Creepy ponies

Masky and Hoodie were leading the group of ponies down the hall. They were slightly surrounded by changelings, just in case one of the ponies tried to attack.

"Are you sure it's safe to just let these ponies in?" One of the changelings asked. "Even if they're surrounded, it doesn't seem safe, I mean, they could be planning something."

"I know these ponies." Masky assured him. "And most of them are too dumb to know what the word plan even means."

"Shut up." Toby said from behind him. "I may not be smart, but at least I'm longer than 3 in-"

Masky used his magic to seal Toby's mouth shut before he could finish the sentence. "Oh, shut up, Rogers." He was only more annoyed when he noticed Hoodie snickering. "It's not funny."

"Well, I'd have to disagree. The truth is always funny."

Masky made a growling noise and glared at Hoodie.

You mad, Timothy? Hoodie asked through the mind.

Don't even start with that, Bria- Masky was interrupted by Hoodie punching him in the side.

Don't call me Brian. He sounded quite angry. You know that's not my name, Brian's been dead for over forty years.

Masky couldn't help but smile at the fact that he was getting on Hoodie's nerves. Well, your face looks like his mask, what's the big deal?

Hoodie looked like he was ready to kill someone. His usual frown was twisted into a menacing glare and his wings were twitching in anger. Luckily, before he had the change to pounce on Masky or something a familiar changeling flew over to the group and landed in between them. You could tell he was a higher rank because instead of blue eyes, he had green, and he was slightly taller than the drones.

"You ordered a higher up, correct?" He asked Masky.

"Yes, thank you."

"It's no trouble, but I have to ask, why are you leading this group of ponies into our hive?" He asked.

"Trust me, I know these ponies, I'm sure if they attacked we would be able to overpower them easily."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that, Tim." Smile chimed in.

Masky's ear twitched in irritation. "Must I remind you, that is not my name."

"Close enough." Smile said.

The others chuckled at Masky's anger, all of them except E.J. He seemed to be shocked for some reason, which didn't really make sense considering everyone called Masky by his human name, it was just fun to see him get so angry.

Nobody really seemed to notice his shock except Ben, who slightly nudged him. "Are you alright, man?" He whispered.

E.J nodded somewhat slowly.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm fine." E.J spoke in a monotone voice.

Ben, of course, wasn't convinced, but decided not to pry. Not yet anyways.

Masky was still talking to the changeling.

"That's not really a reason to bring all these strangers here." The changeling said.

"Well, to be honest, we have something of theirs that I'd like to show them." Masky answered. "Just to see their reaction, nothing more."

"By 'something of theirs' do you mean that one pony we kidnapped a few days ago?"

Masky nodded. "If worse comes to worse we can contain them just as easily as we're containing him."

"I'm sure we can." The changeling agreed, glancing back at the group. "If they're anything like that pony it should be easy as-." He stopped mid sentence. "Jack?"

E.J looked away and nodded.

The changeling flew back so he was walking next to E.J. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"I didn't expect to see you either." E.J mumbled, sounding annoyed.

The others watched, confused.

"I don't get it." Masky said. "You two know each other?"

"Unfortunately, yes." E.J confirmed.

"What's the connection?" Masky asked.

"Well, you see, Jack here is my son." The changeling answered.

This made everyone stop walking in shock.

"That's your dad?" Ben asked. "I mean, I knew one of your parents was a changeling, but still, I wasn't ready for that."

Toby, Brvr, Masky and Hoodie all spoke at the same time. "You knew?"

"He told me." Ben explained.

"Does the queen know that you have a son?" Masky asked.

"Yes, in fact, I believe she may have met him before." The changeling answered. "Don't ask how it's possible, inter-dimensional travel is weird."

"Wait, if you're part changeling why did you ever decide to work with humans?" Masky asked.

E.J sighed. "I can't shapeshift, so I'd be kinda useless here."

"But they're letting us stay, and we can't shapeshift." Hoodie pointed out.

"You're ponies who have the IQ of a dead goldfish and Cleverbot." E.J pointed out. "I'll let you guys guess which is which."

Hoodie and Masky whispered to each other for a moment before turning back to E.J. "What does that have to do with why you didn't stay?"

"I was human before, and they didn't trust humans." E.J explained. "That and when I first entered their hive I was legally blind, having only eaten two kidneys, so I was kind of hard to put up with."

One of the changelings blinked. "You eat kidneys?"

"That's strange." Another one said. "If you're part changeling then why not just feed off of emotion?"

"Kidneys give me sight, emotion doesn't." E.J told them. "Now, if you don't shut up about it then you'll be my next harvest."

This made the two go silent.

"Good, now if you don't mind, we'd like to continue the tour."

"Of course." Masky started walking again. "If it interests you, we're almost to the main attraction."

None of them commented, since they all knew what that meant.

"What do you mean?" Toby asked. Almost all of them knew what it meant.

The others sighed.

"He means, we're almost to the room where they're keeping Jeff." Ben told him.

"Oh, well why didn't he say so?"

If they hadn't been walking they all would've facehoofed.

"Just to let you know, you're not going to like what you see." Masky said.

"Of course not." E.J replied. "If we did there wouldn't be much point in trying to save him."

"That was rhetorical." Masky told him.

"I know, I just like annoying you."

Masky sighed. "Who doesn't?"

"Well, you seem to get along pretty well with most of the changelings." E.J pointed out.

Masky's eye twitched behind his mask. "That was also rhetorical."

E.J didn't respond that time, to Masky's relief.

After a few more moments Masky stopped in front of a cave. The others crowded around him and looked inside.

"You guys follow me, I'll lead you to the fish." Hoodie decided to speak again, hovering above the ground and entering the cave.

The others followed him. Inside the cave was a sight that only E.J expected. It was fairly dark, but it was bright enough to see green pods hanging from the ceiling, which had ponies in them. There weren't that many, and pretty much all of them had ponies that they'd never seen before, but that didn't make it that much better. The ponies almost looked like they were dead, the only sign of life being their somewhat shallow breathing.

After about a minute Hoodie stopped in front of a pod. As expected, this pod had Jeff in it. He lied limp in the pod and his permanently open eyes stared at nothing.

Toby blinked and poked it. "Ew, i-it's all gooey."

"So is my eye socket, but you don't hear me complain about it." E.J reminded him.

"What is all this?" Ben asked.

"This is the cave where we keep the ones we kidnap." Masky explained.

"Well, I can see that, but why keep them in those pods?"

"So they can't attempt escape." Masky told them. "It's a lot easier than just using a prison cell or something, trust me."

"If you say so." Toby spoke again, poking the pod a second time, this time with his broken leg. He giggled afterwards. "I bet it's like they're passed out in jelly."

Masky sighed. "Now I remember why I was glad to be away from you guys."

Toby wrapped his front hoof around Masky's neck. "Aw, come on, we're not that bad."

Masky tried to pull away. "That's what you think."

Toby tightened his grip. "Because it's true, I mean, how bad can we possibly be?"

Masky couldn't speak, or breathe form how tightly Toby was holding his neck. He tried pulling away, but when he did the grip just tightened.

"In fact, I bet you don't hate us at all, but you secretly love us and think we're awesome and amazing and you want to give us cheesecake and cookies and you want to come home with us and lie down next to the fireplace with some hot chocolate before we eventually-" Toby was interrupted by Hoodie punching him in the throat. He let go of Masky and grabbed his throat, gasping for air.

Masky also gasped for air, and stepped away from Toby, behind Hoodie.

After Toby caught his breath he began talking again, to Masky's disappointment. "That was uncalled for, I wasn't gonna say what you think I was."

Hoodie glared at him. "First of all, yes you were, and second of all, that wasn't the only reason I hit you."

"What was the second reason?"

"I prefer to be the one who chokes Masky, and that's on rare occasions." Hoodie answered, smirking at Masky.

Masky rolled his eyes. "Thankfully."

"Yeah, yeah." Hoodie rolled his as well. "After tonight you're gonna wish I just choked you."

"You are a truly evil person." Masky said.

"We'll discuss this later."

Toby shook his head. "No, we don't mind, go on."

E.J hit him in the ribs.

Toby sighed. "Okay, back to the topic at hand then." He looked at the pods as he spoke, sounding slightly disappointed.

"You know you can't keep him here." E.J said, looking at Jeff.

"And what could you guys do against a whole army of changelings?" Masky countered.

"Well, we could, and this is just a thought, take you two hostage and slaughter all the changelings here before letting Jeff go and kidnapping you." E.J suggested. The others nodded in agreement.

Toby tapped E.J's shoulder. "If we kidnap them, can I-"

"No." E.J didn't even need to hear the rest.

"Hey, you don't know what I was going to say." Toby protested.

"I have a good guess, but I suppose you can ask anyway."

"Okay." Toby smiled. "If we kidnap them, can I keep Masky as my slave?"

"I would say yes, but I know it's that type of slave, and not the regular kind."

Toby sighed. "You know me too well."

Hoodie glared at Toby. "Even if you kidnapped us and they let you have him, you can't, he's mine."

Toby smiled slightly behind his mouth guard. "Would you say that he's your little slave?"

Nobody even chuckled.

"How do you think of these things?" Masky asked.

Toby shrugged. "It just came to me, not sure why."

"Whatever, we're getting off topic, again." E.J interrupted the conversation. "We came here for a reason, and that was to get Jeff back, not to stand around and talk about slaves."

"Oh, right." Toby said as if he'd actually forgotten why they were there.

"If you want him back you'll have to fight." Masky warned them.

"Don't worry, we came prepared." E.J said, getting into an attacking position.

"Good." Masky's horn began glowing and Hoodie got into a position similar to E.J.

Soon everyone, including the changelings were ready to fight.

"Good luck." Smile said. "You're gonna need it."