In Which I Display Vast Cunning and Wit
...
So, uh, hi.
My name is Znitchs’ka’kuul and I’m a Changeling Infiltrator, but, uh, you can call me Nichts, I guess.
...Look, this is awkward for me too, okay?
Well... how about you start at the beginning, then?
Ah, well, when a Changeling Queen feels that food resources are high, she selects a drone she feels represents a beneficial genetic basis for a new generation of nymphs—Okay, okay, geez.
Alright, yeah, I am a spy. I guess that much is obvious at this point. You’ll do me the honor of not prying for whom, of course. Professional honor and also horrible pain of death, and all that. Where was I? Right, as an infiltrator I naturally go out into the society of other species and learn about them, syphoning love and intel back to mommy dearest. Blah, blah, you know this already. So… yeah. I was assigned to Canterlot Castle with the intent to get more information on your government, especially given all the chaos that’s gone on as of late.
Was your patron planning another attack?
Pfffahahahaha! Oh that’s cute. No, sorry, I’m disposable assets. The queen wouldn’t tell me anything useful like that. For one, that would require her to feel an emotion other than paranoia and animal cunning, and for another, if I were to get captured, that information could be extracted, possibly against my will.
Why do you think ponies would do something like that?!
Meh. It’s what she’d do in your place. As I was saying, I’m a spy, and I was spying on your Princess in particular. Had a pretty nice identity built up as Spit Shine - which reminds me, since it would no longer blow my cover to ask: what is with pony names anyway? Do parents just know what you guys will get employed doing down the line? Or is it some sort of deterministic labeling system like we use back at the hive? Which is weird because we were taught you guys were big on the whole individuality thing—
Nichts.
What? It’s something that bugs a bug while he’s dusting Her Majesty’s armoire.
I’ll try my best to explain it later. Could you please continue on with the story? This is kind of important.
Alright. I’m going to hold you to that, by the way. So, I’m Spit Shine. Humble Canterlot butler, buttling away in Her Majesty’s presence while secretly building a profile on events as they happen like a good deniable operative. Granted, it’s not like the job doesn’t have its perks. Celestia is far too trusting, so I got to learn a lot about what was going on, and she seemed to appreciate having someone to talk to. Got me some nice snacks too after I was here for a while.
Plus, I actually just enjoy cleaning.
So, yeah, there I am, doing my jobs, humming away to myself while she takes tea about ten feet from me, when she says the one thing a changeling never wants to hear.
“Spit Shine,” she says, putting the glass down without even looking at me. “I know what you are.”
To which I reply: “Oh,” and go out the window in a ball of screaming green fire.
Which I guess was a bad choice. She could have been telling me she was aware I fancied stallions or that she was aware I was secretly a Yearling enthusiast, but, in my line of work, it pays to not be around when things like your cover are in question. So. Yeah. Me. Green fireball. Out the window – and she’s hot on my thorax.
She starts shouting after me, telling me to stop. Which, of course, totally works. Naturally. I’m only fleeing for my life. I totally want to stop and have a chat with the angry goddess who apparently knows I am a foreign agent out to subvert her government. This made perfect sense.
So you kept running?
Of course, I kept running! The fact that she had begun coordinating the guard to cordon me off certainly wasn’t helping things, but you feathered mammals are so clumsy, especially all done up in those fake carapaces, that I dodged the first couple waves easily. Unfortunately, that took some speed I just didn’t have to spare, which let Celestia get within grabbing range with her telekinesis.
So, what happened then? She said you fell and...
I torqued my body using my momentum to break her hold. Granted, at that point it was all over. I was in freefall for a second due to that trick, and even if I instantly regained flight, I wasn’t getting out of Canterlot Castle alive with her and the guard bearing down on me…
So I figured I’d do so dead.
What exactly happened?
I dived into a bush and did my best swatted fly impression.
I saw the blood. How did you do that without…?
Exsanguinating? Simple, actually. Or, well, it’s actually complex. Our ancestors had a trick where they had blood-sacks they could pop along with some bad pheromones to fake being dead as a sort of trick of last resort. Also activates a hormone rush that puts us in a state of aware semi-torpor. They used it to fake out predators. Changelings still have all the parts to do the trick, but most drones in modern hives never have a reason to practice. Infiltrators get taught how to use it for… well, this sort of crap.
So, yeah, I popped my blood balloons, lay back to take a nap, was going to wait a few hours, lock the mortician in a closet just before closing, walk out wearing his face, and by the time they would find him in the morning I would be well on my way out of town.
So, why didn’t you?
…Well… I don’t…
You’re telling me you’ve turned yourself in and you don’t know why?
… Yes?
Ugh!
Look, I don’t… get it either, really. I was pretty much about to do a textbook escape from a bad situation, no sweat. Queen was going to chew me out, but chewing me out is her thing. Hell, back at the hive the other Infiltrators would be telling this story to soft-shells for a while. I just… wasn’t expecting her to get so upset.
Celestia?
Yeah. I mean… I was a spy. She caught me red-hooved. The Queen probably would have locked me in a crypt somewhere and tricked me into fighting my brother to the death after gloating about how smart she was or something. Celestia… she got really quiet when she landed. I heard her walking up. She called my name a couple times. Then she gasps and suddenly I’m being lifted into the open. Her hooves are all over me then – and, I mean, I’m covered in ichor and I’ve begun to stink, and she’s… just… touching me. Trying to find a heartbeat, I guess.
She puts her ear right on my chest. I can hear her breathing right next to me face… and… she’s afraid. I can smell it. I can hear it. Hell, way she was shaking, I could feel it, and… ugh, why?
She thought you’d died.
I know that. That was the point! What I want to know is why she cared so much.
That’s just her way.
Her way doesn’t make any sense. If I had been in her position I’d…
Would you have just shrugged it off so easily?
… Maybe not, I guess. Still… it’s not what we’d been trained to expect, and I just didn’t know what to do. She starts calling for the guard to get help and I just don’t know what to do. I mean, here I am, having pulled one over on the Sun Herself and all I can do is lull around in her hooves and feel bad for making the old lady cry. She’s put me down and gone to wash herself when Moonbutt shows up—
Moonbutt?
Sorry, Princess Luna. It’s what I call her in my head. Anyway, she shows up. Apparently the guard had woken her due to an emergency, and they start talking about me.
What did they say?
…
Nichts?
She asked if Celestia was alright first, and Celestia tells her no. So she asks if there had been a battle and Celestia gives this bitter laugh. She said she’d been trying to take me in peacefully, and that she’d gone and killed me. And here I am, minding my own business, listing to the old lady beat herself up because she thought she’d knocked me out of the sky leading to my death which was… yeah, it was sort of the point.
You should watch out, FYI. The old lady’s great at guilt tripping a bug when he just wants to escape punishment for his crimes against the state.
Anyway, I just sort of listen to them talk. Celestia promises Luna they’ll talk later and then they hugged, I think. At that point the doctors show up and she instructs them to take me to the morgue to await burial. Then she gets into an argument with some stallion I couldn’t really see at the time, mind you, about whether I deserve to be buried. He tells her I was an enemy of Equestria which… well, he wasn’t wrong, and she tells him was is the operative word there. That whatever I’d done in my life was my choices… and that I wasn’t going to bother anyone now.
And I mean, jeez, can’t a bug just die in peace without everyone making such a big ethical fuss?
After that little bit they plop me onto the stretcher and cart me off. I sort of let myself drift then, letting the hormones tune me out a bit while I wait for time to get along.
How long were you like that?
Oh, here, let me check this watch I keep stored inside one of my foreleg cavities which I was keeping perfect track of while I was semi-paralyzed and taking a hormone-induced coma-cat-nap.
Sorry.
So, anyway, I’m out for a while, until I hear Celestia’s voice again, and that is, unfortunately, when you showed up.
What’s that supposed to mean?
I don’t know, Little Miss Necrophile, you tell me!
If you mean my research—
If you mean poking somebody’s corpse with a ruler in a morgue.
You were the only changeling specimen we’d ever had!
That was the future of the hive you were prodding!
I thought you were dead.
That doesn’t make it any less creepy!
Ugh!
Anyway, you two and Celestia show up and she gave you that speech, and then you proceeded to unload your strange and probably unhealthy desire to fondle a dead person all over my semi-inert body and that’s about when—
~*~*~*~
“—I decided to... wake up,” he finished.
The room was almost completely silent as Twilight stared at Nichts. The only sound was Rainbow Dash hovering behind her, having watched the entire exchange wide eyed.
“So, yeah, there. That’s my story. I surrender myself to the justice of the crown, yadda yadda, throw me in irons, it was only to feed my nymphs, so on and so forth.” Nitchs blinked. “Happy now?”
Twilight raised a hoof to her temple and groaned.
“Not exactly, no. I’m already imagining the legal nightmare of trying to fill out all the proper forms just to send you to trial, let alone what that’s going to look like.” She turned and gave him a sour look. “I would also appreciate it if you kept your description of my attempts to study you less… colorful, and toned back your ‘insights’ into my character when this goes on record.”
“Don’t want it getting out that the Princess of Friendship fiddle-faddles corpses, got it.”
Twilight groaned. Rainbow Dash snickered.
“Anyway,” Nichts went on, “Someone mind giving me a washcloth? I’ve still got blood in chinks and I smell like a quarry eel’s mouth.”
“Sure thing.” Rainbow Dash said, swooping down and tossing him a towel from next to the operating table. Nichts caught it in his fangs and then set about furiously scrubbing himself. Twilight grumbled and began packing up her notes and such.
“So,” he said, scouring the inside of a cavity on his pastern, “When’s she getting here?”
“I don’t know. The guard left before you began, so it shouldn’t be long unless she was busy and couldn’t be reached.”
“I see.” He moved on to a forward knee. “What did she mean when she said I was going to be another one of her ‘old mistakes?’ ”
Twilight seized up. Nichts stopped and blinked.
“Bad topic?”
“Ummm… not exactly. Just personal.” Twilight shook herself slightly. “She… It’s her way, like I said. There have been many times when she’s tried to help somepony who was trying to hurt her and… she couldn’t save them.”
Nichts sat for a moment.
“Well, crap.” He cocked his head to the side for a moment before shrugging and going back to work. “Well, glad that didn’t happen then… I guess.”
Twilight laughed and smiled for the first time since he’d spooked her by speaking up.
“Yeah, guess that’s true.”
“What’s true?” a voice said from the stairwell. Twilight and Nichts snapped to attention to see Celestia and Luna making their way into the morgue.
“Nothing, Cele—”
“Just commenting on the fact that I wasn’t going to be another reason for you to drink yourself to sleep, Your Majesty.”
Everyone froze. Twilight stared forward, her face locked in rigor mortis. Rainbow Dash and Luna were wide-eyed. Celestia had a passive face, and Nichts stared at her, the model of causal innocence.
Until he grinned.
Celestia’s mouth twitched into the slightest of smiles.
“Yes, that is fortunate,” she said, her smile growing slightly and her eyes wide with some emotion Nichts couldn’t read. “So, Spit Shine, what exactly happened today?”
“Please, Your Majesty, call me… eh, too hard to pronounce, call me Nichts,” he waved his hoof. “Spit Shine was just somepony I came up with.”
“I’m glad to hear that, or else we’d have to add kidnapping to your charges.”
“Touché, Your Majesty. This is why only an amateur actually tries to impersonate a real pony.”
“Mmm, indeed.” Celestia’s smile reached her eyes more now. “So, as to my original question?”
“Ah, well. I figured that would be obvious. You called me out. I bolted. You tried to capture me, so I faked my own death. I had some time to consider that choice and… well, decided to turn myself in.”
“Mmm,” she said, quirking an eyebrow. “That is the course of events, but that does not exactly explain what it is that caused you to try escaping so hard only to turn yourself in when you could have escaped so easily.”
“Well…” Nichts rubbed the back of his neck. “I… wanted to apologize.”
Celestia blinked.
“Excuse me?”
Luna snorted.
“For making you so upset.”
“... Why?”
“I mean… I don’t know. I just wanted to get away. I thought you were going to lock me up or kill me or something. I didn’t… think I’d hurt you.”
Celestia stood, mouth open slightly and eyes wide. Luna rolled her eyes.
“Seems your mercy has melted the black heart of the enemy, dear sister.”
“Luna!”
“Hey, I resemble that remark!”
“It’s true though,” Rainbow Dash said, swinging her hooves for emphasis. “I mean, you have this badass changeling spy, right? And he manages to outmaneuver you and even fool you into thinking he died. All he has to do is wait and he’s home free, but then you’re there, trying to save him, defending his honor and stuff after he’s gone - that’s something else. I bet Queeny-Meanie wouldn’t do that.”
“Nope. Last I heard she ate the last rival hive infiltrator that got into her ranks after finding him out.”
“See! No one else would do that! You managed to win him over just by being like, yourself and stuff, and that’s awesome!”
“They have a fair point, Celestia.” Twilight said. “Although I could do without the details of changeling counter-espionage.”
Celestia took a step back, ruffling her wings slightly. She was blushing, ever so slightly.
“I see. I don’t think I deserve your flattery. I was just trying to do the right thing.”
“And that, Sister,” Luna grinned, “is why you deserve the flattery.”
“Indeed!” Nichts said. “So, now that we’ve all hugged and made up, can I go?”
“I’m afraid not,” Celestia said, smiling wryly.
Nichts rolled his eyes and sighed, snapping his hoof against the tile.
“Darn! And here I thought that would work.”
“Mmm, you’ll have to try better next time.”
“Naturally.” Nichts grinned. “Think the book will sell well, at least?”
Twilight groaned.
“Totally!” Rainbow Dash interjected. “This is the best story ever.”
“It does sound like an entertaining tale,” Luna said. “That said, I do think I shall go and find arrangements for our prisoner for the time being.”
“Can I stay in the ambassador’s suite?”
“I doubt it!” Luna called over her shoulder.
Nichts frowned and shook his head before looking back to Celestia.
“Darn. Seems I can’t catch a break today.”
“No,” Celestia said, smiling. “Seems you can’t.” Her voice was quieter and her smile softer when she spoke again. “I am glad you are alive, Nichts, and I am… touched that you chose to let me know you were alive.”
“I’m glad to hear it, Princess.” He smiled softly back. “I was pretty touched that you cared.” His smile stretched into a grin. “Plus, I’m pretty happy to be alive myself.”
~*~*~*~
The book did eventually become a Manehatten Times best-seller.
