The taste of sweets lingered in Midnight Thunder's mouth as he considered the situation.
The Summer Sun Celebration, huh? That should be plenty early... Well, not so much for directly interfering with the end of Luna's moon-based thousand-year Time Out, but that wasn't something that Midnight should be directly involving himself in anyway.
... Right?
Well, as things went down originally, the Elements of Harmony had been found, Nightmare Moon defeated, and the Princess Luna restored to the position she had held before the fact that essentially everyone else was not nocturnal had really gotten to her. Not much in terms of complication, easy solution for a given value of easy, not really much in the way of opportunity for things to accidentally go wrong somewhere.
Not much room for Midnight to really get involved with the ponies that were going to go on to continue bearing those Elements, either. Not safely, anyway. That Pinkie had homed in on him somehow to throw a party was one thing, but it was pretty important that those Ponies meet, acknowledge that it might be a little difficut to get along, and then be willing to work together anyway. What with Friendship being equivalent to Magic for the moment and the mot part, anyway.
So just for a start, while it seemed unlikely for Twilight Sparkle to get distracted from her focus on how Nightmare Moon was about to be released... Midnight wasn't quite early enough to do anything but say hello in passing without risking things. He would have needed to arrive in Ponyville at least a few days before... ah, no, actually that wasn't the case. Twilight's own arrival here had been on fairly short notice before the celebration had happened, hadn't it been?
Either way, it was probably for the best that he wait to meet the rest until after the whole business with Nightmare Moon had reached it's conclusion. He shouldn't get involved with things that were going to naturally run their course and reach a good resolution on their own when he was here to prepare for something completely different... Right? Shouldn't he stay out of it?
... Or should he?
How was he aiming to prepare for things anyway, if he didn't get involved in the big events? The story of being summoned and then flung into the past to try to guard against a future that went terribly wrong after horrible invasions from creatures not native to this plane of existence was... Well, Midnight could rightfully be assumed to be unhinged and deranged if he couldn't provide evidence of it, and until the enemy got their hooves under themselves and started making scouting raids 'proof' would be hard come by indeed.
How was he supposed to get people on his side about this when he had no way of proving the threat he was trying to build up defenses against was real?
He needed to have earned trust. Participated enough, in enough of the big things, that people didn't just roll their eyes and tune him out when he started talking about a future threat that nobody else had ever heard of.
The question was how.
Play too small of a role, the sidekick of the situation, and Midnight would be humored more than anything. He would be listened to, but not taken seriously... a fear of demonic invaders would be a running joke right up until the punch-line of them actually arriving. But... But he also couldn't do too much. Not and be able to hope for good results.
Even if he was capable of taking over the spotlight, fighting every threat that rose up naturally on his own, what did that mean for the bearers of the Elements of Harmony?
They would ultimately wind up being less experienced and effective than they had originally been, when it had happened. Midnight's own weight added to the scales might counterbalance that... but it also might not. There was no way of knowing.
It also wasn't right to just stay completely out of sight and practice, training every day in expectation of the day that would come when Equestria was invaded from Without. Midnight was just one stallion, even if he wound up being the equivalent of any of the Princesses in battle. He could only be in one place at any one time. His talent was going to be tested in War, and no individual combatant changed the tides of a war. That took many things, many people, all acting together in pursuit of a common goal of victory....
... No, no Midnight couldn't stick himself with the weight of a general's mindset for the war to come, not before he'd made the preparations to be able to direct actions and have people comply. He needed to start somewhere else, building connections and making the foundations to base later actions on, and...
Empathy. That might be the better option to lean into. Looking at things from a different point of view.
Friendship was power in its own right, even if it was just the power to call in all your friends to join in on kicking someone you had reason to want to have a very bad day. That was the core of what made the ponies who bore the Elements of Harmony special. Near the end of it all, a number of the enemies that had stood before against them had started to learn that as well. They had just... chosen their new 'friends' very poorly indeed.
Selfish, self-centered, arrogant and demanding as they had been, there had been an effort made to co-operate in order to seek their goals. Now, they weren't good people by any means, and their goals weren't generally things that could be countenanced, but... they were generally still the less terrible alternative, even at their worst.
But the fact that they had tried to reach out and make allies, terrible reasons aside, was still proof of them being able to consider negotiation and compromise if the opportunity was right. And maybe if they were left without alternatives. If nothing else, it was still a start.
That was it. The 'outsiders', whatever source they came from, were the enemies that couldn't be reasoned with or negotiated with. More local problems could be tolerated, agreements with them could be found, since after all... they all had to live here, in this same world, so it wasn't in anyone's best interest for it to be destroyed or ruined. That meant that the question was just how Midnight could arrange things so that they were forced to play nice and get along with the good guys.
Luna wasn't a concern. She would reform into a respectable princess, if old-fashioned and slightly out of touch due to the extended imprisonment on the moon. It was the ones that followed that would be an issue... some more than others.
Chrysalis, the Queen of the changelings...
What was the reason for having the changeling race excluded and held at a distance from ponies? Two things.
First, their ability to shapeshift, easily allowing them to disguise themselves as ponies and slip in and out of various herds at their discretion was fertile ground for the seed of paranoia to sprout within. That was how they became a part of the horror stories that ponies told to spook each other, which would make it hard to integrate them to begin with....
Second, their diet. The changeling race requires an external source of emotion, love, to feed upon. The Queen can accumulate and redistribute the emotion, skillful rationing ensuring that a small amount stretches much further than it could if an individual were to feed and attempt to fill themselves on their own.
Combining those two factors, the natural result is for changelings to secretly slip into Pony society, fill a role somewhere, build relationships, and secretly trade places with each other frequently in order to ferry the emotions they've gathered home for the Queen to accumulate and redistribute... even if it stopped there, that would be enough to alarm and put ponies on guard against the Changelings because of the deception! But that's not all of it, either.
For a changeling to insert themselves into society, there has to be 'an open space'. It's possible for them to slip in as wanderers and vagrants, but... that doesn't provide much opportunity. Given that it's a matter of not only feeding themselves, but supporting the entirety of the hive on the backs of infiltrators... it's unfortunately effective to create those open spaces to be filled.
It wouldn't work well if they were just taking opportunities that came up by chance, sudden and accidental deaths here and there, since they wouldn't have much time to research the personality, habits, and hobbies of the pony they were going to replace. They would be likely to make mistakes, give the game away... and at that point there wouldn't be much use in arguing that you didn't do anything to that Pony, just slipped into their place once they were gone, Midnight imagined.
Perhaps a few attempts that failed like that were the trigger both for the underlying concern about Changelings from the Pony side of things, and encouraged the Changelings to actively plan out a premeditated replacement instead of acting on sudden opportunities.
They didn't kill the ponies they exchanged themselves with, so far as Midnight knew, at least. But it was debatable whether being kept imprisoned with the changelings and 'milked' for emotion over time to supplement what the infiltrators brought in was really a better result than death.
Maximized efficiency for the hive.
That being said... Midnight didn't really see any reason for things to have to be that way. It was a matter of that being the way it had always been, with Ponies fearing and shunning Changelings and the Changelings quietly and secretly feeding off of the Ponies in order to survive.
The main issue was that it was a matter of deception. If there was a way for them to openly become a part of society and gather emotional sustenance, then over time the Ponies would acclimate to their presence and adapt to having them around. There would likely be issues, especially at the start, but it would prevent problems later on when the invasions began as well. And infiltrators that could slip in and out of the enemy lines, with perfect disguises that they could effortlessly wear, discard, and change on a moment's notice? Yes, Midnight wanted that advantage.
If he had to say it, he also just loved the idea of integrating them in general. The social pressure aside, who would be unhappy to have a lover that could be anything you wanted of them, as long as you kept loving them? It was an exciting thought... maybe too exciting for him to have in public, what with how he wasn't really wearing anything that would hide a sudden erection and it wasn't yet clear how popping a stiffy at an odd time might be taken... he would need to be careful.
In any case, the sticking point and linch-pin of that situation was Chrysalis, the Changeling Queen. The rest of the hive would follow her direction, after all, so if Midnight wanted to prompt grand and sweeping changes in Changeling behavior... one way or another, it was going to have to go through Chrysalis first.
And that was just one part of the future he needed to plan for. Potential enemies further out...
Well. For now he needed to set the stage. Begin making moves that would set a foundation for resolving later events in ways that would create a framework where it would be at least possible for them all to work together in the face of an external, existential threat.
Midnight dropped a bit on the counter of a stall and picked a piece of fruit without inspecting it too closely, using the crisp and juicy flesh to wash out the lingering sugary aftertaste from his mouth.
It would all begin at the Summer Sun Celebration after all, with Luna's return.
He had to get this right.