The Assigning of The Mission
Alpha watched the changelings march to their assigned stations, each one doing a specific task to help the Hive flourish and succeed. Some were looking for mates to make some new changelings, while others were training to master their transforming ability, since the young ones don’t really know well.
Two changelings walked past him, probably a male and female changeling about to mate. One was wearing a little bowtie that he found while scouting through the Everfree woods, while the other had a very strange hairdo, probably a style the normal ponies wear now.
It was becoming increasingly common to see small articles of clothing in the hive. Something that wouldn't have been here a few cycles ago, but now there was a few ties, bowties, and bowler hats adorned on a few changelings, but at the same time there was a few that decided to take the freedom to dress even further.
He watched at the workers again and saw what had to be a male changeling wearing a gray suit jacket, a gold pocket watch hanging loosely from the pocket, and it was apparent that not all of them understood some of the simple nuances that went with wearing clothes
Alpha didn’t really like scouting through Celestia’s territory, so he didn’t know what was going on in Ponyville and Canterlot, except for the rare encounters he had with his close friend, Beta.
Earlier that day, Beta just got back from scouting, and was severely hurt, having a broken leg and an eyepatch from an accident. Not as bad as Alpha’s scars, which he boasts about daily, but that was irrelevant.
“I...need to find...The Queen…” Beta panted in between words. She was exhausted, and there were many reasons why, but Alpha didn’t know yet.
“Beta, what in the blazes of Tartarus did you do?” Alpha scolded his injured friend. “Please don’t tell me the normal ones have found out our existence!”
“No...not really….kind of….” Beta said, out of breath.
“C’mon, we need to take you to the Queen.” Alpha said to his comrade.
Alpha laid an arm on Beta, slightly carrying him, and moved to the throne room of Queen Chrysalis, where she spotted the two changelings.
“Where have you been, Beta?” Chrysalis growled. “You’ve been gone way longer than necessary!”
“Forgive me, your majesty…” Beta replied. “I found something...that might change...our strategies and plans...for attack.”
“Oooo. Please, go on, tell me more.” Chrysalis strangely changed her mood quickly.
“Some of the ponies are...having a wedding.” Beta began, catching his breath more. “This can be a perfect opportunity to attack, seeing as how...it can boost our energy with the love we can feed off from.”
“Interesting…” The Queen said, looking at both of them. “What do you suggest we do, Alpha, my second-in-command?”
“We attack, of course! Get a huge army, lead by me, into battle with the ponies, and we can suck off all the love we can get!” Alpha said.
“But, if you don’t mind me saying this, your majesty, the changelings you have trained aren’t very good. Look at what they did to Beta!” Alpha looked at his best friend. “While she is trained well in the eyes of you, I think we could use a bit more training. I can train them well, because I am, of course, your second in command, and because our army is weak an-”
“SILENCE, YOU BLASPHEMOUS FOOL!” Chrysalis snarled, pissed off by Alpha’s offensive words. “I have trained my babies for years, and you’re saying they aren’t good enough?”
“Y-yes, your majesty, but I didn’t want you to take offense. I could train them, you see, an-”
“QUIET, YOU ARROGANT PRICK!” The Queen yelled. “You are officially demoted, Alpha!”
“B-but I…” Alpha began, but was interrupted by Chrysalis again.
“SILENCE! Beta, you are now my second-in-command! You must gather an army to destroy Celestia’s ponies!” He watched her face scrunch up in anger only to smooth out as she became more calm. While all of them could show expression it was Chrysalis who was the most expressive. Their queen's face told of everything ranging from high praise to fear of banishment or death.
“T-thank you, your majesty! I am grateful.” Beta said.
“Alpha, get out of my throne or I’ll behead you in front of your friends!” The Queen snapped.
“Y-yes, your majesty.” Alpha said.
So there he was, looking at his once proud group of changelings, now a bunch of failed little pieces of crap. He knew they were all going to die in that attack because The Queen didn’t get them properly trained.
He was better than any other changeling in this hell-hole of nasty, slimy changelings. He could beat up all the Elements of Harmony and the Princess’s without breaking a sweat, and nopony could stop him if he wanted to.
But, besides Beta, he had no friends. Everypony seemed to hate him because he was “arrogant” and “haughty”. He really wanted to tell them that telling the truth about his abilities isn’t called being arrogant, it’s just being truthful.
Deep down inside him, he knew was an arrogant prick. Chrysalis was right, and the whole hive knew that. Sometimes, late at night, he would cry in his sleep and weep about how he hates himself, that he needs to change, only to be woken up and comforted by Beta with a nice snuggle.
Beta and Alpha were sort of a couple. Chrysalis forced them to be mates with each other, and that was fine and good, seeing as how the both like each other, but when the Queen gives more individuality of their types of clothing than their future wives and husbands, it kind of makes her a bit of a hypocrite.
Alpha walked down the stairs to see how the training youths were doing. He saw that some were a bit too small to fight, while others were fully grown, but were a bit young.
“Since we are going to fight the Elements of Harmony, we need to transform into them to confuse them!” The instructor said, pulling out a newspaper article of a cyan colored pony with a rainbow mane. “Transform into this and your transforming training shall be complete!”
The changelings concentrated hard and some bursted with green energy to very good and believable copies of the pictured ponies.
“Oh, come on, you’re doing it all wrong!” Alpha said. “You, over there!” he pointed to one of the transformed changelings. “Your eye color is a shade off and your hair color order for the rainbow mane is off! And you, your nose is a bit smaller than what’s on the picture!”
He walked to one of the changelings that he complained about. “What is your name, naive one?”
“S-sigma, sir…” The frightened changeling said, still as the rainbow pony.
“You’re the only one who actually copied the pony exactly. I’m proud of your fine work.”
“T-thank you, sir.”
“As for the rest of you,” Alpha backed away from Sigma, looking at the rest of the changelings. “You must work on your details, this is a war, not a simple battle.”
“Alpha, please.” The instructor said. “They’re just young kids. It’s fine as long as they have the confidence.”
“No, Gamma, I know what I’m doing here.” Alpha said, arrogantly.
“You obviously don’t, seeing as how you were demoted earlier.” Gamma said.
“H-how do you know about that so quickly?” Alpha replied, flabbergasted.
“News flies around, dude. It’s a small hive after all, isn’t it?” Gamma nudged.
Alpha backed away slowly. His life was all crumbling in front of him, first the demotion, and now this.
He bumped into two changelings, possibly the same ones he saw earlier.
“Hey, you’re that guy who got demoted.” One said.
“We heard you got some scars under that armor, Mr. Arrogant Alpha.” The other teased at him.
“I was in a rough battle, I-I’m actually proud of my scars! It’s battle wounds for experience.” He managed to get those words out. He was afraid inside, because he knew what was about th be said.
“If you’re so proud of those scars, then why hide them in your ridiculous golden armor! Hell, I don’t think that’s even real gold.” the first one said
“Yeah, it’s probably painted gold to show how fake and arrogant and fake he is!” the other one replied.
“L-leave me alone….” Alpha backed up more, genuinely terrified of himself and afraid.
His eyes have been opened for him. His actions have paid off. His karma was coming back to him.
“Oh, look, Mr. Arrogant Prick Alpha is gonna cry. Cry home to your mommy, you little sissy.”
He ran away from the two changelings, pushing some of the other changelings to move out of the way. He needed to get away from all of this pain, this cruelty, this harshness.
He ran down the hall of the hundreds of bedrooms in the hive and found the one him and Beta shared. He opened the door in lightning speed and slammed is, running to the bed and weeping terribly.
Why was he so arrogant, so unlikeable, so haughty and, what the queen said, such a prick? He knew little answers, maybe he was just spoiled. He was one of the first changelings created by Chrysalis, one of the few people who made this whole hive. Him, Beta, Delta and Gamma were the first four, following the old Equestrian alphabet. So he could have just thought he was better than others because he was one of the first and more experienced changelings in the hive.
He wept for what seemed like ages, and then it turned into a quiet whimper. Alpha thought it would be good to stare at the sunlight at the window, and it made him feel a bit better, like the light was shining in his cold, black heart.
The door opened again.
“Alpha, Chrysalis wants you.” Beta said, her voice soothing.
“N-not now.” Alpha said, his voice shaking a bit.
Beta walked to Alpha. “I know how it feels to be stripped from your rank, Alpha. I once was stripped away from being an instructor because I was too harsh on the kids.”
“That’s n-not what I’m talking about.” The sad changeling looked at the comforting face of his soon-to-be mate. He sat up. “I just realized how arrogant and mean I am. It just frightens me…”
Beta kissed Alpha on his cold lips, warming them up. The sensation of the two lips meeting was absolutely amazing, nothing like he could ever do by himself.
“I love you, Alpha. There’s nothing that can make me hate you, because I know what you’re like on the inside. We are kind of forced mates, so I have to be stuck with you.” Beta giggled.
“Th-thanks Beta. I love you two.” Alpha said as the two fell into a warm embrace.
He felt her forelegs around his neck. The hug made him feel secure, safe, and happy. He returned it and felt her pulling him closer. He kissed her, letting himself slip slightly.
She returned his affections, and softly she broke away. He watched as she turned away from him, climbed into their bed and then turned her head to face him.
"I love you"
No better words could ever be found in Equinish. He climbed into the bed after her, his desire, his need, and his love were all together in one body simply waiting to become one with him.
Hours later he looked up at the ceiling of the hive over their room. Beta had healed his hurt to some degree. She was the other half of him, and feeling her curled up next to him made him feel better.
"Stop worrying," she whispered half in and half out of sleep.
"Is that what that was for?" he jokingly asked.
"No, that was because I love you," she said before she gave him an extra squeezy hug. “Still, Chrysalis wants you, so you better hurry before the Queen gets even more pissed at you.” She let go.
“Alright, I’ll go.” Alpha got out of his bed and walked all the way to the throne room again, where Chrysalis was waiting with a smirk on her face.
“It’s been a while since we last talked, hasn’t it?Oh, Alpha, how I have missed you terribly.” The Queen lied.
“I was, uh...busy. Besides, I thought you wanted me out of the throne room.” Alpha said, sniffling a bit, thinking about the loving comfort of Beta. “Is this about my former second in command rank?”
“Oh, heavens no.” Chrysalis replied in a motherly tone. “That is long gone. Actually, I wanted to talk to you about a very special mission I have planned.”
“Tell me more, your majesty.” Alpha said, hoping that his mate could come along with him.
“It’s a very simple task.” The Queen said with an evil grin. “I want you to go out to Ponyville, maybe for a week or two, without transforming and learn about their culture and ways of life.”
“That seems highly illogical, your majesty. They’ll kill me in an instant!”
“Oh, but it isn’t. You see, these ponies say they are loving and kind to one another, so if you come as yourself, you’ll have nothing to worry about. Besides, if we can learn about them in a lifestyle way, we can form better strategies. Does that seem illogical to you now?” The Queen still had an evil grin on her face.
“N-no… I guess it could work.”
“Good. Pack some essentials in your backpack and say goodbye to your loved one, Beta.” She said, quickly.
“Wait, she’s not coming with me?” Alpha said, worried.
“Nope. It’s all just you.”
“B-but she’s my mate, I don’t want to leave her side! What will happen to her?” Alpha didn’t want to be alone without Beta for more than a day, let alone a week or two.
“Oh, when this whole “attack” thing is over, I shall worry about that later.”
A dreadful thought came into both of their minds: Beta dead.
To Queen Chrysalis, it was just another one of her useless minions dead.
To Alpha, it was his pride and joy gone from his life, the one thing that has kept him from killing himself the last couple of hours.
“A-alright.” He finally said with a bit of thought. “I’ll do it.”
“Good. I’ll be waiting for you at the entrance to greet you goodbye on the way out.” Chrysalis said.
Author's Note
Sigma is owned by Lunafan1k. Check out his Sigma Squad story here.
