High in the skies over Equestria and on the borders of the Everfree Forest, a beige Pegasus with a heart for a cutie mark was flying home. Unknown to anypony, her true name was Façade, and her disguise concealed her true form as a changeling, one of the finest infiltrators of Hive Chrysalis. All had gone very well for her. Both her primary and her larger secondary love stomachs were filled with sweet pony love, more then enough for her, for the needs of the Hive she served, and for the rapidly growing egg in her womb.Soon I'll be home with the true love of my life, and a full eighteen months to look after my child before I have to go back to gathering pony love. My life could hardly be better. She was so busy thinking about herself and her husband and child to be that she failed to remember that Everfree Forest weather ran wild, and got rather too close to a large thundercloud. There was a flash and a bang and pain shot through her whole body as a lightning bolt hit her carapace. Her disguise vanished, her wing muscles seized up, and she plummeted down towards the forest canopy down below. Lightning....my wings, can't move them...I'm going to die here along with my child....please no, not like this...
As she plummeted down towards her doom, Façade realized that she had a chance after all. If I burn off enough of my love, I could create a force field strong enough even to let me hit stone and not be hurt. The problem is, it'll take so much of my love... Seconds before crashing through the canopy she started burning off her love and although she slammed into the ground both her exoskeleton and the egg in her womb were protected from being cracked open. "I made it, I survived...but I emptied my hive stomach totally so there is nothing left for the Hive. She winced in pain when she touched the large scorched crack in her carapace. "I'm going to need to use most of my remaining love to heal that wound so I can get out of here, but...but then there won't be enough love left to nourish my baby and it'll die in my womb. I'll have to lay it here and stick it to a tree, it can survive on it's yolk long enough for me to come back within hours and get it, and it's poisonous to timberwolves or any other things that would eat it." She laid it with care and snuffled at it. The smell was different depending on the gender of the unborn changeling. "It's a girl. Nocta, my little Nocta, stay here and I'll come back within hours to take you back to Daddy in the Hive."
She healed herself in a burst of green flame and flew away, a little unsteadily, into the sky. The forest floor was far too dangerous for a lone changeling to stay for any longer then absolutely necessary, and the quicker she got back to the Hive the quicker a search party could be sent out to bring Nocta back where she belonged.
Unknown to her, one of the only ponies to regularly enter the Everfree Forest, a pegasus by the name of Fluttershy, was not far away. Many of the otherwise savage creatures were friendly to her, as they knew she would always be kind to them, whilst others she could see the tracks of and knew to stay well away from. She was after a kind of mushroom that, when properly prepared, could help to heal lame ponies, when she came across the green egg stuck to the tree. "That poor little thing, it must have fallen out of it's nest. Normally I would leave eggs well alone, but if I leave this one down here, something might well eat it." And she scooped the egg up with her hooves and set off back to Ponyville.
*****
Façade smiled and shed her disguise as she flew into the Badlands, the domain of Queen Chrysalis. To changelings, the ochre cliffs that had been eroded into arches and pillars and strange shapes by wind and time were a beautiful place. She flew into a deep canyon with a great cool river at the bottom of it and tapped three times, then twice, then three times again on a certain rock. Even in such a far away place the rules of the Masquerade still needed to be obeyed, for an open undisguised Hive might be seen by explorers of other races, and these explorers might escape to tell the world of what they had seen. Which would be very bad news for Hive Chrysalis as the other Hives would unite against it for revealing the secret of the Changeling race. She tapped three times, then twice, then three times on the rock with her hoof and it was pushed forward, revealing a guarded Hive entrance. "You have to help me...I was struck by lightning and had to burn love to avoid a fatal crash. And then again to heal myself, and I had no love left over for my baby. I left the egg of little Nocta stuck to a tree in the Everfree Forest."
They let her through and she flew quickly to where her husband Smersh was waiting for her. After hugging him and kissing him, she told him the sad story all over again. Soon enough the news made it's way up even to the Royal Quarters and Queen Chrysalis, who flew down to her in a rage. "Façade, you have let yourself down, you have let your Hive down, and you have let Changelingkind down. What if your egg gets eaten, or worse, found by strangers?"
Façade hunger her head in shame. "Your Majesty, my life was in danger, I had to abandon the egg to get here safely."
"You will take ten soldiers to where you left that egg and bring it back here before it is discovered. Bring it back, and given what you have been through there will be no punishment, but do not fail me."
