, they get ‘creative’.

“I promise you they will strip this compound for parts and use those parts to build a fully functional BattleSteed, just to see if they could―and I know they can―and then you’ll have that to deal with,” Squelch made sure that her tone sounded deadly serious, because she absolutely was, “so my advice is to tell your maintenance techs to just stay out their way and let them tinker with whatever they want. It’ll be better for all of us that way, okay?”

She disconnected the link and tossed it away. If the pony charged with supervising this little reservation of Sphere ‘refugees’ wanted to complain more about what Mig and Tig were getting up to in their spare time―which now consisted of literally every waking hour―then she could do it to somepony else. As Squelch had pointed out: the unicorn was no longer their employer, and thus had no real authority to leverage over the kirin twins. She was powerless to do anything, and so she wasn’t even going to try.

Besides, she was too busy battling her own boredom, quite frankly.

Her career-driven lifestyle up to this point hadn’t left her with a lot of time to develop any real hobbies, and she had yet to come up with any appealing candidates yet. She looked out over the lake, her mind briefly toying with the notion of taking up fishing. Slipshod had claimed to find the activity relaxing―

Squelch winced and shook her head fiercely, cursing aloud as she sought to remove even the thought of that monster from her mind. Mercifully, a further distraction presented itself in the form of her apartment’s door chime ringing.

“Come in,” she called out as she turned around, curious as to who it was that had come by to pay her a visit. The smile on her face vanished in an instant when she caught sight of the large purple alicorn stepping inside. Just beyond the open doorway, Squelch caught sight of a pair of armored guardsponies who had taken up position in the hallway for security purposes, “what do you want?”

Twilight Sparkle at least had the decency to acknowledge that she was unlikely to be the unicorn’s favorite guest, wincing slightly at the biting note in Squelch’s tone, “I came by to make sure that you and the other Coursers are being well taken care of.”

“Does it usually take you a week to get around to checking on your prisoners?”

A cringe this time, “you’re not prisoners,” she insisted.

“So we can leave then?” this question was met with silence and a brief period of open-mouthed hesitation, before the alicorn finally shook her head, “I thought so,” Squelch was smiling now, a cruel curve of her lips as she took satisfaction in confronting the princess with those realities that she seemed to find so uncomfortable, “so what can this prisoner do for her jailor?”

Resigned to the terms that Squelch was insistent upon using, the purple mare instead pushed through and moved on to the business that had brought her here, though she was certainly far less convinced of how this conversation would go, “I’d like to ask you for a favor.”

Squelch blinked at the other mare for several moments, in stunned silence. Then she snorted. Then she began to outright laugh at the alicorn. A cackling, indignant sort of laugh that was anything but mirthful, “a favor? Are you pulling my fucking tail? I hide you from ComSpark, help smuggle you to the backend of the galaxy, give up my livelihood and the livelihoods of my crew, and you have the gall to ask me for a favor?!

“Get out of my sight,” she wasn’t laughing anymore, turning away from the princess.

Unsurprisingly, she didn’t hear the alicorn leave. It wasn’t like there was anything that she could do to force her to. This wasn’t really ‘her’ apartment, Squelch knew. It was just a really fancy jail cell in a prison that Twilight owned.

“You’re right,” the larger mare acknowledged, “it was wrong of me to ask for more of you, especially when I haven’t exactly done a lot to repay you for what you and your crew have already done,” hearing the admission, and how genuine it sounded, didn’t do nearly as much to assuage Squelch’s bitterness as the unicorn thought that it would have. Maybe because it was little more than a pyrrhic victory in the end. She was still trapped on this world after all.

“I’d like to hire the Steel Coursers for a job.”

That got Squelch’s attention. The sage green mare slowly turned around, not entirely certain that she’d heard the princess correctly. She narrowed her eyes at the other mare, “excuse me?”

“I am in need of mercenaries for a mission,” Twilight went on, “and I would like to offer the opportunity to you first.”

“And why exactly would I help you?”

“Because you’ll be well paid,” the alicorn began, “because it will get you off this world. Because doing this job may be the key to defeating Chrysalis and finally putting an end to the fighting―meaning that there won’t be any reason to...retain you any longer, and you’ll be free to go as and where you please again.

“And, maybe, because it’ll save a lot of lives,” she said with a hopeful little smile, “any one or a combination of those reasons would be perfectly fine.”

Squelch held the purple mare’s gaze, regarding her. Appraising her. Twilight was hardly the type to be trying out some sort of cruel, elaborate, prank in an effort to try and play with the unicorn’s emotions. She knew that much. This wasn’t some sort of con. She was being serious. If anything, that only made Squelch more curious. As well as more suspicious.

It meant that there was an angle that she wasn’t seeing, and she didn’t like that, “what’s the catch?”

The alicorn sat back on her haunches and began to furtively tap her hooves together, “there’s not a ‘catch’ so much as there are certain requirements for this job that I think you won’t appreciate much,” the unicorn was already frowning, but she did appreciate that the princess was willing to be up front with her about it. She might be able to work with Twilight if she was going to be the type of client who was candid about a contract. In fact, she tended to prefer clients like that.

A pity they tended to be so rare.

“First, Star Admiral Cinder and I will be coming with you.”

“You? Don’t you have an empire to run or something? Wasn’t that the whole point of coming out here in the first place?”

Twilight averted her gaze briefly, clearing her throat, “I have...abdicated my position,” she admitted in a faintly bitter tone, “It has been...suggested to me that I acknowledge that I lack many of the qualities that would be required to lead a war of the type that is to come. There is already an existing leadership in place. Disrupting it on the eve of a large-scale military campaign would do more harm than any possible good I might hope to bring.

“So...I have stepped away from my place as Princess, and will instead seek to help defeat Chrysalis through other means.”

“Means such as hiring my company?” the alicorn nodded, “and the star admiral?”

“She will be coming along as a tactical advisor,” Twilight said, “the contract I’m offering you will be rather long-term, and if the initial phase proves successful, then the latter ones will involve much larger-scale operations than I suspect you are used to.”

“How large scale?”

“Including, but not limited to, overthrowing the existing leadership of the Pony Commonwealth.”

“Oh, is that all?” Squelch chortled, sounding just a tad incredulous; understandably, “I think I could probably clear an afternoon for that…”

“That would just be Phase Two, actually,” the purple mare blew right past the unicorn’s sarcasm without missing a beat, “your participation in Phase Three would be optional, but appreciated.”

“And Phase Three would be…?”

“Invading Equus.”

“Of course it is,” the unicorn began massaging the bridge of her nose, “what the heck is even supposed to be Phase One of this crusade of yours?”

“Tracking down Victoria Blueblood in the Minotaurian Concordat.”

“Finding a dead mare in cow country. Of course that’s how this insane plan of yours starts,” Squelch was finding herself having doubts about how confident she’d been that Twilight wasn’t the type to come down here to make jokes. Not that any of this was sounding the least bit funny to her, “you said that the ‘first’ thing that I wasn’t going to like about this contract was that you and the lizard would be coming with us. Assuming that the objectives of the contract itself aren’t the second thing, dare I ask what would be?”

Twilight hesitated this time, taking what sounded a lot like a deep preparatory breath. Whatever she was about to say, the alicorn was certain that Squelch was going to find it particularly objectionable.

“I want Slipshod to come with us as well.”

She was right: the unicorn mare didn’t appreciate that caveat at all.

Her features hardened into grim lines in an instant, “fuck off,” she turned around once more, looking determinedly towards the lake, and away from the alicorn.

“The real Slipshod’s family were the ones who helped Victoria escape to the Concordat,” Twilight explained, apparently deciding that it was still worth the effort to try and convince the unicorn to help her. As far as Squelch was concerned, it was a wholly wasted effort, “he’s probably the only pony she’d be willing to listen to, and we need her help if we want the invasion to succeed.”

“I believe that I’ve already explained to you how little I care about whether your invasion succeeds or not,” Squelch retorted in a curt tone.

There was silence from the alicorn for a bit, then, “so then what do you want? You’re a business pony―a mercenary. You’ll do just about anything for the right price, correct? So then what’s the price for Slipshod’s inclusion? Ten million? A hundred million? A billion? You’ll have it.”

The desperation was almost palpable. Twilight really wanted the changeling included in this mission. It was enough to prompt Squelch to look back towards the purple mare. Though she was sure that her expression was hardly encouraging. She wasn’t the least bit amused, after all.

It wasn’t that she minded the insinuation that she was some sort of ‘C-bit whore’ who’d agree to anything as long as there was a big enough number attached to the offer. That was honestly a largely accurate appraisal of her character when everything was said and done. True, there were a few lines that she wouldn’t cross―massacring civilians and such―but otherwise she could be quite accommodating to what prospective clients wanted from her and her company. Money went a long way with her. It bought her skills and abilities, her client’s privileged confidence, even her unwavering loyalty for the length of the contract.

However, there were a few things that couldn’t be bought from her with money. Not for any price. One of those things was her trust.

Slipshod was a changeling. A monster. He’d played on her emotions and violated her in ways that it was difficult for her to even speak about, for purposes that made her skin crawl just thinking about it. He’d lied to her. He’d used her. There weren’t enough zeros that could ever be added to a number written down on a check that would let her overlook those violations.

“What would be your price?” she asked, cooly, “what would it take for you to let a creature back into your life who’d manipulated you? Who’d used his ability to read your emotional state so that he knew exactly what to say and how to say it so that you’d convince yourself you were in love with him? Who’d gone through all of that just so that he could devour your very essence, like you were his personal buffet?

“What’s the going rate on that in the Sphere these days?” Twilight didn’t have an immediate answer for that, “he’s a monster.”

“He’s not a monster,” the alicorn countered softly, “he’s a changeling,” the unicorn rolled her eyes and looked away once more, but Twilight merely persisted, talking more loudly now, “he can’t help what he needs to survive. No more than you can help eating hay or oats. He’s a psychovore. He needs emotions to sustain him, or he dies.

“He was wrong to manipulate you like that,” the purple mare conceded, “he shouldn’t have tricked you into feeling a certain way about him. He should have genuinely reached out to you as a friend. Earned your feelings like any other friend would have.

“He made a mistake.

“But he didn’t do it maliciously,” Twilight insisted, “he didn’t do it to be cruel, or to hurt you. He did it to keep from dying. And I know that he feels badly about it.”

Squelch scoffed, “I can’t believe you’d actually trust a word that thing says.”

“I’m not basing this on anything Slipshod’s said to me,” the alicorn said, “I’m basing it on the fact that you two are divorced.”

The unicorn glared over her shoulder at the other mare, “mares who catch their stallions sleeping around on them tend to do that,” she growled.

“And why exactly would he have cheated on you?” Twilight asked, apparently unconcerned with the dour look from Squelch, “if all he was after was a meal, and he had you wrapped around his pastern,” the unicorn’s gaze narrowed further at that remark, but she said nothing, “then why step out? What did he have to gain?”

Squelch didn’t respond. She didn’t have an answer at hoof. Not anymore. At the time, she’d figured that the reason had been a rather simple and cliché one: Slipshod was a letch. That was hardly a rare cause for divorces―one pony sleeping around on the other. There hadn’t needed to be a deeper reason than that.

Admittedly, that had been the obvious excuse for it all back when she’d believed he was just a regular old earth pony. Now she knew that wasn’t the case. He wasn’t an earth pony. For all she knew, he didn’t even feel sexual gratification the same way that other species did. They were psychovores; they might not get a lot of gratification from physical stimuli at all compared to ponies. Which meant that the usual and obvious explanations for what had prompted him to stray probably didn’t apply to Slipshod.

So why would he have done it then? If it wasn’t to get his dick wet, then why bring that other mare back to their quarters that night? Specifically their quarters, too. That was the part that had always bothered her the most about it, in a lot of ways. At the time, she’d waffled between believing that Slipshod had either been too preoccupied thinking with the wrong head to realize Squelch would be back on the ship that night, and thinking that he’d done it deliberately in order to be extra cruel to her.

However, the latter had never proven to be justified by anything that the stallion had ever said or done since that night. He’d never insulted her directly, and she’d never caught him disparaging her to the rest of the crew. He’d never been antagonistic, and he’d never left. The stallion had stayed, as though he found nothing objectionable about anything that Squelch had said or done to him in retribution since that night. She’d not shied from giving him abuse either, and he’d taken it all in stride.

Which really only left the first possibility as the most likely reason for getting caught. But even that didn’t quite sit right with her. Slipshod was neither careless nor stupid. Not even when he was drunk. If anything, he was one of the most methodical and organized ponies she’d ever met! There was no way that he’d have forgotten where she was going to be that night or when. It would have been too easy for him to have his little dalliance somewhere else and leave her none the wiser.

So why let himself get caught? He knew her well enough to know that she’d divorce him in an instant for an indiscrecion like that…

The unicorn blinked. He did know her well enough to realize that. Had he...counted on it? Had he been playing her even then?!

Somehow the thought that the stallion had manipulated her into getting a divorce made her angrier than the thought of him manipulating her in marrying him in the first place, “that son of a mule! Does he just get off on playing mind games with me?!” she snarled. She glared at the alicorn, “I don’t know what he had to gain,” she admitted, “and I don’t know why he’d trick me into divorcing him. I was so out of it at the time that I’d probably have just agreed if he’d ask―”

The unicorn’s words cut off abruptly as she recalled a conversion that she’d had a little over a month ago. She had been feeling off around the time she’d caught him cheating. Doc Dee had even run some tests, and made some findings. She hadn’t thought that they were related at the time, but now…

“Serotonin,” she blurted out, stunned. Twilight raised an inquiring brow, but remained silent, regarding the green mare expectantly, “Doc Dee said he’d found I’d had some low neurotransmitter levels around that time. In Slipshod too,” she added after a second’s thought, “...if having your emotions fed off of had a physiological symptom, that’s what it would be, isn’t it?” the alicorn nodded, “low levels in me would make sense, because I’m the one being drained,” then Squelch’s brows furrowed, “but why would he have had low levels too?"

The mare went on to work out the answer to her own question, “if low levels in their prey represent getting fed upon, then low levels in changelings could mean not feeding enough,” she surmised, “...Slipshod was hungry,” she blinked, looking to the other mare for assurance that she was on the right track.

“Because of how vital emotions are to a changeling’s physical wellbeing, their ‘optimal’ neurotransmitter levels are actually at a slightly higher level than the average pony at any given time,” Twilight informed the unicorn, “if Slipshod’s levels were ‘low’ by pony standards, then it’s actually more likely that he was suffering from outright starvation.”

“...I wasn’t enough,” Squelch concluded, receiving another nod from Twilight, “then why marry me in the first place if one pony can’t sustain a changeling on their own?”

“He likely didn’t realize it,” she offered.

“So then why not ask for the divorce himself?” she frowned, “he obviously realized what was going wrong long before I did. Why trick me into doing it?”

“You could always ask him,” the alicorn suggested with a shrug.

Squelch grimaced, “and you expect me to believe that I’d get the truth from him? He’s done nothing but use me since the moment we met.”

“I’m just saying that if you want an answer to your question, he’s the only one you can get it from,” Twilight pointed out, “whether you believe it or not is up to you. But it couldn’t hurt to ask. Maybe you’ll even be surprised by what he has to say.”

“Doubtful,” the unicorn snorted, “but alright. Have him call me and I’ll ask him. But,” she quickly amended, “I don’t promise to believe him.”

Twilight smiled, “that’s fair. Trust is a lot harder to mend than it is to break. But it can be mended, given enough time,” she said with a firm nod, “as long as everypony is sincere.”

The purple mare then looked over her shoulder, “well, you heard the mare: she’s willing to at least listen.”

Squelch’s eyes went wide with stunned surprise as a golden earth pony stallion hesitantly stepped into view through the still-open apartment door. He was clearly more than a little nervous, and it probably wasn’t all due to the heavily armed ponies glaring daggers at him on his way past. She whipped her head back to Twilight, glaring accusingly at the alicorn, “what’s going on? You knew I’d agree to hear him out?”

The purple mare smiled, “I hedged my bet,” she said, “I like to think I’ve gotten pretty good at figuring out how to mend the rifts between ponies. It used to be my whole...‘thing’ for a while.”

She stepped aside, using her wing to usher the stallion further into the room and closer to the unicorn so that they could have a more involved conversation, “now, I believe that you had a question for Slipshod? I know he has quite a lot of things he’d like to tell you.”

Twilight turned to Slipshod now, “I’ve done all I can: she’s willing to listen. Getting her to believe it is entirely on you though.

“Don’t fuck it up,” both ponies turned their stunned expressions towards the princess, who merely shrugged, “what? I’m trying to adapt.

“I’ll wait outside,” and with that, the alicorn turned and left the apartment. The door closed behind her, leaving the pair of ponies with some modicum of privacy.

What passed next were several long seconds of uncomfortable silence as the pair of ponies separately sorted through their feelings regarding the upcoming conversation. Especially Squelch, who was pointedly aware that she had received far less warning about the possibility of this meeting than the stallion had. Which meant that she found herself with quite a lot of emotions that she wanted to process before they had the conversation that Twilight had ostensibly brought him here to have with her.

“I hate you,” she stated bluntly, earning herself a shocked look from the earth pony, “I hate everything that you being in my life has done to me. The sham marriage, the heartbreaking divorce, the secrets and lies, getting me involved in all this bullshit,” she gestured broadly to their surroundings, “I wish I’d never met you. I genuinely believe my life would have been infinitely better if I hadn’t.”

Slipshod swallowed, but then cleared his throat and started nodding, “that’s fair. Harsh, but fair. For what’s it’s worth; I’m so―”

The unicorn cut him off with a sharp look, “I’m not ready for an apology from you,” the stallion’s mouth snapped shut with an audible click, “not until I believe you’re capable of meaning it,” he remained silent, but did offer her a meek nod in understanding.

Squelch took a deep breath, steadying herself, “okay. So, you already told me that you married me so that you could...feed,” just the thought of it made the mare shudder. Slipshod at least had the decency to look ashamed of himself, “and I’m guessing that what Doc Dee found out in those tests meant that you weren’t getting enough...whatever from me. Right?” the earth pony nodded, still refraining from speaking, “okay. The cheating. You said that it only happened the one time?” another nod, “but it wasn’t for food, was it?” Slipshod shook his head.

“...Was it to hurt me?”

He hesitated, closed his eyes, and nodded.

“Why?”

“Because you needed to be the one who ended things, if you were going to get better,” Slipshod finally said aloud, “if I’d broken things off, you’d have thought it was your fault; blamed yourself and not me. You’d have still cared for me. Felt positive emotions towards me.

“You’d have continued feeding me, at the expense of yourself. You wouldn’t have gotten better.”

Squelch frowned, “why did it matter to you if I got better or not?”

“Because you mattered,” Slipshod responded, the words catching the sage mare off guard. He offered a small smile and shook his head, “not like that,” he said, “you were a brilliant administrator and the owner of the company. You mattered to the ship, you mattered to the crew, and you mattered to me insofar as you gave me a job and a home.

“If you’d died, I’d have lost all of that. I’d have lost everything that I had left in the galaxy. And I didn’t want that.”

Squelch frowned at the stallion, “that has got to be the most unromantic phrasing of the most romantic sentiment I’ve ever heard,” she said flatly.

The ‘Steed pilot chuckled, “I may never have loved you, but I have absolutely always respected you, Squelch. Obviously not enough to ever tell you the whole truth about me,” he acknowledged, offering a helpless shrug of his shoulders, “but in my defense, honesty isn’t generally a good policy for a changeling.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind. So you went out of your way to hurt me so that I’d be the one to cut ties,” Slipshod nodded his confirmation, “and from there you…?”

“Swore off long-term romantic entanglements and focused on trying to entice as many positive reactions from as much of the crew as possible,” the earth pony replied easily, “give myself a wider array of ‘menu options’, so to speak.”

“That’s still really fucking creepy,” the mare said with a shiver.

“I know,” Slipshod replied with a warm smile. Then the stallion’s expression seemed to falter somewhat for a brief moment. He shook his head and rubbed at his eyes.

Squelch regarded him, “you okay?”

“Just tired,” he assured her confidently, “had a lot of late night planning sessions with Twilight and Cinder this week.”

“Yeah, she mentioned something about a job tracking down a mare who’s been dead for over two years? Victoria Blueblood? What’s that about?”

“Remember how I told you my family died plotting a coup?”

“Yeah? Why―oh,” the mare blinked in mild surprise, “really? So she’s still alive?”

“She was two years ago,” Slipshod shrugged, “part of that job Twilight offered you is tracking her down.”

“And you need to come along to make the pitch, because it was your―or, rather, the real Slipshod’s family that supported her. Which means she’ll be more willing to believe that we’re out there to give her a second shot at her uncle’s throne if she hears it coming from you.”

“Pretty much.”

Squelch sat back on her haunches, rubbing her chin thoughtfully with a hoof as she weighed the offered contract. She believed Twilight when the alicorn said that this would be the quickest way to end the fight against Chrysalis. Which meant that it was indeed the swiftest route to her life returning to some semblance of normalcy. Heck, this operation would be ‘normalcy’. A paying gig, a chance to get back out to the Sphere…

There wasn’t really a downside. In fact, the only one that there had been was working with Slipshod again. Which...if the stallion was being sincere―and Celestia help her, Squelch believed he was―she might be able to tolerate him again. Whether the others on the crew would though...that was another matter.

“How exactly am I supposed to sell this to the crew?” she asked the earth pony, “it shocked a lot of ponies when the truth came out. They might not want you along.”

Slipshod nodded somberly, “I know. I used them like I used you. I don’t expect any of them to forgive me―I don’t expect you to forgive me; and I’m not asking any of you to. Keep me locked up somewhere out of sight. I don’t care.

“I just need to talk to Victoria and get her onboard with Twilight’s plan. After that…” the stallion closed his eyes and rubbed the side of his head, clearly quite fatigued, “...well, I suspect a lot of problems will be solving themselves at that point,” he flashed the unicorn a wan smile.

Squelch frowned, not quite understanding the implications of the earth pony’s last statement, but chose not to push him on the topic, “I’ll call a meeting,” she informed him, “see where everypony stands. I’ll let Twilight know what we decide.”

Twilight idly wondered if she was ever going to get used to her temporal displacement. Despite being confronted at seemingly every turn with evidence that just about everything―and especially everycreature―had changed, the purple alicorn still found that her first impulse upon meeting one of her ‘old friends’ was to treat them like they’d just seen each other, and that they hadn’t just lived through half a millenia of bitter strife.

Smolder had always presented herself as was expected of a young dragon: strong, willful, and independent. Even after she’d embraced the core ideals of Friendship at Twilight’s academy, the burnt orange dragoness had never let those outward affectations slip. She might be more open to sharing her innermost thoughts and feelings with those closest to her, but she was still a dragon. Which wasn’t to say that it wasn’t apparent to some that Smolder had been possessed of some hidden depths.

Every Grand Galloping Gala that Smolder had attended, she’d worn a decidedly resplendent gown. If pressed on the matter, the young dragoness responded with a mutter about ‘reluctantly observing the dress code’, and that seemed to satisfy most. Of course, Twilight knew that there wasn’t any such ‘dress code’. Not officially, at any rate. It was custom to dress nicely for the event, but hardly required.

It was certainly not anything that had ever been explicitly brought up in the invitations that Twilight had sent out.

That repressed fascination with delicate jewelry and extravagant dresses, along with her managing to find all manner of justifications for why she ‘had’ to wear them had been one of the qualities that the―now former―Princess of Equestria had found to be quite endearing about the dragoness. It had reminded her of Rainbow Dashes ‘secret’ love of reading.

There was no sign of that Smolder in the icy blue eyes that stared at the violet mare from across the table now though. Hundreds of years spent watching the Harmony Sphere rend itself into pieces, and then proceed to blow those pieces to flaming bits in perpetuity had apparently burned out that little light within her. She’d lost her faith in the inherent goodness of creatures. For that, Twilight was disappointed. Of course, it wasn’t like Smolder was the only creature to have undergone such a change, was she? In fact, such changes had been so common that Twilight found herself wondering if she herself might not have felt that way if she'd been forced to sit by and watch everything that she’d built become undone, helpless to do anything to stop it.

Was the only difference between herself and Flurry Heart nothing but the accumulation of time?

It was a harrowing thought, to say the least.

Smolder was not the only dragon in attendance for this meeting either. Three others were present, and Twilight couldn’t say that she was surprised by who they were: Garble, Clump, and Caldera. The first of whom, Twilight was the most familiar. She’d met him early on in her own life, and gotten to know the crimson dragon as a bully and a blowhard. He’d made efforts to smooth his rougher edges over the years, but always harbored various resentments. He’d not been a fan of Dragon Lord Ember’s rule from the outset, and had mostly complied out of a sense of peer pressure. It was not considered seemly, even within dragon culture, to be the sole dissenting voice against the Dragon Lord.

The other two she had met in passing over the centuries at various functions, bother formal and otherwise. Like Garble, their level of courtesy at those functions had been quite superficial. They were behaving as their Dragon Lord was expecting them to, and little else. They’d exploited the ideals of Friendship more than they embraced them, capitalizing on the networking advantages it provided in order to bolster their own personal and political power as much as they could get away with.

Twilight had always known that it would be the hardest to convince the older generations of dragons to adopt the philosophies of ponies. Centuries of tradition were almost impossible to change, and she understood that. It was enough for her that they had at least adopted the facsimile of Friendship, for the benefit of the generations that came after them.

Now, the alicorn found herself wondering if maybe she shouldn’t have tried harder to impart Harmony and Friendship onto them. There were limits to what could be done, obviously. Forced Harmony was not Harmony at all. A creature had to be open to embracing those ideals. Yet, it seemed that even then the good embracing them did could be undone with enough time and cynicism.

Smolder was proof enough of that.

“I’d like to start things off by telling you all how grateful I am that you’ve agreed to meet with me,” Twilight began, bowing her head politely in Smolder’s direction. She did her best to keep a warm smile on her face, but she was forced to acknowledge how difficult it was to see such coldness in the eyes of one she’d known to be a lot warmer the last time they’d met.

There was no reciprocating nod from any of the four dragons, and Smolder’s expression reflected annoyance more than anything else, “when the Dragon Lord says ‘jump’, the Clans jump,” she grumbled, “now what do you want?”

The alicorn suppressed a grimace. She was relatively certain that Ember wouldn’t have framed this meeting as any sort of actual ‘command’ that these Khans were obligated to obey. Then again, oftentimes it was not about how the request was phrased, and more about who was giving it. Twilight knew that, when she had been the ruler of Equestria, even her most mundane requests had been treated tantamount to royal decrees, no matter how apparently optional she’d made them. Nopony wanted to disappoint the princess.

Presumably, no dragon wanted to disappoint the Dragon Lord either.

“I have been made aware that some of the Clans have grown…” Twilight spent a moment groping around for the right word to use. She didn’t want this to devolve into an argument of any sort, or give the impression that she was trying to give them commands. Especially since Twilight knew that she no longer had the authority to do so, “...disappointed,” she finally settled on, “with how the inhabitants of the Harmony Sphere have been behaving.

“Which I understand completely,” she added, nodding her head sagely. Twilight vividly recalled how much of what she’d personally experienced upset her, “and I can empathize with wanting to do anything to make it stop. To try and restore even some measure of peace to the Sphere again.

“And I think that Princess Flurry Heart, Dragon Lord Ember, and I have managed to come up with a plan that will allow us to remove Chrysalis and restore Harmony to the Sphere with a minimal loss of life and in the most expedient way possible,” Twilight did her best now to sound as enthusiastic about the plan as she could, which proved to not be quite as easy as she might have hoped. While she did believe what she was saying was true, and that their new plan would mean fewer casualties, that wasn’t the same thing as saying few casualties overall.

Millions could still end up dying in the fighting. Blood that would lay the foundation for the new era of peace, as Slipshod had warned her. It was difficult not to feel at least some measure of bitterness at that thought, “I’m here to ask that you give the plan your full support, as well as the time needed to execute the plan, before you all decide to, er...take matters into your own claws. Please.”

Smolder was silent for several tense moments, exchanging glances with the three other dragons with her before looking back in Twilight’s direction, “you want us to abandon our invasion plans in order to support your invasion plans,” Twilight visibly winced at the not wholly inaccurate phrasing, but didn’t object, “and our incentive to do that would be…?”

The alicorn blanched for a second, stunned at the question, before managing to get out a response, “to keep down the number of casualties,” she said, “we’re trying to limit the destruction as much as possible so that just Chrysalis’ forces are affected.”

Smolder flashed a contemptuous sneer, “you’re talking like it’s only the changelings that are behind the fighting and the destruction in the Sphere. Except that nocreature in the Sphere knows that any of what’s going on is part of some nefarious plot! They’re all perfectly willing to go along with it just ‘knowing’ that ‘that’s how the galaxy works now’,” the burnt orange dragoness snorted, “so if the creatures of the Sphere are willing to do all of this when they don’t know there are changelings at all; what makes you think they’ll stop once Chrysalis and the changelings are gone?”

The purple mare was forced to admit that she mentally stumbled for a brief moment. It was very easy to lay all of the galaxy’s woes as Chrysalis’ hooves; but Smolder had a point: none of the Sphere denizens knew they were playing right into the changeling queen’s clutches. They thought that they were just going about their normal lives, which included all of the national and regional leaders who were perpetuating the violence and destruction and death. They were like Squelch, believing that this was how things had to be. They’d be doing it whether the changelings were there or not at this point.

“You’re right, it’s not enough to defeat Chrysalis,” Twilight admitted soberly, “that’s just the first step on a long road to recovery. The galaxy will need to be taught Friendship and Harmony again. It’ll be harder than before, I know that,” she met Smolder’s gaze now, her expression more determined, “but I also know that it can be done.”

“And so do we,” the dragoness said, gesturing at the other dragon Khans with her, all of whom were now sporting hungry grins that made Twilight more than a little nervous. The hunger behind those eyes was anything but reassuring, “we can stop the violence and restore peace. And we can keep that peace enforced,” Smolder asserted, clenching an upraised fist in emphasis, “long enough for that peace to become the new ‘cultural norm’, just like the fighting did.

“They’ll resist us; at first,” she acknowledged with a dismissive shrug, “everycreature resists change. It’s only natural. But, in time, they’ll adapt and they’ll embrace Harmony once more.”

“What you’re describing doesn’t sound like ‘Harmony’,” Twilight cautioned, unable to hide now how disappointed she was in one of her former students, “that’s...tyranny.”

Smolder glared at the alicorn now, “...it wasn’t ‘tyranny’ when it was ponies going around telling every other creature how to live their lives.”

“What?! We never ‘told’ anycreature how to―!”

“Didn’t you?” the dragoness snapped, silencing the former princess, “your kind indoctrinated a whole generation of creatures at that school, and then every generation after it at the hundreds that followed in its wake,” she sneered at the alicorn, “we were children, being explicitly told how we were expected to live our lives according to pony philosophies. Only to find out, centuries later, that even ponies don’t believe any of that ‘Friendship’ crap!

“Do you know what that tree of yours did to me and my friends at that school of yours?” Smolder seethed, jabbing her claw accusingly at the purple mare, “it played on our fears to get us to bend to its whims! It made Gallus and Silverstream think they were in mortal peril until they agreed to do what it said!

“And you don’t think that counts as ‘forcing’?”

“What? No, that...that can’t be true,” Twilight protested, shaking her head in defiance, unwilling to believe such outrageous allegations, “the Tree of Harmony would never do something like that! It existed to help the creatures of the world―”

“It existed to control them,” the dragoness shot back, the other three dragons around her nodded their assent, “obedience was rewarded, and deviation was punished. I didn’t see that clearly when I was just a whelp, it took me centuries to understand what was happening, took me seeing what even ponies become when that threat of retribution for being anything other than ‘harmonious’ did to the society that you molded.

“Stop constantly reminding ponies how ‘important’ Harmony and Friendship is, and suddenly they’re at each other’s throats!” Smolder scoffed, “which just proves it’s nothing but a load of crap to begin with.”

“No, that’s not true,” Twilight insisted, though, even to her own ears, she didn’t sound nearly as certain about that anymore. There was no denying the state of the galaxy, after all. Friendship and Harmony were foreign concepts to modern societies. Maybe she could lay the blame for that at the hooves of Chrysalis and Cozy Glow where the Harmony Sphere was concerned…

...But how did she rationalize the state of the Clans and the League-in-Exile? Torture, butchering of its captives, the Disciples certainly didn’t sound like a ‘stabilizing force’ in the Sphere as far residents like Squelch had been concerned. Those warped values that seemed to glorify violence and subjugation...that hadn’t been the changelings’ doing.

The League had done it to themselves.

Excuses could be made regarding a need to abandon the ways of real Harmony for the sake of defeating a greater evil; but an excuse was not the same thing as a justification. Were the changes to the principles of the League-in-Exile and the Clans justified? They’d been excused, yes, but that didn’t mean it had been right.

The purple alicorn shook her head, distraught t not just how this conversation was going, but at the general state of the galaxy, and how far things had fallen, “I believe in the Magic of Friendship,” she insisted, though her voice still wavered much to her own chagrin, “I know that the Elements of Harmony are the path to a happy and just society. I believe that with all my being.

“No creature is perfect,” she said, finding the determination within herself to meet the dragoness’ eyes once more, “certainly not ponies. Falling short of ideals doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile! It doesn’t mean they’re not worth pursuing, even in the face of adversity.

“The galaxy existed at peace for a thousand years! When Chrysalis and her influence are gone, someday we can have that peace again.”

“For how long?” Smolder quipped, dismissively, taking the alicorn aback once more, “another thousand years? Then we have another few centuries of war to deal with? Is this going to be the new cycle?”

“No, of course not; this time it will last!”

“You can’t possibly make that promise,” she snapped, rebuking the mare, “not even an immortal alicorn can see the future,” she snorted, “otherwise you’d have seen this whole Chrysalis thing coming…” she waggled a patronizing claw at Twilight, “you just lied to me there, princess,” the dragoness’ smile was anything but warm. It was a cruel, mocking thing, “you threw your own vaunted Elements right out the window just there to try and get your way.

“How are you going to get a whole galaxy of creatures to abide by them for the rest of time when you couldn’t adhere to them for ten minutes?”

The feigned smile was gone now, replaced with a contemptuous glare once more, “we already tried building your perfect little utopia once. It failed. So now we’re going to try things our way,” she jabbed a claw at the center of her chest, receiving cheers of ready agreement from the other dragon Khans, “we’re going to bring this galaxy to heel and finally give it peace.

“Any creature that resists us obviously doesn’t want peace or an end to the violence,” her tone had acquired an icy chill that sent a shiver down the alicorn’s spine. It was a soft, but firm tone that promised to not be exaggerating in the slightest, “creatures like that don’t have a place in a genuinely peaceful galaxy, and so they’ll be culled.

“They will be Sacrificed for the Cause. For the good of all.”

“Please,” the alicorn pleaded, sounding almost petulant in her apparent helplessness to sway these dragons, “Smolder, don’t do this...give me a chance―give our plan a chance!

“Please?”

The burnt orange dragoness hesitated, and for just a fraction of a second, her eyes seemed to soften. Twilight felt hope swell within her heart, sure that she’d gotten through to one of her first pupils. Then Garble spoke up.

“Why choose?” the gruff crimson-scaled Khan asked of the pair, earning confused looks from both, “who says that only one option can be done at a time?” his beedy yellow eyes seemed to delight at Twilight’s discomfort, “I say we try both,” he looked at Smolder, “we put out the word among the Clans that they can either help try and put the galaxy back together ‘the pony way’, or they can join us on our crusade to forge an even better society!”

He leered at the alicorn, grinning sadistically at her, “after a thousand years, we’ll see whose half of the galaxy is better, and who was right.”

Twilight was shaking her head, ready to counter the red dragon and once more appeal to Smolder, but even as she looked back at the orange dragoness, and the delight in her cyan eyes, the mare knew that she’d lost this battle. The prospect of a competition to demonstrate superiority pushed exactly the right buttons where a dragon’s inherent nature was concerned. Smolder wouldn’t even entertain the notion of backing down, not in front of the other Khans, where she might be seen as ‘weak’ to refuse such a challenge.

The other two Khans were similarly already muttering among themselves how much more quickly they’d be able to ‘pacify’ planets that the ‘pink pony princess’ could ever hope to. The bottom fell out of Twilight’s stomach. Had...had she just somehow made things worse by inadvertently giving the Dragon Clans an incentive to boycott the League-in-Exile’s invasion strategy in favor of their own distinct invasion plan?

A soft, “don’t...please…” was all that Twilight was able to manage, even as she saw the hopelessness of her cause reflected in Smolder’s hungry baby blue eyes.

Her lips pulled back in a vicious grin, “tell the Dragon Lord that she’ll have to command us―all of us―to hold off. Otherwise, the Clans are going to war without her…”

The icy blue griffon hen sat hunched over the desk, tapping idly at the keys as they navigated their way through the various file directories. The building was otherwise rather quiet, save for the click-clacking of talons on keys. This late at night, most of the command staff was home asleep. The only creatures to be found on the premises were the custodial staff, the night watch, and a few others looking to get less behind on their administrative paperwork.

The griffon lieutenant classified themselves among the latter.

Her official duties were actually rather limited, but her clearance level allowed for her to accomplish far more if she wished to. An enterprising officer displaying initiative in an effort to gain recognition wasn’t something that was wholly unique, and so none of the other officers had paid her much mind when she came in long after her duty hours had technically ended and sat herself down at her desk and began working.

An hour later, she finished compiling the summary of the forces fielded by the Clans and had the information transferred to her personal datalink. The griffon then went ahead and cleared out the system’s log entries for that evening and shut down the computer. She bid the cleaning crew and good evening on her way out of the building and took to the sky.

Ten minutes later, she landed at the front gate of the compound housing the Harmony Sphere mercenaries. While she could have flown over the wall quite easily, protocol was that every creature had to check in with the security detail before entry.

A burly gray earth pony stallion stepped out of the guard shack, snapping off a quick but sharp salute upon catching sight of who the arrival was, “good evening, lieutenant,” he greeted the hen, “I thought you got off duty a few hours ago?”

“I did. Realized I’d forgotten something in my locker that I needed. I’ll just be a few minutes and then I’m heading back home again.”

“Ah, no worries. I forget things all the time. Good night, LT.”

He waved the griffon through and she nodded and took to the air once more, heading in the direction of the small duty-barracks. Once she was out of sight of the guard post, she instantly diverted towards the apartment complex housing the mercenaries. Specifically the third story balcony on the west face. The blue feathered feline alit briefly on the railing before hopping through the door on silent, stealthy hind paws.

If anycreature had been positioned so as to be able to look into the apartment from the air, they might have seen the briefest flicker of emerald green light. It lasted for only a fraction of a second, so even any who might have seen it would have thought nothing of it.

The white unicorn stallion walked quietly to his desk and slipped his datalink into one of the drawers. He then turned his attention towards his bedroom, and the sound of the soft, chittering purs, that were wafting out of it. The more potent effects of the sedative would have already worn off by now, meaning that his guest would be poised to wake up if desturbed. Which was good, because she had expressed an earlier desire not to spend the whole night in his bed, insisting that she had a trio of hatchlings and a husband who would wonder what she’d gotten up to if she was out the whole night.

Her story for her family was going to be that she’d spent some extra hours at the office catching up on writing overdue reports.

Doc Dee had seen little issue in taking the initiative to give that alibi some witnesses who’d corroborate things if they should be asked later.

The stallion crept into the bedroom and eased himself into the tousled bed sheets. The icy blue hen stirred, murmuring something that hadn’t been quite intelligible. The physician smiled, leaning over and beginning to nibble on the plumage along her neck. The griffon let out a pleasurable pur, stretching out languidly. Her eyes began to flutter open lazily, a pleased smile spreading over her lips to either side of her beak.

Then, with a sudden start, she sat bolt upright, “shells! I didn’t mean to fall asleep; what time is it?!”

“Half past one,” Dee informed her, affecting a satisfied groan and an accompanying grin, “you’re quite welcome, by the way.”

The griffon grunted in a huff, though her cheeks did blush beneath her feathers, “yeah, yeah; you’re a real stud, stud,” her tone suggested that she was being patronizing, but the amorous feelings that simmered beneath the surface attested to the reason why she had been making frequent layovers in the unicorn’s apartment for the past week. She hopped out of bed and glanced between the exit and the bathroom before giving the underside of her wing a test-sniff.

“Yeah, I definitely need a shower,” she grumbled, “shards know Gunther hasn’t gotten me this hot and bothered in a long time…”

“Want some help?” the stallion flashed a playful grin in the hen’s direction.

“No,” she said emphatically, though there was the slightest hint of longing just beneath the word, “I’m late enough as it is, and ‘showers’ with you take an hour,” she dipped into the washroom and closed the door behind her. A second later, he heard the water start running.

The smile fell instantly from his face as he let the facade drop. The sooner the griffon was gone, the sooner he could get some sleep of his own. He rolled over in the bed, and his nostrils instantly flared as he recoiled from the residual stench of their ‘love-making’. The moment she was out of the apartment, he’d change the sheets.

Though, if a little sex and a brief experience with an irritating odor on his sheets was the price that he had to pay for the opportunity to collect information on the dispensation of the opposition’s forces, then it was most assuredly a price worth paying. Mimesis wasn’t entirely certain what his reward would be when he finally found a way to get the information to his queen, but the changeling didn’t have to fake the smile that was spreading across his face as he contemplated the possibilities…

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