#rumors have reached me that Inq and DC's dead blog might be rebooting so much of this might be rendered noncanon

[shiftermod]

Spoilers under the cut because I don't know if I'll ever finish this.

In the timeline I've been working with, Shifter in the guise of Dust Jacket became friends (in no particular order) with Ash Maplestar, Curi, Night Spinner, Inquiry and Dream Catcher. Not in Ponyville but in a small town called Roan Hills.

A few years ago, Ask Maplestar Toys, Ask Inquiry, Ask Night Spinner, and a bunch of the other pony blogs my characters interacted with all went silent for various reasons. All of the reasons were good reasons.

But I gradually realized (I think 2020) that with these other blogs dead, I needed to get my characters (at least Chirp and Metamorphosis/Shifter/"Dust") out of Roan Hills if I was ever to move forward.

I floated the option of rebooting completely, and Lucidmod kind of talked me out of it at the time, or at least that's how I remember it.

But I needed a reason to move my characters to Ponyville, and if I was holding onto the shared universe in spite of the dead blogs, I needed to figure out what the fallout would be.

I had a comic scripted for this but ran out of energy, and then had multiple deaths in the family, moved, and I don't know if I'll ever finish the thing.

So, this is an overview.

Dust Jacket and DC become an item, and Dust eventually gets them matching silver lockets; Dust's has a photo of DC on the left and a photo of both of them on the right; DC's has a photo of Dust on the left and the photo of both of them on the right.

And then, one day, Shifter either receives an encoded message on a changeling communicator device which has been silent ever since the failed Canterlot invasion, or is contacted by a changeling officer whose name I'm not going to put here for the time being. Either way, the message is the same: Shifter and Chirp are being recalled to the changeling citadel, and the Changeling Queen is gathering her forces for some new offensive.

So, Shifter writes goodbye notes to First Edition and DC in Dust Jacket's hornwriting saying there is a family emergency and he needs to go back to his family, blah blah.

Unfortunately, Chirp accidentally leaves evidence that a changeling has been in Dust's loft.

So, First Edition finds the notes when Dust doesn't show up for work the next morning... and finds a) Dust's chess set collection still there, and b) changeling-related stuff.

He of course notifies Dust's friends not that Dust has gone to visit family, but that Dust has been ponynapped by changelings.

So far as I recall, DC and his friends from the Dream Delivery Service are technically soldiers (e.g. guardsponies) whose superior officers are unicorn mages.

Blogcanon is that thousands of years ago, unicorns annihilated Flutter Valley and the Flutter Pony species is extinct, the survivors having been forcibly mutated into the Changelings.

So, the unicorns and later Equestrian government have inherited stolen flutter pony magitech: dream orbs, a non-lethal weapon which renders the target unconscious for about an hour and gives them a vivid dream of whatever they desire most. They have a limited number of charges before needing to be recharged—and can only be recharged with flutter pony magic (or possibly changeling magic), meaning once they run out of "ammo" they become inert.

Unicorn magic, pegasus flight, and earth pony strength don't work within the radius of Chrysalis' throne, but the flutter-tech weapons do.

So, a small team of pegasus soldiers (DC and his friends) take these weapons and go on an unauthorized rescue mission to rescue DC's Sweet Baboo.

And they do, and are strangely successful.

And as they break into the prison at the lowest levels of the Hive, they are confronted by a large royal-class changeling emerging from the area, who starts to attack or sound an alarm but then hesitates when he seemingly recognizes one of the soldiers. This gives DC time to nail the changeling with the weapon and get into the prison to free Dust Jacket from his captivity.

None of the ponies notice the silver locket around the changeling's neck.

And at the center of the prison, among all the cocoons, is something a bit different: a glowing pod that looks almost artificial. And visible inside it is an unconscious Dust Jacket. So, the three of them break him out and carry him out of the citadel and the radius of the magic-negating effect.

They bring his unconscious body to a hospital in Roan Hills and he lays seemingly comatose with an oxygen mask on his face.

And then, while DC, Ash, Curi, Night Spinner, and Inquiry are visiting, Dust opens his eyes.

His eyes should be a brilliant green but they are blue. He doesn't recognize any of them and is confused, more so when he realizes that a pegasus is being allowed in the Unicorn Lands (Unicornia I think?) and then realizes that he is not in the Unicorn Lands, where is he, what is going on?

Night Spinner lifts the cover and checks the pony's cutie mark and it's a Rod of Asclepius, not a chess piece. The Unicorn's magic is the color of the book, not the color of the bookmark, which is the wrong shade of green.

The unicorn's name is Last Chance, and he was a combat medic whose last memory was of deserting the Unicorn Army in order to aid wounded flutter pony survivors and then there was a bright pink (or green?) flash and something happened and he woke up here.

DC realizes that Dust Jacket wasn't ponynapped by changelings; he was a changeling—a changeling who copied Last Chance's physical features, mannerisms, and voice—which obviously means the entire relationship was just for a meal and none of it was real. Some random changeling's greatest desire was probably a buffet of some sort.

DC leaves the hospital and goes home and sits in the living room and mopes, and rages, and sobs, and calms down and opens his locket.

He stares longingly at the photos for a moment, and then angrily casts it into the hearth.

The photos melt, bubble, crackle, and burn, and DC doesn't watch.

Behind the photos, engraved on the interior of the locket, are words:

"I'm sorry," on the left and "Please forgive me," on the right.

Shifter, having been hit by the device, has spent an hour dreaming a lifetime of what he desires most: living happily ever after with DC, raising three precocious daughters, and ruling a newly established hive to the north, and establishing a peace treaty with Equestria, sending Princess Cadance prank gifts for Hearthswarming (spelt "Heart-Swarming" on the card), etc.

Happily ever after. DC gets turned into an alicorn and gains the long lifespan associated with it, and the whole family all live happily ever after forever and ever and—

—then he wakes up on the floor of the citadel near the prison with an expended dream orb near his head.

Shifter, perhaps understandably, does not take this well.

He runs for the prison and finds Last Chance's stasis pod empty; unicorn scum, certainly, but also the only unicorn to try and save them while the others would see them destroyed, and thus worthy of preservation.

Shifter knows exactly what would happen next. This point of no return (literally) plus the Happily Ever After ripped away from him on awakening, breaks him.

Shifter is about as devastated as a changeling could ever be, and I don't really know if he ever truly recovers from it, but he swears off romantic entanglements altogether, intending to find ways to extract love through other means.

"'Tis better to have loved and lost—then never love again."

He is reassigned to Ponyville and requests that Chirp be the one to accompany him. (Chirp is utterly overjoyed; just ecstatic, omg omg omg omg omg.)

This time Shifter leaves prepared: over centuries, Shifter had experimented with fragments of the asteroid that destroyed Flutter Valley, various sizes and shapes, until he created a perfectly polished black crystal sphere and used changeling magic to phase it into his chest cavity, nestled among his organs, and adjusted his molts to accommodate it better; it is effectively part of him, has been for centuries, and provides a perfectly sized personal anti-magic field which can be temporarily enlarged with changeling magic if needed to cover multiple individuals or a larger shapeshift. I don't think Chrysalis knows about it.

Shifter has the other previous iterations and experiments and brings them with him.

"Dust Jacket" now lives in Ponyville and owns and runs a book bindery called Dusty Pages near the edge of town, constructed from stone and wood with shingles (maybe clay?) instead of the wood and thatch Bavarian architecture seen in most of Ponyville. The building looks very formal and has the curious feature that the lawn leading up to it eventually gives way to artificial grass, artificial flowers, and artificial hedges within a circular radius around the building. Within that radius magic just evaporates.

My plan for the blog now, at least presently, is to scoot to a future where the peace treaty between the Sparklebugs and Equestria has been formalized. Shifter has manipulated and/or intimidated his way into being grandfathered in, and while he made substantial concessions, he also extracted concessions. One of these is that he and Chirp and Lobelia receive either weekly or monthly love rations in liquid form in little glass vials (shaped like hearts) and in return they don't feed on any ponies. Another is that his residence and place of business (which conveniently are in the same building) is permitted to be magic-proofed (which it was already by this point but now he has permission) as a defensive measure. (He himself is also magic-proofed, and he may have magic-proofed Chirp to keep Chirp safe but I'm not sure.)

So: peaceful slice of life; in Ponyville; no magic anons because magic won't affect him or anyone in his shop/home; and all his employees are earth ponies currently, with the possibility of pegasuses in theory but not presently probably unless.

Shifter kept his locket and keeps it in a locked desk drawer in the writing desk in his bedroom. He never opens the drawer.

He still spends most of his time as Dust so as not to frighten customers, but doesn't technically have to hide who and what he is. A number of employees (such as Doodle) have figured it out but he's never harmed any of them and the pay is good, the benefits are good, the dental is fantastic, and he genuinely seems to be trying very hard to be an ideal manager.

There are some ponies who avoid the place, and there is friction occasionally, and this one super-angry unicorn once tried to blow the place up with a hyper beam that instantly failed because anti-magic field; he was arrested.

Shifter eventually gains a pegasus love interest named Disaster and they have dates and snuggles in bed together while awake and/or asleep (they sleep in on Saturdays) and it's all very cute and fluffy and snuggly-wuggly.

I chose to do this in 2020, largely because tying my plot to three dead blogs in a non-Ponyville setting that only the four of us used was causing my blog to stagnate.

Moving my characters to Ponyville was necessary to move forward with the blog. Ending Dust's relationship with a character from one of those dead blogs was painful but necessary, and it had to be tragic for all involved because... well... because reasons. I'm uneasy about sending Last Chance out into that abandoned setting, and I don't know where he'll end up, but again... it felt necessary.

Anyway, that is a spoiler-filled summary of what has led up to this point, this scenario is where the blog will be starting, and now I'm going to return to working on puppets and man oh man are there a lot of them...