Bring on the Pirates

Chapters

Chapter I - Memories
Chapter II - Hearts
Chapter III - Loopholes

Chapter I - Memories

Rainbow Dash marched up and down the line of young changelings. She cast them each a stern look, causing them all to straighten their legs out. She made her way to the far right of the line, and shouted, "Alright! Each and every one of you will come to me as a little filly! By the time we're done here, you'll be the most formidable guard on the planet!"

She turned around to face them, and looked down at the one closest to her. He was smaller than his sisters, but he was also younger, and wasn't even going to be a guard. His parents had just decided that an heir needed to know what his guard went through, along with how to defend himself.

She caught his silver eyes pointed up at her, whereas his sisters' purple eyes were all pointed directly forward, at the grand wall the civilians were constructing, and the rising sun beyond it.

She cast a quick glance at her own daughter, who stood at the far end of the line, her red eyes full of determination, and took a moment to smile at the young hybrid. She knew that her daughter didn't see the smile, but it was moments like these that made her proud of the rainbow changeling.

Rainbow Dash drew in a deep breath, and shouted, "Now give me twenty laps around the city! Go! Go! Go!" She blew her whistle, sending a piercing sound through the air.

All fifty four children raced forward, while their sergeant flew alongside them, singing, "Let's get down to business, to defend, the hive. Did they send me stallions, when I asked, for mares? You're the saddest bunch I ever met, but you can bet, before we're through. Misses, I'll, make a mare, out of you."

"Tranquil as the castle, but a fire, within. Once you find your center, you are sure, to win. You're a spineless, frail, pathetic lot, and you haven't got a clue. Somehow I'll, make a mare, out of you," she told the silver eyed colt as he stumbled.

"I'm never gonna catch my breath," he panted.

"Say goodbye to those who knew me," her daughter sang.

"Was it just me or did she try tripping him?" one of the purples said.

"This mare's got you scared to death," one of the cadets told her brother, having wheeled around to pull him back onto his feet. That was Glados, always having a soft spot for her brother.

"I know she wasn't speaking to me," another of the purples muttered.

"Now I really wish that I knew how to swim," someone shouted as she leapt over a series of columns jutting out of an artificial pond designated for the civilians to bathe in.

"To be a mare-" the group shouted.

"You must be swift as the coursing river," Rainbow Dash sang.

"To be a mare-" they repeated.

"With all the force of a great monsoon," the sergeant declared.

"To be a mare-" the cadets sang.

"With all the strength of a raging fire. Mysterious as the dark side of, the moon!" Rainbow Dash shouted, smiling at the class as they raced around the city.

Glados hummed the familiar tune to herself as she buzzed her vibrant purple wings, gently setting her hooves down on the floor —if one could even call it that. She looked around the gondola, smiling warmly at her comrades as they sat at their posts, all exchanging information about their current position, wind conditions, and the total force with which the endless sandstorm outside was throwing them off course, all oblivious to her entrance.

She made her way to the middle of the ellipsoid room, and spun her chair with a hoof before taking her seat. She swept her gaze across the room, from port to starboard, admiring the clean white control panels and the neon green displays of the ship's many systems, all under her command. The front view windshields had been equipped with heavy armor, which could be removed at the push of a few buttons, as, out here, in the desert, there was only one thing to see; sand, endless, unforgiving, relentless sand.

She sighed heavily as she slouched into the red cushions that adorned her smooth, white chair. She had sometimes been a little envious of her brother, knowing that he would have a throne someday, but this, this made up for it.

"General," a voice shook her from her state of quiet contentment.

She opened her left eye, the pinkish purple orb turning to locate the source of the voice. She stood up from her chair, and made her way towards the front left section of the deck, where Milli and Kaytsak, better known as Lightning, sat, monitoring the weapon systems and shields. She narrowed her eyes at the displays, and quickly scanned them over as she awaited a briefing.

Instead, Milli gave the general a peck on the cheek, and smiled as her more authoritative sister —clutchmate was the correct word, because they were genetically fourth cousins, but they considered themselves closer than that— blushed madly, her cheeks practically glowing a slightly darker purple than her eyes. The subordinate changeling returned to watching the display in front of her, and asked Glados, "You're in a good mood today, so what's up?"

Glados said, "I've been thinking about our commander recently. Why, you rarely ever ask?"

Milli beckoned her sister closer, and whispered into her ear, "Make sure you use protection next time you genderswap."

The general remained still for a moment, and asked, "Is it that time of year already?"

"'Fraid so, sis," Milli answered, and tapped a few keys on the arm of her seat, which lit up a golden green color as she pushed them down. The screen in front of her presented a green outline of a generic member of the purples, and she spun her chair around to face the general. She said, "Along with that, I just recieved a message from a particular apple farmer."

Glados's eyes widened, and her cheeks flushed completely. Her ears pinned back, and she shook her head. "I don't know any apple farmer," she told her sister.

Milli grinned, and slid her hoof over a trackball on the arm of her chair. She pressed down on a button with her other hoof, and opened a word document on her screen. "If it up isn't for you, then I'll read it aloud until the recipient claims it," she said, and promptly began to read the message, "Dearest Glados, I eagerly await your arrival, and have a special surprise for you, my very special somep-"

Glados covered her sister's mouth with a hoof, and tapped her other hoof on a memory cartridge labeled, "For Glados." She grabbed it in her magic, and said, "It's um... Yeah, that's mine. It's about uh... that shipment of crystal apples for Ladybug." She looked down, and bit her lower lip nervously, slipping the coin sized object into one of the holes in her legs, which she closed up around it.

Milli rolled her eyes, a sly grin on her face, and said, "Now you're purchasing apples from your stallionfriend for your crush." She shook her head slowly, and said, "Glados, at least wait until the poor thing recovers from the loss. Not everyone bounces back as fast as you."

Glados sighed heavily. "I know, I just..." she began. She shook her head slowly, and asked, "Can you blame me?"

"What for?" Milli asked. "Having the hots for our princess, or pursuing two lovers at once?"

"The former," Glados sighed. She mumbled something under her breath, and made brief eye contact with her sister. "It's just that... she's so... She's adorable, and sweet, and kind, and funny. She's all anyone could ever want, and have you seen her working out, with her well toned, smooth muscles flexing, and have you wondered how nice it would be to just touch her wings, and those soft, delicate feathers?" She looked up a bit, her eyes glazing over as she drifted away.

She shuddered upon snapping back to reality, and pouted, "Whatever, it's none of your business."

Milli said, "It's not my fault you've slept with everyone on this ship."

Glados glared at her sister, and said, "It's not like I'm hurting anyone."

Milli shook her head, and said, "Well, I could have gone without the role play about me being in trouble. I was genuinely freaking out, but I relaxed when I realized that I was just talking to a nymphomaniac."

"I'm not a nymphomaniac. I'm your general, and hold a lot of sway over who helps you this time of year. Talk too much, and I might just have the entire city avoid the very scent of you like it's a chemical weapon," the general said.

Milli turned around, throwing her hooves in the air as the general marched back to her chair in the middle of the gondola, then snickered as she opened a copy of her sister's messages.

An object flew across the bridge, lodging itself in the memory slot containing the copies, destroying them. It fell to the ground, and Milli looked down at the polished, curved dagger her sister had always carried with her. It was bright white, some article of their father's adventures, and serrated three times over, each little tooth covered in more teeth, which still had more teeth.

Glados walked back over to her sister, picked up the old weapon by its smooth, wooden hilt, and asked, "Any other copies?"

Milli shook her head immediately, and turned around to look at her monitor, a wild fear in her eyes.

The general returned to her seat, sliding her weapon back into its sheath, which was on the belt around her shoulders, releasing a sharp, metallic sound. She watched Milli for a moment longer as she resumed her normal activities, and sighed as she pushed the cartridge she'd grabbed into a slot on her chair. She tapped on a button next to the slot, and beams of light shot from the front of her chair's left arm to generate a screen.

She used a trackball to scroll through the data, scanning the files for one specific thing. She grinned as she located it, and quickly closed the window to pull up one that looked more important. She'd need to see how well the file worked later, when she wasn't working.

She still smiled as the day went on, with no one looking over her shoulder, calling for her attention, or alerting her of some complication in the flight plan she'd prepared for this trip.

And in there lay the problem. She had been in charge of this ship long enough to know that if nothing appeared to go wrong, something had already gone wrong. It was a part of the vessel's personality.

She looked up from her monitor, and dismissed it with a wave of her hoof. She removed the cartridge room her chair, and lifted her purple helmet over her head a bit, slipping the storage device between her head and helmet. She looked over at the front of the bridge, and silently tiptoed her way towards June and Fire, who were supposed to be watching the radar, but had taken a break to share a kiss at the worst time possible.

Glados tapped June on the head, and whispered into her ear, so as not to make a scene with the rest of their crew, "Guys, I get it, but at least wait until we change shifts, or for me to pretend to fall asleep."

Blink called the general over, "Glados, we may have a problem."

The officer rolled her eyes, and pulled herself into a more authoritative composure. She smiled at Blink, and said, "Just when I was starting to get bored. This ship never fails to entertain me." She walked to the starboard side of the gondola, and looked over her sister's shoulder.

The monitor showed a green outline if the ship as viewed from above, a great ellipse with a pointed front and a flattened back, with tails and rudders placed pointing vertically and horizontally. The display put the tail end of the ship on the far left of the screen, where a dozen or so red objects blinked in unison.

Glados narrowed her eyes at them, and then turned to look at Milli. "Put the shields up. We've got company," she said. She turned around, and marched to the back of the bridge, leaving the red dots to move further and further left on the screen.

She flew up out of the gondola, and ran towards the barracks, where a dozen other guards slept in preparation for their shift. She threw the doors open, and shouted, "We've got unwanted guests! I expect to see each and every one of you armed in the next minute! Move! Move! Move!"

He remembered dying, falling, and running out of time. Chrysalis had managed to cast one final spell on him before she'd died, one that didn't even take its time in leaching his body of love, which wouldn't have hurt a normal pony —it was the same spell she'd used on Shining Armor before— but was a gruesome way to kill a changeling.

He had pleaded for one thing of the castle as his limited energy had run dry. He had known that it must have been impatient with him, as it'd saved his life several times already, but as he had died, the stone had moved.

He had drifted away, his mind slowing into nothingness, his heartbeat ceasing, his heavy breathing coming to a stop. He hadn't gone anywhere, but found himself limited to a presence in the castle, a mind on its own, trapped in the obsidian walls and floors, able to think, able to gradually manipulate the stone, but unable to know what was going on with his friends, family, or mate.

The stone had gathered a few things to replace him with, some metals here, some water there, channeling it all through porous stone, into a shell that had become his new body. Then, with a sudden start, a dose of much welcomed energy, and a surge of newfound strength, his new body called him back into physicality.

He felt the stone encasing his body shatter, falling off of the white chitin in plates, leaving behind a new body, where his old one had turned to dusk. He collapsed, his new legs shaky and weak, barely able to support themselves, much less him. He fell flat on his face, opened his eyes, and smiled inwardly.

The timid little filly, with a pair of golden eyes, had grown wings. She flapped them delicately as she smiled at him, showing off the membranes of shimmering chitin, clear in some places, blue and pink in others. They were shaped like those of a butterfly, but more regular, composed of squares, octagons, and triangles.

He willed himself to move, and gasped as he remembered how to breathe. He coughed up a cloud of dust, and flicked his ears as he took inventory of his body, tensing each muscle in turn. It was strange, as his new body didn't feel the same, like each muscle worked a bit differently, and the actions that had once moved his wings now made his jaws clench.

It took him a bit to get used to, and as he pushed himself up on his legs, the sound of footsteps on the cold castle floor approached. He took a shaky step forward, stumbled, and fell over, landing on his left side. He let out an exasperated grunt, and looked up just in time to see who was coming.

A yellow and red pegasus stood in the doorway, a shocked expression on her face, but her camouflage brown eyes told him only one thing. She didn't look much older than when he'd last seen her, but her shoulders and neck had gained a bit of muscle, enough that he worried how long he'd been absent.

He opened his mouth to speak, but found even that challenging, and only smiled as Ladybug pulled him onto his feet.

She gave him a stern look, a hug, and a swift slap across his left cheek, confusing him completely. She then began talking frantically, "Where have you been? We all thought you were dead! I thought you were dead! Why the hay are you just coming back now?"

He sat down, rubbed his cheek with a hoof, and bit his lip as she added one final question, "Are you even Toothless?"

He nodded slowly, and ignited his horn, only for it to snuff itself out as his vision clouded. He was low enough on energy as it was, and casting even a minor spell was nearly enough to put him back to sleep. He steadied himself against the bed, realizing that they were in his old room, and cleared his throat. "I... I need love," he managed, with a few syllables slurring.

She rolled her eyes, and pulled him into a hug, wrapping her soft, feathery wings around his back. She gently nuzzled his neck, and whispered the three most dangerous words in the changeling world, "I love you."

He had to moderate himself, because if he didn't, he might take too much from her, but slowly drained small amounts of love from her. He wrapped his forelegs around her back, and told her, "Sorry about this whole mess I got you in. Thanks for not leaving, and not killing me for doing something as stupid as taking on Chrysalis myself."

"Oh, and um..." she said. She paused, and took a deep breath. "You missed a few things, a few months worth of things. Glados and a few of the others just left on the ship to tell Princess Luna that her son is dead. The purples formed a committee to run the country in our stead for the next few months, so I could go to school."

She took a step back from him, and looked him over while she tried to add a few things, "And uh... I was busy arranging your funeral, but I guess that's gonna have to be cancelled. We... You never properly proposed, and you promised me a ceremony."

"That I did," he said, and smiled at her. "Have you been training with my sisters?"

"Well... after homework, there isn't much else to do here," she said. She sighed, twiddling her front hooves anxiously. "Do you... Do you think you'll outlive me, with the whole... you being a god thing and all?"

He shook his head, and said, "First of all, I'm not a god, I'm simply relying on a spirit to save my sorry flanks every time I die, which has happened twice now. Secondly, I will properly propose, publicly. Thirdly, have my sisters explained the family curse to you yet?"

She shook her head.

"Basically, if I ever have children, only one of them will be a boy, and the rest will all be girls," he said. He blushed, his white cheeks turning bright blue. "I'm not even sure if this body can reproduce. I sort of trusted the desert to make one as similar to my old body as it could. I mean, we don't need to have kids if you don't want any, but my grandmother is a bit insistent that she gets tons of descendants."

She blinked at him, and said, "Well... I'll think about that."

Then they both just stood there, avoiding each other's gaze, looking nervously around the room.

She stepped forward, wrapped her wings around the back of his neck, and nuzzled his shoulder. She muttered, "I thought I'd never see you again."

He winced, wrapping his chitinous wings around her, and said, "Sorry." For one thing, he was usually talkative, the exposition person, so summing up his entire thought process in one word felt strange. For another thing, he, at the age of sixteen, was technically married, in charge of a country, and recently brought back from the dead. This had been the most hectic part of his life —not that he had even been conscious for most of it.

He sighed, leaning against her, and said, "You're a princess."

"Don't remind me," she grumbled, and asked, "You don't mind that I moved into your room, do you?"

"No, not at all," he said. "You're warmer than my blankets, and my blankets aren't nearly as beautiful as you."

She took a step back, looked him in the eye, and walked past him, shaking her head. As she walked, she pushed him over with her wing, shoving him onto the bed. She said, "Your blankets must be really ugly."

He blinked, more than a little confused. "Th-that was supposed to be a compliment. Take a compliment every once in a while. I'm putting effort into these lines. At least acknowledge that I'm trying," he said. He sighed, and lay down on his side, tucking himself under the thin blankets. He closed his eyes, pinned back his ears —or not, as he couldn't quite get the proper nerve signals through his new body— and declared, "I'm going to sleep."

Silence fell upon the room, and after a moment or two, curiosity about her actions got the better of him.

He opened his eyes, and went still as she gently landed behind him.

Ladybug slipped underneath the blankets, and pulled him to her chest with a wing, her two hearts thumping like soft, soothing drums. She opened her mouth to speak.

He said, "I love you."

She smiled at him, and said, "I love you more."

Author's Note

Just to remind everyone, when the term sisters is used at any point to refer to any two members of the same brood, broodmates is much more representative of how their relationship works, aside from the purples, who are unusually close, having done almost everything together since they were hatched. No two members of the same brood are genetically similar enough for them to be called siblings.

If you ignored genetics and started calling clutchmates siblings because they have at least a queen —which is not the same as a mother— in common, suddenly everyone hatched from Queen Chrysalis, which is the entire adult population of New Hiveland, can't legally have kids.

Chapter II - Hearts

Glados had looked down at her straw, then around at all the others. She had frowned, having drawn the shortest one. It had come down to that, to decide who might live or die. Their enemies had taken all but one of the attack vehicles, and it was only large enough for one person.

It was just her luck, that she had been sent home.

She'd have to look the princess in the eye, and explain to her what was happening.

She was more likely to survive this than the rest of her crew.

They had all hugged her, patted her on the back, and sent her on her way, towards home, towards a place that they may never lay eyes upon again.

She sniffled in the stuffy air of the cockpit, her engines blairing somewhere through a few meters of the endless sand. She couldn't see them, but they sang of a struggle she couldn't even speak of.

She looked down at her radar map, with its great green gaze spinning around her timid little vessel, all that protected her from the wrath of the Badlands. She could see the tail end of the Prydwen vanishing from sight as she flew away from it.

She and her armor were covered in grease and grime, mostly from the enemies' weapons, those great guns they'd brought with them, and taken her home away from home under siege.

"They won't win," she muttered to herself.

She could still turn around, make a last stand, show those pirates who was boss.

No, she had made a promise. She was not going to turn around. She had just enough fuel to get her home. If she turned around or got thrown off course by some unforseen wind, or by another attack, she'd never see the princess again.

Suddenly, a faint sound rung out through the cabin, and she looked down at the map. A dozen red dots were right in front of her, just a few kilometers ahead.

She hissed at the map, and reached a hoof up to deactivate her cabin's light, throwing her into near complete darkness. She flipped a switch in front of her before she could forget where it was, activating the silencers on her engines. All that she knew was the endless howling of the wind outside, and the shaking of the cabin as she looked up.

As her eyes adjusted to what fortunate light could pierce the sand, she looked down at her map, and the red dots it claimed to be directly overhead.

She couldn't hear them, nor could she see them. She only knew they were there because, for a few short seconds, everything went pitch black. Her map fizzed out, and her monitor went dark, leaving her in total, uncompromising shadow of something massive.

A few tense moments later, she emerged into relative light.

Her map flickered back on, and she gulped as she looked it over.

Directly behind her, was a mass of bright red light, at least twice the size of her beloved vessel, and easily massive enough to have snapped her plane in half on its hull without even slowing down enough for someone onboard to ask, "Did you feel that?"

She grit her teeth as she considered this new threat, and how lucky she had been to have flown under it rather than level with it.

A familiar aching pain in her stomach haunted her for the next few minutes, and and she finally turned her silencers off and her light back on.

The bulb above her head glowed for a moment, then fizzled out like a candle in a flood.

"Dammit!" she cursed, slamming her hoof against the one section of the dashboard that didn't have any buttons on it.

She ignited her horn, and held her hoof in front of it. She pulled her hoof away, dragging a ball of purple fire with it. It remained a few centimeters away from her hoof, and licked at the stuffy air, greedily using up the small amounts of oxygen the filters could supply to her. It didn't matter, as the tanks had plenty in reserve.

She looked around the cabin, quickly activating autopilot, and glanced at the map, then out of the cockpit window. "Shit!" she declared, and swiftly deactivated the machine that had almost flown her into the another massive object. She rolled the red trackball in front of her forward, and the plane dove downward.

She glanced above her head, and waved her hoof to put out the flame she'd made.

Right there, was a grand, chrome ship, likely entirely unaware of her presence. Her head was a meter away from its hull, and she could see that distance closing as she dove out of its way.

She could feel her heavily armored biplane shaking in the wake of the air the larger ship pushed away. She could hear the great flying machine's propellers and the beating of her heart, threatening to jump out of her chest.

She saw the ship's hull moving away as she descended out of its path, and then it vanished behind the sand. She pulled back up, and silenced her engines, hoping that no one had heard them.

She looked down at her map, and at the large craft above her. She hit her hoof against the screen to make sure it wasn't broken, then she gulped as she realized why the entire cabin was awash in bright red light. It was that big.

"Just keep flying straight," she muttered to herself, shaking herself free of the stupor she'd entered. Her crew, her broodmates, her sisters were going to try and take on that thing. It must have been the size of a small city, if not in width, then at least in length. "Just keep flying," she repeated.

Arachne made a sharp left turn, scrambling to gain traction on the cold obsidian floor, and sprinted down the hallway, towards the royal suite, where the princess surely slept, and would be less than pleased to be awoken at such an hour as this.

Her purple eyes were of little help in such light as that of the lamp which illuminated the princess's chambers, so she knocked in the door to rouse the princess. She panted for a moment, and held her breath as the sounds she had heard too often this time of year met her ears, although she tended to hear them from Glados's chambers, and only when another member of the guard couldn't be accounted for. She said, "Your highness."

The noises cut off. There was a scuffling sound, and one of chitin and fur. Ladybug's voice shushed that of someone else, and asked, "Yes?"

Arachne said, "We have lost contact with the Prydwen." She slumped against the door, and asked, "May I be made aware of your lover's identity, so we at least know who is here under your custody?"

Ladybug answered, "Toothless."

Arachne asked, "Are you mad, your highness?"

A masculine, almost startlingly familiar voice came from the other side of the door, "No. Do alert your congressional committee that I uh... I'm not dead anymore."

The guard blinked her purple eyes, dumbfounded, but quickly regained her bearing, and said, "I'll need to see you personally in order to present such a groundbreaking piece of information. And uh..." She drifted off, trying to think about anything other than what must have been going on just behind that door.

"Uh... Use protection," she told the royal couple. She felt her ears burning, and could almost see the deep purple color her cheeks must have been turning. She stood up, prepared to leave, and added, "Remember what father taught you."

Toothless had always been uneasy whenever someone brought up sex as a topic of conversation, so the princess's lover's response made her question their identity, along with her own sanity. "I will," he told her.

Arachne almost considered poking her head instead, if only to be sure that was Toothless, but shuddered at the thought. She said, "I'm uh... I'm gonna go get some sleep. I do not feel very well." That was totally a lie, but she desperately needed a reason to get away from that door.

"Okay," Ladybug shouted, and then the noises began again, of two creatures deeply enthralled in the most beautiful —or disgusting— act of love.

Arachne sprinted back up the hallway, trying as hard as she could to clear her mind's eye of what Toothless must have been doing to make such a tough mare be so loud. When she returned to the barracks, casting her armor onto the floor, it occurred to her that, perhaps, Toothless was the one being so loud. That could have been it. Their voices were similar in pitch, so she may have mistaken them.

She shuddered, and rolled over in her bed, glad that Glados wasn't in the castle, or she would have asked to join the two of them, if not also drag another guard with her.

Meanwhile, Toothless and Ladybug were standing on opposite corners of the bedroom, panting, their sides heaving, wings limp at their sides. Their front legs were supporting more weight than their hind ones, so they leaned forward a bit.

Toothless said, "Give it up. I've been wrestling since I could walk, against proportionately larger opponents than you."

Ladybug shook her head, and said, "You know, you don't need to grunt every time I bluff a charge. This isn't television."

Toothless flared his wings at his sides, and brushed his hoof against the ground, kicking up a small cloud of dust. He tensed up, then froze. His face went pale —or they would have if his chitin hadn't been white already— then his cheeks turned bright blue. "Ladybug, I... I think Arachne..." he began, before relaxing as he broke out into laughter.

She raised an eyebrow at him, and asked, "What about her?"

He threw his head back, displaying his fangs as he laughed. He wiped his eye with a hoof as he calmed down, and said, "Arachne thought we were mating."

Ladybug stiffened, and her wings folded against her sides as she considered this possibility. She smiled faintly, and chuckled.

Toothless closed his eyes for a split second to say, "That'd never happen, what with my whole, being a nerd and a-"

Ladybug pounced upon him, and pinned him to the ground below her, saying, "You let your guard down." She pressed her nose against his, and curled her lips back in a snarl, appearing much more intimidating than she would have otherwise. She spread her wings out at her sides to balance herself as she placed her front hooves on his chest, not supporting enough weight there to hurt him, but enough to keep him from pushing her off.

He thrashed about, trying to throw her off nonetheless, but his new body still wasn't cooperating with him, and he gave up after a few seconds of this.

Ladybug dropped her aggressive expression, figuring he'd basically surrendered, and that acting more like a serious opponent would only succeed in terrifying him or giving him a heart attack. She smiled at him, and, suppressing a giggle, asked, "You think I wouldn't have sex with you?"

He blushed madly, and stammered, "W-well... I'm still in school."

"Oh, about that, you missed your seventeenth birthday, and um... I didn't look to find any other partners," she said. She gave him a warm smile, and a quick peck on the lips. "And we're married, so I kind of assumed that sex was a part of what I signed up for."

"Not even Glados? And, technically, the marriage ended when I died," he told her, still pinned beneath her, but waiting.

Ladybug said, "She mostly avoided me, and I got the impression that she didn't enjoy wrestling with me."

He smiled, and raised an eyebrow at what he imagined was incredible naïveté. "Sure," he said, and kicked her in the gut as she blinked, attempting to get out from under her, and possibly pin her down, but it didn't go according to plan.

He wound up with her lying down on top of him, their stomachs and chests pressed together, her hind legs hugging his sides. Now, with her actually sitting on him, he said, "Fine, you win. What do you want?

She grinned at him, and nuzzled his cheek affectionately. She said, "A chocolate fountain at my wedding."

He blinked at her, and asked, "What's chocolate?"

"You poor, poor, uncultured soul," she said, sighing, and shook her head. "Your parents never let you try chocolate? I'm sorry, but, are you sure they were your parents?"

He nodded. "Yeah, pretty sure, between the whole um..." He spread his wings out on the floor, glancing at them. "... having these, my father being the last bat pony, and my misshapen fangs," he told her, and smiled warmly at her. He wrapped his forelegs around her back, and held her on top of him. "Oh, and don't forget my elongated ears, my horribly messed up reproductive system, my ability to survive things that nopony should."

She smiled, and nuzzled her nose against his chest. "It's not that messed up, I'm sure," she said. She lay her lower jaw against the floor next to his head, and whispered into his ear, "I have a question."

"Okay," he whispered.

"Can you drink blood?" she asked him.

He rolled his eyes, and said, "My grandfather was a fruit bat pony, not a vampire." He shook his head slowly, and gasped as Ladybug playfully nipped at the tip of his ear. "H-hey, that's sensitive," he stammered.

She said, "That's the point."

Glados dragged herself to the large double doors she knew so well, and, though her eyes were bloodshot, slammed her hoof on the left door. She waited a moment, heard nothing, and said, "Your highness?" Again, nothing. She grit her teeth, trying to placate her conscience, and pushed her way through the doors.

Immediately, she said, "My apologies, your highness, bu-" She paused as scent she had known from her childhood until a few months ago met her nose, and she looked towards the bed. Then another smell, the underlying implications of which she understood from experience. Something gnawed at her when she realized what had happened.

Toothless woke up first, and, blushing, said, "Good morning, general. What are you doing here? I thought the Prydwen was under your command al-" It was then that his eyes focused on the damage her armor had sustained, how misaligned her helmet was, and how she reeked of fear, rage, and what must have been pain.

"What happened?" he asked her.

Glados couldn't listen to his voice, couldn't accept what was happening, wouldn't come to terms with what had clearly happened. She tried to simply say what she had been tasked with telling the ruler, "We were attacked by a..." She went quiet, and simply stood there, staring.

This was extremely unusual of the general. She rarely became speechless, and when she went silent, it was usually to make a point of it. Silence was a powerful tool in the general's line of work, and a well placed break of even a few seconds could rally a crowd around her.

But now, she was at a loss for words. She was more scared than she ever had been since she'd first met Rainbow Dash, on that first day, in the old bunker, huddled up with her sisters while the endless storm of sand and pain raged outside, howling like the dogs of Tartarus.

She had been terrified, paralyzed by the sound, the threat of her only home collapsing around her, of her sisters and maybe even herself being swept away into the unforgiving desert, unable to see, hear, or be heard. But that had all changed when the tender warmth of a hoof on her shoulder, and a wing around her back had given her an anchor, something to hold onto, a shred of hope and security against the endless winds outside.

She was now only slightly less terrified than she had been on that day, on the day that had shaped her, that had brought her more a mother figure than Princess Sweet Tooth had ever been.

She watched the princess's sleeping form, how she rolled over, how naturally the corners of her lips curled up in a smile, how truly happy she looked, sleeping beside her mate. And they were mates, that much was made clear by the smell that hung in the air.

Glados's legs tensed, and her wings folded at her sides. She took a deep breath, attempting to regain her composure. She felt something, something inside of her breaking, violently shattering, sending little pieces of itself throughout her mind, and burying those pieces into everything else like shards of glass.

Everything, all that she'd done in the last five months, dreaming, waiting for the bright pegasus to recover from the loss they all shared, how carefully and meticulously she'd avoided talking to her, so she was not being sly about her plans, all fell apart. She felt everything inside of her shaking, threatening to collapse in above her, crush her beneath it.

"V-very well," she said. "I'm glad for you. I... I can't be happy, I get it." She felt something chipping away at her, like she was slowly being consumed from the inside out, like the symbiotic worm in her stomach had decided that she looked tasty, rather than all of the love she'd fed it since her mother had given it to her so she could be normal, so she could be like her sisters.

It was like that worm, so oblivious to what pain its host was going through, contained in the pitch blackness of her stomach, was as ungrateful, and undeserving of receiving all the love she'd harvested, as the prince. It hadn't bent the very rules she was tasked with enforcing to get that love. It hadn't worked until its legs gave out beneath it. It hadn't done anything but sit there, and reaped the benefits of her tireless work.

It was fun work, and she had enjoyed most of it, but it was still work, work that she had done. That she had spent her every moment of her well earned spare time collecting love was of no consequence to that worm. It only wanted more, more of what she alone could provide it, and would continue to provide it until she died, and the worm went off to find a mate of its own.

It gnawed at her very soul, and what resolve she had to preserve that worm's life. Just because she needed it in order to maintain her diet was all the reason the worm needed to know, and it knew how safe it was. It didn't consider the fact that she could unsheathe her dagger at any time, cut herself open, and pull the parasite out.

She would have to start eating pony food —which would only keep her alive for a few weeks— and return to a normal sleep schedule, but she could still do it.

Toothless had only known Ladybug for three weeks, and she had married him, just as how she had accepted the worm. And when the host had been cleansed of its parasite, Glados had worked so hard to let her mourn in peace. She had conceded to wait, to wait until six months had passed, but he had given her five before deciding that she couldn't be happy.

She had come so close. She had worked so hard. She had waited so long. She had been one month away. She had been so close on a dozen different occasions to confessing her love for the bouncy pegasus who plagued her dreams, who had stolen her heart, and now, she would never get it back. She would never know happiness. She would never forgive him.

Before she could say something she'd regret, before the princess could wake up to find her in such a state as she was, she ran. She charged through the hallways of the castle, her entire mind threatening to fall away like ashes left to the mercy of the desert, and managed to slam her bedroom door closed behind her.

She survived long enough to drag herself to her bed, having removed her armor, and collapse onto it, and then, she finally gave in, to the pain, to the emptiness spreading from the center of her chest, where her heart and once been. She, for the first time since she could remember, curled up into a ball on her thin, purple bedsheets, and wailed into her pillow.

The great general, the supreme commander, who had been tasked with readying her home for a war, was ripped apart, by the news of her prince's return from the dead. She, the great tactician of her generation, mentored by the great Rainbow Dash, the element of loyalty herself, broke like a piece of glass against a hammer.

She cried, and that was all she could do.

Author's Note

Okay, so in case you're still confused by what Glados meant when she referred to a worm. She was born with a chromosomal mutation that basically rendered her body incapable of processing love in any helpful way, so she promptly began to starve. The worm was supposed to be a temporary solution, as it processes the love energy for her, but they had never gotten around to finding a better one, and the worm demanded most of the love she consumed, so she simply consumed more love. Consuming more love meant doing so as efficiently as possible, and to a changeling, that means have lots and lots of sex.
I'll probably explain more about this worm in later chapters.

Chapter III - Loopholes

Standing just outside the left in a pair of doors that led into the general's bedroom, Arachne gulped, and looked over her shoulder at the royal couple. She looked back and forth between them, and said, "I'd have thought she would ask you guys for a threesome. Are you sure she's upset with you?"

Ladybug took a deep breath, and said, "Look, we didn't even do anything serious. I was just feeding him."

Toothless grumbled, "I would have put it in a less transactional term, like horsing around. And it stopped being about feeding the instant you decided to give me a b-"

She quickly covered his mouth with a hoof, and placed her ear against the door. She listened for a moment, and turned around to look at him. "Okay, I have an idea," she said.

"Well, at least that makes one of us," he said.

She stepped towards the door on the right, and slowly pulled it open. She made sure to stay behind it so no one inside would see her, and grabbed Toothless's hoof. She pulled him in front of the open door, and said, "I need you to get in there, and figure out why she's upset." She then shuffled her stallionfriend into the general's quarters, ran to the door before Glados could see her, and slammed it behind her.

Toothless gulped as the sound of the door closing echoed throughout the bedroom. He glanced at the general's bed, and sighed with relief when he found it empty. He looked around the room, and ran over to Glados's personal restroom, whereupon he darted inside, closing his jaws over the hilt of his father's dagger.

Glados looked up from her stomach at him, and sighed. "What else have you come to take from me?" she asked him, having removed her armor and prepared to remove the final scourge in her life she could still do something about. She had gotten far enough to treat her stomach with disinfectant, and had been about to cut herself open.

That worm didn't deserve her work, her love, her body. She couldn't live with it any longer. Everyone thought of her as a wanton, or less pleasant things.

He shook his head, and carefully looked her up and down, taking note of some other things around the room. Her medical kit was sitting atop her sink, open, and she had popped out the purple armor plates guarding her stomach, propping them against the tub. He could taste her apathy, her denial, her listlessness.

He teleported the dagger away, and said, "Look, why don't you tell me what's got your tail in a bunch, and I'll help you put your armor back on. I'll leave you alone if you want, but I need to know what happened." He made a tentative moment of eye contact, and sat down in front of her.

Glados looked away, and said, "A large fleet of airships attacked us, and took all but one escape vehicle. We drew straws, and I got to come home, to find you, alive." She surprised herself with the amount of spite she could put behind such a positive word.

He sighed, and asked, "What's so bad abo..." He trailed off, and slapped his forehead with a hoof. A dozen seemingly random things fit into place; her avoidance of Ladybug, her remark about being happy, her suddenly intense awareness of her sex life.

Glados didn't look at him. She couldn't.

He shook his head slowly, and said, "Oh... I... I can't believe I didn't realize that."

She sat up, and hung her head low, biting her lower lip. She closed her eyes, trying to keep the tears welling up behind them at bay, and sniffled. She expected him to act all sorry, beat around the bush while telling her that she had to move on, and leave her without helping.

He wrapped his forelegs around her back, and nuzzled her side affectionately. "Why didn't you just make your move sooner?" he asked her.

Her breath caught, and she clenched her eyes shut, turning to face the wall to her left. "I didn't want to take advantage of her grief," she said, choking on the final syllable.

She hadn't said, "I didn't want her to think I was taking advantage of her grief." She hadn't cared about what the others thought of her. She just didn't want to live with the idea that she had taken advantage of Ladybug, even if she didn't intend to.

His eyes snapped open, and he gulped. Some part of him made him regret coming back to life. He had stolen away what was probably Glados's only chance. That part of him was immediately scolded by every other fiber in his body, but he couldn't think of a better solution.

Ouch.

He said, "I... She wasn't aware of that."

"Couldn't..." she choked. "... tell her."

He couldn't just tell her to move on. He wasn't cruel. But he couldn't just give her what she wanted.

Or could he?

Well, he couldn't just give Ladybug to Glados, because that would be slavery. But he could turn a blind eye to a bit of playing around. No, that wouldn't sit well with his conscience.

He thought back to a conversation he'd had with Ladybug the previous night, and smiled as the solution became glaringly obvious.

He gently patted the general on the back, and said, "I'll be right back."

She didn't respond, and simply sniffled as he left the room.

When she looked up, a mass of yellow and red was sitting in front of her, and Toothless was smiling mischievously —a look she'd come to dread over the years. She wiped her eyes with a hoof, and blinked at Ladybug, who was sitting less than a meter away, so tantalizingly close, but so painfully far.

Toothless said, "Glados, you are a well respected general, my personal advisor, and all around bossy sister. Ladybug has been informed of your infatuation with her, and, since there isn't a legal process by which marriages can simply pick up where they left off if one of the parties involved dies, she is technically single."

Glados thought over his words a few times, letting them bounce around in her head for a moment. Her eyes lit up as she realized what he was trying to say, and stood up. She wrapped a foreleg around his neck, and hugged him to her chest in an overly enthused moment of glee. "You're the best brother ever!" she said, her words barely separated by any length of time distinguishable from that between syllables, and placed a myriad of quick kisses on his left cheek.

By the time he managed to escape her grasp, his entire face was practically glowing bright blue. He pushed the general off of him, and said, "Now, I'm not going to just let you win her over entirely. I'm still in need of a princess, and I'm still going to marry her eventually."

"Whatever! You should go deal with the pirates! Bye!" Glados rambled, before quickly herding him out of her bedroom, and slamming the door shut behind him.

He blinked profusely as he regained his bearings, and shouted through the closed door, "What? So I'm supposed to announce to everyone that I'm alive by myself?"

The door opened for a moment, during which time the general taped a piece of paper to the front of the left door, which read, "Do not enter. Stay out. (Seriously, I will not be held responsible for any damages resulting from failure to follow this rule.)"

Toothless opened his mouth to speak, then jumped backwards as Glados retuned to place a hasty kiss on his nose, and snorted at the sign, "Nice." He turned to his left, prepared to leave, but added, "If she comes back to my room with a positive pregnancy test, you're fired."

"Okay," came the general's voice, accompanied by a trilling giggle from her partner.

He glanced over his shoulder, and shuddered, before marching down the hallway.

As he walked through the many halls of the castle, he took some time to think about his plans, of his reign. After he and Ladybug got married, and Glados reconciled her feelings for Ladybug, he could get to work on his great project, a key part of his public image —at least, before he'd died; wholesale reform of the changeling laws.

When his parents had built the city, their subjects had insisted they incorporate the old changeling legal system into their constitution. And, while his parents hadn't been naïve enough to leave the entire unedited bulk of messy, often contradicting laws that had supported the undisputed rule of the same queen for two thousand years in the law of their new city state, they hadn't been given enough time to edit the whole thing.

They had made it better, but it was still a huge mess, largely unstudied, and wildly inconsistent.

He had dedicated his spare to time to doing some deep dives on the books, but even he had only explored a small fraction of them, which was still a lot of reading.

Thankfully, they had inserted a clause into their constitution that basically said, "The changeling legal code will not hold any legislative power until this document is eighteen years old."

Something nagged at him. He didn't know what it was or why, but it bothered him.

He considered asking some of the purples what the exact date was, so he could get more acclimated to being alive again, when he tripped over something, landing on his face.

He groaned, and looked up.

The nameless changeling filly smiled down at him, and flapped her gossamer wings, lifting herself into the air. She gently set herself back down on Toothless's back, and curled up into a small ball, letting her head rest on the pink armor that covered his back. Her golden eyes drifted closed, and she gently nuzzled his white chitin as he stood up.

"Hi," he told her, and asked, "Do you have a name yet?"

She nodded.

"Don't bother with the silent treatment. I know you can talk," he told her.

Her breathing became slow and regular, as though she were asleep.

He didn't buy it, not for one second. "Look, dad explained the condition to me, and assigned me as your personal guardian in the event of his death. I know you have something to say," he told her.

He was referring to an unfortunate hereditary mishap that had only happened because she was both a biological queen, and their father's child. Changeling queens developed incredibly fast —unless the current queen somehow stops the hive from feeding them the necessary diet for the development of a queen, and stunts their growth, as Chrysalis had after her first successor became a rebellious traitor.

Queens also did other things that didn't really make genetic sense, like how each and every queen had a different pair of wings, horn shape, and many more differences. The trick was that DNA had very little to do with it. The biological diversity of queens was all about magic, which dramatically altered the epigenetic influences on a growing queen.

And they grew at incredible rates —Chrysalis's first child was rumored to be less than a year younger than her.

Between that, along with their father's unfortunate ability to learn faster than normal ponies, and the evidence she'd already provided Toothless with that she understood language, he was fairly positive that she could speak.

She stretched her legs out, and flapped her wings slowly, not taking off, but fanning him in the hopes that he might stop prompting her.

She did know how to pander, he'd admit. The gentle breeze she generated did feel nice in the warm desert air of the dry season.

Still, he pressed, "You're only convincing me all the more that you have a secret to keep."

He shook his head, and rolled his eyes, deciding that he'd deal with her later. He continued walking, occasionally making remarks about how much she'd grown since he'd last seen her.

Then, as he made a sharp left turn, and emerged into the throne room, he said, "So, Glados left me in charge of dealing with a..." He trailed off as the gravity of his task hit him.

He hadn't had the time to think about Glados's news. It had been of less priority than stopping her from committing suicide, and, now, as the words she'd used buzzed around in his head, he began to panic.

He looked around the throne room, and focused his gaze on a large, circular table in the center of the room, give or take a few meters towards the back of the room. Around the polished blue table sat a dozen or so members of the guard, eah with their own chairs that matched the table in color.

A large, holographic model of the city covered the table, with the outer wall lining the edge of the table. In the center stood the grand castle, with its many branches and spires, which was surrounded by a circular road, and the city itself sprawled around it.

He stepped closer to the group, who were busy with some important discussion. All of them seemed to speak at once, and none of them noticed him until he reached a hoof over the table.

He phased through the hologram of the wall, and sat down so his eyes were level with the table. He could see through the wall, and even make out the shape of an individual changeling, smiling gaily as she went about her daily business.

By that point, all of the purples had stopped talking, and were staring at him.

He stood up, and cleared his throat. "So... Glados tells me that the Prydwen was attacked by a fleet of pirates," he said, smiling nervously.

There was a flash of purple light, and two mares landed on the center of the table with a thud. One lacked the stains and marks of her previous battle, and was dressed from hoof to head in her purple armor. The other was clearly exhausted, panting heavily as she made her way to the edge of the table.

Ladybug's fur was visibly matted with sweat in several places, most notably on her shoulder blades, where her wings met her back, and her ears were pinned to the back of her head, hiding themselves away inside her rosy mane. She hopped onto the floor, whereupon Toothless turned to the other mare, and said, "That was fast."

Glados chuckled from atop the table, and said, "Unlike you, Toothless, I've had lots of practice with mares. We've made an agreement, and I'm not done by a long shot, but I have a war to wage, because nopony messes with my family and gets away with it. Could you please take Pupa to her doctor's appointment? It's in the research and development wing." A look of keen pride flashed across her eyes, and she cleared her throat, before addressing her comrades.

Toothless blinked at her, but nodded, and cast a quick glance at the spent pegasus next to him. "We have an R and D department?" he asked her.

Milli growled as she and two of her sisters slowly sat down, cowed by the larger force, surrounded, hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned. They couldn't escape from the gondala, as the only way out was off the ship, where the perpetual sandstorm raged.

The larger force in question was barely worth calling an army, as they had clearly lacked proper or amateur training. They were all covered in grease and oil, which stained their black chitin. They all had ghostly blue eyes, but she couldn't recognize any of them as citizens of New Hiveland, and she would have, as she had been the most active member of the postal service for a good two years now.

Two of them stepped out of the way for a different changeling to meet the last group of fighters.

Milli blinked when she recognized the mare.

Her eyes were orbs of scarlet red. Her wings were shaped like those of a pegasus, with hundreds of black, chitinous feathers bristling as she moved. Her frills were a vibrant shade of orange, and the large plate of armor on her back was sky blue. The smaller plates that guarded her stomach were different colors, from front to back, banana yellow, earthy green, and cyan. Her tail was a deep navy blue, and it flicked from side to side as she spoke, exposing her white tongue in the process. Her voice was deep, raspy, and feminine, and she said, "Oh, good. You remember me."

Milli asked, "What are you doing here?"

The rainbow changeling laughed quietly, and said, "What does it look like? I'm winning." She spread her wings proudly, and walked towards the purple changeling. "How's your brother doing?" she asked nonchalantly.

Milli frowned for a brief moment, before growling at the multicolored mare, whose hoof lifted her chin up.

"Oh. Poor, poor thing. You miss him. You actually care about a stallion," she teased, and shook her head, rolling her eyes.

The purple mare continued to growl at her, while two groups of three changelings moved in to carry her comrades off. She didn't care how she knew about Toothless's death.

The rainbow mare turned around, and Milli said, "You know, this ship doesn't have any weapons. It's basically useless if you plan to attack the city."

She laughed, and said, "The ship is the weapon, Millipede."

"It's just Milli," the purple muttered, before something solid met the back of her head, sending her helmet flying.

The helmet hit the rainbow mare in the back of the head, who then turned around to look at the guard.

Milli held her front hooves in the air, suppressing a smile.

The pirate leader glared at the changeling who had hit Milli in the back of the head, who promptly dropped the metal pipe he was carrying, and spat, "Take her to the brig."

Milli shook her head slowly, and said, "There isn't one."

"Maybe not on this ship," she chortled.

"How would you get me into another ship in this weather?" Milli asked her, raising an eyebrow.

A chuckle answered her, and she was led out of the ship. Milli expected the pirates leading her to dump her into the endless sandstorm, and commit mutiny in the process, as their commanding officer had just told them to take her to a brig of sorts.

Then the main hatch opened, and she was pushed out of the ship.

Landing on her hooves, she looked around, and her jaw fell open.

The chrome colored walls of a vast air hanger surrounded her on all sides, and the grand ship in which she had flown was simply tethered to the floor by a few chains. It looked minuscule when compared to the ceiling of the hanger, which rose to nearly triple the Prydwen's height.

Something solid slammed into the back of her now unprotected head, and she collapsed as the world spun away from her.

Author's Note

It's silly, and a bit awkward, but it's what I have at the moment. Glados made a very fast recovery, which I know isn't how hearts always heal, but she does have a war to wage, so her personal life will have to wait. I'll add the next chapter as soon as I can get to writing it.