In a dilapidated room with bad lighting, there sat five dilapidated men around a nice and shiny new table. The man at the head of the table, a large sort in an ill-fitting black suit, stood up and put his hands down on the surface.

“Gentlemen, you know why we are here,” he rumbled.

The man at the far right cut him off. “Oh no, you are not leading us into an impromptu Jesus Christ Superstar rendition, Dwayne!”

“Goddammit, Edgar,” Dwayne moaned in frustration. “Fine, we’ll focus on the matter at hand. That being those goddamn horses.”

A white-dressed man on the left side of the table coughed. “Ponies, Dwayne. There’s nothing wrong with the horses. Equestrians if you want to be specific enough not to-”

“Fuck you and your nomenclature, Tony,” Dwayne roared. “I don’t care how you want to call them! Of course the horses are fine! It should be obvious from context what the fuck I’m talking about!”

The man sitting opposite from Edgar, an older sorts with a huge beard, mumbled incoherently.

“For the last time, Ahmed,” Edgar said as he slapped his neighbor on the back of the head, “we’re not bombing shit. Stop suggesting it, you’re not former Taliban.”

Ahmed spat some violent-sounding words at Edgar.

“No, fuck you. You’re not even Muslim, shut your beard.”

Tony shook his head at the shenanigans. “Why’d you even invite the guy, Dwayne?”

Dwayne sighed as he slumped back in his chair. “I don’t even know, man. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But anyway, this country-”

“And many, many others,” Tony cut in.

“-thank you Tony – is getting overrun with these… Equestrians-”

“Thank you, Dwayne.”

“-fuck you Tony – and needs to be stopped before it gets out of hand. Especially those shiny black assholes… what were they ca-”

“Changelings, Dwayne.”

“Eat a bag of dicks, Tony. You can never tell which one’s which, or even if a given pony of another kind isn’t one. Now, even without them, the ponies are a problem. If you thought the illegal immigrants were bad, stealing our goddamn jobs…”

“With all due respect to your arguments, Dwayne, nobody else wants to do those particular jobs,” Edgar objected. At Dwayne’s “do continue” look, he obliged. “We don’t want to be the ones picking up other people’s trash, and the immigrants can’t get better jobs. That’s exactly because they’re illegal. And in the end, somebody has to go around collecting the trash, right?”

“Damn you and your education, Ed. Anyway-”

“I’m not finished, Dwayne. The ponies also brought entirely new kinds of jobs, like weather control. Humans can’t do that sort of stuff.”

Edgar’s words had barely left his mouth before he realized those would be his last. Ahmed, Tony, and the last man, who had remained silent up to now, jumped back almost simultaneously at the gunshot.

“Anyway,” Dwayne roared, louder than before, “it’s not even the jobs thing that gets me. It’s the rape packs!”

“Oh shit no!”

“Shit yes, Tony. The news won’t report it because of those namby pamby Princesses, but dammit they’re sneaking around at night, snatching our women right up!”

Dwayne paused to take a breath, and leaned in for dramatic emphasis.

“Do you guys know what a horse dick can do to human pussy?”

“I think I can imagine,” Tony said carefully. Ahmed nodded.

“And that,” Dwayne continued, “means our women can’t bear our children anymore! They’re depopulating our goddamn planet!”

The last guy beckoned for some attention. “I heard,” he said with a thick Italian accent matching his costume, “that they got changelings pretendin’ to be human doctors, and whenever a guy gets operated on, they gives you a free vasectomy on the down low.”

“My God, Rico. Now then, what do we do about all of this? And Ahmed? Don’t be predictable.”

------=======------

One month earlier…

“Look, Slipstream. It doesn’t matter how much you try,” one changeling said to another. They were sitting on the roof of an apartment complex, taking in the sight of Earth’s sun setting in the distance. The two looked almost exactly alike, were it not for the holes in their limbs. “It won’t fucking work.”

“Screw you, Hopper. We’re shape shifters, we should be able to do this,” the other changeling, Slipstream, argued fruitlessly. “This is not just some pride thing! Why shouldn’t we be able to do it?”

“Because, you daft punk, we’re quadrupeds, and we’re equine,” Hopper hissed, poking Slipstream’s chest armor for emphasis. “We can only change into other ponies.”

“Have you… have you tried?”

“Sure I have. I was young and naïve once too, y’know?” Hopper jokingly admitted.

“We’re the same age, asshole.”

“But yeah, I really did try,” Hopper insisted. “The result… you wouldn’t call it ‘human’ at all.”

“Show me. Try turning into… into that one lady on the news?” Slipstream challenged. “You know the one; the blonde human female who likes to wear blue.”

“Ah… hold on,” Hopper said, concentrating on who he saw on TV the day before. With a burst of green flames, Hopper changed his form to the best of his ability. When the flames died down, there stood a pony approximation of the woman known best as simply Linda. “See,” he spoke with the newscaster’s voice, “it can’t be done.”

Slipstream shook his head in disapproval. “I’m sure it can be done. It must be something instinctive or whatever.” He stood there in thought as Hopper turned back into his own original form. “Wait, I have an idea!”

“Enlighten me.”

“What if I took it step-by-step?” Slipstream considered out loud. He reared up and tried to hold that pose, comparing his stance. He let himself fall back down again, took a few steps on all fours, then got up again and tried to take a few more steps on his hind legs.

“What the fuck are you doing, Slippy,” Hopper deadpanned. It wasn’t even a question.

“I’m studying.”

“Bro, you haven’t studied since you first left home.”

Slipstream gave Hopper a nasty look and dropped again. “Okay, you know what we need, Hop?”

“Mental help?” Hopper joked.

“Forget I asked.”

Slipstream turned away from the peanut gallery and considered his options, rubbing a hoof against his chin. It produced a nasty scraping sound that neither changeling paid any attention to, but did cause a pegasus that was napping nearby to fall of her cloud.

“Got it!” Slipstream exclaimed. Focusing his powers on his hips, he slowly stood upright once more. As the flames died out, the experimenting equine found his first idea to have worked perfectly, or at least as far as he could tell.

“By the Power of Ingenuity… I AM A BIPED!”

Hopper facehooved. “We’re doomed. Please tell me you can revert that?”

------=======------

“And that’s that. That’s how we can get these people to realize the ponies must be driven out of the country.”

“You’re a genius, Tony,” Dwayne admitted, nearly driven to tears by the sheer audacity of Tony’s plan. “Ahmed, you on board with this?”

Ahmed happily mumbled something through his beard.

“Rico?” Dwayne called out. But Rico didn’t respond. He just sat there, leaning back in his chair with an odd smile. “Rico, answer me. Are you with us?”

Slowly, Rico straightened up his chair. He grabbed the arm rests and audibly smirked.

“Rico. Answer me, you smarmy Italian asshole.”

Slowly, Rico rose from his chair and adjusted his fedora. “I heard ya, boss. Keep your pants on.”

“What’s the matter with you, Rico?” Dwayne growled.

“There’s something ya oughta know at this particular juncture, boss,” Rico said in a dramatic rumble. With his eyes closed, he pulled out a cigarette, slowly stuck it between his lips, and held both hands in front of his mouth, as if to light the cigarette without any wind. He was, like the rest, standing inside.

“Rico, this is no time to smoke.”

To the shared surprise of Tony, Ahmed, and Dwayne, the light of the flame behind Rico’s hands was not the regular yellow and orange colors, but a stark green. Before the others knew what was happening, the Italian’s hands had erupted in bright green flames that quickly spread to his arms and chest. Within seconds, there stood a monstrous creature with shiny black skin and bright cyan eyes, wearing a practical dark blue armor – a bipedal changeling. The only thing retained was the unlit cigarette and white fedora.

“Changeling! Kill him!” Dwayne barked as he pulled his gun.

“I’m unarmed!” Tony shouted back. Ahmed, in his shock, just froze in place, smelling of fresh urine.

The changeling formerly known as Rico handily deflected each shot with his forearms, earning a few cracks in his dermal armor that he would heal later. Counting the shots, he waited for Dwayne to empty his clip, and slapped the gun out of his hand.

“By the power vested in me by Princess Luna of Equestria,” the creature spoke with a different, deeper voice that nevertheless still had Rico’s accent, “you are all under arrest for plannin’ da eradication of a sentient species.”

“You can’t do this, hellspawn!” Dwayne spat. “We have rights! You have to read our rights!”

“If ya were to check with Equestrian law, you’ll find that I don’t,” the changeling said with a smirk. He produced a sticky green glop and bound the would-be terrorists’ hands and feet with it, then stuck them to their chairs. Confident in his work, he flashed green once more, revealing his usual – and slightly less frightening – quadruped form, and tapped a hoof against a small device in his ear.

“Come in, Night Guard. Sergeant Ransack here, Changeling Squad Alpha. Yeah? Targets are secured. One casualty, not mine. Okay, very good, Commander.”

Ransack sat down on one of the remaining chairs. “Man, walkin’ on two legs is a pain.”

“Your kind… you’re horrible, you know that?” Dwayne hissed.

“Maybe. But hey, somebody has to come and collect da trash every now and then, right?” the Italian Stallion joked as he finally lit that cigarette.

Author's Note

Thanks to Nighthawk for some very good suggestions on the opening scene.