(Barbed Retort)

Well Shit.

I bathed in the sickly green glow coming from all of the bank ponies who surrounded me, their eyes were unfocused and their voice sepulchral, but I could deal with them, they were just bank ponies for the Hive’s sake. Completely emotionless, mind wiped Bank Ponies who would obey the slightest whim of a mad assassin, totally something I could deal with.

No, they weren’t the thing worrying me; that would have been the cloying, choking rage that had settled around me like the tender forehooves of a loving, caring, mother who suddenly had very, very good reason to punish a disobedient hatchling, and was letting them know there was no escape to be found. A sensation I thought I had left behind over thirty or so years ago.

It was disconcerting to say the least.

The motherly hug that is, not the rage, I was used to the rage; the rage had been a constant boon companion over the last few days.

“Thinking you could escape?” the feminine voice was just behind me, somewhere in that cloud of rage “Our Queen is most amused by your antics, drone”.

No point in getting riled up here, a chance would reveal itself, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t play my part.

“Oh, and you did such a good job stopping me, nymph” I shot back over my shoulder, seemingly angry.

“We did,” The bitch had the gall to sound smug, “you are still here, and all the playthings are in our Queen’s grasp, soon the witless Captain will come here at the beckoning of his drones, and they will…”

Oh Queen, I thought to myself, she’s going to monologue. I was not going to just sit there and listen to some half-baked villain monologue delivered by the most bored sounding Changeling I’d ever met.

“Let me guess” I interrupted her as loudly as I could, Bulwark twitching slightly at my hooves “You were going to stun me, partially destroy the folder, and brainwash Bulwark into snapping my neck because he’d seen me trying to destroy evidence” my outburst was met with stunned silence “In fact I’m willing to bet you have multiple drones ready to sacrifice in case my Queen hadn’t sent me here with Shining Armour, after all why do you think Moonbutt and I had such a loud shouting match on the station platform” I was smiling as the anger started to fade to a stunned shock, the emotion hitting the ground, and spreading like a puddle of molasses.

“You cannot have planned that!”

“Your Queen’s end plan was to destroy My Queen’s Hive, absorb the remains of her swarm and then infiltrate Equestria to your own ends, most likely by fostering the political distance between Equestria and Chrysalis, before either having Equestria wipe us out, or doing it yourself, and making it look like we had just left, never to return?”

The anger had receded from my limbs, taking away the disconcerting weight that had pinned me in place, which in turn allowed me to twist around, glaring at her.

“Am I getting close yet?”

The infiltrator stared back at me, I hadn’t really noted her appearance during my helter-skelter rush from the archives beyond the brief impact of ramming her head into a filing cabinet; I should have done it harder.

She almost looked normal, almost; if it hadn’t been for the dull white eyes that were deeply set into her skull, or the cartilaginous snout that split open revealing a worm like maw, with rings of jagged looking, fangs that was hanging open in shock, lines of drool pooling on to the floor.

“Queens of Old, you’re the ugliest thing I’ve had the displeasure of seeing”, I never claimed to be subtle, I have claimed to be smart on several very ill-advised occasions, but I have never claimed to be subtle.

Which is probably why this caught her attention and managed to violently jerk her back into action.

“You think that you have bested us? That this was our only plan for your demise? Your Queen shall fall and her swarm will be as dust in the Wasteland! We shall take pleasure in reducing you to an emotionless husk and presenting the bounty of your heart to our Queen” the changeling was almost shouting, flecks of spittle and saliva flying through the air in front of it, and I shuddered in overly obvious revulsion, letting a little bit of the emotion flow out of me and slap the infiltrator across her snout, before putting my mental shield back in place.

I could feel her anger growing again, trying to grasp at me, and choke the life from my neck, even as my mental shield kept me safe, before the emotion disappeared, to be replaced by smugness.

“We wonder drone, her horn flared with green light, although now I had the time to pay attention I could see the white fire at the heart of it “how you will react to this?”

I barely had time to stifle my expression as the infiltrators telekinesis snatched one of the bank tellers, hovering the pony next to her. The mare’s sickly green eyes staring at me as her body started to twist around while her head was held in place; the slow motion accompanied by the popping and crackling would be expected of someling stretching their neck after heavy exercise.

“Drop your defences drone” the Infiltrator crowed smugly at me “or this pony will die, I assure she is feeling everything, trapped in her own head, unable to make even the slightest resistance, it will be no waste to lose this one, I have been feeding from it for months and it can barely drag itself from its cocoon in the mornings, I doubt it would live another week.”

That got my attention, but I kept my mental shield going, I could sacrifice one pony for my Queen’s Hive: I didn’t want to, but I could.

“Go ahead, she means nothing to me, you can just continue wasting my time with meaningless threats and keep digging your grave deeper, I wonder what the guards will think when they come in and find some poor pony dead on the ground, her neck shattered, rather hard to justify finding your targets corpse in the archives, and his victims in the foyer” I smirked coldly, praying that she would buy my bluff.

“We suppose that we’ll just have to modify the guard’s memories further then”

Well shit.

I could see her telekinesis brighten as the mare’s body twisted further, the grinding and popping of bones registering in the back of my head as my own magic built under my disguise.

It was a pleasant surprise when the bank doors flew open, late afternoon daylight streaming in through the overly large portal, followed, at a comparatively slower pace, by two ponies in the armour of the City Guard.

All eyes in the room turned to stare at them as they started to speak while I felt my disguise drop.

It might’ve been personal pride but I always said it to anyling that would listen; Transmutational Transformation is superior to any other method, no grand flash of light as the illusion drops, no period of readjustment as the enchantments rearrange your view of the world; just the release of magic back into the air that takes barely a second, the elastic rippling of sensation as I reshaped my body into how it was supposed to be, the coat & hat fading back into my solid chitin and tattered wings.

“The alarm went off is every…” the guards voices halted as they took in the decidedly unsettling plateau that they had just uncovered, before the Unicorn’s horn blazed with light and he sent a flare hurtling into the sky.

My disguise was still dissipating as I darted forwards, swinging one of my forehooves at the infiltrator who leapt backwards out of reach, her horn swinging the golden coloured bank mare directly at my side like an improvised club.

She didn’t notice my horn glow again as the new transformation spell rippled through my body.

It’s a very little known fact that most Changelings’ need a little in the way of physical nourishment, most ponies think that all we need is emotions, and while emotions do power our magic, we need a little physical nourishment to make our metabolism go.

My hive in particular grew Fungi as a food source; various very dangerous Fungi, several species of Fungi that would explode if mishandled, spike covered fungi whose spores could cover several kilometres.

Nature is so fascinating, explosive too.

The flash of ignition was mostly covered by the fact that I had my leg between my eyes and the pod on my limb, but the screech of pain as tiny little barbs started digging into the infiltrators snout was music to my ears, even if I had been aiming for her eyes, while the magic she had surrounding the hovering mare dissipated.

“Lay down on the ground, you have the right…” I could hear the Pegasus thundering as he pulled a heavy looking truncheon out from under a wing

“GET THEM!”

Green eyes turned to the two guards as wings unfurled, horns lit up, and hooves stomped against the carpet.

Then all Tartarus broke loose.

Good thing I was only paying minimal attention to that fight.

I refused to let the infiltrator get away from me, like she had gotten away from the guards before.

Darting in as she screamed with rage, I brought the same hoof to bear, green ichor trailing from the wound I had left on myself, my horn flaring again as she evaded again, a pale shield flickering into existence between us as I smashed into the barely there wall of force with all of my strength, splattering her shield with the ichor from my wound which was already starting to seal itself; her horn flaring as with light as she held me back.

Which is why she didn’t notice the grasping tentacle that uncoiled from my shoulder before it snaked around the wall of force and lashed at her wings. I had to ground her before she escaped.

Her sudden disappearance with a flash of white fire put paid to that idea as my tentacle whipped through thin air.

Well shit.

No smouldering ashes on the floor, so she hadn’t portalled out, a building like this should’ve had anti-teleport wards installed anyway.

I could feel my mind slowing as the haste spell wore down, my awareness fading as my senses dulled ever so slightly.

I barely managed to leap to the side as the shield burst with a thunderclap of force, the rush of air twisting my body around and staggering my landing, my hooves stumbling on the carpeted floor as I tried to regain my balance, a bolt of crimson magic shot past my retreating snout.

The magic drew my eyes to the side and I managed to roll onto my back just as a Pegasus dove at me, my back legs intercepting its attack with a practised motion as I continued through the roll, before bucking it into the wall behind me. It would have been an extremely impressive manoeuvre if it hadn’t been for the Earth Pony that tackled me as I returned to my hooves.

It wasn’t an impressive tackle, as far as tackles go I would’ve rated it a 3/10, but in my unbalanced state it was enough to knock me to the ground and I scrambled to escape before the Earth Pony stomped down in the space where my ribcage had been, bringing both hooves down with enough force to shake the floor.

I didn’t even have time to try and trip him up before another bolt of magic flashed in my vision, and I continued to roll away, arcane darts shattering against the floor, each coming closer than the last.

This constant dodging was getting old; I needed to get under cover for just a second.

Breaking the roll I bounced to my hooves and charged the unicorn, their horn was sizzling with cream magic, wisps of smoke following it as her head turned to track my motion, before another flare of light and a maelstrom of miniature magical missiles screamed through the decreasing distance between us. My own green magic meeting the darts, trying to stop them while they crashed against my carapace; leaving scorch marks and bloody traces as evidence of their impact, even as my body rippled again before there was a pop, a rush of air, and I was the size of a hatchling and the remainder of the darts soared over my fins.

I darted under the unicorn, through the legs of a grasping Earth Pony, and over one of the bank’s counters, ducking behind the heavy wood as the rushed transformation dispelled itself with a flare of magic.

“Hiding will not save you drone” The infiltrator was sitting there, waiting calmly, her horn blazing with light.

Well shi...

My vision filled with green as the balefire smashed into my snout, lifting me from the ground, driving me through the counter and slamming me into the wall opposite. It was a lot less pleasant without my armour to take the impact for me and I could feel my carapace crack and splinter against the stone surface.

I barely registered the Pegasus guard lying next to me as I tried to pick myself up. Green blood trickled from my wings and barrel, I could feel my back plate crunch and shift as I tried to move, my horn throbbed like it had been stuffed with webbing, and one of my ankles twisted as I attempted to put my weight on it, before a group of ponies forced me to the floor with a sickening crunch, as I fought back the hiss of agony that pushed against my fangs.

I couldn’t feel pain, not now, I had to deal with this first, and then there would be time for pain. And maybe a drink to take my fractured mind off of the pain, a sweet honeyed drink full of excitement.

I continued to struggle against the ponies holding me against the floor, ignoring the noises that my chitin made as the Infiltrator strutted across the floor; her hooves clicking against the floor on a path outlined by green flames.

“You see drone?” I glared up at her as she looked down at me, smirking like she had already won “If you cannot hope to stand against me, how will your soft-shelled, youngling of a Queen hope to stand against the glory of our Queen?”

I continued to glare as a last ditch plan formed in my mind, something that I would have preferred to avoid.

“And even if you had succeeded here, do you think we do not have other plans for the pit you call a hive? Do you think your actions here have made any form of a difference?” She crowed in triumph, as I started to summon my magic, my will fighting against the wild pain howling in my head as the magic started to take shape.

“They know... you’re here” I barely managed to croak out against the throbbing in my head and the pain in my chest as I tried to buy just a few more seconds of focus, while she turned to the Unicorn guard in the corner of my vision, his hooves planted on the steps outside, his horn glowing as he held a shield over the open doors and the windows that lined the bank’s front facing.

“So what, with the love I’ll harvest from this room they may send weakling after weakling at me” she started to laugh as her horn lit up with green and white flames “And even if I fall it’ll be too late for anyling to save your pathetic Queen, there will be no love for your swarm anywhere in this weak land, you have lost and your essence shall feed the Swarm.”

The flames on her horn started to curl towards me, lunging like they were possessed of their own cruel will and I released my final spell up against them, white light bursting from the contact point between her will and my own as the magic in the air started to unravel with the force of a collapsing cavern.

I closed my eyes and let the light wash over me as the dysjunction fed on all the ambient magic in the air.

Even with my eyes closed, my vision turned white.

<~~***~~>

(Shining Armour)

I was about five minutes’ walk away from the bank when I saw the emergency flare go up. I knew the spot it had gone up from; it was right by the bank.

I didn’t have time to panic; Bulwark was down there, the bank clerks were down there, innocent ponies could be down there.

I felt myself break into a gallop, covering the distance far quicker than the messenger by my side; I was shoving my way through the crowds that stopped to stare in the sky as the red flare hovered in the sky, sending ponies to the ground in my rush. Frustration and worry rising in my throat as the crowds thickened; a plethora of panicked, pony pedestrians pushing against me as they ran parallel to my path, until I managed to reach a pair of guards who were either helping ponies escape in a calm and collected manner, or containing the curious crowd away from the bank, before an armoured hoof shot out to halt my progress.

“I’m sorry you can’t be here there’s an emergen…” the Pegasus looked up at me his expression twisting between relief and horror as he realised who he was talking to.

“I would argue that the fact there is an emergency is why I am here, what’s happened corporal” I tried to keep the humour out of my voice, this was a serious situation, but that reaction was almost too much after everything I had been through in the last five days.

“We don’t entirely know sir, The bank's alarm wards went off, Valiant and I secured this end of this street, CC and Line got the other side, Break and Idol went to go check the bank out and they’d barely opened the doors before Idol sent the flare up and covered the entire place in his shields, Break just ran inside yelling. We’re just waiting for reinforcements now to hold back the crowds while we work sir”

I was just about to ask if there was any information on who had set off the Bank’s wards when I saw a white light build behind its windows. A white light that set my teeth on edge and sent my horn into overdrive.

I didn’t even have time to throw my shields up; I just grabbed the Pegasus and flung him to the ground behind me as the white light burst from the bank, breaking the barriers cast over the bank like a gust of wind blowing away dust.

The enchantments in my helmet scarcely kept my eyes safe from the glaring light as it flooded over me, before they collapsed with a screech of noise, the light washing over the crowd behind me before blinking out with a rush of green flames.

I could hear the sound of retching from the crowd, and my own stomach roiled with a sudden bout of nausea and weakness as my legs trembled under the weight of my, suddenly, very heavy, armour; but it felt like I was looking at everything through a film of mist as my eyes watered from the flare of whatever that light was.

<~~***~~>

(Barbed Retort)

I would like to say that once the backlash of my dysjunction spell wore off I leapt into action, bravely restraining the now unconscious infiltrator with some hardened goop, checking on all the moaning bank ponies, making sure that the folder was still intact and all the evidence we needed was still there.

I would like to say that, but mostly I just lay there, adding my own moans to the concert of discomfort that surrounded me as I attempted to be able to see again without my visions filling up with flashing colours and patterns.

I’m not entirely sure just how long I spent warming the floor with my sides until I could see again but the clatter of armoured hooves on the floor, and the flood of concern that cut through the faint fog of confusion reminded me that I still technically had a job to do.

Which is why when I tried to stand up, I felt my one of my hind hooves collapse from underneath me; sending me back to the floor with a crashing impact, right on to my wounded wing.

Balefire, stagnation, and cobwebs; did that fucking hurt.

I managed to choke back a moan of pain as I lay there, my eyes closed with the effort of just not crying out. I could feel the scraps of love I had had left flicker and weave on my wounds, repairing what they could, and sealing what they couldn’t; and just felt thankful I was a Praetorian, anyling else would’ve been irreparably broken by that blast, I could just lie here and wait for the hurting to stop.

Oh Queen, how I wanted to just lie here and wait for the hurting to stop.

Which was why, when I felt a pair of hoofcuffs click shut around my wounded leg I started screaming bloody murder and managed to slug my captor in the snout with all the strength of an incredibly angry kitten.

“Commander, this one’s still conscious” A voice sounded out from above me and I gave another pained groan in recognition.

More armoured hooves clicking and clacking on the floor, how were they doing that on a carpet? Another barely seen presence hovered above me, although this one was joined by a voice I could put to a face.

“Name?”

“Barbed Retort” I mumbled back to him, it was the agreed on name, noling or pony in the city other than Shining Armour knew this name, it was the signal to make I was still me, never mind the fact that noling would have been able to copy my rugged good looks.

“Get the cuffs off of him, gently” I could feel him turn to me, and a wash of concern, actual polite concern, brushed against me, numbing my wounds enough that I could try to stand up again.

In thirty minutes or so, I didn’t want to repeat the last attempt that quickly.

“That the assassin?”

“I’ll assume you’re pointing to the other changeling lying somewhere in the room” as I gestured weakly at my eyes with one of my hooves “and the answer is yes, yes she is”

“This thing’s a she?” a new voice came from somewhere in front of me, it looked like a blurred lump of white and gold “I thought changeling females were supposed to be ethereal beauties, the likes of which mortal ponies couldn’t lay eyes on, this thing looks the west end of my wife walking east”

I choked out a wheezing laugh against the flood of humour that had little tingles of lust and love floating in it that I gleefully devoured for what little energy they could give me, as I heard Shining Armour sputter in shock from elsewhere in the room.

“I pray for your sake then, that the east end of your wife is that of ravishing beauty found only once in this fleeting mortality” I could feel my vision returning slowly, my other senses returning with it, the simple aura of humour mixing with deeply felt anxiety and denial; truly humour is the coping method of the gods.

“Only when she’s walking east” I almost wished I could see Shining Armour’s face at that comeback, his shock was almost a tangible thing matched only by the deep rumbling chuckle of the guard who was removing my hoofcuffs.

“Commander, we got a couple of casualties over here”

And there went the entirety of that good mood down the irrigation channels, any humour winking out to be replaced with anger and pain as the words cut through the joviality like a knife.

“If they are not in clear and present danger do not move them until the healers get here, what are we looking at?”

And this was the part of victory that I had hoped to avoid, when all was said and done, the celebrations had died down, and the broken things were being cleaned away.

“Earth Pony with a broken neck, possibly more, but still alive and a Pegasus I had to flip into a wall for the sake of my own health” I answered as I pushed myself back to hooves, my tortured limbs holding under my weight as I wobbled about just standing upright, “Probably a concussion and wing damages, but I pulled that punch.”

“YOU BROKE HER NECK?”

Oh hey, I’d actually missed Shining’s rage, pure anger mixed with the love of a natural born protector; it was like eating chocolate coated ghost chillies by the hoofful, good for short bursts, but Tartarus on wings for my gut the next morning when the burning started.

“No” I think I heard some of that old bitterness enter my voice, I’d been doing so well knocking it down to ‘just’ snark after we had been getting along so well, but sometimes he just refused to think things through. “I did not break her neck, that particular cruelty lies on the back of short, black, and ugly over there” a particularly heavy sigh pushed itself past my mouth as I started to limp over to where Bulwark was still lying undisturbed, the milky white film on his eyes had faded away and he was gently snoring away like he hadn’t just been the centrepiece to a fight that could’ve decided the fate of damn near all I cared about. “She took the mare hostage, threatened to snap her neck unless I dropped my mental shields against her drinking every single drop of emotion out of me like I was the last pulp fruit in the market, and framing me for her deeds with a plan that would’ve been shockingly competent if I hadn’t managed to figure it out and luck had been on her side, I bluffed with the idea that more bodies equalled more loose ends that would spoil her plan, and she did not buy it for a second. The only reason I’m still standing here is that I managed to set off an alarm I had no clue about and your guards responded in time to distract her from twisting the mares head off like a bottle-cap.” I sighed again, with a little more relief when I saw the folder I had stuffed under Bulwark laying there, safe and sound “But we’ve got what we came for, and thankfully nopony died, anypony that isn’t actually wounded will recover eventually, with love and care and chocolate and hugs, those two will recover quicker because their bodies realise they’ve been damaged and will do their best to heal themselves, everypony else is stuck in a limbo because they don’t know they’ve been hurt and they can’t heal without help, and I didn’t want to start punching ponies hard enough to reduce their bones to dust if it was at all avoidable!”

I stopped and just panted for a second, my rant apparently over as I glowered at the unconscious infiltrator, her outline only slightly blurred under the spots still dancing in my vision.

“But of course little miss ‘Our Queen Guides Our Will’ over there doesn’t care about the fact that she put a bank’s worth of ponies into what could be indefinite comas, she doesn’t care that we exposed ourselves to the civilisations of the world with the wedding, she doesn’t even care that her actions are destroying us in the long run, it’s that another hive is successful, another hive has love for the taking, another hive can be conquered and brought into the swarm so that the queen may be even greater” I picked the folder up with a hoof before limping my way over to the bank doors. “That’s why we were so damned secretive, not because we needed to hide from the Ponies, or the Gryphons, or the Diamond Dogs, or even that one coven of quite frankly charming Arachnes that have sequestered themselves so far into the Badlands you’d think they were trying to hide from the world itself, NO!” I turned and spat on the unconscious infiltrator as I passed her, my hooves were too sore to kick, and any attempt probably would’ve dropped me on my wing, again. “We hid because if a single word of us got out to those thrice damned, thoughtless, soft-shelled, single-minded, shit-guzzling, half-witted excuses for queens in the Wastelands they would’ve hounded us to the gates of Elysium, and now that we have ‘allies’ they’re targeting you too, because it doesn’t matter if they wipe out every food source in Equus to kill the last queen that isn’t them, all that matters is that they’ve killed the other queen proving that they are the best of the worst.”

The silence spread out behind me as if it was the wake of some all-consuming sea monster as I shuffled over to the door in a slow, limping gait, nopony daring to disturb me. The sounds of the street slowly filtering back into the room as my diatribe faded away, the clatter of a flying wagon landing on the cobblestone of the road outside, before a group of unicorns and pegasi burst through the still open door and made themselves busy checking on the comatose ponies, the softly snoring Bulwark, and oddly enough me, with a mixture of professional pride, selfless concern, and in my case, idle curiosity.

“When you take these husks in, stick them in a maternity ward or something, somewhere with a lot of love and life and the like, not an isolated room” I spoke quietly to the doctor who was watching as my final vestiges of love ran across my leg before flickering out, I’d still have to keep my weight off of it, just to make sure everything healed up nice and neat, but it was functional enough that I could throw it back under a wagon without the threat of actually losing it. “It’ll help them recover faster, and once that’s done send a team to this address” I opened the folder and gestured at the address, before closing it again “we’ll probably need more pick-up there.” I finished quietly before I turned to walk towards the doors.

<~~***~~>

(Shining Armour)

I barely had time to react before Barbed Retort walked out of the doors, pushing aside the doctor who was trying to hold him back

“Get a message to the princesses, stick the heaviest nullifier we’ve got on her horn, and try to get messages out to these ponies’ families before the press gets here” I spoke as rapidly as possible to the Pegasus that had originally stopped me at the crowd before following the changeling outside into the street, where he was standing at the bottom of the banks steps, completely undisguised.

Thankfully the crowd started to shy away as he began to limp down the street, the late evening sunlight barely reflecting off of his chitin, a wave of terrified silence spreading as he continued to move towards them, the only noise being the irregular sound of the changelings’ hooves on the cobblestones.

At least until somepony threw a stone.

It wasn’t a big stone, but I had dealt with enough riot situations to know that it didn’t have to be. It just had to be the ‘first’ stone, and it would inevitably be followed by a second, and a third, then even more until the number of thrown stones would blot out the sun.

My horn sputtered and sparked as it lit up, trying desperately to catch the stone in my telekinesis, whatever that light had done was still affecting my magic and it took all of my concentration to stop it before it could make its date with destiny.

Barbed Retort didn’t even notice as he just continued walking along, glancing disinterestedly at the hovering stone before limping past it, staring down at the crowd who had only just noticed me as my magic fizzled out and the stone fell to the earth.

It was weird, something about him looked different as he approached the crowd; he looked almost threatening, imposing, like a soldier utterly prepared to fight and kill. Tiny wisps of green mist flickered around his horn, congealing from the air around him before running down his body, hovering over patches of burnt and broken hide that slowly faded away to match his slate grey chitin.

Another stone flew from the crowd, faster than my magic could track it and struck the changeling in the eye before falling to the ground.

“If that’s your idea of trying to scare me off you’re going to need to try harder” his voice was cold as he continued to walk towards the crowd which backed away slightly before he stopped in the middle of the street, as I trotted after him, my armour clanking on my back.

“We ain’t scared of you, changeling” a voice called out from somewhere in the crowd, a wave of assent spreading out as more ponies hefted rocks, tomatoes, and other assorted debris; a wave of assent that broke against Barbed Retort’s quiet laughter.

“’Not scared of me’, why should you be scared of me?” his tone was light and when I managed to walk to his side I could he was smiling, even if smiling might have been a generous description, exposing his teeth would be a better fit.

“Cause you’re a monster,” another voice called out, and if I hadn’t been standing next to him, I would have missed Barbed Retort’s snort, his eyes narrowing and the false smile starting to turn down. “You kill ponies and replace them”

“I’m a monster, really,” all the ‘humour had drained from Barbed Retorts voice as he swept his gaze over the mob “that little bit of unoriginality is all you’ve got as to why there needs to be a lynch mob to stone me to death, for simply being a ’monster’ the great unwashed have decided to band together, take the law into their own hooves, and slaughter me in a manner that was considered outdated and barbaric before Celestia herself was born” he snorted as a glob of green blood fell from one of his nostrils.

I edged closer, just to be ready if he actually lost control, something about him was singing with violence, and I saw a few of the crowd flinch back as he snarled the last few words.

“So what monstrous things have I done since I arrived here yesterday then? What have I done beyond unmask and help arrest a murderer who was planning on using you ponies to wipe out my hive? What have I done other than remove said murderer’s mental shackles on fifteen ponies after she drained them dry of any emotion they might have ever felt? What have I done outside of helping an elderly mare get her cat out of a tree?”

The crowd had started to back away again as his voice continued to build, not in volume, but in certainty, but nearly everypony just stopped at the last action, a few heads tilting as the words sunk in.

A very quiet grinding noise brought me back to my senses and I saw Barbed Retort twist and scrape his uninjured hoof against the ground in one of the few displays of actual body language I had seen from him.

“Am I the monster that stalked, brutalised, and killed a divorce lawyer for saving her client from an abusive spouse? Am I the monster that falsely accused two mechanics of testing an unsafe device on trainee Wonderbolts to cover my own flank? Am I one of the many monsters that attempted to burn a zebra at the stake out of the fear that she might have been a witch? Am I one of the monsters that raped a nine year old FILLY?”

The crowd continued to shift away, none of the ponies meeting Barbed Retort’s eyes as he swept his gaze across them, either flinching away, or staring at the ground as though it would somehow spirit them away. I could feel my own gut growing hot with disgust, I remembered that particular incident and I still hadn’t found the cadets responsible, something that a few of the more belligerent nobles loved to bring up to the Princesses when they called for my dismissal.

“All of those monsters were ponies and yet I don’t see angry mobs hunting them down to lynch them” he turned and spat on the ground next to his hooves before he looked over the crowd again “so I hope you lot have a better reason for calling me a monster rather than the fact that I’m just a Changeling, or I will give you lot a fucking reason and damn the consequences”

The crowd was utterly silent, most of them hardly daring to breathe before he started to walk towards them again while they just sat there like puppets with their strings cut.

“Right, right, the show’s over, everypony’s got places to be, work to do, family to comfort” somepony said, and I only realised that it was me when every eye in the street swivelled to face me, their reverie broken. “No need for anypony or changeling to get hurt over a bunch of flared tempers and misunderstandings, or would the lot of you like to spend the night in the cells?” Did we even have enough room in the dungeons for an entire riot? I didn’t know; I just wanted to stop what ever was happening from escalating to the point of violence, Canterlot did not need to become the next panicked mob capitol of the world, right next to Ponyville.

It was that exact moment that the group of guards decided to arrive, trotting around the corner like they’d been waiting for that moment, the moment when they would be able to either calm the mob down, or clean up the debris they would have left behind them while throwing the rampaging ponies into cells.

Now they were moving through the crowd of ponies in pairs; talking to the ponies who could add to the official statements and subtly breaking up the mob by inches.

Say what you want about my guard’s combat abilities, but they were Tartarus on wings for dealing with the aftermath of those events, and I could feel just a little bit of pride as I watched them swiftly, professionally, and most of all, skilfully deal with the chastised crowd.

That little bit of pride being enough to distract me from Barbed Retort who had started stalking away, through the group of ponies who were now shying away from him, even as I hurried to catch up with him.

The two of us continued down the street, the crowd dispersing behind us as ponies disappeared back to their lives, the temporary panic forgotten as they could attempt to put their thoughts back in order after the hysteria.

It was only more glaring now as I walked alongside him now, but something had changed about the changeling. He had forced me to spend enough time with him in the hive that I knew there was a difference, I just couldn’t place it, and after his set of speeches I was hesitant to try breeching the topic.

The glowering silence only continued as we walked side by side, moving slowly through the streets as he led the way. I could feel the looks that ponies were giving us, the nervousness almost palpable even to me, thankfully the fact I was wearing guard armour seemed to prevent any more angry mobs from forming.

“So do I want to know why you just walked out and faced down an angry mob without any disguise?” I asked quietly as we turned off the main market streets and started to follow a winding road downhill.

“That dysjunction spell took pretty much everything I had out of me, probably more than that to be completely honest” he snorted lightly, spraying flecks of congealed ichor that hadn’t been shaken loose during his earlier rants, from his nostrils “I couldn’t put up a disguise to save my life at the moment”

“That wasn’t an answer.”

“It’s as close to one as you’re getting” he winced slightly as one of his hooves turned on a loose cobblestone, before turning down another quiet side-street and doing his best to bring the uncomfortable silence back.

“Care to explain why you know your way around here so well?” I asked as politely as the situation allowed.

He turned to face me, and I expected to see the raised eyebrow, but he stared at me blankly.

“I lived here for fifteen years before the wedding” he stated blankly, before looking away again, I was about to ask what he did here before he started talking again “I went to the university here solely on the strength of brainwashing my way in, completed a doctorate in record time, got a job, made friends, some of which were in that crowd just now, was somepony’s special some’pony’, acted as the protector slash organiser for the harvesters we had here, got another job by royal appointment, lied to your princess about my knowledge of Changelings in the build-up to the wedding to help the original plan go smoothly, tried to stop my queen from altering the original plan, failed, tried to salvage what I could when the new plan fell through, failed, and then finally got violently thrown out by a shield that was made out of love so pure it tore me apart and healed me at the same time, making it the second most painful experience of my life” he stepped out from the side street we had been walking down before stopping in front of what seemed like a random house. “Here we are, the den of all evils, also known as storage unit A-1, also known 42, Founder’s Way, Lower Cliffside”

It looked almost completely identical to the average Canterlot house; white stone facings with average sized windows and amber coloured shutters, a set of flags hanging over the door with the owners ‘cutie marks’ and pelt colours fluttering in the evening breeze, and a pair of planters that ran along the front of the building, filled with a mix of unkempt Orange Mock shrubs and a bed of wilted and scraggly looking Gardenias; but something in the building just seemed slightly off, I half expected to see eyes peering at me from the windows and even the flock of pegasi that had followed us refused to land on the building to watch us from above.

“Aww queens, they didn’t even bother to water the plants” he swung a hoof at the two planters that stretched across the buildings front, huffing exasperatedly as he did so “I put some of my heart and soul into growing those beauties when I lived here and they’ve just been left to rack and ruin”

I stopped and stared, the pegasi stopped and stared; I think I could feel the invisible eyes of the princesses stop and stare at that particular exclamation.

“What, I like growing plants” he paused for a second before pulling a loose stone out of the step to the front door, stone clinking against the key underneath “is it weird that I have a hobby?”

“Yes, yes it is, gaze upon the fearsome personal bodyguard of Chrysalis herself, watering his begonias with the blood of his enemies”

His muttered response was muffled around the key in his mouth as he went to push it against the door, which just swung open the moment he put his weight against it, the key falling from his fangs and clattering against the wooden floor.

I think he said something in mock outrage, but to be honest I didn’t hear him as the door slowly swung open; shadows, terror, and dread spilling out from that opened portal like the very legions of Tartarus had been unleashed with that simple act. The ancient creak of rusted hinges their herald, the cold breath of the building billowing out before their presence as a red carpet would for the princesses. I could hear the panicked flapping of some of the crowding Pegasi as they simply launched themselves into the air, leaving Barbed Retort and I as their sacrificial victims as that empty doorway loomed over me.

I swear I could hear the building itself groaning in hunger as Barbed Retort turned to look at me, and the shield I had reflexively put up, before he just shook his head disbelievingly and slipped into the shadows, his discoloured carapace disappearing into that darkness.

“Seriously, what’s with you ponies” I could hear him muttering from further inside as I walked up the steps, dismissing my shield “it’s just a bit of Anxiety and Apprehension, nothing to actually be worried about”

I would have vocally disagreed, but I kept my mouth shut, something about the idea of stepping through that doorway scared me to my core; it scared me worse than facing off against Sombra, terrified me more deeply than my training expeditions in the Everfree, petrified me more thoroughly than watching Cadance walk up the aisle during our wedding.

“Stop mincing around out there and get in here” Barbed Retort’s buzzing voice rang out from inside the shadows.

I gritted my teeth, lit my horn, and braced myself to face down the chthonic horrors that would surely await me inside the barrier of shadows and despair as I stepped through that damned portal.

Only to be met with the view of an utterly average, if neglected, suburban house, the weight of trepidation lifting from my shoulders as my mind absorbed what I was seeing.

“What was that?” I didn’t shout, well-trained royal guards didn’t shout when they met the unexpected, they remained calm, and dealt with the circumstances with complete professionalism.

“Emotional barrier,” Barbed Retort had his eyes closed as he answered; his head swivelling around as though he was looking at something didn’t require the use of his eyes. “Looks like she built it straight off the emotions that had already stagnated here, otherwise it could’ve been much, much nastier, imagine suicidal despair instead of apprehension”. I don’t think I imagined the smirk he had as he opened his eyes, but he turned away too quickly, his hooves echoing on the dirty wooden floor.

“What do you mean emotional barrier?” I kept my horn lit, even if it wasn’t the all-encompassing, soul-crushing, hope-draining darkness I’d seen from outside, the house was still poorly lit and my eyes strained against the gloom that struggled to pierce the drawn curtains and grimy windows.

“I already explained all of this to Bulwark and I do not enjoy repeating myself, but I’ll do it just for you” I scowled at the smugness in his tone as his horn started to sputter with green mist. “It is entirely possible for a physical object, or place, to collect emotions, such as wedding medallions being suffused with love and hope, dentists’ offices with fear, or a nursery with foalish joy; any sort of cherished foalhood toy that a pony still owns into adulthood is a common example, this emotional infusion builds up and seeps out creating a sort of empathic resonance” I immediately thought of Miss Smarty-Pants, Twilys old study doll “Because we Changelings can sense and manipulate emotions, we can absorb concentrated good emotions from these objects or impart bad emotions to a place in amounts that would never naturally form, while being immune to the effects ourselves, hence a ward made out of Anxiety that makes you remember all of things you were scared of doing at the same time and paralyses you with indecision while I just waltz on through with nary a care, good enough?” He turned away from me and walked further into house, following a trail of dirt that led to an open doorway, downwards stairs just visible in the gloom beyond.

“And of course she set up shop in the creepy basement” he turned his head to smirk at me again before speaking “would the Captain of the Royal guard like me to hold his hoof to keep the scary darkness at bay?”

All I did was glare at him and his smirk slowly died being replaced by nervousness, as the white points on his eyes shifted to the sides.

“Okay, odds are good that there is going to be something nightmarish down there, and basements tend to hold negative emotions really, really well” his ‘pupils’ flickered back to me before looking down the stairway again as I walked next to him, “try not to freak out”

“I am a Royal Guard,” I said with mock pride, a smirk covering up the growing apprehension I felt, “I don’t ‘freak out’.”

“Just don’t say I didn’t warn you” was the muttered reply before he looked away from me and started to walk down the narrow stairway.

I snorted before following him, and even as I passed through the doorway I could feel cold air pressing against my pelt, my breath misting and the sweat caused by the events of the day growing cold against my skin.

It wasn’t a long staircase, maybe only twenty steps or so, but by the time we had reached the base I was shivering under my armour, and Barbed Retort looked at me as he paused just in front of another door, his hoof resting against the old wood before he pushed and the entire thing swung open silently.

What awaited us behind that door was like nothing I had ever seen.

In some strange way it was a reflection of Jet Set’s study, four walls, a desk, what looked like a magical fireplace had been built into one of the walls; I twisted my head and even saw something that looked like a rudimentary bookcase; although several of the books had rotted away from the neglect they’d suffered, Twily would be mad if she saw it.

What set it apart where the racks of shattered waxy orbs that were covered in some sort of colourless ooze, only a few still intact and glowing with pink light, and the rows of glowing pods that were stuck to the walls and ceiling, bathing the entire room in a pallid green light in such a way that cast almost no shadows.

I could feel my breath catch in my throat as I looked over the number of pods, counting silently in my mind as I did so.

“Twenty seven, how in Celestia’s sunny flanks did they manage to replace twenty seven ponies without us noticing something out of place”, I whispered in some form of awe as I edged closer to one of the glowing cocoons, trying to peer through the murky slime to focus on the features of the pony inside, the wings showing it was a pegasus, but anything else was too obscured to fully make out. I was about to turn to the next pod before the rustling of paper caught my attention and I turned to see Barbed Retort flicking through the pages of a tattered book that had been sitting on the desk.

“Is now the time to catch up on your reading?”

“Infiltrator journal” he shot back almost immediately, “She mentioned other plans and I know from experience that it is remarkably hard to keep everything straight all the time, hence…” he gestured at the journal, before turning a page “you keep checking those pods, see if there’s anypony you recognise in there”

“And that’s not going to be in code, why?”

“Because she was setting us up for a frame job, parts of it are in equestrian, other bits in really poor dual-hempid” I opened my mouth to ask as I checked on the next pod, an earth pony in this one “and no we do not have time for me to explain it, maybe when this mess is over.”

He fell silent again as he flipped another page, while I moved on to another pod; earth pony, earth pony, pegasus, earth pony, the pattern was unsettling to say the least.

“There are no unicorn’s here” I said before continuing to the next pod.

“Makes sense, aura colour is difficult to change, the fact that Chrysalis could do it was enough of an ego boost for us to even start planning for the wedding, if these guys are as competent as their ‘leader’ has shown herself to be, I doubt that any of them were capable of that particular bit of disguise work” I heard the rustle of paper as he flipped another page, before a shocked intake of breath and a chittering exclamation.

“Bad news?” I asked as I looked into the next pod, my eyes widening as I finally recognised one of the ponies inside the green prisons.

Barbed Retort turned to me, his eyes narrowed as I met his glare, before we spoke in perfect unison.

“They’ve infiltrated the royal guard”

Author's Note

FINALLY, sorry for the wait guys, am going to get to work on Chapter 9: Purgatory ASAP.

Thysania (the Infiltrator) is acting extremely like a changeling, strange words, odd turns of phrase, yada-yada, how did nopony pick up on this? Easy, she can act like a pony, but it makes her feel sick to do so.

It’s mentioned in the supplementary materials chapter, Swarms do have small physical differences based on the Queen, alongside, Eye/Back-Plate colour. In this case “The Leech Queen’s” (as Queen Hirudinea is impolitely known) Swarm have the maws of “Jawed” Leeches, an unclean, dull, bone white colour to their eyes and Back-plates, and can actively drain their victims of their life force, rather than just their emotions. Several Legends point their Queen having outlived four to five generations of other Queens, and being somewhere in the realm of ten-thousand to twelve thousand years old. She was a fairly large power in the Wasteland changeling council when Chrysalis left. And yes, when a Changeling joins a hive it loses its old idiosyncrasies, and gains new ones.

I’m making a lot of references to Emotional Concepts (Such as anger or revulsion) performing physical actions, this is kinda the Changeling version of body language, it’s mostly metaphorical, although really powerful emotions can (and often do) impart some form of physical impact to Changelings, it’s why the love bomb was capable of throwing every changeling away, otherwise the shield spell would’ve let them in when they were in danger of being crushed against something solid; it was designed to be non-lethal, and that includes not crushing ponies in the way of its expansion. The love gave it the “concept” of Embracing ponies (so not pushing them around at all) and rejecting Changelings (so just pushing them inexorably) to the point where it turned them into greasy smears against the floor.

Say goodbye to Shining Armour kiddies, he’s not going to be a POV from now on, and will not in fact show up until the epilogue, he’s got infiltrators to hunt down, and now that his XO is out recovering from mind magic, he’s got training exercises to run, he’ll be a busy little bee.

Chrysalis is about 75-80 years old here; she’s basically a Changeling Queen teenager, who has had no advice beyond her mother forcing her to leave the wastelands as soon as she was able to. She is at once desperate to stand on her own 4 hooves, and be validated by her Swarm; this explains her thought processes behind the Canterlot Wedding Fiasco.

Once again more information on ranks: Shining is the Captain of the Royal Guard, this is a “Title”, his actual rank that he has according to any charter is “Commander in Chief of the Equestrian Guard”, this takes up more space on his invitations, and as such he’s almost completely ignored it, except when he works with city guard, who all have their own captains which is a separate rank from the Captains of the Princess guards. It is a confusing and byzantine system made worse by 2 out of 4 princesses coming into their official power in a roughly 2 year period of ancient monsters, attacks, and Discord, which has had the side effect of messing up all of the official paperwork (which is still being fixed).

Praetorian Sturdiness is less a matter of them being hard to hurt (they are, but that’s because they are trained in combat, which involves being hard to hurt) and more a matter of their personal restorative abilities. It’s nothing on the inbuilt skills of a healer drone, but beyond actually having something partially torn off, or a weapon jammed through a vital organ, they’ll survive and heal, relatively quickly depending on the amount and types of emotive energy they’ve got in storage, even if they’re left battered and bruised.

Look up Mock Oranges and Gardenias in flower language, there’s a reason to why they are the flowers planted in front of a Changeling den, I was also tempted to put in Snapdragons, but then anyone who knows even a bit of Flower Language would get the joke at that point.