Pearl's Travels 1: Hollow Shades

Chapters

31

We walked up as close to the town's train station as we could get without being seen, and then hid in the nearby bushes to wait for the train to arrive. From our hidden spot among the undergrowth, I could clearly read the station sign; "Hollow Shades".

While there had been some fanfiction about the place over the years, I could not remember any actual show episode where the lead characters had visited the place themselves. I was fairly interested to find out what the place was actually about.

From where we sat I could pretty much only see the train station and its small one-room terminal building, built underneath the overhanging canopy which made sure the place was hidden in eternal shade. Multiple coloured lamps were hung on the side of the small building to provide light, and led away from it through a tunnel between trees into the darkness.

There really was far less to see than I needed to satisfy my curiosity, and I soon sat down on my rump and looked between the others in the hopes they could provide some relief from my growing boredom.

Blaze was pretty much the only one of the three staring intently at the nearby station, while Oval and Breeze were drawing figures in the sand before them in turn, then wiped the dirt clean again and started anew. I quickly realized they were playing their own version of Tic-Tac-Toe, where the O's and X's were replaced by hoofprints and single diagonal lines.

From the looks of things, Breeze was winning each round, but this did nothing to curb Oval's enthusiasm. Where Oval was clearly seeking for the best way to stop Breeze from winning, the filly clearly had the tactics of the game down to a T. Oval did not have a chance to beat her.

I walked up to Blaze's right side and sat down next to her, noting her intent gaze on the station and a light twitching to her pony ears - perked up as they were. I was reminded of how focused she had looked back in the outpost's tunnels, just before the group of soldiers ran by us.

"You already know when that train will arrive, don't you mom?" I asked her, and she blinked as she snapped out of her deep focus. I could see the gears turn in her head as she tried to grasp at what I had asked of her, but then she turned her head to face me and gave a quick nod.

"I have a sixth sense for these things," she told me calmly. "I always had."

"Like precognition?" I wondered, tilting my head a bit at her and sitting down. My tail flicked to lay curl halfway around to the front as I sat.

"A bit, but only with moving things," Blaze agreed. "It's like they cause ripples ahead of them and I can sense these ripples. They come closer and closer together until the thing I'm tracking arrives, and then spread out again once they've passed."

"That's how you defeated brother in the earlier match, didn't you?" I suggested, remembering the ease with which Blaze had spun around the other Hatchling while still in the training room.

"I try to tune this ability of mine out while in a fight, Pearl," Blaze offered. "It's not fair to my opponent when I know where they're going before they make the decision themselves. Now, my juggling act is a different thing; I can track the objects I juggle even with a blindfold on. Audiences love it when I do."

There was a distant sound like the whistle of a steam locomotive, and I perked up at it.

"The train will be here soon, yes," Blaze chuckled weakly. "I've been tracking it since we moved to cover."

"I think it's neat that you have this power, mom," I told her with a smile, and Blaze smiled back warmly at me.

"I wouldn't call it 'neat', but it's been helpful in the past," Blaze chuckled. "How are you doing holding your guise? It's been over an hour now since we left the outpost."

I looked down at myself and blew some air out at the fur on my barrel. It felt funny to have so much hair covering me, especially since it was cartoon hair, but I kinda liked the feeling.

"It's warmer than expected," I replied, smirking up a bit. "I worried I might feel worse about it than I do, considering where I come from, but it's actually pretty comfortable to look this way."

Blaze raised an eyebrow. "How do you mean, 'daughter'?"

I blushed involuntarily at Blaze calling me her daughter, wriggling a bit on my spot.

"Well, as a Human we don't exactly have a coat like this. Or walk on all fours. Or have tails," I started to list off. "I had expected things to feel less natural to me than they do."

"You didn't seem to have much of a problem with your body when I first saw you either," Blaze commented. "None of the Hatchlings did."

"Yeah, it was surprising how fast I learned how to use my new body after I hatched," I agreed. "I just fell to the floor, was wiped down by a matron, and then walked on over to the next room. I only stumbled once or twice on my way over, but no more after that."

Blaze looked at me intently for a moment, but then peered up as the hissing sounds of a steam train winding down to come to a stop drew near.

"I will have to ask Matron about that when we return to the outpost," Blaze decided. "For now we should get ready to join the ponies as they exit the train. Sturdy Hoof, Summer Breeze, will you two quit your games and join us?"

"Yes, dear," Sturdy Hoof (Oval) chuckled, standing up. "I was losing anyway."

"You're using the same tactics over and over, dad," Summer Breeze (Breeze) suggested. "It's not difficult to anticipate on your moves if you keep making the same ones."

Blaze rolled her eyes and motioned a hoof at the train as it came into view.

"The cars generally have balconies at the front and back of them," she told me in a soft voice. "When the train stops, we approach the cars and get up on the balconies on our side, then off them at the station's side. Once we get to the station platform, feel free to look around and comment on the place as if you're seeing it for the first time. We're as much tourists as any of the others getting off."

"Don't overdo it, though," Breeze warned. "If you start shouting and making grand gestures or statements, you'll only draw more attention. You're a teenager as far as they're concerned, so feel free to look bored as if you're pulled here by our parents against your will."

I grinned up and nudged Oval in the shoulder. "Maybe I should whine to 'dad' about why he had to take me away from my friends and take me to this backwater place?"

Oval lifted his hoof and gave me a noogie, grinning back. "Not too bad an idea, 'daughter'."

"The train's stopped," Blaze offered, and immediately pushed forward out of the bushes to run up to the nearest car.

Breeze was after her in a moment, and I set in motion as well, joining them at the side of the train.

I could hear a familiar voice from inside the car, and perked my ears up in surprise.

"We're heeere!" Pinkie Pie declared merrily.

I pushed up on my hind legs to look into the car through one of its windows, even as Oval joined us as well, spotting the pink mare bouncing around another familiar face.

"Ugh, tell me again why I had to come with you for this?" Starlight Glimmer wondered, getting up off her seat and starting to walk over to the car's door.

"Well, obviously there's a friendship problem here, and Twilight thought you could help out and learn something more about the magic of friendship, and since my cutiemark glowed the map obviously needs me to be here, but I can always use another friend to help out with friendship problems, because what's better to solve friendship problems but to try and fix them with your friends, right?" Pinkie rattled off in one continuous sentence.

Starlight Glimmer stood frozen while in mid-step for a moment, then shook her head and continued on, pushing the door open with her magic as she approached it.

"Right," she commented dryly to Pinkie's stream of words, walking onto the rear balcony.

I lowered myself to the ground again as Pinkie bounced on after the other mare, and motioned in the direction they were going, shaking my head at Blaze.

Blaze took my motion to heart and pointed in the other direction, to which we all turned and walked to the front of the car instead.

Oval went ahead climbing up on the front balcony, then turned around and offered his right forehoof down. I hooked my left leg around his right and was quickly pulled up to his level.

Oval started off to leave the balcony at the station side, looking around with a smile. "Ah, Hollow Shades. Such a calm place compared to the busy city, right dears?" he spoke out loud, and I followed him while trying to pull off a bored look.

"Ugh, dad," I started, stepping off on the balcony while watching Breeze and Blaze in my peripheral vision as they lifted themselves up on it with their magic. "Tell me why couldn't I have stayed behind with my friends again?"

"Because it's a family outing, Pearl," Oval in his guise as Sturdy Hoof returned to me, turning to help little Breeze down to the station level. "What do you say, Summer Breeze? Don't you just love the fresh air here?"

I idly glanced back to where Pinkie Pie and Starlight Glimmer were walking, while Summer Breeze did her best impression of a filly who was overly excited from visiting a new place.

"Look, dad! Lights!" Summer Breeze pointed out, bouncing past me and drawing my attention back to my 'family'.

"Yeah, lights," I half-yawned, my lack of interest in them only half-fake. Blaze came walking up to my right side and gave me a stern look.

"Try to look amused, Pearl," she told me. "If only for your sister's sake."

"Yes mom," I replied with a sigh, falling in line with her as she continued on toward the tunnel leading away from the station, and we passed a couple of ponies coming the other way.

They were talking among themselves about the trip ahead of them, and barely gave us a second glance, but Blaze gave me a nudge after they passed by.

"You're doing good, kid. Keep it up," she whispered at me with a wink, before running on after Summer Breeze who had darted ahead a bit too much for a filly to go unsupervised.

Oval walked up beside me and grinned after them. "Don't go too far ahead, girls," he called out, then dropped his voice to a whisper as well. "Let me know if you start feeling overwhelmed. Don't feel like you have to keep up with us; we have more experience and endurance."

I smiled up at his suggestion, and leaned in against his larger stallion side a bit as we walked on, watching Blaze and Breeze do their mother-daughter-routine ahead of us. It really did feel like I was part of a family now, even if it was just for show.

32

With Spotlight (Blaze) and Summer Breeze (Breeze) walking ahead, and Sturdy Hoof (Oval) and myself only slowly catching up to them, we passed through the dark tunnel which was only lit with the lamps mounted on the side of the trees at regular intervals.

The tunnel opened up to a clearing in which the actual town of Hollow Shades was set, the sunlight shining down on a collection of log cabins set along the unpaved roads. The only pavement was found near the center of town to form a plaza along which some of the more important buildings were set.

I spotted the town hall about as soon as we left the dark tunnel since the building was about as large as I imagined the Apple Family's barn to be - dwarfing the rest of the buildings in town. It was the perfect size for holding town meetings or parties in, and I could hear music coming from its direction.

Next to the town hall was an obvious bakery - the only building in town with a stone chimney as far as I could see - and the smell of freshly baked goods led out from it to permeate the clearing. I was not at all surprised to see Pinkie Pie bouncing off toward it, considering how much she liked sweets and baked goods.

I looked on to where Starlight Glimmer stood, having stopped following Pinkie Pie when she got near to the center of the plaza, and found her looking back. Our eyes met, and I stopped walking myself as I stared across the distance between us into those blue eyes of hers.

I thought I saw a glimmer pass over them before she turned her head away and resumed on her path to follow Pinkie into the bakery, shaking her head at herself.

"Are you okay, Pearl?" Oval asked as he stepped right in front of me, a look of concern on his face.

I blinked my eyes a few times in quick succession to break myself out of my hyperfocus on the location Starlight Glimmer had been standing at moments ago, then smiled up weakly at Oval.

"Yes, dad, I'm okay," I answered. "I just thought I saw somepony familiar just now."

Oval turned his head to look in the direction I had looked in moments before, but Starlight Glimmer had already entered the bakery and was nowhere to be seen.

"Ah, well, your mom found us a spa," Oval muttered, motioning a hoof at where Blaze and Breeze stood waiting for us. "She says she wants us to have a treatment there before we do anything else in town."

I looked on over to the building the others were standing near and realized it had done as good a job at camouflaging itself as we Changelings had done: The building was about the size of two of the houses in town set side-by-side and then connected to one another, but the amount of trees and plants growing around it hid most of it from wandering eyes.

Only by staring at the space between the front row of trees and low shrubs could one see the straight wall set directly behind them and figure out just how big the building actually was. The entrance to the building was the only thing actually marked properly, the shrubs and trees trimmed to leave a round arch over the doors.

A sign stood just in front of the shrubs, to the left of the doorway, showing the spa's name and opening hours. Blaze and Breeze stood in front of it, Blaze's larger form obscuring most of the writing on the sign.

"A spa treatment, dad?" I asked half-heartedly to keep up appearance, dragging my hooves as I started to walk over to the place. "Anything's better than standing out here, I guess."

Oval followed after me with a thoughtful look, which the others picked up on as we drew near. Breeze whispered something up to Blaze, who gave a barely noticeable nod to it.

"They have hot springs here, Pearl dear," Blaze offered up with a warm smile once I came within conversational range, but I could see her trying to hide her worry.

"Hot springs!" little Breeze repeated excitedly, jumping around a bit before moving in to nuzzle her head in against my chest. "Hey, you doing okay there sis?" she whispered from under my chin, her concern obvious.

I appreciated how much the three of them seemed to genuinely care for me, and forced a smile on my face.

"Yay, hot springs," I spoke with equal parts fake-enthusiasm and sarcasm, reaching my left hoof up to rummage through Breeze's mane.

Breeze giggled cutely at the attention I gave her, while Blaze narrowed her eyes a bit as I did not answer the question they felt was more important right now.

Obviously not wanting to make a scene outside either, Blaze turned to the entrance to the spa and forced herself to smile as well.

"Let's go inside, kids," she suggested, to which Breeze broke away from me and darted forward with apparent boundless enthusiasm again.

Oval walked up to my left side and gave me a fatherly pat on the shoulder. "I'm sure you'll like this spa thing more than you think right now, Pearl dear," he spoke out loud when I looked up at his moustached face.

"Blaze will want you to tell her what's going on when we get inside," he whispered under his breath, barely moving his lips.

"I know, dad," I stated openly, answering both of his statements at once.

He gently nudged me forward, and we walked together up to the spa building and into the reception area, with Oval turning to close the door behind us once we were inside.

The spa's interior had a waiting room with decorative plants, a set of chairs, and a low table with several magazines laid on top of it to the immediate right of the entrance. A low reception desk was placed on the left side, with an open ledger on it showing the names of all those who had reserved a spot in the day, and the treatment they were coming to get.

I had no knowledge of any of the ponies living in this town, except maybe one or two of the Apple family who were only ever once mentioned as an aside in the show, so I barely gave the ledger a second glance. I walked over to the low table instead, using my right hoof to push the magazines on it around a little.

They were mostly fashion-conscious magazines catering to the richer few in pony society. I recognized a few names of designers from the covers, and smiled as one article mentioned one of Rarity's stores. It was good to see one of the show's lead ponies getting recognition in local media.

Blaze went over the available treatments with one of the spa ponies, while Oval kept Breeze busy on the side. Breeze did a good job of appearing to be a fussy little filly, looking to give her dad a hard time, but I could notice them whispering things on the side.

I gave them a smile as Breeze looked my way, trying to let them know I was doing fine, and Breeze finished her conversation with Oval before she bounded over.

"Big sis! Dad says we're gonna get treats later!" Breeze exclaimed loudly, but then quickly dropped her voice again. "We can still back out of this if you don't think you can hold your guise, but it's going to take us a few hours to get out of here again once we commit to the treatment."

"No, I'm fine," I whispered down at her, reaching a hoof over to rummage through Breeze's mane with. "Treats, huh?" I spoke up louder, starting to walk over to Oval at a slow pace and trying to see Summer Breeze as the little filly sister she posed to be for me.

"Yeah! Dad says they have the best bakery here in all the forestlands!" Breeze answered merrily, nuzzling up against my side.

I smiled up weakly to Oval and walked up close enough to her so I could whisper up to the big stallion. "Can you guys stop asking me if I'm doing fine? I just have a lot to still think about; I'm good to continue with the spa deal."

"We're putting a lot on the line here, just taking you out like this," Oval whispered back, slipping his backpack off his back. He put it down between us and lifted an old carton of candy looking about as battered as his backpack out of it.

"Who wants a candy corn?" Oval asked with a wide grin, but both Breeze and I took a simultaneous step back.

"Eeugh, daaaad," I whined. "You're not expecting us to eat something as old as that, do you? It looks all mouldy!"

"Yeah!" Breeze agreed. "What big sis said!"

Oval raised an eyebrow at us, but then took the package in his mouth and shook a block of a few sugar-glazed pieces of actual corn out of it which had stuck together. He put the package back in his backpack and shoved the candy corn in his mouth, shaking his head.

"You don't know what you're missing out on," he decided. "Don't judge the contents by the look of the package or something."

"Yeah, no dad," I disagreed, pulling Breeze close to me. "It's two against one here; that looked disgusting."

"Yeah!" Breeze agreed again.

"What are we disagreeing about, kids?" Blaze wondered, walking up to us with one of the spa employees.

"Mommy!" Breeze exclaimed happily, rushing over to nuzzle into our mom.

"Dad tried feeding us something with mould on it," I pointed out.

"There may be a little bit on the package, but the candy is fine!" Oval protested.

"Not the candy corn you bought years ago, was it?" Blaze demanded, staring Oval down until he finally looked away from her with his ears falling down. "They were old when we first met. I can't believe you're not through them yet."

"I bought a volume deal back then, dear," Oval muttered. "This is the last remaining package."

"I should have guessed," Blaze sighed. "Well, you may wish to undress; we are about to take a bath in the spa's hot springs."

"Hot springs!" Breeze repeated with great enthusiasm!

"I can't wait," I added in my half-sarcastic tone, making Blaze smile at me.

33

We were led through a hallway deeper into the spa, and I was starting to wonder just how big the place really was. Doors on either side gave access to the various rooms, with signs set on the wall to the left of each door.

The more private rooms had little sliders underneath these signs, showing either the word Free or Occupied depending on whether the room was currently in use or not.

For as early as it was in the day, I did notice a few such rooms having the occupied sign set already, and I had to think back to the ledger in the reception area. If only I had given it more than a passing glance, I might have been able to figure out which patron was in which room.

Our little group was brought to a room on the left side, and the spa pony switched the slider from Free to Occupied with their magic as they moved to hold the door open for us. As I followed Blaze and Breeze into the room, with Oval a couple of paces behind, I felt the warmth of the room greet me like a warm blanket the moment I stepped over the threshold.

The room was larger than I had imagined it would be for a private room, and was dominated by a large round bath made of wood with an elevated walkway set halfway around it for easy access. Steam was rising up from the bath, but I could not imagine it being connected to any hot springs unless there were pipes hidden under the walkway somewhere.

From all of Earth's media on hot springs, this looked like anything but.

A number of lounge chairs were placed together on the ground near the bath, and Oval walked past me to put his clothes and backpack on one of them.

"Breeze, sweety," he called out, motioning for her to join him, and I realized I had entirely overlooked that she was wearing her little flower-like backpack as well. In the same thought I remembered how the pearl I was named after by my extended family was still inside of it, pending closer scrutiny.

I shook my head at it a bit and walked up to the stairs leading up to the upper walkway to get a closer look at the bath.

Blaze watched me as I walked by, her expression holding the middle between motherly concern and trepidation. I raised my eyebrow at her in passing, but she shook her head and walked back to the spa pony near the door instead.

"Remember; no interruptions until we're ready and done," she told him, to which he gave a polite nod while holding a professional smile.

"It's the first time at a spa for my youngest," Blaze continued, ushering the spa pony out the door as she did, "and she may decide to run amok and bother the other patrons unless we explain the rules to her first."

She quickly closed the door on him once the other pony was out of the room, then stood near it with her ears perked as if trying to make sure that he was actually walking away.

I shook my head at her overly cautious behaviour while I reached the top of the stairs, and changed my focus to the large bath instead. From my new vantage point on the upper walkway along the bath's edge, I could easily see into the clear water, even with the steam rising from it.

I walked along the edge of the water, peering down to check whether there were any openings leading from under the walkway into the bath, but could not see any.

I let out an annoyed snort at the water, but then noticed the deep frown of a grey Earthpony mare's face staring back at me from my reflection on the water's surface. To the left of it, a smaller green Unicorn filly was looking at me as well, but her face had a huge grin plastered on it.

Just as I was turning to face Breeze to ask what she was grinning about, I felt a hard shove on my rear and was pushed forward in an instant! The moment I realized I was now above the exact center of the bath, gravity took hold of me and I plunged into the hot water...

Startled at the magical push from my supposed little sister, I flailed my limbs about without real thought behind it, barely managing to get my head back above the water.

The few moments of panic I felt while struggling to get air back in my lungs felt like they lasted an hour or more, but finally I felt something grab a hold of me and I was lifted up above the water's surface by Blaze's magic.

Blaze's eyes were focused on Breeze rather than myself, and I was sure the little filly could have spontaneously combusted from the fire raging in our fake mother's eyes as I struggled to calm myself down.

Hanging in Blaze's magical grasp, inches above the water, I barely got enough wit back into me to calm my breathing before I was shocked anew by my reflection; I had lost my Earthpony guise in my panic, and hovering over the bath was a clear and definite Changeling.

This Changeling, I noticed, was being moved over to the walkway, and I soon set my hooves back on solid ground as Blaze put me down next to her.

"That was entirely irresponsible, Breeze," Blaze snarled angrily.

"What, like you didn't put up a shield around the room the moment you closed that door?" Breeze threw back, then motioned one of her small hooves my way. "She needs the training, see?"

Oval came up behind me, and gently nudged his right forehoof against my Changeling headfin, making it wobble as it tried to self-right again. "Any of us would lose our guise when faced with mortal danger."

I was still trying to get my heart back to a regular rhythm and did not dare speak, but gave a thankful nod to Oval's words instead.

He took my nod as an invitation to loop his right foreleg around my neck and pull me close to him, and I felt his soft fur against my bare skin. It was surprisingly comforting and helped me to calm down better than if I had continued to stand there on my own.

Blaze motioned to the water. "It's her first time in a spa, Breeze. Heck, it's her first time in our world! Think before you act, will you? Having one Oval around is enough."

"Hey," Oval protested. "I take offense to that."

"You know what I mean," Blaze defended her statement, still staring Breeze down.

Oval let go of me and walked forward to stand to Blaze's right, then looked sideways at her. "I'm still offended. You need to cool down, Blaze."

He quickly pushed his whole weight off to the left, forcing both Blaze and himself to splash into the bath together!

I watched as Blaze and Oval struggled to get themselves upright again, still dripping wet myself. Oval was the first to get up on his hind legs in the water, and he immediately moved to splash his hooves down and forward in the bath to spray water at Blaze before she could right herself in the same fashion.

I shook my head at this ridiculous sight, especially as Blaze warded off the sprays of water with her Unicorn magic and decided to upend half the pool's contents to splash it down in a giant torrent onto Oval.

Breeze just stood grinning on the side, watching the water fight with sparkles in her eyes. She was clearly thoroughly enjoying herself.

I fluttered my Changeling wings a little to get them dry faster, and realized Breeze was the only one in our little group who was still dry.

Could I?

Should I?

I stopped my wings from buzzing, and instead started forward, staying close to the wall to my right which was placed so nopony could fall off the upper walkway, trying to draw a semi-circle to approach Breeze from behind.

I took care to place my hooves down as soft as I could, even with the noise Blaze and Oval were making, and slowly positioned myself where I wanted to be.

Breeze showed no signs of having taken notice, instead still excitedly spectating the mock fight between our "parents", and I took my shot!

In one quick move I pushed off from the wall, took a leap at Breeze, and hugged the air as Breeze teleported away at the last moment...

I grasped at nothing, still continuing to fly forward, and was still trying to figure out where she had gone as I hit the water again in such a short time.

Knowing Blaze and Oval had stood up on their hind legs to keep their heads above the water helped me fight off my immediate panic this time, and I struggled to find my hoofing rather than splashing wildly around.

As my Changeling hind hooves found a solid floor to stand on, I pushed myself upright and practically launched my head up above the water, drawing in a breath of much-needed air.

I stood wobbling on my hind legs, trying to get my bearings, but the smile I spotted on Oval's face said enough.

"Breeze got me a second time," I breathed in a half-cough, then proceeded to snort a bit to get the excess water from my nose.

I turned around a little on the spot to catch Blaze staring at me blankly. The water battle between Blaze and Oval must have stopped the moment I threw myself in their midst, I realized. Like good parents, they were more concerned for their children than the fight they were having.

I turned around more until I had made a full circle, but I could not spot Breeze anywhere. "Speaking of Breeze," I started, breaking the silence which was quickly getting uncomfortable. "Where did she teleport off to?"

Oval motioned to Blaze, who brought her right forehoof up out of the water, allowing Breeze to lift her head up high enough to grab a breath of air. As I watched, Blaze just as quickly pushed that hoof back down again, keeping my little sister underwater.

"Don't worry; I won't damage my sister too much," Blaze spoke calmly, while Oval snorted water out of his nose while trying to giggle.

"Is this how baths usually go for you three?" I wondered, backing myself up until I stood resting the chitin plating on my back against the wood wall.

"No, usually it's Breeze or me who ends up getting wet first," Oval remarked flatly. "Other than that, pretty much the same."

34

Breeze was dunked under another two times before Blaze finally let go of her, and ended up hanging her forehooves over the edge of the bath while gasping for air for a few minutes after while the rest of us calmly stood in the warm water, letting it pull into our bodies.

I closed my eyes in this calm moment, trying to pull my guise up again and change my appearance back to that of the Earthpony I had been before I was unceremoniously shoved into the water.

"You missed your entire left lower leg and a sizeable spot up along your left hip and across the side of your barrel there," Oval listed in a fatherly tone of voice, and I looked down my left side at the patch of dark grey on my otherwise light grey coat.

Moving my weight to my right lower leg, I shook my left leg out while focusing on getting it changed as well, and the familiar green flash of my Changeling magic passed over it. Even if it was muted somewhat by the water surrounding it.

Satisfied that that problem had been taken care of, I looked back up at Oval with a grin. "Thanks dad. Did I miss anything else you can see?"

"Forgot your cutiemark on your right side," Blaze offered from my right side.

"Ah, yeah, it's missing from the left as well," Oval realized.

"This is why I go for foals; don't need one of those marks," Breeze suggested weakly, daring to turn halfway around so only her left foreleg was still draped over the edge of the bath.

I pushed the mental image of a brown conch and shiny pearl down to my hips and two small flashes of green from below the water's surface let me know my transformative magic had done its job. Even so, I decided to make a slow, full turn for my parents.

"Did I do good now?" I asked, getting a face full of water from Blaze's direction in return.

"You did fine, kid," she threw my way in mock annoyance.

"I'm just asking since you keep reminding me I'm new at this," I threw back. "Your constant worried looks and questions before we got here were more bothersome than having to keep up my guise, you know?"

"No, you look fine," Oval suggested. "I was more worried about your weird glances at those other ponies than anything, earlier. You were drawing attention to yourself by staring at them."

"Blaze was the one who was worried whether you could keep your appearance in check," Breeze revealed. "I was just the messenger."

"The tiny messenger who kept poking her horn into my chin while nuzzling at my chest," I remarked idly. "No, apart from the shock of being thrown into the water earlier, I'm actually fairly comfortable in this guise. I could hold it for a long time if I need to."

"Well, that's good to hear at least," Blaze sighed with some relief, but her face darkened considerably. "Which means at least one Hatchling is out of danger."

I perked up. "Out of danger?"

Oval let himself dip lower into the water until he had half his head down in it, leaving just his nostrils, eyes, and ears above the water.

Blaze gave a thoughtful nod and folded her forelegs over one another just at the break of the water's surface. "Yes, if the rumours I heard earlier today are true, the rest of your batch and all the others before or since are not as lucky."

"Get to the point already, Blazey," Breeze whined like the impatient filly she was.

"From what I've been told, the Hatchlings are all taken to chambers deep within the outpost after we finish training them," Blaze spoke darkly, closing her eyes. "Only a few Drones have seen these chambers, and only from the outside. There are Guards stationed in every tunnel leading up to them, at every entrance to them, and they're strictly off-limits unless by special exception."

I heard the sound of bubbles coming from my left side and turned to realize Oval had sank down deeper and was blowing bubbles out of his nostrils from where he hid under the surface. I took a breath and stuck my head down underwater to peer at him, but the angry look in his eyes made me stumble sideways away from him as I pulled my head back up out of the water again.

"Dad's scarier than you right now, mom," I breathed out, and received a deathglare from Blaze as my reward.

"Oval has a strong sense of justice," Breeze muttered from where she was still hanging off the edge of the bath by a single foreleg, her own face spelling doom and gloom as well.

"Okay, so do we know what happens in those rooms, mom?" I asked, trying to focus on the least angry-looking one right now which, for the first time since I met them, was Blaze.

"Only more rumours, Pearl," Blaze offered back with a light shake of her head. "From what I heard it's just the guards in charge there. The matrons can't get near it, none of us drones have been allowed in, and the only reason we know of these rooms in the first place is because one of our brothers was chatty with a Hatchling. He just walked along with them as they were led out of the last training room and was only stopped when a guard noticed him at the entrance to the chamber he was about to enter."

Oval's head appeared above the water's surface and he took in a breath of air, then moved a hoof to wipe the water from his eyes.

"This on top of the rumours about a war brewing," Oval stated darkly, more to himself than anything.

"That's why I blew my top in the common room," Blaze sighed. "This is sounding like a worse plan than the failed invasion of Canterlot."

"You're never going to let that one go, are you?" I suggested calmly, knowing full well what happened thanks to the show's episodes.

"If this plays out as the rumours suggest, we're going to have an all-out war with the pony kingdoms," Blaze stated grimly. "We were just a nuisance before, only mentioned in bedtime stories to get foals to behave."

Oval grimaced. "They would start hunting us down if we prove to be too great a threat. It won't end until we're contained."

"Like the night's princess before us," Breeze offered into the conversation, and I could hear the fear in her voice.

"I highly doubt we'd all get banished to the moon," I told her, swimming awkwardly toward her and giving her a soft nose boop.

Even knowing she was probably older than me did not matter; she looked like a filly and I was happy to treat her as my little sister for as long as it lasted.

"No, but the consequences will be dire, whatever they may be," Oval grumbled in his low voice. "We have been working for years now to try and get us put in a better light in the pony kingdoms, as I explained to Pearl before."

There was a thoughtful hum from the other two at that.

"This kind of action could not only throw our progress back to start, but could make it far worse. Far, far worse," Oval continued to spell doom and gloom for us all.

"There's not really anything the four of us can do about it, now is there?" I quipped, looking from one to the other. "I've seen hundreds of Changelings in the outpost's common room. If the Queen tells us to, we're just going to do what she says because all the rest will do it too, right?"

"It's a little more complicated than just peer pressure," Breeze corrected me, at which point Oval decided to dunk himself under water again.

"Well, I'm not getting why we're supposed to do whatever Queen Chrysalis says, no matter how stupid we think it sounds," I threw back. "Can't we get the rest of the family to band together and put a stop to this? How many of them have families or worked their ways to the top of pony society? All that will be lost if we go to war, won't it?"

Blaze closed her eyes with a sigh and looked away from me. "There are ties you haven't felt yet. We can't just say no to our Queen."

"Yet another thing I haven't felt yet," I listed. "Just like that emptiness I still have to experience. If the other Hatchlings are anything like me; they haven't felt that emptiness yet either. They don't feel any connection to Chrysalis either."

"But we do," Breeze offered up. She let go of the edge of the bath and swam over to me with her forehooves reaching out toward me. "Let me hold onto you for a bit, Pearl?"

I let her wrap her forelegs around my neck, and she settled against my back, her muzzle poking out over my left shoulder.

"Thanks, big sis, I was getting a lame leg from hanging on the wood panels," she giggled softly. "Could you walk around a bit? I like how the water flows through my coat."

I shrugged idly, taking a few careful steps around the bath with her smaller body hanging off me. "It's fine, but I still don't get why we can't make a stand against this. It seems obvious to me that it's a bad thing. Our siblings will agree, right?"

"You're so young," the little filly on my back sighed out. "We three had a similar conversation about the Canterlot attack."

"Failed invasion," Blaze and I said together, and I grinned at her while she narrowed her eyes at me.

"There was a whole group of us trying to get Queen Chrysalis to change her mind about it. It didn't last long," Breeze continued.

I glanced back over my shoulder at her. "It sounds like there's a story there."

"Keep walking and I'll tell you about it," Breeze suggested.

35

With Oval half-hidden under the water's surface like a ponified crocodile, just letting his nostrils poke out so he could breathe, and Blaze lost to her own thoughts, I waded slowly through the round bath in a counter-clockwise motion with Breeze hanging from my neck.

"There were rumours back then, as there are now," Breeze started her story, and I chuckled a bit at the strangeness of her young filly voice recounting an event from years ago.

"Are you taking this seriously, Pearl?" she wondered in annoyance, and I gave her a nod in reply.

"Yes, yes, please go on," I answered quickly as we passed behind Oval.

"We weren't told all the details of the plan until the very last moment," Breeze continued. "I'm not going to be surprised if it will play out the same this time as well."

"We were just told to dig a few outposts in strategic locations, and this was fine. Having a safe place to go to while out in the pony lands is always a good thing, especially if you're found out somehow or need to bring food or items to the hive."

I could see where Breeze was coming from and smiled. "Yeah, that sounds like something that's just handy to have around."

"Handy?" Breeze wondered, but let it go as I shook my head.

"Well, think like the Changeling you are now; we are a big family," she decided instead. "These outposts started as just a few rooms, but then the Queen started sending more of us to them, accompanied by guards and matrons. Before we knew it, the outposts themselves had grown far larger than was needed for the ones out in the field, and we were stationed there for weeks between going out for another run."

"You're making us sound very militaristic," I suggested, to which Blaze opened her eyes and watched us approach her from her left side.

"We are, in a way," she voiced her opinion, and motioned her head to indicate I should pass before her rather than behind her.

I turned to follow her silent order and grinned as we waded past.

"Yeah, but the rumour mill just kept on going during that time," Breeze pressed. "The outpost near here was actually the fourth to have been built inside Equestria's borders. We started near far smaller cities before our Queen dared to send us deeper into the pony lands. Half the Macintosh Hills have holes in them which we dug during that period."

"The Queen grew bold as we were not detected while digging these outposts," Blaze added.

"Blazey, who's telling the story here?" Breeze complained, looking back at the oldest of the trio.

"Well, hurry it up. There's something else I want to know of Pearl," Blaze scoffed.

"Hurry it... you know this spanned twenty years, right?" Breeze stammered.

"Wait, it took you guys twenty years to prepare for the attack on Canterlot?" I realized with some shock.

"No, just twenty years of digging seemingly random outposts before the attack on Canterlot was even suggested as being a potential target. Who knows how long the Queen had been sitting on it?" Blaze revealed, and I turned on my hooves to look at her directly.

"No, really, hold on here; you've been digging holes for twenty-odd years, in between posing as ponies and building lives for yourselves out here?" I listed.

"Pretty much," Blaze answered with a shrug.

"Yeah," Breeze agreed from over my shoulder.

"I wandered a bit before I settled in Hoofton and found my mare," Oval mumbled into the water.

"How old are you guys?" I breathed out in surprise.

"Er, is it thirty-seven this year?" Blaze wondered, looking like she genuinely did not know.

"Thirty-seven or thirty-eight," Oval agreed, standing up straight.

"Are we counting from our hatchday or the time we spent in our eggs as well?" Breeze asked, pulling herself up a little to get a better look at me.

"Humans don't count the time we spend in the womb," I revealed. "So from your hatchday?"

"Yeah, thirty-seven this year, then. We hatched shortly after the new year," Breeze nodded. "You Humans sound like the ponies then. They start counting from the moment their foals are born as well."

"I guess it's more difficult to see the eggs when they're on the inside," Blaze mused. "We can see our siblings grow from the moment our Queen lays the batches in the maturity room."

"I'm so glad I'm a stallion," Oval sighed happily.

"Oh, fuck you," Blaze snarled in his direction! "I would love to be able to give birth, and you know that!"

I waded in-between them and moved my forehooves to form a T in front of me.

"Time out, time out!" I called. "This is getting us nowhere. Can you finish the story about the failed invasion quickly, little sis?"

Breeze nodded her head eagerly. "Yeah, it's mostly just that we were stationed in the outposts for so long, until about a week before the wedding. All of a sudden we were told where to go, what to do, and to make sure we were ready when the sign was given. Not a week later and half our siblings were bashing their skulls into the energy barrier surrounding Canterlot. It didn't matter if they had been opposed to it or not; once our Queen told us what we needed to do, we went and did it."

"I know the rest," I offered when Breeze took a breath to continue on.

"It shook the ponies up a lot to think that their capital was attacked," Breeze just added as a last tidbit.

"My mare could not stop talking about it for weeks after," Oval grumbled. "Imagine coming back from having been on the losing side, only to hear your mare complain about how scared she is of you and your kin... It hurt, Pearl. It really did."

"I wish I had fingers now so I could hold the bridge of my nose," I mumbled to myself, instead using my right forehoof to rub at my right temple since Breeze was still hanging around to my left.

"So, what do we do now?" Blaze asked, and an uncomfortable silence fell between us all.

I just started wading around again, and Oval let himself sink down underwater again until just his nostrils stuck out. The eager mood we had come in with had evaporated thanks to the conversation topics, and I felt mentally drained.

Breeze detached herself from me without warning, and paddled on over to the edge of the bath. I watched her as she clambered up on the upper walkway and used her unicorn magic to levitate a set of four towels over.

Three of the towels were halfway unfolded and hung over the walkway's wall, and she used the fourth to dab herself dry with. Blaze joined her a moment later, and I felt compelled to be the third to do the same. Oval was always pulling the rear anyway.

Blaze helped me with her magic after seeing me struggle to figure out how to use a towel with my new body, and I stood like a young foal as my mom toweled me off. It actually felt really nice to have my furcoated body rubbed dry by someone maternal, and I happily followed her instructions as she asked me to lift a hoof or turn my head this way or that.

By the time Blaze, Breeze, and myself were dried off and ready to walk down to ground level, Oval finally started to move to get out of the bath as well.

I shook my head at him while following Blaze down, and finally asked the question I had been plagued with since we entered the room.

"Hey, guys? Er... so how exactly is this a hot spring?" I wondered, while silently cursing whoever decided that staircases didn't just go up but also came down. Gravity just made me want to fall forward with each step I took.

"Well, the water comes directly from the hot spring the spa is built around," Blaze revealed. "The spa ponies clean out the old water once we leave the room, then fill it again with fresh water from the hot spring outside."

"I thought it would be more like a pool directly connected to the flow of the water?" I suggested.

"Bleh," Breeze snorted. "That would dirty the drinking water. The bathwater is filtered before it's let back into the stream. This way the dirt stays behind and we have clean water even downstream. Ponies are inventive like that."

"Ah," I commented dryly. "That actually sounds like it makes sense. Even in a non-magical world."

"I couldn't go without my magic," Blaze stated matter-of-factly, walking over to the door. "Are you almost ready, Sturdy Hoof?"

Oval came galloping after us, while Breeze lifted her backpack up on her back with her magic.

"What's with the sudden rush, Spotlight dear?" Oval wondered, fetching his own clothes but stumbling a bit since he had no use of magic as an Earthpony like me.

We gathered near the door, and Blaze's horn flashed a brief moment. "Safety's off, kids," she whispered back at us, and both Breeze and I nodded in response.

"Damnit, I'm not dressed yet," Oval complained behind us as Blaze pulled the door open and walked into the hallway beyond.

Breeze followed, and I took third position again. Walking behind my little sister, I noticed one of the flaps on Breeze's backpack was folded in an odd way. I quickly hurried over and pulled the flap back in its proper place with my teeth, making Breeze look back in confusion.

"One of the flaps looked odd, Summer Breeze," I suggested, while a door up ahead opened to let a Unicorn mare out of the room.

The pale white-coated mare looked lost in thought, and almost turned for the reception area on automatic, effectively leading the way for us since we were headed in the same general direction.

"Oh, thank you Pearl!" Breeze exclaimed happily, turning into me to give me a nuzzle at my chest.

Blaze stopped walking, forcing us to stop as well, and as I looked past her I noticed the Unicorn mare up ahead had stopped and turned to look our way with a look of sheer hatred in her eyes!

"Pearl?!?" she exclaimed loudly, and I saw a green flash pull over her form as her excited state made it difficult for her to hold her guise...

36

The three of us stood staring back at the pale white Unicorn mare looking at us with the fires of hell blazing from underneath a long dark blue mane. From the occasional flash of green washing over her form, it was clear we were dealing with another Changeling, but we were in a public pony venue...

Blaze took a half-step to the left with her forehooves, positioning herself diagonally in-between her children and the strange other.

"Moonshine, this is not the time or place for this," Blaze spoke calmly, but her horn started glowing with a barely noticeable magical aura.

"Stay out of this, Blaze," Moonshine bit back, her own horn glowing with far more power.

I could barely see from behind Blaze, as she kept moving in my way.

Breeze nudged me and took a step back. "Take some distance, sis," she whispered up. "This can get ugly."

I followed Breeze's example, backtracking toward the room we had just left. The tension between Moonshine and Blaze continued to build up as we did, but Blaze's body made sure we were protected in case something was to come from Moonshine's side.

"We have adopted Pearl into our clutch," Blaze stated with a deathly calm to her voice, her horn steadily glowing with more power as Breeze and I took our distance. "I will protect her as any of my sisters."

"Spotlight, dear, really give me a moment to at least get my hooves through these straps," Oval called out after us, half-stumbling out of the door behind us but freezing in place as he realized something new was going on.

"You can't adopt a Hatchling into your clutch!" Moonshine decried! "You're not even supposed to take them out of the outpost!"

"Inner voices!" Oval hushed, rushing past me to take a stand on Blaze's left. "There be ponyfolk nearby!"

"I got this," Blaze grumbled, to which Oval shook his head.

"We have two foals behind us. I'm not moving," he declared.

"What do I care about these ponies???" Moonshine screamed, letting loose a beam of magic which made Breeze and I dive for the floor!

Blaze's magic slammed into the beam of light coming our way, deflecting the blast into the wall to our right, which suddenly had a lot less wall and a lot more open space.

Oval turned his head to look at the newly made gap, then quickly started to trace his steps back. "You got this, Spotlight? I'll... be hiding in the back with the kids."

He turned and rushed our way, hooked a foreleg under Breeze and me both, and ran the last few steps back into the room we had just left on just his hind legs!

Another blast of energy erupted in the hallway, but we dove for cover behind the lounge chairs once Oval let go of us, Breeze quick to cling to my right side!

The flashes of light and accompanying sounds were worse than a severe lightning storm, and it appeared to me like Moonshine was trying to bring the place down in order to get to me!

"What got into her?" Oval complained, ducked down behind the lounge chair in front of us and effectively forming a living barrier between Breeze and me and the danger in the hallway.

"I told you there was a friendship problem he... whoa!" I heard a familiar voice just moments before another explosion, and my ears involuntarily perked up on my head.

"That's Pinkie Pie," I whispered down to Breeze, who gave me a confused glance back. "That's who distracted me earlier; she's one of princess Twilight Sparkle's friends."

"She is?" Oval queried.

"Hey, now, that wasn't nice!" Pinkie shouted from further down the hallway.

A blue flash followed, and suddenly everything went quiet...

"I saw Pinkie Pie and Starlight Glimmer at the train station. They're here to find some kind of friendship problem and won't leave or stop investigating until they find it," I explained quickly.

"Well, they have a tough one on old Moonshine," Oval suggested.

"Moonshine? Who's that?" Pinkie Pie asked, popping up on my left.

The three of us jumped from her sudden appearance, and I barely managed to avoid landing on Breeze as I came down again. As I stumbled on my hooves to find my balance, I noticed Pinkie's eyes growing a little more than usually on the show when she was excited about something...

In a split second I realized the sudden appearance of the pink Earthpony must have made me lose my guise again, and I quickly re-applied it, but the damage was done already.

"Waaaaait a second," Pinkie started, but I quickly fell to the floor between chairs, pretty much falling flat on my face, and stared up at her in great despair.

"Please don't tell anyone, please please please please with sugar on top???" I literally begged of the pony before me. "I promise I'm not here to do anything bad! I'll Pinkie-promise if that'll help!"

From my position groveling at the pink Earthpony's forehooves, I could not see Breeze or Oval. All I was looking at was Pinkie, and all that existed before me was Pinkie. She held my fate in her hooves right now.

Pinkie blinked her blue eyes down at me, but a smile started creeping onto her face and I knew it was going to be fine once I saw that smile I had seen so many times on the show.

"Weeeeeeeeelll..." she started, helping me up from the ground. "Okay! I won't tell. But only if you Pinkie promise you're not here to do any of that evil stuff and are just here to have fun."

I sat up in front of her and tried to remember the correct sequence. "I do! I pinkie promise! Er... I am going to need your help with that, please?"

"Cross my heart and hope to fly," Pinkie started, and I mimicked her hoof motion while mouthing the words, punching myself in the face a moment later, "stick a cupcake in my eye!"

With my left eye held closed from the hoof that hit it a moment earlier, I motioned around blindly with my right hoof. "I'm Pearl, and this is my family; my sister Summer Breeze and my dad Sturdy Hoof."

Once I could see more than just stars, I realized Breeze must have leapt straight for Oval once Pinkie appeared, or when I threw myself at the ground, or somewhere before I gave myself a black eye, and the pair of them were staring at us in great confusion.

"Hi! I'm Pinkie Pie and I'm your new best friend!" Pinkie exclaimed merrily.

"Is she for real?" Oval wondered.

I did my best to smile through the adrenaline still rushing through my veins. "Yes, yes she is," I stated to Oval and Breeze.

"Pinkie, I know it's difficult for you to keep a secret for long, but can you at least keep Starlight Glimmer from finding out about me?" I asked, turning back to face Pinkie Pie.

"Oh, she already knows," Pinkie revealed with a happy smile, then bounced on off to the doorway. "They're in here, Starlight!"

I shared a confused glance with Oval and Breeze, but then the three of us turned to face the doorway as a blue glow started to shine stronger and stronger from it.

Pinkie Pie bounced back toward us and promptly shoved something under my nose. "Cupcake?"

I looked away from the doorway to notice a cupcake held up by Pinkie Pie's hoof, a blue swirl with multicoloured sprinkles on it. I took a sniff at it and the sweet, sweet smell of freshly baked cupcake wafted up through my muzzle and hit the pleasure centers of my brain.

I gently took the cupcake in my mouth and set it down on the lounge chair in front of me so I could nibble from it, while Pinkie offered another cupcake to Breeze.

While we ate from the impromptu treats given by our new friend, the blue glow finally delivered something to our view; a pair of Changelings, their guises lost, hovering in mid-air thanks to Starlight Glitter's magic.

The Unicorn pony followed behind them and raised an eyebrow at the picture of four ponies eating cupcakes.

"I'm not good at pinpointing exactly which," I started, "but one of those is my mom Spotlight. The other is Moonshine. She's... got a problem with me, for some reason."

Starlight Glimmer moved one of the Changelings closer to us and set her down on the ground. The magic glow around her disappeared, and the Changeling turned to huff in Starlight's direction.

"As I was saying," Blaze started, the green glow passing over her as she took on the guise of Spotlight again, "we were just taking a bath here."

Starlight set the other Changeling further away from us, and let her go as well.

Moonshine snarled once she regained control of her own motions again, and just sat down on her rear with her forehooves folded in front of her. "I came here to escape that one," she grumbled, nudging her head in my direction.

"For what it's worth, 'that one' has no idea what she did to offend you so much," I quipped.

"See, Starlight? This must be why the map sent me and you here!" Pinkie Pie suggested happily.

Starlight Glimmer looked less enthused, and looked at our little group. "So I take it you're Changelings as well, then?"

"Uh, Starlight?" Pinkie started. "They prefer the term love-challenged."

37

The five 'love-challenged' ponies in the room fell over at Pinkie's suggestion to Starlight Glimmer, and I had to pick myself up from the ground from that while trying not to choke from laughter.

The others were less amused by it and, while Blaze was giving her signature deathglare in Pinkie's direction, Moonshine instead took it far more personal.

"Oh, you think this is a joke, do you?" she sneered, standing up and walking up to Pinkie Pie in a threatening manner.

Starlight Glimmer's horn sparked to life and she pushed Moonshine back again to keep some distance between her and the pink Earthpony.

"Look, I know how you feel; I have made some bad decisions in my life which put me on the wrong side of things as well," Starlight started.

"I never had a choice to begin with," Moonshine exclaimed loudly, her own horn suddenly bursting with energy which she launched in a strong beam at Starlight Glimmer.

Starlight easily deflected the attack, having barely moved from where she stood, the beam crashing into the wall near her instead.

"Everypony has a choice, Moonshine," the pink Unicorn suggested calmly. "I thought I had no choice either."

Another blast of magic erupted from Moonshine's horn, but Starlight turned fully into it and sent her own magic to meet it. The two beams of energy exploded in mid-air with a bright flash, and I had to look away from fear of getting blinded.

"You have no idea what you're talking about," Moonshine shouted, jumping forward to close the distance between Starlight and herself for her next attack. "You're just some dumb pony. Your books don't even mention us properly!"

Starlight moved to prepare for this next attack, but a different magic beam flew past her and hit Moonshine straight in the barrel - sending her flying back into the side of the large bath.

Blaze walked up over to stand beside Starlight Glimmer, her eyes burning with fire. "This is not the time or place to do this, Moonshine. You need to stop this!"

Moonshine crawled back on her hooves, but a blue glow manifested around her as Starlight caught her in her magic and she was pinned down to the ground instead.

Starlight looked sideways at Blaze, raising an eyebrow. "I don't know what's going on, no. Maybe we can sit and talk about it instead of fighting?"

"In any case we can't stay here," Oval offered up from where he was sitting. "It's different for you ponyfolk, but if we're found out here in this place with half the walls missing, there will be questions we can't answer!"

A snap came from Moonshine, and as I looked at her getting up, her horn glowing menacingly, I realized she had broken out of Starlight's grasp on her.

Starlight looked as surprised at this as the rest of us. "That's not supposed to happen," she stammered.

"I've studied in your Canterlot's royal archives," Moonshine snarled, the glow around her horn growing ever more fierce, "I have picked up a thing or two about your unicorn magic that few others know about."

Starlight Glimmer was starting to look worried, and Blaze's stare on Moonshine hardened. "Sturdy, take the kids and run," she ordered through clenched teeth.

"Damnit," Oval cursed. "Pearl, follow me!"

I watched as Oval and Breeze made a run for the door, but they then skidded to a stop as the hallway behind it disappeared to make room for a formless void.

"We're stuck," Oval shouted back to Blaze, "there's nowhere to go!"

Starlight took a quick look at the door, then frowned at Moonshine. "Starswirl the Bearded's Chamber of Solitude? I'm impressed, but all it does is allow us to talk this out without interruption."

Moonshine grinned wickedly at Starlight's admonishment, and I backed away from fear of her turning her attention back to me. I caught a glance at Pinkie Pie from the corner of my eyes, and noticed her backing away as well, while her body was shivering all over.

"Well, since you like it so much, have fun in the void, pony," she sneered, and the contents of the bath behind her lifted up over the edge and washed out around and past her like a wall of water - moving straight toward Starlight, Blaze, Breeze, and Oval.

Blaze set her hooves down a little farther apart on the ground, her horn blazing energy as much as her eyes as she used it to set a magical wedge in front of her to part the wave with.

"Sturdy, behind me," she shouted.

Oval practically jumped forward with little Breeze held in his forelegs, the both of them crashing down behind Blaze as the wave hit her magic and flowed past them at great speed.

I could not see Starlight Glimmer in all this, but the water rushed out of the doorway into the void until the bath had emptied itself fully, taking with it all that had not stood firmly mounted on the ground or walls.

As the torrent finally died down, all the furniture which had been placed near enough to the entrance had disappeared from the room, except for one lounge chair which had hit it at an angle and was now wedged stuck in the doorway.

Pinkie and I had only been saved by the fact we had been standing farther into the room, me because of my fear response at seeing the evil look in Moonshine's eyes, and Pinkie Pie due to her Pinkie sense.

I noticed Starlight Glimmer standing behind Blaze and the others, and she shook her head in disappointment. "You remind me so much of myself," she spoke softly. "I see now why Twilight wanted me to come with Pinkie Pie."

The Earthpony waved a little flag in her right hoof at hearing that, smiling brightly. "Well, someone's gotta be the magical defense, duh!"

Blaze stood panting, having exerted herself already, and Oval moved to her side to offer her something to lean against. Breeze rushed over to Pinkie and me instead, and I quickly pulled her in close against me.

"Little sister, you're strong with magic yourself, why aren't you helping mom?" I asked, but Breeze shook her head at me.

"Changeling magic; yes, but my Unicorn magic is weak and glitchy," she revealed. "It's a wholly different technique."

"So no beads of sweat?" I wondered down, to which Breeze had to chuckle weakly at remembering my magic training.

"Maybe I'll try teaching you how it works if we survive this," she suggested as a shiver ran through her small form.

Moonshine spat at the ground where she stood before the empty bath, while Starlight took a step forward - now standing a nose ahead of Blaze from where I was standing.

"Nice dodge," Moonshine decided, trying to hide her disappointment that her plan failed.

Starlight Glimmer smiled weakly at Moonshine, her horn letting go of a very thin, but very fast-moving dart of pink light instead. In the blink of an eye it had crossed the distance between Starlight and Moonshine, hitting the latter straight in the forehead - just below the base of her unicorn horn.

I watched as my angry Changeling sister went cross-eyed, took a step back, and then froze halfway through her next step back.

"You are not the only one who read the scrolls in Canterlot's archives, Moonshine," Starlight spoke softly, then turned to face Blaze. "How are you holding up?"

Blaze did not dare take her eyes off of Moonshine, and neither could I. As we watched, Moonshine's already-pale white coat hardened, the individual hairs merging into one smooth surface. Blue veins appeared across her coat, while her mane and tail hardened in a similar fashion.

Within a few short moments Moonshine had turned to stone.

Her body was a white marble with blue veins, but her mane and tail looked more like a very deep blue sapphire. Her eyes stared blankly ahead of her from a face showing just the inkling of the realization of what hit her before its effects took a hold of her.

"Ooh, she's pretty," Pinkie Pie cooed, but all Blaze, Oval, or I could do was stare at the newfound statue while we stood in deep shock.

Was this what a regular Unicorn could do to us? In the show I had only seen this happen with the magic from the Elements of Harmony or that strange chicken thing from the Everfree Forest. It made me wonder just how powerful Starlight actually was.

The Unicorn in question walked over to the statue Moonshine had become since Blaze had not answered her, and looked her in the eye.

"The spell won't last too long, but in the meantime she is entirely powerless, and forced to stand still, watch quietly, and just listen to what goes on around her," Starlight explained to us.

"It gives us some time to talk about what is happening here exactly," the Unicorn continued, turning to look straight at me. "Because I have the feeling there's more going on than just a family feud."

38

Starlight Glimmer was looking at me intently, while Blaze finally gave herself a moment to relax.

There was a green flash to my right side, and Breeze took a step forward to Starlight. "You already know what we are, and our sister Pearl told me something about you ponies; is it true you know one of the princesses?"

"Of course! Twilight Sparkle is my friend! She's been my friend even since before she became a princess, actually," Pinkie Pie answered before Starlight Glimmer could. "I can remember the first day I saw her in Ponyville. It was the day of the summer sun celebration, and I was walking down the street to visit my good friend Colgate, who lives in the house next to my good friend..."

"Pinkie, I don't think we need to know all that," I interrupted, letting my own guise drop after Breeze's example.

Two more flashes of green passed before my eyes as Blaze and Oval changed back to their regular looks, and I saw Starlight's eyes move as she looked at each of us in turn.

"Wow, you... look really similar," she realized. "How do you keep each other apart?"

"That's what I've been wondering ever since I hatched," I mumbled quietly to myself.

"Oh, that's easy; Oval is the only one wearing pants," Blaze chuckled.

"Is that his name?" Starlight wondered, while watching as Oval worked to get out of her clothes. They were ill-fitting now her body's size had changed considerably, and would only get in the way.

"It's a joke at my expense," Oval explained. "The five of us here are all female. I just pose as stallions more often than not."

"I... see," Starlight muttered, her brain clearly trying to grasp at how that worked exactly.

I looked sideways at Pinkie Pie, who was just looking at us all with a big grin. "You're not at all fazed by having us around, are you Pinkie?"

"Why would I be?" Pinkie asked back, turning her attention on me.

"I... I don't know? I mean, I guess I heard enough stories so far that ponies will freak out about us," I stammered. "I just expected more of a shock, is all."

"You Pinkie promised you were friendly, silly," Pinkie returned merrily. "That makes us as good as best friends."

"Don't," Blaze interjected, "trust the rest of our family with that. They won't hold themselves to such a promise."

"Oh, but you can't break a Pinkie promise," I explained quickly to Blaze. "Trust me; this pink pony is much more dangerous than she looks."

Blaze raised an eyebrow at that as if she could not see it, and I did not blame her at all; she did not know Pinkie Pie as well as I had over the years of watching the show back on Earth.

That innocence could turn on you in a second if you tried to harm her friends or broke a promise with her.

"The stories I have heard about you have not painted the best picture," Starlight spoke up, while sitting herself down next to the statuefied Moonshine. "Scores of Changelings supposedly swarmed Canterlot a few years back, supposedly taking Celestia herself hostage, and supposedly only being thrown back out thanks to the efforts of Twilight Sparkle. If I didn't know the princess myself, I would not have believed any of it."

"Oh, it was true; I was there!" Pinkie Pie chimed in.

"So were we," Oval sighed, dropping down on the floor near to Starlight Glimmer. "I mostly just stood on the sidelines, but Blaze fought for our side. I'm not that good of a fighter myself."

I realized there was the opportunity for the group as a whole to form a circle to talk in, and walked up past Blaze and Breeze to sit down on Oval's left side, somewhat opposite to the petrified Moonshine.

Breeze flopped down as well, and Pinkie hopped on over to sit to the right of Moonshine, leaving the spot between her and Breeze open for Blaze.

Blaze had turned to face us, but stared through the circle at Starlight. "We could have won that," she told Starlight. "We could have had Equestria in our grasp. Canterlot had fallen. We were victorious before that sudden blast of magic sent us flying."

"It was a powerful spell," Breeze agreed. "I've never felt another power quite like it, before or since."

Blaze walked over and sat down in the gap left for her. "I blame our Queen's hotheadedness. We could have lived among them openly if only she had struck a deal with the ponies after having taken their capital. Brokered peace. Instead she wanted full domination."

Starlight winced and her ears drooped a bit. "Power is a terrible thing. It can sway you to take actions you know may be wrong, but they feel so good when you do it. Like the actions themselves fill a void left by past hurt."

"It never lasts, does it?" Oval suggested, straightening her right foreleg out in front of her. "Look at us, miss pony; Our holes are there because we need to feed on love. Pony love. I don't get why, but it's our fate. We start off as whole as you or Pearl here, but the hunger grows and the holes start to dig through our bodies. They never fill again after. No matter how much we feed."

Starlight looked mildly perturbed at the very idea of it, and I looked down at my own forelegs. They were still smooth and hole-less. I had not felt the hunger yet, even if they had warned me I would start to feel it by now.

Starlight looked grim. "That explains why you roam among us."

"There is no other source for the love we need to survive," Breeze spoke up. "We've tried to find other ways to get our fill, but only ponies share their love in the quantities to sustain us without having to drain them of it."

"Moonshine has been studying at some magic academy to figure out if there is a pony magic which can help us with this," Oval brought up, using her extended foreleg to motion toward the silent observer.

"I think she's mad at me because Matron forced her to teach me, and I'm not the fastest at understanding this stuff," I sighed.

"Or because you're the one who figured out how to make a pearl out of our resin," Breeze commented dryly, moving her backpack off of her back and taking the pearl out. She levitated it to the center of the circle for all to see. "I don't think anyone has ever spun a gemstone like this before."

I looked over at the perfectly smooth, perfectly rounded, slightly translucent green marble hanging in mid-air between us and smirked at it.

"To be fair; I still don't know what I did exactly," I revealed.

"It's pretty," Pinkie Pie breathed out in admiration.

"Can you place it on the floor, er... whoever you are?" Starlight wondered.

"I'm Breeze," Breeze chuckled, laying the gemstone down on the floor as asked. "Blaze is to my left, and Pearl and Oval respectively are to my right."

"If we ever meet again after today, maybe you can wear nametags?" Starlight suggested, but focused on the pearl on the ground after. "You say one of you made this out of a resin?"

Blaze spat a ball of hard resin at the floor near her, which looked nothing like the perfectly round pearl. The blob was glinting with wetness, and had sagged in a little to form a half-round bulb on the floor, even as it was hardening quickly. The only thing the two had in common was their transparency and green colour.

Starlight looked at it with some disgust, but Blaze just stared back at her.

"This is normal for us. We built half our home with this resin," she explained. "You ponies don't even try to learn about us."

Oval closed her eyes with a sigh. "We're just old mare's tales, Blaze. There is so much going on in pony society that it's easier to just go 'Well, Canterlot was almost invaded by Changelings' and then leave the details to the ones in charge."

Starlight looked down at the floor, shaking her head. "Even so, we have long memories. Me and my friend Trixie are both still being looked at funny if we walk down the street."

"Then you know what we're fighting against," Breeze stated. "We're some of the good ones in our family, but we don't stand a chance going to a place like Manehattan or Canterlot without appearing as somepony else. We would be chased out of town or worse."

"This is more than just a friendship problem, Pinkie," Starlight offered up to her pink companion, who looked almost uncharacteristically thoughtful.

"Yeah, we'd need a very big party to fix this," she agreed. "There's not nearly enough sprinkles in town to make that many cakes."

"That's not what I meant," Starlight sighed, shaking her head. "We can, at most, help out with the issue existing between you four and the statue here. But we can't exactly fix the way Changelings are treated. You're going to need to fix that yourselves, and it will take a lot of time."

"We don't have time," Oval sighed out, drooping her head down until it rested on the floor. "Our Queen may be planning to ruin everything yet again and there's nothing we can do to stop it."

Starlight Glimmer perked up at that. "Come again?"

"There are rumours among our family that our Queen Chrysalis is preparing to invade Equestria again," Breeze spoke up, while Blaze gave Oval one of her trademarked deathglares. "None of us want to have a war with Equestria; we have been infiltrating pony society and have productive lives there. But if our Queen commands us to, we won't have a choice."

Pinkie gasped in shock. "That... that... meanie-meanie face!"

"Thanks to Oval spouting the news, we are going to have no choice in how to deal with you two ponies either," Blaze half-hissed in frustration. "We can't let this word spread through the pony lands. You're going to have to come with us back to the hive."

Faces fell as they realized the truth in Blaze's words.

Starlight Glimmer was clearly outmatched by the five Changelings sitting near her, even if one was a statue right now. If we wanted to overpower her, we could easily do so.

Oval realized how bad she ruined things just now by speaking up, and was staring at the ground in front of her. Her few words had turned the tables on the whole situation.

Breeze was trying to figure out a way to get us all out of it without the whole thing leading into yet another fight, her eyes flitting between us.

Blaze was ready to fight already. It had been clear as day to her what had to be done as soon as Oval had finished her sentence.

The only ones who looked unperturbed by the situation were Moonshine, who was still stuck in her shocked expression thanks to being petrified by Starlight earlier, and Pinkie Pie.

The pink Earthpony sat with a big grin growing on her face, and I wondered just how her brain worked when she spoke up in a merry tone; "You know what? That actually sounds like fun!"

39

Four pairs of blue Changeling eyes, and one pair of blue Unicorn eyes set upon Pinkie Pie after the Earthpony had expressed her genuine interest in visiting the nearby Changeling Hive, even if it should have been clear that it would be as our prisoner.

Considering the chains I had seen on Oval's Unicorn guise in the training room a few days ago, and the emaciated look on each of the "captured ponies", as well as knowing the nature of my new family from both the show and having lived with them for a little while, I could not wrap my head around Pinkie thinking it would be fun to come with us.

It was Breeze who finally broke the silence. Sitting up and looking at us with a deep frown, she scraped her throat and spoke her thoughts. "Actually, I think there's a chance this could work out for all of us."

The attention of all others shifted to Breeze with a snap, except for Pinkie Pie who was looking at me instead, and Breeze held up a hoof to ward off the questioning gazes.

"Bear with me here; You ponies are here to solve a friendship problem, right?" she started, and there was a nod from both ponies. "And we're dealing with a Queen who is apparently losing her mind at the moment."

"You can't mean what I think you are talking about, can you?" Oval wondered, pushing up from the ground to stare at Breeze. Not wanting to strain my neck as I looked from left to right between them, I pushed up to get at the same eyeheight as them.

"Well, I don't know if Moonshine agrees with me, but I think we're all on edge thanks to the rumours about the invasion," Breeze continued. "It's easy to let small things become big ones as a result. And I want to apologize for interrupting her magic lesson with Pearl. I thought it was for the best to help out."

The Moonshine statue was unmoved by Breeze's words.

"I mean, we can solve this between us as long as we don't go flinging magic about again," Breeze chuckled. "It's just a misunderstanding, really. But the bigger issue is our Queen."

Oval groaned. "No, Breeze. Just no. There's no way these ponies can stop our Queen from doing whatever it is she wants to do."

"Think about it; when's the last time she laid eggs?" Breeze asked of Oval directly. "She has been stewing over the failed invasion of Canterlot almost as much as Blazey has."

"I'm not stewing about anything," Blaze threw back with a snort.

"Thing is; our Queen needs someone to talk to," Breeze decided. "and she can't talk to any of us, because her ego won't let her. We're her children, and none of us are potential queens ourselves. She has no equal in the family."

I stared at her and realized she was right.

"I think you're on to something there, Breeze," I agreed. "I told you guys that this is all a fictional realm back home. Something to watch and fantasize over. But there are hundreds of fanfics about how Chrysalis feels hurt and alone. And from what I was taught in these past few days, the rest of the Hive has the same problem thanks to our nature. We just don't fit in. There's a lot of pain buried beneath the surface there."

"Hmm-mm," Pinkie Pie hummed with a nod, finally taking her eyes off me to look around at the rest again.

"I can sympathize with not fitting in," Starlight muttered pensively. "And I've done some bad things myself as a result. But nothing like preparing an invasion..."

"Trust me, I know better than the others here how you feel," I told her. "I know all about your little village where you took the cutiemarks off of other ponies and stored them in a cutiemark safe. I know all about how you fought Twilight Sparkle through time, and how Twilight took you in as her student. I know about your history with your best friend who gained his cutiemark before you and how you met him again in the Crystal Empire."

Starlight Glimmer looked back in utter shock and incomprehension! "H...how?"

"Because I'm not from here," I sighed. "I was sent to this world along with others like me. If it wasn't for me breaking a leg during my training, I would've been stuck in some underground cavern somewhere and would be preparing to invade Equestria right now."

"You didn't break your leg," Blaze corrected me. "It was sprained if anything."

"In any case; back on Earth we have this show which details about the lives of Twilight Sparkle and her friends, including Pinkie Pie," I motioned my left forehoof in the Earthpony's direction. "I know how Pinkie grew up on a rock farm, her relationship with her sister Maud Pie, and all the adventures surrounding them."

"But, most important to the situation right now," I continued; "I think Starlight is the only one here who can understand the pain Queen Chrysalis must feel; the loneliness. Not being understood by anyone around her."

Starlight lowered her ears and looked down.

"Breeze's idea actually has merit, is what I mean," I suggested. "I mean, it works that way in the show. It's probably the best shot we have at staving off the invasion. We need to get these ponies to Queen Chrysalis so our Queen can get some friends... cause... there's honestly nothing else I can think of that just our little group can do against her plans."

"Well, we could let them go so they can mobilize the pony defenses," Oval muttered.

"That won't work; they're here because of a friendship problem," I retorted. "They have to fix that friendship problem. And there's one really big friendship problem staring us right in the face; Queen Chrysalis."

"She's not even at the Outpost," Blaze threw back. "She's over at the main Hive."

"No, she's here," Breeze corrected her. "I've felt her presence for the past few days now."

"In that case she must be close to where the Hatchlings are being kept," Oval pondered. "There's no way we can get these ponies anywhere near there. There are too many soldiers in that area, and it's off-limits for us."

"You got me, don't you?" I realized. "I'm a Hatchling, and I'm supposed to be there with the other Hatchlings. I'm sure I can get to those chambers."

"But the ponies can't," Oval sighed.

Breeze snorted strongly. "That's the one problem I can't figure out a solution for."

"Excuse me," Starlight Glimmer started, "but what's a Hatchling?"

I held up my right forehoof to her. "I am. Notice how I have solid legs, still? I was transformed into a Changeling when I was taken into this world. I don't feel the hunger yet that my sisters are feeling."

"That's the only difference between you?" Starlight wondered, and I saw a spark in her eyes.

"Er, yeah," Blaze answered in mild confusion.

"I might know a spell that could transform Pinkie and myself to look like you, but the holes would have been a major problem with that," Starlight offered up. "If all we needed to do was look like you without having holes in our legs and other bodyparts, so as to pose as Hatchlings ourselves..."

Breeze stood up and gave a quick nod. "That could work! The guards would just see you as Hatchlings; they don't have the ability to sense magic as strongly as we do. They may just look straight past that and just shove you in with the rest!"

"Wait, we're going to do what now?" Oval wondered, looking confused.

"Oh shit, this may actually work," I breathed out, realizing the depth of what it was we were planning.

"It's going to blow up in our faces," Blaze worried. "We can't get to those chambers ourselves. We can't be of any help once you and Pearl go in that deep."

"If there's a chance I can make a new friend, I have to take it," Pinkie Pie stated with grim determination. "There's nothing worse than a pony without friends!"

"Technically our Queen is not a pony," Oval coughed uneasily.

"That doesn't matter!" Pinkie threw back, speeding over to Oval and grabbing a hold of her, shaking her about. "It's FRIENDSHIP we're talking about! FRIENDSHIP!!!"

Oval's head wobbled as she got physically assaulted by an overly-excited Pinkie Pie, but even so managed to nod in response.

"Alright! Alright! Friendship! I get it! Stop shaking me!" Oval decried.

A deep sigh came from the direction of the statue, who was slowly turning into a proper unicorn again as Starlight's spell wore off. It only lasted a moment before Moonshine dropped that guise, and she narrowed her eyes at me for just a brief moment.

"Okay, I'm game," she mumbled weakly, moving her jaw a bit. "As long as I don't get turned to stone again."

The pearl which was still resting on the ground up to now, and had somehow escaped being trampled on by Pinkie as she had shot forward to assault Oval, lifted up into the air and floated over to Moonshine.

Breeze's horn was lit with our green Changeling magic as she placed the pearl down in front of Moonshine. "I'm sorry for having caused you distress, sister. Please take the pearl Pearl made as a sign of goodwill?"

Moonshine looked at the green gemstone and took it from Breeze with her own magic, but then closed her eyes with a sigh. Her horn glowed brighter for a moment, and a simple leather lace appeared near the gemstone. It threaded itself through the pearl, then drifted toward me.

I sat still as I could as the necklace was fastened around my neck by Moonshine, her eyes opening again to look at what she was doing. It sat loose around my neck, with the green resin marble resting against my chest, and I relaxed a bit once Moonshine's horn stopped glowing and I felt it settle.

"Pearl should keep it. You were right; the invasion plans are weighing heavily on all of us. I overreacted," Moonshine spoke softly. "We should give these ponies a crash course on how to behave within the outpost before I return the room back to where it belongs."

40

I took to the sidelines while Blaze, Breeze, Oval, and even Moonshine explained to Starlight Glimmer and Pinkie Pie just how the Hive worked. I had been there myself and seen how it all fit together in some strangely comfortable fashion.

My addled half-Human, half-Changeling brain was only a little disturbed about how quickly I had felt comfortable there, not only in my new body but also among my new sisters. There was that tiny little voice in the back of my head suggesting that there was something intrinsicly wrong about the whole thing and that I should have been more shocked about it than I had been.

If I thought about it rationally, it was easy enough to realize why I had started to feel at home almost immediately after I hatched. Obviously I had always pined to actually be in this world. My fantasies about this place, the fanfiction I read, everything had set my heart to wanting to be here. Any chance, any chance at all, to be part of this world was something I would have jumped at if I had been given the choice.

The fact the choice had been taken away from me did nothing to lessen my enthusiasm of being here. Being a Changeling, rather than a Pony as I had always imagined myself to be, was of little consequence. If anything, it had opened me up to the ability to pose as any kind of Pony I wanted to be in the future. I could change my guise to be an Earthpony, Unicorn, Pegasi, or even an Alicorn if I wanted to be.

This was a golden ticket straight into my wildest imaginations, and in any other situation I would have been crying from happiness after having arrived in this world.

Changeling society, really, was not that bad. What I had seen and heard so far, they were a little hampered by the way their Queen had bossed them around, forcing them to be seen as the big bad evil leeches only few of them truly were. They protected each other, they lived with one another, shared things I could not have imagined from the show's depiction of them. They truly were like one big happy family.

The one thing driving them was to find a place for themselves in this world. A place where they could feed on the love they needed to survive without being chased by everypony else. Oval was a good example of that, what with having married a pony and living a life beyond being 'just a Changeling'. I could really see the pain in her heart every time the invasion was brought up. War would tear her from her mare and could do irrepairable damage to her marriage.

I reached up my right hoof to gently tap at the resin ball hanging from my neck. I still did not fully understand how I made it, but I did make it. This was Moonshine's resin, and Moonshine's leather strap, but my magic had made that resin into the perfect little sphere. I wondered how long it would last.

The two ponies in the room were doing their best to understand just how our family worked, what things to consider when posing as Changelings, and how to act among us. I had been away from the rest of my batch for too long to know exactly how they would react. There may be more bronies among them than would be safe for Starlight Glimmer or Pinkie Pie to suddenly reveal their true selves among them. They could be rushed by fangirling Hatchlings.

"This spell," I started, interrupting Breeze explaining about the guards.

"Sorry, what was that Pearl?" Breeze asked, looking back at me.

"This spell Starlight is going to use to look like a Hatchling," I elaborated. "It's going to be Unicorn magic, right? It's not going to be like our Changeling magic which allows us to change guises?"

Breeze raised an eyebrow at that, then looked over at Starlight. "Yeah, I doubt she could use our magic," she agreed.

Starlight tilted her head a moment. "There is a difference in how your magic works from ours?"

"Yes, although they touch base in some areas," Moonshine offered up with a nod. "I have been studying Unicorn magic in Canterlot's Royal Archives while posing as a scribe there. Boring work, but the scrolls have given me some insight in how your own magic works compared to ours."

"What's the main difference?" Starlight Glimmer wondered.

"Mainly the way you are attuned to it," Moonshine suggested calmly. "Unicorns, like yourself, are connected to the ambient magical energy of the world around you. If something were to happen to that energy, you would be powerless. You could not use magic in a world like the one Pearl came from since I heard it barely has any ambient magical energy at all."

Starlight Glimmer gave a slow nod to that. "That sounds about right."

"We pull our magic from within ourselves," Moonshine went on to explain. "I'm not sure if it is because of the way we feed on love or something else, but we work like magical generators rather than just consumers."

"So Unicorns don't actually have any magic of their own?" I asked, trying to figure this out. "Cause we have myths about Unicorns with magic back on Earth as well."

"Well, they do store magic, right?" Moonshine asked of Starlight, who gave a nod.

"Yes, we do store magic within," Starlight agreed. "I just never thought about where we draw it from, but Moonshine is right; when I try to fill my reserves, I mostly pull it in from around me."

"Whereas we build it up from within ourselves," Moonshine stated.

"I can get magic back by eating, drinking, and sleeping," Starlight pondered, "but it's far easier to pull from the world around us."

"But even pony food is imbued with magic," Breeze offered up. "Everything in our world is brimming with energy."

"That's... true, I guess," Starlight realized. "You know, this actually explains some things."

"Okay, but does this mean we can use magic while on Earth?" I asked. "I mean, I was taken here by humans, but we talked about how they could have been Changeling infiltrators before?"

"We should be able to, as long as we can feed out there," Breeze agreed. "I'm not sure how your world works. All I can go on is what I heard about it from others."

"I will have to be careful when we are out there in your outpost thing, then," Starlight mumbled. "If I draw energy from the world around me, but you don't, that could draw attention from those among you who can sense that sort of thing."

"They are few and far between," Oval suggested. "There are some Matrons who can sense magical auras, but most of us have to train as hard as Pearl to get our magic to do anything useful. Forget about reading others' magic."

"Well, I can read magical auras," Moonshine stated, staring Oval down.

"But you're a "special" Unicorn scribe," Oval threw back, sticking her tongue out between her fangs.

"Okay, can we get back to the lesson here?" Blaze wondered. "If something goes wrong, you're not going to be able to fight your way out of there. The chambers are too deep in the outpost, and there are soldiers posted in every corridor leading to them. Trust me on this; you don't want to go up against a soldier."

"Pinkie Pie might stand a chance," I suggested calmly. "Earthponies are sturdy and can take a few blows, and I've seen Pinkie Pie in an alternate timeline breaking down stones with her forehooves. If Starlight uses her magic to support Pinkie, they could make it out, even if they'd had to dig themselves out."

Starlight Glimmer winced a moment as she remembered the wasteland from the alternate timeline Twilight Sparkle had taken her to.

"It may also help if we cause a diversion further away in the outpost," Oval pondered. "The soldiers are mainly reactionary; they go where they're told to go unless there's an attack on the Hive."

"I'm not going to pull another prank like that," Blaze decided. "Matron had us doing chores for weeks after."

"But it was effective; thirty soldiers out of the Hive within seconds," Oval remembered. "I doubt they still remember."

"Let's keep it around as a plan B," Breeze offered up.

"Oooh, now I'm curious!" Pinkie Pie exclaimed, trembling from excitement. "What'd you do? What'd you do?!?"

"Oh, set off some fireworks," Oval chuckled. "Although we misjudged the fuse timer, so they kind of all went off at once."

"I did warn you Oval gets us in trouble," Blaze told me. "Breeze just stumbles over things. Oval is the criminal mastermind."

"All I wanted to do is show our family how beautiful the fireworks show was that I saw over in Manehattan," Oval grumbled. "I can't help that the fuses got entangled and lit each other."

"And blew a hole in the side of the mountain," Blaze added.

"Still didn't do that on purpose," Oval decided. "Although we would be doing it on purpose now."

"Ah, but where would we get the fireworks from?" Breeze wondered.

"Oh, I have some!" Pinkie grinned, pulling a crate full of fireworks out of thin air. "I never leave home without my party crate!"

41

With the plan mostly set, and with Pinkie Pie providing the fireworks, teaching continued. Once my Changeling sisters felt the ponies had learned what they needed in order to survive at least the trip to the other Hatchlings while remaining undetected, we took on our earlier guises again and Moonshine returned the room to the spa.

The green pearl which had given me my name bumped against my chest as I walked out with the rest, the seven of us pouring out of the half-destroyed room into an equally-damaged hallway. We were almost immediately stopped by the spa's manager, but as soon as Starlight Glimmer mentioned Princess Twilight Sparkle and how she would take care of the damage, they were all too happy to see us go without getting in our way again.

It was a quick trip back to the train station, and Blaze led us back to the path we took to the town to begin with. Pinkie Pie and Breeze were chatting among one another a few paces behind Blaze, the pink Earthpony taking to Breeze's filly disguise as if she truly were a young foal. Starlight and Moonshine came up behind them, talking about the differences between Changeling- and Unicorn- magic as well as the different scrolls each of them had read.

I could barely follow the conversation between them, but Oval walking to my left was quiet and clearly lost in thought. It probably didn't help that he had half of Pinkie Pie's fireworks collection stuffed in his backpack. It made me a little antsy each time a branch tapped against it.

Even with having the two ponies among us, the walk back to the mountain went quicker than I had expected. While it was still light out, the sun was clearly starting to sink behind the towering mountain of Canterlot to the West and it would be dark soon.

"Remember," Moonshine told Starlight, "just keep quiet or call the others sister or brother depending on their gender. Its fine if you mix it up; we change guises so often it won't get noticed."

"Right," Starlight Glimmer nodded.

"We'll drop our guises in the common room. That's where you should cast your spell. Take Pearl as an example," Moonshine continued, giving a quick glance back to me. "That annoying Hatchling might actually end up having saved us all if this works out."

"Hey, thank you for that," I threw back. "I really needed to be reminded just how useless we were made to feel during training."

Moonshine smiled at that. "Shit, I really hope this works out," she breathed out, facing forward again. "I'm going to need to teach her more advanced magic without Breeze interrupting me."

Starlight dropped her head and tail a little, her ears tilting down as well. "This better work."

"We're entering the controlled zone now. Keep your guises," Blaze called back, but we knew what she meant. The ponies had to appear to be Hatchlings from this moment on; the guards were watching.

We continued on to the nearest hive entrance in silence, Blaze taking position next to the bush which hid the entrance from sight and allowing Breeze to take point.

"Oval, do something annoying," Blaze hissed under her breath after I passed her by in front of Oval.

"Damnit, Blaze, stop riding me," Oval threw back angrily.

I looked back at them as I walked into the tunnel system which was our home, watching Blaze come up beside Oval and giving him a nudge.

"I'm going to break off at the storage room," Oval decided, looking up at me staring back. "Pearl, you're going to miss the turn if you don't look ahead."

I turned my head to face forward again, just spotting Moonshine's tail disappearing down a side tunnel. I turned after her, shaking my head a bit. "Right, 'Pay attention, Pearl.' Got it, dad. Thanks."

"Keep it up and I'll have to talk with my mare about adopting you," Oval called over.

I heard some whispers following, but could not make out whether it was Oval or Blaze. I just focused on tailing Moonshine through the maze of tunnels until we ended up at the storage room. When I finally did look back, Oval was gone and it was just Blaze pulling up the rear.

"She gets like this some times," Blaze shrugged, walking up to me and giving me a soft shoulder bump. "This is a really dangerous plan. Oval's more worried about what might happen than she'll admit."

I stared up at my 'mom', watching the green glow spread over her as Blaze dropped her guise.

"I have to admit I'm not too sure about it myself either," I told her. "Should I take my necklace off?"

Blaze looked over to where Breeze and Moonshine stood with the ponies, and shook her head. "Keep it on. The guards won't give a shit about it, and it gives them a way to identify you."

I felt oddly consoled by that, and leaned in against Blaze while dropping my own guise. "It's been a fun few days, Blaze. Thanks for taking me in like one of your own."

"It's not over yet," Blaze smiled, giving me a gentle nuzzle. "We'll find you after this, whatever happens. We have more training to do."

I laughed softly at that, watching as Moonshine gave Starlight some last minute instructions. Breeze was doing the same to Pinkie, who eagerly drank in what the filly told her. Blaze and I were the only two who had dropped our guises so far. The others looked like four ponies looking entirely out of place in our hive.

"Hey Blaze," I started, looking down at my forehooves. "What if this goes bad?"

"Don't think about it, kid," Blaze returned, her stare hardening.

"But what if it does?" I had to press, looking on as Starlight turned to Pinkie Pie and tried to get her attention. "Those two have the best shot at this, but we don't know what we're going to find down there."

"Never think of defeat," Blaze spoke softly. "If you allow the possibility of defeat, your opponent is going to take that and run with it."

"It's not a fight, Blaze," I sighed.

"Everything's a fight," Blaze corrected me. "Just getting up in the morning is a fight. Picking your guise is a fight. Feeding is a fight. Life is a large string of challenges you need to overcome to survive it."

We fell silent as Starlight sent her magic out to Pinkie Pie, the blue glow spreading as an alien thing within this realm of black and green. The pink Earthpony changed before our eyes, with the most obvious of changes being her large mane and tail shrinking down as they changed into our grey Changeling fins. A curved horn grew out of her forehead to replace the former overhanging mane.

Her coat disappeared to become the smooth grey Changeling skin I had started to accept as my own, while her pupils expanded to the full size of her eyes like small explosions, then turned the full blue of our Changeling eyes. She licked her tongue around her mouth as her fangs grew out, the tongue itself changing to green as she did, and arched her back a moment as the chitin plating and wings grew from it, but then Pinkie Pie looked nothing like her pink self anymore.

As the magic glow died down, the pink Earthpony had fully transformed into yet another grey Hatchling like me and the unknown numbers hidden in the rooms deeper in the outpost. She was immediately being scrutinized by Breeze and Moonshine both, and small flashes of blue magic came from Starlight's horn as she made alterations to Pinkie's appearance based on the others' suggestions.

"If this fails," Blaze sighed, turning her head to look at me directly, "there's nothing we can do. We're no match for the guards. Whatever happens down there, all we can be is the distraction. Unless you can get out of there on your own, we can't get to you."

"If I do have to get out, where do I go?" I wondered.

"Hoofton. Oval will find you," Blaze decided quickly. "For all our joking around, Oval's the only one of us who has actually got her life together."

"And what if the invasion happens?" I had to ask, and Blaze's face fell.

"Aim for Hoofton. It's not a priority city," Blaze trusted to me. "If you manage to get others out with you, stick near the outskirts. A group of you would draw attention in the city proper. As long as you can see the water tower, you're fine."

We turned our heads at another blue flash of magic, which quickly changed to green. Starlight was in the process of changing herself now, and her magic changed colour to reflect her new appearance.

"She's still going to be using Unicorn magic, right?" I asked of Blaze, who gave a slow nod.

"Those changes are purely cosmetic. Not like our own," Blaze agreed.

"But I can learn Unicorn magic by taking on a Unicorn guise," I realized.

"Yes, although it is definitely more difficult to maintain than our own," Blaze explained softly as we watched Moonshine and Breeze finally dropping their own guises. "Juggling each night in front of a crowd, using Unicorn magic... it drained me so much. It took me months before I could hold my guise after; I just had no energy left. I would lock myself in my cart and steer clear of everypony else until I could safely change again."

"How long did it take you to get used to it?" I wondered, looking over at her again.

"I'm still not used to it, and I've been doing it for years now," Blaze sighed. "It takes a bite out of you. It's unnatural for us to use their magic."

"I hope Starlight can keep her magic up tonight. I'd like to learn some day," I told her, and she smiled back.

"Yes, let's get this over with," Blaze suggested while stepping forward to join the others.

42

"Where's Oval?" Breeze wondered as Blaze and I neared the small group of four; two adult Changelings and two 'Hatchlings'.

"She moved ahead," Blaze returned, to which Breeze gave a slow nod.

I looked between the Hatchling posers, and realized there were small differences between them. Pinkie's ears were slightly smaller than those of Starlight, while Starlight's wings were smaller than Pinkie's.

"You two can't fly, remember that," Moonshine told them. "Also try not to use magic unless you really need to, Starlight. You already carry the wrong aura on you."

"Can you even move your wings?" I wondered, but there was a quick headshake from them both. "Can we put something like a cast on them?"

"Like with your leg?" Blaze realized, giving a thoughtful nod. "We could say they damaged their wings while in fight training?"

"Coming from you, that may be the most believeable story, Blazey," Breeze agreed. "No casts here, but I'm sure there are a couple of bandages. I'll fetch some from the common room."

Breeze spurted away at that, and I smiled at the ponies in their guise. "You know, Pinkie, you look good as a Hatchling."

"Thank you!" Pinkie giggled.

"I may be biased, though," I chuckled. "You think you can keep this spell up for a few days if you have to, Starlight?"

"Days may be difficult," Starlight answered truthfully. "We should try to find your queen as quickly as possible."

"Keep in mind the others were practically herded into those chambers," Blaze stated. "You're not going to have many options or second chances."

"I'll be there with you guys, and you can easily find me by my necklace, okay?" I suggested, motioning my right hoof at the green resin bead dangling from my neck. "I'm pretty much the only one out there you can trust, and I have no idea what we're going to be walking in on."

"Don't seek out your brother," Blaze warned. "You can't trust him. The only reason I allowed him to proclaim victory over me a few days back was to get him out of our way."

I remembered being outside on the mountain with Blaze, Oval, and my batch brother, and the way he nudged Blaze out of the fighting ring by using a dirty trick on her.

"Noted," I agreed to her. "Which means it's just the three of us. I can't trust any of the others either."

"Especially if they start showing holes in their legs, Pearl," Blaze continued. "You can't trust anyone with holes in their legs. They will be feeling the hunger and may jump at Pinkie or Starlight in an attempt to feed."

I looked down at my own legs and how smooth they still were. "I'm still not feeling it," I muttered. "We should do this before I start to get hungry myself."

Someone walked up to me and put their forelegs around my head, letting it bump into their chest. "I trust you, Pearl. We're friends. You won't hurt us."

I chuckled weakly. "I Pinkie promised, Pinkie," I agreed. "I'm honoured to call you my friend. I won't break that trust if I can help it."

Pinkie let go and looked me in the eyes, giving me a genuine bright smile which beamed straight into my heart - fangs and all.

I felt a warm glow spread through me as I looked upon my friend, Pinkie Pie, and realized she truly was just that simple to understand; everyone could be her friend and she would immediately trust them and love them unless they did something that betrayed her trust in them.

Pinkie was as honest as Applejack, and the Mane6's biggest asset. She was there to break the ice, to pull you in, and make you realize the power of true, genuine friendship. And then the others would move in for that punch that drove evildoers over to the side of good.

She had already shown Nightmare Moon, Discord, Starlight Glimmer... and maybe Queen Chrysalis would be next to feel this buzz.

This warm fuzzy feeling that just made you realize how all-important it was to share the magic of friendship.

A hoof waved in front of my face and I snapped back to attention. Pinkie Pie had wandered off already and was being bandaged up by Breeze, while Moonshine was doing the same to Starlight.

The one waving her hoof in front of my face was Blaze, who looked at me with a mischievous grin.

"Got your first taste, then?" she suggested, and I had no idea what it was she meant with it.

Blaze sighed at my complete blank stare back, and sat down in front of me. "You just had your first taste of love, Pearl," she explained slowly. "You were out for a good ten minutes there."

"I... what?" I tried, still not getting what she meant.

"Do you feel warm on the inside, like you've been resting in the sunlight?" Blaze asked, and I gave a slow nod. "Tingles through your hooves?" I nodded again. "And now you're starting to feel that heat pull away again slowly?"

I shivered as I realized she was right. It was starting to get colder by the second.

"Yes, you just fed," Blaze explained. "That there, that was pure love. That pink one has a dangerous amount of it."

I fidgeted a bit as I felt the warmth leave me, making place for an eerie cold feeling. "Well, I knew she was dangerous, but... wait, what? Ten minutes?"

"Breeze returned with the bandages while you stood staring into space," Blaze pointed out.

"I had noticed that," I agreed, then realized something. "Wait, if I just fed..."

"Yeah," Blaze commented dryly.

"Does that mean I'm going to have holes appear now?" I wondered, trying to fight the shivers pulling through my body.

"Not until you run out of that juice," Blaze suggested calmly. "Liked the feeling?"

"Let me stop shivering first and I'll get back to you on that," I threw back, sitting my butt down and trying to wrap my forelegs around myself to find some heat back from somewhere.

"That's not going to do you much good, kid," Blaze chuckled. "In case you haven't realized it yet; our blood runs colder than theirs. That wave of heat you just had is only going to come back if you feed on one of them again."

"But... how? How did I... did what exactly?" I stumbled, the whole thing not making sense.

"It sort of happens automatically; you just absorb it when it's presented to you," Blaze offered, reaching her right hoof up to scratch at an itch near her right ear. "Gotta tell you, that looked like it was a good one. Kinda got me jealous."

"Oh, leave her," Breeze snorted. "Remember how it felt, Pearl. You're going to keep chasing that feeling from now on."

Moonshine let out a low whistle at that. "And you're never gonna get it," she added. "No matter how you try; that first one's where it's at. Nothing will compare to it."

Blaze sighed with clear longing. "Yeah..."

She snapped herself out of her reverie and frowned at me. "Don't get any funny ideas while out there, okay? Remember we need to stop our Queen from doing something that's going to ruin a lot of lives."

"Oh, she'll be fine," Breeze decided. "If anything, I trust her to be able to pull it off more than any of us. You included, Blazey. You're too hot-headed, I'm too clumsy, and Oval will end up staring at a wall wondering what it was she was trying to do."

"Hah," Moonshine chuckled. "Sounds about right, if I know you lot."

"Some respect for your elders there," Breeze threw at her. "Okay, I'm done wrapping you up, Pinkie. Don't blow Pearl's mind out like that again if you can help it, okay?"

"Okey-dokey-lokey," Pinkie agreed happily.

"Pff, older by what? A few lousy weeks? We were still hatched under the same moon," Moonshine defied Breeze, finishing up her own work fastening the bandage around Starlight's barrel.

"I really hope Twilight is not going to give me a test on this stuff when we come back," Starlight sighed. "Because I don't fully get what you two are talking about."

43

We gathered near an exit of the storage room with Blaze moving to take point, but then Moonshine called Starlight to the side.

"I am not part of their batch, so I will stay behind as it would look strange for us to walk together," she spoke. "You have a strong understanding of magic, Starlight."

"So have you," Starlight offered back with a half-smile.

"Maybe once we get through this we could meet up again and talk? See what we can learn from one another?" Moonshine suggested.

"You're a scribe in Canterlot, right?" Starlight wondered, to which Moonshine gave a nod. "Just take the train from there over to Ponyville. It's a much calmer town, and both Pinkie Pie and I live there nowadays."

"Any particular place I should try to find you at?" Moonshine wondered, and Starlight smiled up lightly.

"If you'll head for the bakery called Sugarcube Corner, you'll spot Pinkie Pie in an instant; she lives in the same building and works the counter there," Starlight Glimmer told the Changeling. "You're going to want to try some of her cupcakes while you're there."

"They're the best! Sometimes I go down into the store at night and eat until my rumbly tummy is all full with cake, and then I have to help bake new ones in the morning," Pinkie interrupted their conversation. "But yeah! I know everypony, and I mean EVERYPONY, in Ponyville. If I see someone new, I always go to them to greet them and see if they want to be my friend."

"She does that, yeah," I added, waiting near the entrance with Blaze. "She can be very overwhelming in her enthusiasm to try and make you her friend, so be forewarned, sister."

"Who are you calling sister, runt?" Moonshine threw back at me with an evil grin. "Get out of this in one piece first, and then we'll see if you've grown up enough to be allowed to call me sister, Hatchling."

"Oh, the high and mighty Changeling routine's back again," I grinned back. "I'm glad you calmed down earlier, sister. I'd prefer us to be on friendly terms."

Pinkie Pie agreed with a nod. "Yuh-huh!"

"Just keep these two alive out there," Moonshine told me, then gave Starlight a quick nod. "If you need a quick exit, aim up at a fourty-degree angle and just drill up. Ignore the existing tunnels or any mess you may make on the way out; just keep going straight. Any lower and you won't make it out of the mountain before you'll get swamped. It's got a wide foot and you're going to be pretty close to the center below it."

"I'll keep that in mind, thanks," Starlight spoke softly, turning for Blaze and me. "Shall we, then?"

Blaze let out a strong snort at Starlight's words. "Finally. Follow me and don't stray, Hatchlings. Remember that all Changelings will think of you their lesser and this is especially true for the guards you'll meet. Stick with Pearl; she's gone through most of the training."

With that, she turned into the tunnels and was quickly followed by Pinkie Pie. I walked up behind the bouncy Earthpony-turned-Hatchling, with Starlight directly behind me, and Breeze coming up last as the rear guard.

I shook my head a little as I watched the eagerness which never left Pinkie, then walked up to her right side as the tunnel widened.

"Remember, Pinkie; you should try to act like a Hatchling," I warned. "Try to keep the bouncing to a minimum, and no skipping through dimensional rifts or however you do your popping up in the strangest of places."

Pinkie tilted her head at me, looking at me with those large blue eyes of her Hatchling guise. "What do you mean?"

I raised an eyebrow at her question, and nodded at her as she skipped another step to hop instead. "Less hopping?"

"Ooh," Pinkie realized, falling into a calmer pace and actually putting her hooves down properly.

"Remember that you're supposedly injured as well, okay? So if anypony out there gives you a poke in your side, try to act like it hurts," I continued.

"Oh, I know that, silly," Pinkie chuckled. "I was thinking of acting like Rarity, but maybe not so much so like Rarity, because Rarity always has the best responses to those kinds of things; falling over in style like she does, but then I thought maybe I should just act like my friend Rose, because Rose faints perfectly! Just like Rarity, but a little less like Rarity, if you know what I mean?"

I stared back at Pinkie, then shook my head slowly. "No, Pinkie... but maybe you can introduce us some day? Just try to be a bit..."

"More like a lot," Blaze threw back at us.

"Yeah, a lot calmer than that," I agreed with Blaze.

Pinkie looked back at me with grim determination on her face. "Okey, dokey, and especially lokey."

"Especially lokey, yeah," I coughed, then let myself drop back a bit to fall in step with Starlight. "She's going to blow your cover if it takes too long, isn't she?"

Starlight gave a slow nod to me. "Oh yeah; she will explode in a cloud of confetti if she has to keep quiet for too long," she sighed.

"If it wasn't for the two of you, I don't think this stupid plan had any chance of succeeding," I trusted to the Unicorn-turned-Hatchling. "But knowing what I know of your history? This is probably going to go better than even I can foresee right now."

"And what do you know of our history, Pearl?" Starlight wondered, starting to look a bit nervous.

"Nothing but good things, Starlight Glimmer. We all make mistakes, but you're doing a good job recovering from it. Making right, you know?" I offered up with a smile.

"I keep telling myself that," Starlight sighed. "Doesn't mean I believe it."

"Well, you made up with Sunburst, right? And you've made friends with Trixie. I think she really needs somepony like you to help her. She's made some mistakes in the past as well," I listed calmly.

"Hers pale compared to mine," Starlight mumbled. "I keep hearing from Twilight Sparkle and the others that I'm improving, but I'm not seeing it myself, if you know what I mean?"

"Have you gone back to your old town? Talked to some of the ponies from it?" I asked, genuinely curious about it since it had not come up in the show yet. "I'm sure they don't blame you as much as you do yourself."

"I could never face them again in my life. What I did to them was inexcusable," Starlight stated with great remorse to her voice.

"Hey, I may come from a different world than this, and I may be a Changeling, but trust me on this; you've got a lot of ponies and people in this world and mine rooting for you," I told Starlight directly. "You're stronger than you give yourself credit for, and there's a lot that can be forgiven. You just need to trust in your own ability to talk things out. You did with Sunburst, after all."

"The problems we see are far greater than they actually are," Breeze offered up from behind us. "If you don't face up to them, they will keep haunting you for years."

"Exactly that," I nodded. "You're gonna be fine, Starlight. Have some faith in yourself."

"And especially now; you're the only one here who can help our Queen see she is making a grave mistake," Breeze sighed.

"Yeah, what she's planning is infinitely worse than what you have done in the past, Starlight," I agreed. "Not even your little timetravel experiment comes close. This could irrepairably damage the lives of thousands."

Starlight turned her head to look between Breeze and me with some trepidation, but I saw we were getting through to her.

"I'm going to be around for this one. I don't know what the future may bring, but from what I heard Moonshine is eager to talk with you after all of this," I reminded Starlight. "I'm sure Blaze, Breeze, Oval, and myself would love to come visit as well. I'd love to consider you my friend, as I consider Pinkie my friend now."

"I would like that," Starlight returned with a genuine smile growing on her Changeling face.

"Tell that inner voice of yours that you can't be all that bad if you have us as friends, okay?" I chuckled, giving her a soft nudge to her right shoulder.

"Ah, ooh, that hurt," Starlight spoke flatly to my bump, smiling over.

I missed a step as I had not expected her to make a joke like that, and got a nudge in my rear from Breeze to keep me going.

"Maybe put a little more emotion in that next time," I offered up to Starlight as I caught up to her again.

"Will you Hatchlings keep your voices down? We're just about there," Blaze groaned.

Starlight and I shared a glance, but she gave me a determined nod at my questioning gaze. I steeled myself for what was to come as well, not having a clue what lay ahead of us except for some "chambers in which Hatchlings are gathered" and the possibility of meeting Queen Chrysalis.

It was terribly exciting... with the emphasis on terrible. My heart was racing so fast I thought it was trying to burst out.

44

We rounded a corner in the tunnel, and Blaze was immediately stopped by two large soldiers. They looked menacingly as they were definitely a head taller than any of us, which did little to calm my growing unease with the whole situation.

"Halt. What is this? Where do these Hatchlings come from?" the one standing to the left of a closed door demanded.

Blaze set her fiery eyes upon him and took a defensive stance. "Don't tell me you don't know," she huffed. "It was enough that I had to take care of the one with the bad leg until her cast could be removed, and these other two managed to pierce each others' sides with their horns while fighting. In my ring, no less, so I had to babysit them as well."

"I, uh," the soldier stumbled, looking over at the one on the right. "Do you know anything about damaged Hatchlings?"

"I heard about the one with the bad leg. We had been expecting her to be brought here earlier," the other soldier stated. "Are they all done with their training?"

"Of course not," Blaze grumbled. "I was told to bring them here whether they were done or not. None of them can fly, I don't trust the two bandaged ones to be able to save themselves in a fight, and forget their magic practice, but I was told our Queen wants to gather up all Hatchlings here and to bring them anyway. I can't very well go in against our Queen's desires, can I?"

"No," the soldiers both agreed.

"These are the last ones, then?" the soldier on the right asked the one on the left, who gave a nod.

"The other batches are already inside. You Hatchlings should join them or you won't get any cake," he suggested, then turned to push the boulder out of the way.

I winced lightly at that, but fell in line behind Starlight as Pinkie was already through the door.

"Good luck," Blaze grumbled as I passed her by. "You Hatchlings are going to need it."

The large boulder was pushed back in place as Blaze complained to the soldiers about our limited training, and as it fell closed I realized it did a good job of closing off all the noise from outside.

I walked up to join Pinkie and Starlight and followed their glances around; we were standing on something of a landing or raised platform near the entrance to what was clearly a large cavernous room. It was larger than the common room, and from our raised vantage point we could see batches and batches of Hatchlings on the floor below, mingling amongst themselves.

I realized there were no resin veins in this room, and what little light there was came from clear glass vials stuffed with glow worms, placed around the cavern on large stalagmites which reached up halfway to the ceiling in some cases.

There were no resting alcoves hewn out in the ceiling, nor found on the ground floor; any resting Hatchling there had seemed to just lain their heads down where they stood and fallen unconscious. The only way the area was sectioned off was by the pillars shedding light around.

"No way to feed ourselves here," I whispered to Starlight. "Any Hatchling in here is left to starve. Considering the invasion plans, I can reason why; the more hunger we feel, the more ferocious we will attack the ponies in our attempts to feed on them."

"Yes," Starlight agreed. "There are far more here than I thought was possible. This invasion plan might actually stand a chance with this big an army."

"Untrained soldiers. Any one of Canterlot's guards can take on two or three of us," I sighed, to which Starlight took a step away from me.

"You're not one of them. You're here to help us get to Chrysalis, remember?" she stated quickly, and I gave her a nod while reaching up with my right hoof to touch the green gemstone hanging from my neck.

"Yes, I remember. I am a Changeling though, Starlight. These are my family members down there," I explained. "I am one of them, but I will do what I can to keep them from realizing what we're planning to do until you see your chance."

"There's a stage there," Pinkie Pie pointed out. "I hope we're getting a good show!"

I peered past her at another raised platform which had more stalagmites set around it. A thought hit me and I chuckled realizing the place was set up like a festival grounds. The focus was clearly on the stage, with the large empty space before it serving only to offer a place for the crowd to gather.

"We should try to get as close as we can to that stage," I suggested. "If my hunch is correct, our Queen will want to use it to address her new Hatchling army."

Starlight gave a thoughtful nod to that. "We should not stand right in front of it. Off to the side would be a better place. Do you see that corner there?"

I narrowed my eyes as I tried to see what she was pointing at, and noticed the glow worms in one of the vials had let their lights grow more dim. Either they were resting, or they had died. It meant there was an area with slightly more shadow than any other place around the stage, just off to the left of it.

I was just about to agree with Starlight when I spotted a movement in the shadows and shook my head instead. "No, that's a trap. Anyone like us who means to instigate something will be drawn to it. There's someone out there lying in wait, see?"

Starlight stretched her neck out a little, narrowing her eyes, but then nodded slowly. "You're right, Pearl."

"Opposite that, though," I started, pointing my left hoof past her to the right side of the stage. "It's well-lit, but there's no indication anyone is paying it much mind. Most of the Hatchlings are staying in front of the stage. If we head in that direction and just stay near the edge of the crowd, we can head for it once the "show" starts."

"And we can say it's because of our wounds that we want to stay away from the masses, yes," Starlight agreed. "Should we aim to go straight across the room or stick to the walls, you think?"

I glanced over at Pinkie and shook my head. "If we stick to the walls it's going to take us too long. Pinkie can't do that."

"I can't do what?" Pinkie Pie wondered, turning her attention to us.

"Another problem is how we can't signal Blaze or the others. They're going to set off the fireworks in only a few hours, drawing the guards away," I reminded Starlight Glimmer.

"Straight through is going to be a problem; half of them are asleep, but I think I see a path," she offered back, and turned to walk to the stairs leading down from our vantage point. "We have to hurry before the path closes on us."

"Think you can follow Starlight, Pinkie? I'll stay behind you two. You're easy to spot with your bandages," I suggested, to which Pinkie grinned happily.

"I can do that!" the eager Earthpony replied, hurrying after Starlight.

I followed behind and started my own descent just as Starlight reached the main floor. She started weaving her way through the Hatchlings gathered there, and nodded her head whenever they offered a greeting to her.

We were quickly starting to get noticed by the others around, what with the bandaged two in front of me, and my own pearl necklace was only a small attention grab in comparison.

"So that's why we couldn't start yet," I heard whisper, and gave an apologetic smirk in their direction.

"We should hurry to the stage, sisters," I called forward to Starlight to motion her to pick up speed. "We don't want to get stuck in the crowds what with your wounds."

My call had the desired effect, as the whispers spread the news of two wounded Hatchlings trying to get to a safe place near the stage spread through the crowds, and the path we were trying to take opened up ahead of us to let us through.

Starlight gave me a confused look back, but I grinned at her. "Festival etiquette; give the weak and weary the space they need."

"Right on," a brother to my right agreed, and offered up his right hoof for a hoofbump.

"Ah, my leg is still weak," I offered, lifting my right foreleg as if it was weaker than it was and carefully bumping my hoof to his.

"Well, little sister, if you need any help getting to the stage, me and my mates here'll get you there," he offered with a great doofus smile. "Gonna be a righteous show now you're here."

"Sorry for holding up the show, brother, but I think we can get there on our own," I chuckled. "We'll try to get to our places fast so this thing can start."

"You better; I don't know how long I've been here, but I'm hungry as all hell!" a voice from further in the crowd called out, and another voice said something along a similar vein although it was drowned out by a rise of voices throughout the room.

I hurried up past Pinkie and poked my head against Starlight. "Run before this becomes a warzone," I called out to her through the sudden cacophony of shouting and chanting voices, and the three of us ran through the corridor provided by the few who still understood we were supposedly hurt and needed to get to the safety near the stage.

I heard grunting behind me as two groups of Hatchlings decided they suddenly did not like the way each was staring at the other, but then looked up surprised as the earlier brother ran up beside me, nudging others out of my way.

"We got your back, sister," he suggested with that same doofy grin, while he and his mates formed a protective barrier around us and punched those who got in our way back into the crowd.

With their help, the three of us made it to the edge of the crowd, somewhat in front, and slightly to the right, of the stage, and I turned to thank them.

The group of six or seven Hatchlings had formed a wall like I had seen security do at festivals back home, keeping the suddenly fighting crowds at bay, and the Hatchling with the doofus grin was in the middle of it.

"Hey, thanks; we probably would have been stuck in that mess there if not for you," I told him while Pinkie and Starlight checked their bandages to make sure they were still in place.

"No problemo, little sister," he called back while planting his right forehoof in another brother's face. "Crowd's got mean from hunger, ya know? Settle down there, mate."

"Still, we appreciate it. Hope the show starts soon," I suggested, then ushered Starlight and Pinkie on. "We'll head for the side there."

"See ya later," he called after me, and I had to shake my head at it.

"He's probably been at festivals more so than me," I offered up to Starlight, who just stared at me while we made our way to the side of the stage.

"Or me; I have been to a few parties, but nothing like this," she breathed. "It has my heart racing."

"Will that affect your spells?" I whispered to her, but she shook her head.

"It takes more than that to dispell my magic," Starlight chuckled, and I realized she trusted her magic more than she did her ability to be a constructive member of pony society...

45

We made it to our intended spot with little effort now we were out from between the rowdy crowd, and sat ourselves down to the right of the stage. The gathered Hatchlings were slow to calm down again, angry and frustrated as they were at not having been given any information or food since they arrived here.

It was far different from me; I had fed from the resin veins in the common room. Even if it had not had the same effect on me as Pinkie's eagerly-shared love had just a few hours ago, it had at least kept me from feeling hungry. All these Hatchlings here had were each other.

At a rough estimate there were a couple of thousand Hatchlings gathered in this space, and I did some math on my own training; it must take the better part of a day, and maybe leading into the night, before we'd have been ready for the flying lessons. And all that on the energy our pods had given us. There had been barely any moment to rest during my training, and forget about feeding.

It was lucky on my part that I hurt my foreleg; that had kept me out of this place for now. Otherwise I would have been here for three days now, by my best estimates. I would have gotten cranky as well.

Given the sheer number of Hatchlings here, and the much smaller amount I had seen getting trained, I figured that there were more than one such route leading through the mountain to have led to this many Hatchlings.

I highly doubted that they would let any of us starve for real, even if Queen Chrysalis was supposedly evil. The idea was just to get us on the edge of starvation so we would fight to get at the nearest food source. Which, for all they would know, was ponies.

I scouted the rows of Hatchlings near me and realized some of them were showing holes in their legs already. They looked far too similar to the Changelings from the common room. Where we Hatchlings had a round barrel, theirs had pulled in more. Their waistline was far smaller than mine.

"They're definitely malnourished," I whispered back at Starlight, who gave a slow nod back.

"Even I can see that," she voiced. "The worse off ones are on the floor, you see? They have no energy left to stand."

I looked through the crowds and winced. "I didn't think it would be this bad; how can they fight if they can't stand?"

"I fear I know the answer to that," Starlight mumbled, and walked over to the nearest Hatchling to us. "Do you know what's going on, er... brother?"

The Hatchling focused their eyes on Starlight, and shook her head.

"I'm a sister, sister, but I don't know," she corrected Starlight. "We were told we'd learn how to feed here, but there's no food. It's maddening! We're not even allowed to go out or anything! I don't know if it's been days or weeks or months since I got here. It all bleeds together. They said we would get food once the show starts, but nothing has been happening... nothing."

Starlight smirked at her. "The show should start soon, I'm sure of it," she told the Hatchling, then backed away to us again.

"Don't tell me you're thinking what I'm thinking?" I whispered to her, but she turned her head to stare at me.

"There are a lot of missing ponies in this area," Starlight revealed. "Twilight Sparkle thought it may be related to what Pinkie was being sent for and asked me to come along. She said, if nothing was going on here, at least I would be able to learn something more about Friendship."

"So they're planning on giving this lot a crashcourse on how to drain ponies dry, then," I realized with horror.

"And once they have their energy back," Starlight pushed.

"Yeah, I know how it feels to feed now," I stated, shaking my head at it all. "They will want more. There's never going to be enough ponies hidden away in this mountain to sate this amount of Hatchlings. They will turn into a mob and swarm the pony lands without even needing to be told where to go."

Starlight sat down on the right next to Pinkie Pie, who was idly rolling a loose pebble forward and back under her right hoof.

"You heard what the soldiers said; they were waiting for the last few Hatchlings to come in. That meant you, and maybe a few others," Starlight reminded me.

"Yes, which means the "show" should start at any moment," I agreed.

Pinkie looked dour, not at all like herself. I wondered if she knew what was going to happen through some kind of precognition, like Blaze. That could explain how she could switch locations at just the right time, pop up here or there, and could link in with her Pinkie Sense.

I sat down to Pinkie's left and gently nudged my shoulder against hers. "Are you okay, Pinkie?"

"Don't you feel it?" she asked in a depressed tone. As I shook my head, she pointed at the stage. "Those ponies are absolutely not having a good time."

I stared at the bare stage, trying to see the ponies Pinkie mentioned.

"I see no ponies, Pinkie," I told her, but then there was the sound of a large stone being rolled away.

I looked up at the stage, where a large section of the wall behind it had opened up!

Initially I had thought it was one big wall, but I now realized the uneven wall had just made the boulder closing off the passage blend in very, very well until now!

A pair of guards walked in through the opening, and took position on either side of it. An expectant silence fell over the crowd at the sight of the soldiers, the sliding of the boulder having largely gone unnoticed by the ones in the back until now.

Thousands of blue Changeling eyes turned to face the stage, the ones who were too weak to stand up themselves being helped up by others around them so they could see as well. It filled me with some relief to know that, in their frustration, they were still being helpful to one another. It really drove home that feeling of being around family.

"There she is," Starlight whispered under her breath, and I looked up to the stage to see Queen Chrysalis step out of the hole in the wall, her regal form walking to the center of the stage with grace and the air as if she knew exactly what she was doing.

I realized the Queen was more beautiful than the show had depicted. Sure, she was a Changeling, but having lived among the Changelings as one of them for the past days, I drank her beauty in for all that it was. She truly was massively tall; standing even above her soldiers, and her many headfins waved around her head as if they truly were a mane.

Her green eyes looked around over the gathered Hatchlings - her fresh army - and I saw the corner of her mouth pull up until she was positively smiling. And the smell that drifted over from the stage... her sweet perfume... it made me light-headed.

Starlight said something to my right, but I could not draw my eyes away from Chrysalis on stage. Our Queen had not yet spoken, but I already felt she was proud of what I had become under the other Changelings' guidance.

Some more talking to my right, but it barely scraped the surface of my mind. It certainly did not register as something important.

Queen Chrysalis, in all her majestic beauty, was far more important right now. I would jump at a chance to do whatever it was she asked of me.

A blue flash came from my side, and then another, and the Queen turned her head to look in my direction!

Her expression changed to one of shock, and then she hissed as her anger flared up; "How did you ponies manage to infiltrate my Hive?!?" her blissfully angry words came out.

Blaze should be jealous at our Queen; there was so much beautiful anger on display here. Our Queen truly was magnificent.

"Never mind," Queen Chrysalis decided, then pulled her head back in the most wonderful of laughters I had ever heard. It was truly the best thing I had ever heard or witnessed in all my life.

A hoof hit the right side of my face, hard enough for me to fly sideways into my Hatchling siblings sitting in as much reverie as I had at our Queen's appearance, and I landed awkwardly on my back on top of two of them.

I struggled to my hooves, as they did, and looked around to try and get my bearings.

The entire Hatchling crowd was staring at the Queen on stage with blissful expressions on their face, excepting the couple I had bowled over. Starlight Glimmer and Pinkie Pie had shaken off their disguises and stood to the right of stage, with all the fury of Queen Chrysalis aimed at them.

"Pearl! Snap back to reality here, I need your help!" Starlight Glimmer shouted, and Pinkie Pie jumped forward to land on stage. "We can count on you, can't we?"

I gave a confused nod to the Unicorn before me, and waddled over on unsteady hooves. "I'm... not sure what's going on," I mumbled with a thick tongue as if I had been suffering from alcohol intoxication.

Starlight gave another pleading look at me, but then jumped forward to land next to Pinkie Pie. "Queen Chrysalis, we're not here to fight!" she tried. "But we must try to get you to change your mind. Don't you see how you're about to destroy your last chance to make peace?"

"Yeah, you green meanie," Pinkie Pie added. "Let them go!"

I breathed in that sweet air again, but then stopped halfway through and snorted as I tried to expel it from my nose. "It's her pheromones! I can't help myself," I called over to Starlight, immediately feeling like I had ruined it all by just being there with them.

"Please, Queen Chrysalis, I beg of you," Starlight Glimmer continued, falling into a low bow toward my Queen and motioning for Pinkie to do the same. "Please, hear us. Release Pearl from your grasp and just talk with us."

The Queen stood looking utterly surprised and appalled at the display before her, even as Pinkie Pie reluctantly bowed down low before her as well. The two guards had moved in on either side of the ponies, standing ready to overpower them.

I had to breathe, if just to survive, and my mind immediately fell again to the power of my Queen's pheromones. She was just the most perfect being in all of existence, and I would do whatever I needed to do at a single word from her.

"Hmpf, fine. You have gotten this far, I should at least hear how you managed to evade my guards," the Queen decided in all her wisdom, then looked directly at me.

A deep shiver ran through my body as I noticed those pure green eyes staring at me, and I fell to the floor in sheer reverie.

"Pick that one up and follow me," Queen Chrysalis spoke, and I moaned in pleasure of being recognized by such beauty, "...before she drools all over herself."

46

I was carried off through the tunnel behind the stage, still completely out of it. My vision was blurred, my mouth felt dry, and I had no idea what was going on around me. Even as I was set down in a much smaller room, I was unable to do much else but lay there.

A pink shape moved up to me and I felt her hoof stroke gently over the top of my head, from a spot on the right of the base of my horn to down in my neck. She repeated this a few times before a grey shape placed a bowl in front of my face with green liquid in it.

"Drink, Pearl," Pinkie Pie's voice suggested, and she moved my head a bit with her forehooves to put my snout practically in the resin.

I stuck my tongue out into the green resin, and lapped it up as good as I could. For some reason I felt compelled to do all that was asked of me. I was entirely open to suggestion. Pinkie said drink, so I drank.

The resin washed through my dry mouth and into my throat, and I swallowed it even while I was starting to feel dizzy and nauseated. The feeling slowly but surely subsided as I drank, and I slowly managed to get more control of my own movements as I emptied the bowl.

It was taken from me, and a new full one was put in its place. Pinkie did not have to tell me to drink from it; I felt famished! I licked it clean before sitting up, and realized I was actually feeling pretty darn good right now.

The dry mouth, blurred vision, dizziness, even the fog in my head had all gone! Looking around, I realized we were in a fairly small room considering the contents; a throne set in the center on an elevation with some stairs leading up to it. More lamps with glow worms were set all around the walls, but there was barely enough space between the throne and the walls for three of us to stand.

It gave the impression as if the room had a throne put in it 'because any outpost our Queen may visit needs a throne room, no matter how small'. There was no other use for the room beyond that.

I must have had a pretty dumb look on my face, because as I looked over to my right and my eyes met Pinkie's blue ones, she giggled and gave me a hug. "Oh, you scared me there, silly."

"It's the pheromones, she said," Starlight Glimmer offered up, sitting a little farther away from me, near to the throne on which Queen Chrysalis had sat herself down.

The Queen grinned in my direction and gave a slow nod. "Yes, my pheromones do have that effect on my children."

"Even when they weren't yours to begin with?" Starlight Glimmer asked directly. "Pearl told me she was from a different world originally."

Chrysalis narrowed her eyes at the Unicorn. "What else has she told you? Is she the reason for you ponyfolk to come here?"

I hugged myself to Pinkie Pie who showed no signs of wanting to let go, and shook my head. "Not just me, my Queen."

I saw the anger flare up in Chrysalis' green eyes. "You should not have even been able to get in contact with the outside. Who helped you?"

"Don't blame them," Starlight Glimmer stated. "there are a lot of your Changelings who worry about their queen. From what I've heard; they have every reason to."

"What does a pony know about me or my children?" the Queen hissed, turning her attention back to Starlight. "All you do is hoard all your love and shun us. You could share it freely with us, but you instead make up stories about how bad we are, how much we should be avoided."

"No we don't," Pinkie Pie decided, finally breaking away from me. I let my forelegs fall down so I could sit with my forehooves placed on the ground in front of me.

Pinkie walked up to the throne and looked up at Chrysalis with a troubled look. "You know what I do back home? I go about welcoming everypony new who comes to my town. I welcome them and try to be their friend. I have friends all over Equestria, and even among your Changelings here."

Chrysalis snorted at that and frowned at the Earthpony before her. "You're kidding, right?"

"Oh, no, she's genuine," I spoke up, walking over to the left of Pinkie Pie and giving the Earthpony a soft nuzzle. "She was my first feed, actually. She gives her love freely to any who are friendly to her."

"It was interesting to see how Pearl's face pulled into this look of pure bliss," Starlight Glimmer chuckled weakly. "I had never seen a Changeling before today, or seen how you feed on others. I expected something more gruesome."

"You are not kidding?" Chrysalis wondered, trying to wrap her head around the concept.

I let myself sink through my forelegs, and bowed my head toward Chrysalis. "My Queen, you are more magnificent and beautiful than I had ever depicted you even in my wildest dreams and fantasies. We know about you in my world, and I had never once thought I would meet you, let alone be one of your Hatchlings."

"You are no longer a Hatchling, considering you have fed," Chrysalis decided. "I had intended to have you share that experience with the others down in the chambers."

"You have been starving them, Queen Chrysalis," Starlight Glimmer mentioned, with no small amount of disgust to her voice. "Please let us come to a solution that will benefit both our races?"

"How many ponies know of my plans, I wonder? There are two of you here, and my daughter tells me there are other children of mine who feel like her," Chrysalis pointed out, licking her tongue around her lips. "Don't tell me I am going to be facing off against all the armies of Equestria?"

"Would saying that you are stop you from invading our lands, just long enough for me to try and help you understand we are not your enemy?" Starlight asked.

I closed my eyes and let myself drop down to the ground fully. "She can use her pheromones to get any information out of me, Starlight. I can't fight those. And I know now what my sisters meant when they said they could not fight our Queen even as they thought the Canterlot invasion was a bad idea."

"Hmmmwahaha..." Chrysalis laughed. "You are not wrong, my child."

Pinkie Pie stomped her left hoof on the ground. "But you are! Doing these things is totally wrong! You could be friends with everypony if you wanted to be!"

"Bah, you say that like it's an easy thing," Chrysalis snorted.

"No," Starlight commented. "No, it's not an easy thing. Celestia knows I've been fighting to undo the bad things I've done, get around the stares of everypony who knows me, and I've tried to run away from my friends in the past. It's not an easy thing at all to make friends when you're thought of as bad as you or I, Chrysalis."

"Hmm? What can you have done that comes even close to my legacy?" my Queen huffed. "What can a pony have done?"

"Besides enslaving an entire town, or traveling back through time to destroy this world because I let my fears get the better of me?" Starlight Glimmer spoke, looking tired as she peered up at Chrysalis. "You don't know how dark we ponies can be, Queen Chrysalis. Our own Princess of the Night was banished to the moon for a thousand years because she tried to cast eternal night upon us. Honestly, your Changelings are not even a match to that."

Chrysalis looked taken aback by this news, shaking her head in defiance of the fact. "No, there's... No, I'm being... I don't believe you."

I glanced up at her. "My Queen, she's speaking the truth; I have seen these things in my world, and in my short stay here. There are far worse things out there which the ponies are barely even aware of existing. And there is plenty of room for your family to move among them in peace."

Chrysalis' green eyes stared at me as if to find some hint that I was lying to her. I looked back in them with nothing but the genuine hope she would see reason.

"It will never work," Chrysalis sighed. "These ponies will not accept us, my child. Can't you see they are only using you to stave off our invasion of their lands?"

"Actually, I came here because the map said there was a friendship problem here," Pinkie Pie told her, then took a bite off a cupcake she had conjured up out of nowhere. "I meanf, I didnf efen kno off an infaffion."

"Where..." Chrysalis started, but I shook my head at her.

"Don't ask, my Queen. There are numerous theories about her in my world, but it's better to just accept Pinkie Pie for who she is," I sighed, pushing up from the ground again. "May I make a suggestion?"

Chrysalis shook off the antics of Pinkie Pie, then looked at me directly. "Go ahead. It can't be any stranger than this situation has already been so far."

"Stave off the invasion. Let my siblings join the family in the common room so they can learn to feed from the resin veins," I started, and my Queen narrowed her eyes at me. "Please hear me out; it gives them a chance to learn from the others how to live among the ponies without being detected, to leech off their love in smaller doses. And, in the meantime, you should go with Starlight Glimmer and Pinkie Pie, back to Ponyville."

My Queen huffed and stood up on her throne. "Nonsense! Me, following these ponies to their homestead? I would be cast in irons and thrown in the darkest dungeons! Why, pray tell, would I give them that chance?"

"Because they won't do that," I suggested, and focused on my earlier Earthpony guise. The green flash of our magic washed over me, and I stood facing my Queen as a grey Earthpony next to the pink Pinkie Pie. "Because they will take you at face value. And they will share their love with you without question. If I learned anything about this world in my short stay here, my Queen; these ponies are the real deal."

Chrysalis eyed me with a look of disgust, but at least she allowed herself to sit down again. "Did you have to change into one of them just to tell me that?"

I gave a soft nod up. "Yes, my Queen. Because I learned from my sisters how to take on a guise a few days ago. I snapped my ankle during a fight and stayed in the common room for a few days. There are more Changeling siblings of mine there than I could count, but all of them share the same worry; if you launch an attack on Equestria, their lives will end."

"I spoke with one of your children who has been living as a scribe in Canterlot. I have been to Canterlot's archives myself, and I would have never thought a Changeling was among the ponies working there," Starlight Glimmer offered up. "She's been studying our magic, and we made a promise to meet up again in the future so we can learn from one another."

"Yeah, and I already invited them to come visit me in Ponyville, so she can be my friend and we can eat cupcakes together!" Pinkie exclaimed happily.

"They've known me and my sisters for a short few hours now," I spoke. "Don't you see how they work, my Queen? They don't care if we're Changelings or taking on a guise to look like them. As long as we treat them as friends, they will share their friendship and love with us. There are so many down in the common room who have spent enough time in the pony lands that they have actual lives there. Some of my sisters and brothers are even wed out there! The worst thing that can happen right now is for us to attack them, my Queen."

"Please, please, I beg of you please," I continued, my voice breaking as tears welled up in my eyes. "Please reconsider the invasion... please?"

Chrysalis just stared at me, clearly unsure as to what to do. I just kept looking up at her through my tears, letting them well up and leak down my cheeks freely.

The look in my Queen's eyes softened slowly, and she took a few steps down from her throne to place her right hoof on my head and gently stroke over it.

"My child," she started, but then was interrupted by hoofsteps gallopping toward us and skidding to a stop.

"My Queen," a male voice behind me said. "The hive is under attack!"

47

The news about the attack could not have come at a worse time. Just when my Queen Chrysalis had looked to want to give the ponies the benefit of the doubt, she now clammed up and got her earlier hard stare in her eyes again.

As she tread past me on my left, I looked to the right to Starlight who had her right forehoof to her forehead, just next to her horn, and sighed.

"Oval, right?" she asked, and I gave a halfhearted nod back.

"My Queen, this is not an attack," I tried, turning to face Chrysalis, but she was too busy ordering the guards around to listen.

"Yeah, it's just fireworks!" Pinkie Pie agreed.

Chrysalis just pointed back at us with a cold fury in her eyes. "And bring them. If this is an attack, they may think twice when they see we have these ponies as our prisoners," she told the guard near her.

Other guards moved into the room to stand around us, and I felt my heart sink. Just when it had looked like our plan was going to work, Oval may have ruined it all just by creating a diversion.

As Chrysalis set in motion, we were quickly ushered to follow behind her, a guard in front and one behind us. I had not realized on the way over thanks to my intoxicated state of mind, but the corridors here were larger than the ones deeper in the outpost. These were definitely made to size for the guards and Queen rather than us drones and the matrons.

There was ample space for Pinkie, Starlight, and myself to walk side-by-side comfortably, and Starlight moved up to my left side.

"Now what do we do, Pearl?" she asked, as if I had all the answers.

"Follow behind the Queen, I suppose," I returned. "There's not a lot we can do right now unless you want to start this war off properly by trying to escape."

"That's the last thing I want to do right now," Starlight Glimmer mumbled, her mood quickly dropping.

"I know the feeling," I suggested, giving her a soft nudge with my shoulder. "You were doing good up there until Oval spoiled the mood."

"Honestly, so were you. For a moment I thought we were going to really make a difference," Starlight mused.

"It definitely looked that way from where I was sitting," I chuckled weakly. "Let's hope Oval didn't set the mountain on fire or something. If it's just fireworks we can deal with it. My Queen may even like the look of them."

"You do realize what you're saying, right?" Starlight wondered, looking at me sideways. "You called her 'My Queen'. I saw the look on your face, and of the others, when she came on stage. Are those pheromones of her truly that strong?"

I thought back and gave a slow nod to Starlight. "Yes... yes, they are. I was caught by them before I even realized what it was I was breathing."

"Does your cheek still hurt?" Starlight wondered, and I moved my jaw a little remembering the punch I'd received in the large auditorium.

"No, not at all. I think the resin I was given earlier healed that as well as clearing out my head," I pondered.

"I wonder what all we could learn from one another, if we could set our differences aside," Starlight mused quietly.

We continued through the larger corridors until we came to an exit with a lot of guards gathered near it. Even from inside we could hear the fireworks go off, and there were flashes of coloured light coming from outside.

Chrysalis stepped out into the night's air, and the Guards forced us to follow. Pinkie Pie was immediately distracted by the show of fireworks in the air, shooting up from a place just a little farther up the mountain.

Starlight and I put our attention lower than that; to the small group of Changelings gathered near to the entrance, surrounded by Guards. I recognized Blaze, Oval, and even Breeze, just from having been around them so much the past days, leaving the fourth one to be Moonshine.

They were all staring at the ground, even as our Queen turned to face them.

"More of my children inciting rebellion?" Chrysalis demanded, then used her magic to douse the pile of fireworks still shooting up in the sky. "It does not matter how many flares you shoot up in the sky for your pony friends to follow; I will personally make sure none of you survive to meet them!"

Our Queen's horn flared up as she prepared to unleash her magic upon the group of siblings, but then a voice called out to her from behind us.

"Chrysalis! What have I been trying to tell you about your anger issues?" the feminine voice spoke, and a Changeling rushed by where we stood to move in-between our Queen and the other four.

"Who dares," Chrysalis started, but then her eyes settled upon the other and all energy seemed to drain from her. "Don't tell me you come to defy me as well, Matron?"

I perked up at hearing the name, and realised I knew the other Changeling! She was the Matron who had led me through the tunnels to the Common Room! The Matron who had demanded of Moonshine to teach me magic!

"I have come to stop you before you make a grave error, my Queen," Matron spoke up, motioning back at the group behind her. "These are not the problem. Burst has a history of getting herself into trouble, and even blew a hole into the main Hive while she was still young, if you remember?"

Chrysalis turned her head to the left and stared sideways at Matron while her eyes narrowed. "Yes... now you remind me."

"They obviously wanted to pull another stunt now you brought us all together in this outpost," Matron suggested. "Childish pranks, but certainly nothing to kill them over!"

"We are deep within Equestrian territory this time, Matron. This prank necessitates me pushing our invasion ahead before their armies will come up this mountain to find us," our Queen decided.

"Queen Chrysalis, if I may speak?" Starlight Glimmer started, and quickly continued before she could be stopped. "The only settlement nearby is that of Hollow Shades, and they are barely able to see the sky through the thick canopy from the forest around them. Fillydelphia and Baltimare are even farther away and won't be able to pinpoint our location correctly even if they used instruments to do so. If anypony has seen these fireworks, they would mostly assume somepony else was having a party and leave it at that."

"Yeah," Pinkie Pie agreed! "I throw parties with fireworks all the time! I'm the number one party planner in Equestria, you know? Well, there's Cheese Sandwich as well, but we throw the best parties together!"

Chrysalis did not look convinced, but Matron's interruption had at least stopped her from blasting my siblings off the side of the mountain with her magic. I took a deep breath to steel myself, then took a chance and threw myself past the guard nearest to me, and at the hooves of my Queen!

"My Queen, please, I beg of you, please use your pheromones on me. Let me tell you my story up to now," I asked in desperation. "Please let me tell you all that I saw, heard, and felt. Let me tell you about how your children, my siblings, took me in under their wings and taught me how to live as part of your large family, what good I learned from them, and how they made me realize that we need to work to have the ponies love us for who we are."

I had to take a breath before I could continue, "and of Pinkie Pie, who loves without question, and Starlight Glimmer who came from a spot far darker than you or I and has managed to find herself friends and a place to live among the other ponies. Please, ask anything of me. Let me show you why we are all here, trying to get you to understand."

This was the second time I had begged my Queen for something, and in such a short amount of time. I could see she was hesitant, and was getting more uncomfortable by the second.

Matron took a step toward me and lifted her left forehoof to gently stroke it over my head. "Chrysalis, my Queen, I am one of your oldest daughters, and this is one of your youngest. Between us are thousands of your children, all worried about what their future may bring."

Our Queen closed her eyes with a painful look on her face. "How can you betray me in this fashion?" she whispered under her breath.

"It's not betrayal, Chrysalis. It's trying to help you make the right decision. One from which we can continue on as a stronger family," Matron responded calmly.

"My Queen, I'm wed to a pony mare. I'm happy in that guise. I'm well-fed, and give back to the Hive what I can," Oval spoke up carefully. "We've been prosperous for years now, even considering the failed attack on Canterlot. Any of us will do as you command, you know that, but I would really like to just go home. See my mare, drink her love, and come back to the Hive with new stories, goods, and food."

"We've lived in relative peace for over a decade now," Breeze suggested. "There's no reason why we can't continue as we've done so far?"

"I haven't found the breakthrough yet which you sent me to find in the Canterlot archives, mother," Moonshine sighed. "Starlight Glimmer offered to teach me more about Unicorn magic if I would come to visit her in Ponyville. She can be the one pony I need to help us figure their magic out properly."

"That failed invasion on Canterlot was poorly planned," Blaze huffed. "And this is not looking to be going any better. I'm the first to kick a pony's teeth out if I need to, my Queen, but if you don't listen to our tactical advice, this invasion is doomed to fail just like the one before it."

I felt a tear leak down my right cheek. "I don't want to be last of our kind, my Queen... there are many nations back in my world who fell to ruins because they sought war instead of peace," I whimpered. "I just want to live."

"And you say friendship with these ponies is possible," Chrysalis whispered, then shook her head. "I can't see it."

"When is the last time you tried to make friends with a pony, Chrysalis?" Matron wondered. "Even now, these two here are surrounded by Guards. What have they done to us?"

"They infiltrated our Hive," Chrysalis threw back weakly.

"And we have infiltrated their society on levels they can't even guess at, my silly Queen," Matron chuckled softly, walking forward to place her right forehoof against Chrysalis' chest. "Do you trust me, who has been with you for decades now?"

Chrysalis closed her eyes and gave a slow nod.

"Then ask the pink Earthpony if she wants to be your friend," Matron decided, pulling away again so she could use her right forehoof to point in Pinkie Pie's direction.

48

Chrysalis awkwardly approached Pinkie Pie and the guards, who had been watching this all go on in silence, parted to let our Queen through.

Pinkie Pie peered up with an eager smile, and our Queen stopped a few paces away from her.

Chrysalis looked back to Matron. "I don't see the use in," she started, but Matron's stare made her swallow the rest of her sentence.

A sigh escaped our Queen's lips as she turned back to Pinkie Pie. "Pony," she started, but then fell silent.

Matron scraped her throat, while all eyes were upon Chrysalis.

"Yes?" Pinkie Pie grinned up in eager anticipation.

"Would you... oh, this is just never going to work," Chrysalis huffed, but Matron immediately moved over to her side and nudged her far smaller form in against our Queen's.

"Repeat after me, now," Matron suggested; "Pinkie Pie, would you like to be my friend?"

Our Queen's wings drooped down her side, her tail fell, and she dipped her head a little lower. "Pinkie Pie, would you like to be my friend?" she repeated Matron's words, obviously not thinking it was going to do much.

"Sure!" Pinkie Pie exclaimed merrily, beaming up happily at our Queen!

Chrysalis' face blanked. She took a half-step back, then sank through her hindlegs and just sat there, staring with wide-open eyes at Pinkie Pie before her.

Matron turned around and moved to help me up from the ground.

"If you wondered how you looked during your first feed, Pearl," Blaze started, waving a hoof through the air at our Queen. "That comes very close."

"Well, we won," Moonshine realized.

"Of course," Matron chuckled. "I've known Pinkie Pie for years now. I just never expected to be able to get her this close to our Queen. It could have solved a lot of issues over the years."

"Wait," I started, looking around in confusion. "Wait, that's it?"

Starlight Glimmer moved up beside Pinkie Pie and nudged her. "Your cutiemark's glowing, Pinkie Pie."

Pinkie looked back at it, then jumped into the air in surprise. "Oh, yay! We solved the friendship problem!"

"No, wait, really? That's the... I mean..." I started, then brought my right forehoof up and slapped myself in the right eye with it. "Oh, ow! Ow... ow, I gotta stop doing this!"

Laughter erupted around me, the earlier tension of Chrysalis potentially doing something very bad to all of us finally leaving, and as I peered around through my left eye I noticed even a few Guards were carefully letting themselves laugh along.

"Let me take care of that eye," Matron suggested, and promptly spat resin at my face. I struggled to keep still as she used her hoof to spread it over my closed right eye, but tried to give her a thankful smile back.

"Thank you, Matron," I offered up. "But, really, can we be sure our Queen is going to be open for our suggestions now?"

"Pinkie Pie's love is... special," Matron answered my question. "I haven't fed off a single pony yet who comes near to the effect it has on us."

"Wait, I'm not supposed to feel all warm and glowy, tingly, and everything?" I wondered.

"No, that's just the after effects, and you'll feel those more or less every time you feed on somepony," Matron chuckled. "Pinkie Pie will knock you out however. Our Queen will need a moment to collect her thoughts."

"Your Queen has collected her thoughts," Chrysalis hissed dangerously from behind Matron, and I turned my only working eye back up to look at her.

Matron looked unfazed as she turned around to face our Queen. "Pinkie Pie has kept me fed for years. I make it a point to visit her every time I come to Ponyville," Matron stated. "You can feel why."

Chrysalis sat herself down while facing Matron and me, and looked... hurt, honestly. "Why would you keep this from me, Matron?"

"Because you would have abducted her and kept her as your personal food source," Matron spoke up, still calm as ever. "You deserve better than to have a food source wither away. You must have had some inkling of a realisation of just how good our infiltrators have had it? Surely?"

Chrysalis looked away from Matron. "I haven't paid much attention to my children these past years, no," she sighed out in a long sigh.

"We noticed there have not been any new batches ever since the failed invasion on Canterlot," Breeze commented, walking over. "All of us worry about you, my Queen. All of us. Even the Hatchlings have spoken their concern for you."

"Have I just been so consumed by my anger that I missed all of this?" Chrysalis wondered to herself, shaking her head.

"There is always time to correct your past mistakes and turn your life around for the better," Starlight Glimmer offered, walking up to the right side of our Queen. "As long as you're willing to be friendly to us, I give you my guarantee that we ponies will help you as much as we can."

"I really would suggest taking that offer, my Queen," I spoke up. "You will not find a better group who can deal with us as these ponies. They don't fear us, they genuinely care about us, and they have experience dealing with mistakes from the past."

"You are repeating yourself, my child," Chrysalis muttered with a light smile on her face. "There is no denying that pink pony, pardon, Pinkie Pie, has more love to share with us than I thought possible. And, looking around at the faces of my children, even those of my guards, I can see you are all wanting me to attempt this 'being friendly'."

"There are only benefits to this," Matron stated. "If you listen to the stories from the family, you will see. It's been too long since you let them come to you. You've cordoned off the area around you for years now. Even I was prevented from getting to you."

"I wonder if the other hives feel the same way," Chrysalis mused.

"I am sure you can find out by going there and listening," Matron suggested. "Maybe take our mutual friend Pinkie Pie with you on the trips; she loves to make new friends after all."

Chrysalis winced at the thought. "And reveal all our locations to her in the process? Matron, now I am truly worried if you have lost your mind."

"No more than you have for the past couple of years, Chrysalis," Matron threw back with a smile.

"I don't want to interrupt this, really I don't," I started, "but my Hatchling siblings down in the large chamber haven't been fed for days, or weeks, or however long they've been there for. Is there any way, my Queen, that you could provide them with some food? I mean that in the form of resin lines more than ponies... because they will suck those ponies dry at this point."

There was a gasp from my sisters, who had not been in the chambers, and Matron stomped a forehoof on the ground. "Chrysalis! I had expected better of you! Tell me I can send my sisters out to lay down veins to them, my Queen?"

"Oh, yes, I had forgotten about them," Chrysalis muttered. "I suppose the invasion is on hold, for now. Yes, Matron. I will allow you to set resin veins in that chamber. Call upon any help you need from the guards or drones. But no Hatchling is to leave that room until we find out what to do with them."

Matron sped away, calling upon a few of the guards and taking them with her in the process.

Pinkie appeared next to Chrysalis, holding up a cupcake to her. "Would you like a cupcake, friiieeend?"

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow at Pinkie, then glanced around us. "Is it safe?"

"About as safe as those cakes you had to test before your mock-wedding in Canterlot, my Queen," I suggested with a grin. "Pinkie can pull these things from just about anywhere."

"Except for in my little town," Starlight Glimmer mumbled.

"It is to do with the latent magical energy of the surrounding area," Moonshine revealed. "I don't know how she does it, but I noticed a dip just now when she manifested it."

Pinkie Pie just sat smiling in all innocence, still holding the cupcake up to Chrysalis.

"I see why you need more time to study the ponies, Moonshine," Chrysalis realized, then took a careful bite from the cupcake.

49

We stood quietly in the night's air, watching our Queen eat her way through the cupcake. A cool breeze passed by us, and I heard soft whistling around me in different tones, like a windchime of sorts. As I looked around myself at the many pairs of Changeling legs with their holes in them, I quickly deducted where the sound must be coming from and let out a soft chuckle.

"Hm?" our Queen started, swallowing the last bit of cupcake down. "What is so funny, my child?"

"I just realized our holey legs make for neat instruments," I suggested, then lifted up my right foreleg. "Except for mine and the ponies. My holes haven't grown in yet."

"May they stay away for a long time," Chrysalis sighed. "You clearly have not felt the hunger I have put the other Hatchlings through."

I shook my head at that. "No, my Queen. Blaze, Breeze, and Burst took me in as one of their own Clutch after I'd sprained my foreleg during fighting practice. Matron put a cast around it, so I was unable to continue my training."

"A cast? For a simple sprained leg?" our Queen wondered, then turned her head to face Blaze. "Adopted into your Clutch?"

"Ah, heh... it was Matron's plan, really," Blaze coughed uneasily, taking a few steps back.

I perked up at that, looking around in confusion.

"See, with all the Hatchlings coming out in batches, they could not be separated," Blaze continued. "You know how it is with your batches, my Queen; we sort of grow together."

Chrysalis motioned to a spot next to her. "Sit with me, Pearl. Let's hear all about it."

Oval looked down and away from me. "Matron started her off by having her born alone," she mumbled. "It was easy to spot her after that."

"You know how lone clutchlings are just... different. They stand out," Breeze coughed. "So we made sure she would be taught by Oval or me, and Oval even managed to send her my way after confirming she was who we thought she was."

Moonshine tilted her head at this all. "Wait, so Matron forcing me to teach her magic was part of some plan to get me in on it as well?"

"As was our trip to the spa, after we realized you rushed out. You always go to a spa to calm down," Blaze revealed. "When you rushed past me in the common room, I knew it was time to head for the spa, and Oval just helped make it look like she convinced me."

"You couldn't have known about Starlight Glimmer or Pinkie Pie appearing in town," I stated, having sat down next to our Queen. "None of you could have."

"No, that was a big surprise for all of us," Breeze agreed. "And, really, we did need them. Our original plan was just to send Pearl in there in an attempt to sway your mind, my Queen."

I tasted our Queen's pheromones in the air again, especially sitting so close to her, and started to feel a little lightheaded.

"And now you have your end result; you have me talking with you," Chrysalis stated with a frown. "And what is it you had wanted to tell me, had not these ponies interfered? What would you have this Changeling do, especially now she is as much my child as you are?"

My eyes had trouble focusing, but I thought I noticed Breeze falling down to a low bow.

"We meant no harm, my Queen," she spoke. "We just wanted to stop an impending war."

"We tried this before; before the failed invasion on Canterlot," Blaze suggested. "You did not listen. You overwhelmed us with your pheromones and we went and did what you told us."

"I didn't," Oval mumbled under her breath. "I just stood at the sidelines watching it all."

"And you thought I would do the same this time," our Queen Chrysalis realized, and the air around me grew less thick with her precious scent. In an attempt to stay with it as it withdrew, I fell sideways against her larger form.

"You smell nice," I grinned up as she peered down at me, nuzzling in against her.

"Clearly you chose the wrong Changeling to represent you three," our Queen chuckled. "I was barely aware I was emitting anything just now, and look at the state she is in."

There were some nervous chuckles from the three sisters, but Moonshine kept quiet.

"We really didn't mean any harm, my Queen," Breeze tried. "We just wanted to tell you how worried we were. Matron couldn't reach you anymore, so she asked us for help."

"The point is well taken now," our Queen spoke softly. "I have been neglecting you, my children, and this is what comes of it. Open rebellion."

The faces of my siblings fell, but Moonshine walked up and shook her head. "I don't want to make excuses for them, my Queen, especially not after having been drafted into their plan without realizing it."

"Go on," our Queen Chrysalis offered calmly.

"The fact remains we have been stationed here for far longer than we have in other outposts," Moonshine suggested. "And all because of that doorway leading into the other world, and the steady stream of Humans our siblings managed to retrieve from there."

"I miss my home, and my mare waiting for me there," Oval brought up, but Moonshine cast her an angry glance and she shut up again.

"Is that doorway really only useful for us to get new siblings from, my Queen?" Moonshine asked directly, and Queen Chrysalis looked out over the group in the direction of the door off in a nearby valley.

"What else can we do with it?" she spoke her thoughts. "There is no magic there. There is little of value there which is not protected by humans with devastating weaponry."

"There's love there," I offered up now my mind had some time to piece itself together again.

"Too little of it, and it's overshadowed by hatred, Pearl," my Queen offered down to me. "The only thing we can use from that world is you humans. Properly changed and trained, you made me an army I could not have imagined putting together myself. It grew far faster than I had hoped."

"And is now being brought back from starvation," Starlight Glimmer stated coolly, walking past my Queen and me on our left to join Moonshine. "You are going to have to take care of them until they are strong enough to take care of themselves. Is there any hope for them returning to their world?"

Chrysalis stared at the Unicorn, then shook her head. "Only as who they are now. I never thought about needing to reverse the transformation process. They were dosed with far higher amounts than any others in the past."

I felt a cold chill run down my spine as I processed those words. "...wait, what?"

"A sudden migration of a thousand Changelings won't go unnoticed," Starlight pondered. "Even if you spread them over different towns, they are still numerous enough that they're likely going to be found out."

"Hold on a minute," I started, thinking they were passing over something really important here.

"Are there really that many housed in the caverns? We've only seen small batches of them pass through the training rooms," Breeze asked.

"Waaaaaait!" I screamed, turning all eyes upon me.

I felt bile rise in my throat and looked up at my Queen with tears welling up. "There's no way to turn back?"

"Unless you learn how to pose as a human, no," Queen Chrysalis spoke flatly.

For some reason I had always had that little thought in the back of my head saying "there's always going to be a way back home if you need to find one", but now that voice had been silenced. The cold, harsh truth was staring me in the face and I had just ignored it up to now.

How could I have thought there was a way back from this?

I looked between the faces of the Changelings and ponies near me, and it dawned on me that there were a thousand-or-more Hatchlings down in the depths of this mountain, all waiting to hear this exact same thing. Whatever hope they had clung onto while being starved, this would... this would kill them if it was not brought to them in the right way.

"Pearl?" I heard spoken softly, and looked up in Oval's face.

"I really do care about you. We may have needed you for our plan, but you have a kind heart," Oval spoke. "You can come stay over at my place in Hoofton until you find a place for yourself or learn how to pose as a Human if that would help you?"

I reached up with my left forehoof to wipe the tears from my eyes, then shook my head. "No, Burst, it's... I'm going to need to ask our Queen for something."

"Hmm?" Queen Chrysalis wondered, looking me over.

"Let me tell the others that there is no way to return home. Individually. Don't mention it to them as a group," I asked. "It would kill the ones who are already weakened. This... However much I love living here, among you all, and learning what I can about this new life... if I did not know I had all your support, and friendship, I would have given up just here and now."

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow, but then gave a nod. "Very well. I would not know what to do with them in the first place. I will leave it up to you five and Matron to decide how to best help the Hatchlings integrate. Just be sure to keep me informed."

"Thank you, my Queen," I spoke up, even as Chrysalis stood up and turned for the entrance to the Hive again.

"Starlight Glimmer," she called upon the unicorn, "would you have any idea how I could best release the ponies I have left in captivity?"

"Oh, I can help with that!" Pinkie Pie exclaimed, and pulled out her party cannon. "We'll just have to throw them a party and have them Pinkie-promise not to say anything to anypony! That's easy!"

"...if you say so," Chrysalis sighed. "I am tired of this all. There won't be an invasion, so you do your... victory dance or some such."

With that, she left for the hive, followed by most of the guards.

"I don't feel like a victory dance," Breeze suggested, and the rest of us agreed. "Now we're suddenly in charge of all those Hatchlings."

"I don't suppose you'd feel like staying with us for a few days to help with the Hatchlings and captive ponies, Starlight Glimmer?" Moonshine wondered, to which the Unicorn smiled weakly.

"You know, I think I do feel like staying for a while longer," she agreed. "Do you have anypony here who could send a message to Ponyville?"

Oval chuckled at that. "Well, not a pony per se..."

50

It took months to get every Hatchling nursed back to health, introduce them in small batches to the rest of the Hive, and teach them what they needed to know to survive in this world we were now all stuck in together.

There were tears. There was anger. There were a lot of Hatchlings who just could not believe what we told them. And all the while it was me, Pearl, telling them it was true. This was the new life we all had to find our place in.

Some Changelings were led out to other hives to continue their training there, once they had grown accustomed to living in our new family. Moonshine took care of the ones who planned to take a Unicorn guise, using my magic training as a guideline not to tell them to run ants over their horns.

Breeze ended up being a pretty good teacher for the ones seeking to fly as Pegasi ponies, and I thought I recognized the brother who 'lost' to Blaze in battle among them at some point. Even Oval helped out, explaining to those who wanted to know how to set up guises for longer durations than just feeding runs or infiltration missions.

It was good to have everyone's help, because there were just so many of us..; Chrysalis' former Hatchling army. It was an endless stream of Changelings we had to tend to, while Matron made sure the remaining few were kept fed and entertained while they waited their turn.

Blaze returned to us a few weeks in, after having helped Starlight Glimmer and Pinkie Pie to bring the captive ponies back to their respective homes. The news she brought from Ponyville made Moonshine walk on clouds for a few days; Princess Twilight Sparkle had agreed to let her study Unicorn magic in her Ponyville palace!

Our Queen Chrysalis had been doing better as well, allowing us to visit her when we needed to talk about something. With the family elated to hear that there was not going to be an invasion, and that they would be allowed to return to their lives, there were only happy faces coming to her to proclaim their love and adoration for her.

While we could not feed from each other, just seeing her children this happy had given our Queen a well-needed boost. She actually smiled when she came to check up on our progress, and she just looked more happy and healthy than she had before.

Matron came to us one day to say Chrysalis had told her to "explain how this spa works", which was as good an invitation as any for the two of them to go down to the nearby pony town in their respective guises and spend a lazy day getting pampered. Matron was positively glowing as she told us all about it.

I tried to ask her a few times just how old she was, or why our Queen appeared to see her as an equal, but Matron always excused herself or found ways to change the subject, and I never received a fulfilling answer.

My siblings in the common room were far more helpful, although Matron's actual age was mostly guesswork. We narrowed it down to "at least a few centuries", but as far as everyone else was concerned, Matron had just sort of always been there whenever she was needed.

Spending months among my family, rather than just a few days, made me realize just how much they were just like any other family. Not everyone always got along, and there were a few skirmishes here or there. Moonshine really had it out for Blaze, Breeze, and Oval for a week or two, but they eventually made up for having drawn her into their plan to use me as a Trojan Horse and peace returned to our little group.

I actually learned the pathways between rooms in my stay in the outpost, knowing just which route to take from one room to the next by the way the tunnels curved. Slowly but surely a map of the place had formed in my mind, and I started to find the shortest routes from one place to another without my siblings constantly having to point me in the right direction.

It helped considerably with going back and forth between the common room and the teaching rooms, which were now being used in reverse order to help the Hatchlings with their questions and additional training, and they were given ample time to get it right this time.

The day finally came for the last few Hatchlings to be brought out of the large auditorium they had been stuck in for so long, and with it came the news that Matron would be leaving for the main Hive with our Queen. We said our goodbyes to Matron in a half-empty outpost, most of the family having left a few at a time to return to their lives in the pony lands, and I asked my questions to her again.

"There must always be a matron to take care of the hatchlings," she whispered to me. "None of us live forever."

She smiled as she walked away, and I was left staring at her trying to figure out what she meant. With the final Hatchlings going through their paces after having been told the harsh truth, there was nothing left for me to do either.

Instead of sitting down, I practiced fighting with Blaze, transformation magic with Breeze, had a few chats with Oval about her mare and how I was expected to behave if I visited, and asked Moonshine to teach me some better magic spells.

Progress on all grounds was slow, and I eventually had to admit to Breeze I truly did not grasp how to shrink myself to the size she wanted me to get to, which made her laugh at my expense.

"You just need to trust in our magic, Pearl," she told me again. "Stop thinking of sizes as solid things. That's what the others keep doing as well. Just think small, and our magic will take care of the rest."

"But it's still just a guise. Won't somepony bump into our true size?" I asked, to which Breeze frowned at me.

"While we were out at the spa, did I feel large? Did you have my adult weight hanging from you in the bath?" she demanded, and I realized she was right. "Our magic allows us to shrink or grow depending on the form we take. Just trust that it will do its job and it's far easier to do."

It still took me a few times, with Breeze constantly demanding I go "smaller, smaller!" before I finally stood next to her as an itty bitty Earthpony filly and she promptly wrapped her forehooves around my neck to hug me to her.

Breeze had me walk around like that for the rest of the day, and I kept being surprised at how much bigger the world looked from my smaller viewpoint. Of course I got my share of jokes at my expense from the others, but it was all in good fun and I had to laugh along with them.

When it came time to rest, Breeze walked up to the alcove I had chosen and told me to keep my guise up for the night.

"You have to be able to keep your guise even while asleep, or you'll be found out when staying a night among the ponies," she told me, climbing up in my alcove with me.

With the both of us posing as small fillies, there was ample room for us to rest, and she shirked up against me.

"I'll know if you lose your guise during the night, big sis," she trusted to me, which really did not help me fall asleep. She was out like a light in minutes, but I just lay there worrying until my fatigue finally got the better of me.

Surprisingly, in the morning, I woke up to the smiling faces of the adult Changelings around me, and Breeze hugging herself to me with glee! I had passed her little test, having remained a small foal during the night, and it was eagerly celebrated between us.

Every landmark I passed was celebrated, for that matter; I learned how to levitate objects without disintegrating them, thanks to Moonshine, and we had a resinball game between us where the object was to toss a blob of resin around trying to hit one another. It was a lot like Dodgeball, but with magic and a blob of rubbery resin. I did not last long against the far more experienced others, but I had fun nonetheless.

After a few bad attempts at flying as a Pegasus, I finally got the hang of it and actually managed to glide my way down to the base of the mountain. On my way back up, I was greeted in mid-air by Breeze pouncing me, and we fell to the grass in high spirits.

It was a great time, and I was sad to hear Moonshine finally leaving us for Ponyville. She had studying to do, and Starlight Glimmer was no doubt waiting for her in Princess Twilight Sparkle's palace, so we did know she had to leave eventually. I had really warmed up to her, even if she had definitely been more difficult to get to laugh.

With just the clutch I had been adopted into remaining, we focused my teaching on the remaining few things I had issue with: My guise was fine, my magic was sorted, and my flying had definitely improved. But the local lore was my bane.

How little I truly knew about the area became clear when the trio started to detail about all of the local happenings. Thanks to the show I knew a lot about the princesses and magical adversaries of them, but I did not know that Clover the Clever had opened the oldest still remaining stone bridge in all of Equestria a few years after the land had been named.

Who had come up with the first recipe for cider? When was the first house in Manehattan built? How long would it take you to walk from Fillydelphia to Canterlot? And how long for a Pegasus to fly it? Or to go by train?

My head was spinning from all the different subjects I was forced to learn before Oval would even consider introducing me to her mare as her cousin, but I somehow managed to thanks to my great tutors. By that time the outpost had calmed down considerably, with only a minimal amount of Changeling siblings still left just to keep the place safe and clean.

All the while we had kept ourselves fed on the resin veins, and I had not been craving any love yet, but I was quickly told I would - once we made our way to Hoofton...

Blaze embraced me out of the blue one day, and said she was not going to come along with us; her former circus troupe had been sighted near Vanhoover and she was going to meet them there to pick up her juggling routine again.

"Take care, kid," she told me. "You've done a lot better than I could have ever hoped for. We're in your debt. Hit me up if you ever need me."

It was hard to say goodbye to her, but we had already sent Oval's mare the news that I would be coming along, with some sob story about my parents having died and Oval needing to help take care of the goods and stuff to account for her long absence. I would have to visit Blaze when her circus came to town.

Breeze was going to stay behind in the outpost for a little while longer, we learned on the day of our own leaving, and I actually broke down crying as we hugged each other tightly. Breeze truly had become my little sister during my stay with them, and since she just travelled around and posed as some unknown filly here or there, I was utterly worried something may happen to her, no matter how much Oval and her assured me she would be fine.

We eventually parted after agreeing to meet up in Ponyville a year from then, to go visit Pinkie Pie, Starlight Glimmer, and Moonshine and to just talk about how well we all did. Breeze was going to let Blaze know about our plans once she actually left the outpost.

I was still sniffling a bit as Oval and I made it down to the communal storage room, and Oval let me lean into him after he changed into his Earthpony stallion guise.

Surprisingly it was the very same appearance he'd had on when I first met him; a caramel-coloured coat with auburn eyes looking out from under the overhang of his red mane. There were a couple of greying streaks through his red mane and tail, and even a few lighter splotches in his coat, but nothing as bad as when I had first laid eyes upon him thinking he was a captive pony!

Once I had calmed down and had taken on my own grey Earthpony guise, we packed a couple of random things from the shelves into cases, including a variety of dresses which I had to sort and repack because Oval had just taken a random stack and tossed it in without regard for the colour of my coat. Truly now, I had only been female since I hatched about half a year ago, and I knew better how to match colours than he did.

With our bags finally packed, we loaded them up on a cart and took a slowly-descending tunnel down through the mountain. It took us a longer time to get out this way than through any of the other exits, but it was lower to the ground and would not lead to a runaway cart as a result.

As we finally made our way out of the Hive through an exit facing due West to the setting sun, I turned back to the opening and gave a nod to the hidden guard there. "Thanks for keeping us safe. I'll be coming back some day soon, I'm sure of it."

"Pearl, come on; we have to make haste if we want to catch the train out to Canterlot. We'll have to transfer there to make it to Hoofton," Oval called out to me, and I slowly turned to face him and my future life...

01

The raid happened late in the evening as I was finishing up a forum post, surrounded by assorted toys and posters from various fandoms.

The front door smashed open, the boys in blue rushed in, and I was dragged away from my computers, cuffed, and dragged out into the street.

Under the watchful gaze of every neighbour from the surrounding houses, I was quickly thrown in the back of a squad car and we soon sped away to the precinct.

It did not take long before I learned why I was being detained; illegal spread of copyrighted content via the internet.

I thought back to the things I had downloaded and uploaded in the past. Most of it was seeding of torrents which I had downloaded myself. I had not been the first seeder in most cases.

Most cases...

I knew I had a problem where it concerned the My Little Pony cartoon. I had been buying the episodes the very day they were released, recoded them, and threw them online to share them with the world at large.

At some point I had even made friends with someone at Hasbro who managed to get me pre-release versions, allowing me to make a blooper reel from the uncut footage.

I was a major distributor of content from that one cartoon, and all media surrounding it that I could get my hands on.

My lawyer realized this as well, and he suggested I settle; be a scapegoat, take the dive, and face a fine and years of probation during which time I would not be allowed to touch a computer without close supervision.

I stood before the judge with my head low, knowing I had signed my life away, and wondering to myself what I would do with my life now my online life was over and done with.

I could only hope that the judge would be lenient with setting the amount of the fine, considering I had settled and had given them everything they had asked of me in return for staying out of jail.

I looked up when my name was called and the judge stared right into my eyes.

"Considering the increased frequency and systematic ignorance of the law by yourself and compatriots, I do not see how the proposed probation period would deter the defendant from future transgressions," he stated.

"Since the defendant agreed to settle this in private court, I do not have to ask a jury what they may feel to be a just punishment for the crimes defendant has admitted to."

I glanced sideways at my lawyer, who looked worried.

"There is a new project up state which promises to re-educate offenders such as yourself," the judge continued, addressing me directly. "It is my decision to remand you to their care until such time as when they deem you fit to take part in society again. Court dismissed."

I turned fully to my lawyer, who stood as much in shock as I. "What does that mean?"

My lawyer shook his head and raised his hand to draw the attention of the judge while he was moving to get up from the bench. "Your honour?"

"Dismissed, I said," the judge replied sternly, packing up his papers and standing up from his seat properly.

"All rise," the bailiff called, and we watched in shock as the judge retreated to his rooms in the back.

"What did that mean?" I asked again of my lawyer, even as a pair of cops came over to bring me back to my cell again.

"I honestly have no idea," my lawyer responded, turning away from me to ask his colleague on the other side of the walkway about it.

I could not hear what they said, as I was quickly led out of the room by the cops, my head spinning from what had just transpired.

"What did that mean? Hey, you guys? What did that mean?" I asked of my escorts, but to no avail. They just shrugged and returned me to my cell, then moved on to the next guy over when it was his turn to appear before the judge.

I watched him pass by, but he was staring at his shoes as they led him past. The door at the end of the hallway closed, and I sank down on the bench in the cell, rubbing my temples.

I had a restless sleep at the courthouse before I was put in the back of a car and driven out into the country together with two other of the guys who had been locked away in their own individual cells.

One of them was the guy who I had seen before; a lanky guy with half a mohawk in faded red and several tattoos on him, who mostly kept to his corner of the car we were in and looked down at his lap. He had done everything in his might not to have to look at anyone while they loaded him in.

The other guy was a friendly sort, a bit wide around the waist, who was twiddling his round jampot-like glasses in his hands under the watchful eyes of the two guards driving in the back with us. He just kept smiling, even if it looked like he was forcing it onto his face, and he was talking about his life all the way out to our destination.

He had been a teacher, but they had been cutting back on education spending and it had been getting more and more difficult for himself and his students to get study materials.

Out of desperation he had sought to download study materials online, including ebooks, video files, and even software for his students to do their courses with.

He was charged for several counts of copyright infringement, same as me, and an uneasy cough from the guy in the corner made us realize he was in it for the same 'crime'.

"Really, all I did was spread around the friendship," I offered up. "Sharing is caring, right?"

"They're pushing us to this and then arrest us when we do what we need to survive," the teacher offered. "We haven't lived in a free country for centuries."

"Amen," the raw voice of the other guy agreed.

We sat in silence for a little while longer, while the road changed from proper pavement to something holding the middle between a dirt road and a gravel road. It was the kind of manual labour that showed they wanted to keep the road open in all weather conditions, but did not want to spend a dime on it to do so.

The car finally stopped in front of a gate, which made the most painful grating noise as it swung open, then pulled up roughly onto the place's property.

"We've arrived," one of our escorts explained, and motioned for the teacher to put his glasses back on his face.

As the doors swung open we were treated to the sight of the sun setting in the West, even if we had left the courts in the morning. The lands around us were empty, save for a few trees and the winding road leading away from the gate into the distance.

Civilization was far, far away from here.

Wherever here was, it looked like a normal European homestead you'd see on those old plantations from the outside, with a fence going around the property and a pair of guards standing next to the gate.

We were led to the entrance, where our cuffs were undone and we were instructed to "go inside, you'll be instructed on how to behave here soon enough."

The teacher and I shared a confused glance, but the mohawked guy pushed through the large double doors to enter the house and disappeared off inside.

I watched as our guards walked back to the car and started it off back to the gate at a leisurely pace, only to park it next to the gatehouse, and get out of the car again to join the guards stationed there.

As I turned back for the doors, the teacher had left me as well, and I was standing in front of them by myself.

I was still dressed in the clothes I had been allowed to wear for my day in court, and felt a bit overdressed in the rural area. I rubbed my wrists a bit to get the painful rings left by the cuffs to disappear, took a breath, and stepped through the doors myself.

I was greeted by another country view; having apparently left the outside of the house for the outside of the house?

I turned around to see the doorway behind me set in the stone wall of a fort or castle of sorts. Half the wall had come down, and I could see clearly -around the doors- into the courtyard which looked utterly dilapitated.

"Oh-ho-ho, sister! Do you see what I see?" A strong feminine voice called out from behind me, and I felt a shiver run down my spine.

I still saw the guards outside near the guardhouse, even in the dimming light. I was still holding on to the doorhandle of one of the double doors. I could still turn back...

And then it hit me.

The still closed door looked like that of a cartoon; flat colours with some darker lines to show detail. The door I was holding, was made of real wood. It had substance. It had far more dents and scrapes than its twin.

I slowly closed the door I was holding on to a little so I could look at the other side of it; dark brown cartoon-style paint. I opened it again to look at the side at which my hand was resting on the handle; rough wood, as real as it could be.

"Hmm? A third one?" a second voice offered, barely sounding interested. "Want me to take them?"

I forced my focus on the door, holding the handle tightly. As long as I did not turn around, the voices could not touch me. I could still see through the open door into the real world... I was hallucinating. That's it. I was just hallucinating!

"Heh... hah... heheh..." I laughed nervously, giving a nod to the ever-darkening 'real' outside before I finally closed the door on it and turned around to face my hallucination head-first.

A pair of ponies stood before me in the light of the rising dawn; their pastel-colours clear as day, their big eyes looking upon me with wonder. The world around them was clearly that of a cartoon; trees only had as much definition as was needed to recognize them as such, and the rising sun was slowly revealing the distant lands beyond the two ponies in as much cartoonish splendour as I had never imagined I would see with my own eyes if not through a screen of sorts.

The taller of the two ponies, a pink unicorn with a blue mane through which lighter streaks were woven, raised an eyebrow above her blue eyes at me. "Considering this one's mental state, yes," she mused to the shorter one.

The other pony had a yellow coat and wore a pink mane, her pink eyes settling on me with little enthusiasm. "Sure, give me the defective one again," she sighed, but then quickly spat something green at me!

I reeled back in surprise as the ball of goo hit me, and realized it stuck to me where it hit! I reached for it with my right hand, which immediately got stuck to the goo and made me unable to pull it back again, but before I had fully recovered from this, I was hit with another ball of spit? goo?

Something stuck to me, and as I turned around in my rising panic, trying to get the material off of me, or my hands free - really, I gave the pony spitting these things at me ample opportunity to cover me all around!

Before long I fell over as my legs were hit and stuck together, and I rolled down the slight slope toward the ponies! Whatever the goo was; it was not sticking to the ground!

A hoof put itself on the outside of the material, and I was sprayed by more of it as the pony towering above me almost barfed it all over me with as much enthusiasm as she had greeted me with; she did not care about my struggles - and I was soon covered head-to-toe in the material - completely immobilized.

As the material covered my face, a new wave of panic washed over me; how would I be able to breathe?!? But as I struggled to draw in air, I noticed no change in my breathing. It helped me calm down a little, knowing I was not in immediate danger of dying...

Through the dense layer of my semi-liquid prison, I could hear the muffled voices of my captors, but could not make out their words. They appeared to be discussing something, but then the bigger one's horn lit up and I felt myself lifted up from the ground!

I could barely see through the green haze covering my eyes, but I realized I was passing in-between some trees, and then noticed the wooden side walls of a cart from my peripheral vision as I was lowered onto it.

I could not deal with it anymore. This was clearly not the kind of hallucination I was used to. Nor was this some kind of penitentiary or clinic or whatever it was I had been expecting to be taken off to.

For all intents and purposes I had found myself in a cartoon world! The goo clinging to me covered my eyes with the kind of green, barely transparent overlay, with a few stripes here or there to indicate it was an actual barrier of sorts...

I stared at it, struggled for another moment as I felt the cart set in motion, but it was no use. With no possibility of a physical escape, my brain took the only escape route left to me and shut itself down.

02

I woke up in a new situation; there was a slight swaying motion around me like I was on a boat, or drifting somewhere.

I opened my eyes to find I was suspended from a ceiling somewhere. The cavern or grotto or such had pods hanging down around me, some clearly within my vision, others just in my peripheral if I strained to discern them in the semi-darkness.

With the world around me tinted green thanks to the goop surrounding me, I could not be assured of the other pods' colouration - or that of their inhabitants.

They held ponies.

The ones right in front of me, close enough that I could reach them if I stretched out my arm, but spaced out differently so I was effectively hanging in-between them, had ponies in them.

I could see one of them twitch a leg in the pod to my right, and I felt my right leg twitch involuntarily as a reaction.

My body felt... less constrained. I still could not move much, and especially not beyond the confines of the pod I realized I was in, but I could sort of tense and release my muscles and move my limbs a few inches in any direction.

The goo would strain, and pull, and eventually pull me back to the neutral position I woke up in, but I felt kinda good about this. As if I was given some reprieve from this strangeness.

A couple of shadows moved around beyond the edge of my vision. I could just barely make them out as they moved.

A bright light erupted from one of them, and I had to pinch my eyes closed from how sharp it was!

Some muffled talking... again nothing I could really make out. The light danced a little on the other side of my closed eyelids and a shadow moved in front of it.

When I dared open my eyes again, another pod had appeared, right in front of me, severely limiting what I could actually see! My vision now was pretty much restricted to the pods on my left, right, and in front of me, and a small sliver of space in-between them!

I struggled a bit in protest, but then realized something; the new pod's occupant was not a pony! It was a human!

I could clearly see them in the light shining from the other side of their pod; a human figure caught mid-struggle against the goo that was now their pod.

The light dimmed as the pod affixed itself properly to the ceiling, and I had to strain my eyes to watch the figure before me again in the darker environment.

In the minutes, hours, or days even that followed, I watched their limbs move from their frustrated position in which they were captured. Their arms slowly moved to the side of their body, their legs untwisted and came to a neutral position hanging down, and... was it my imagination or were they shrinking as it happened?

Their head was not shrinking in the least; if anything it was growing larger! And so was their torso...

It took me another... however much time it was that went by before it dawned on me; I was watching another human being like myself... slowly transform into a pony.

...

I flexed my toes. No, I flexed... a toe? The muscles reacted differently to my attempt to curl and uncurl my toes.

My heart sank and I tried to do the same with my fingers. No go. There were no fingers, nor a thumb, to speak of anymore. What I felt where I expected fingers was a bundled-up collection of muscles converging upon a singular digit. Hooves, I guessed, as I could not tilt my head to see.

I shivered and felt it go down my spine until it hit my tail...

Bile rose in my throat and I tried to hammer down my rising panic with memories of the show I watched so eagerly back home; There were good things to being a pony! If this was truly... I could not finish the thought. To think this was Equestria would be pushing it. Would I really be sent to such a wondrous place where ponies actually cared for one another as opposed to the human negativity I had grown up in?

I could still breathe. I could still think. I had seen the other two ponies speak, before they...

Wait.

Green goop.

Pods.

...CHANGELINGS?!?

I struggled again, enough so that my pod bumped into another. A moment after and there was a swinging of various pods bumping into one another as their occupants had woken from the disturbance!

The bright light flashed through the room again, and my pod stopped moving immediately, and so did the others. We were held in place by some kind of magic, I supposed.

I supposed that that must be the case, yes.

My eyes closed to ward off the light, and I felt myself calm down.

It was okay now. We were being cared for; that could have been one hell of a mess if a pod were bumped into enough to break open or away from the ceiling.

Better to just calm down, relax, go back to sleep. It would all sort itself out...

03

I woke again in the darkness, but several of the pods around me were now gone. There were still a few in my peripheral vision, but they looked to be spaced out more.

The ones in front of me were likewise spaced out further apart; I would not be able to reach out to touch them again if I had had my freedom... and human limbs.

I focused on the pod right in front of me and the former human in it; they had taken on a clear pony shape and were hanging in their pod as if they were lazily drifting in a body of water.

Their tail had grown out already, and I realized the shapes I had seen from the corners of my eyes were the fin-like structures of Changeling tails and head structures...

I ran my tongue along the inside of my, now elongated, mouth and traced it along my teeth. I focused on my incisors in particular, and opened my mouth a little to let my tongue feel along these fangs.

Ponies in the show didn't have fangs. Only Flutterbat, Nightmare Moon's guards, and the Changelings did.

I tried to tilt my head down to look at myself, but felt something attached to my forehead bump into a soft wall before I had tilted it even a little.

I struggled to come to terms with the feelings until I realized all Changelings had horns on them... Sharp ones if I could remember correctly.

I moved my head a little more, trying to judge how big my horn was, but my movements made it break through the soft wall and I watched as a split cut down the center of my vision in a split-second, like a balloon popping, and I found myself falling forward and downward not a moment later!

I almost instinctively put my hooves down under myself and braced for impact, landing amidst a splash of green liquid - which had lost about all its glue-like tendencies!

I struggled to remain standing, my wet hooves on the wet floor finding hardly a hold, but then that familiar light shone and I felt myself lifted from the floor and my predicament.

"Easy now, sister," a warm voice offered, and I tried to peer at the source through the sharp light coming from her.

Something that felt not unlike a hand or inflated latex glove rubbed over my skin, and I felt the last bits of glue-like material let go, while the general feeling of wetness was rubbed away at the same time.

I was rubbed clean in this fashion all over, before I was put down on the floor close to the one with her sharp magical glow.

Satisfied I was standing on all fours, even if it was with wobbly legs from the unfamiliarity of it, the other doused her magic and I blinked my eyes to try and get my vision back.

A stocky unicorn mare stood before me, green coat, orange mane, similar orange eyes, with a baby crib as a cutiemark. She let a green sheen flow over her to reveal her true Changeling self to me for but a moment, but then took the guise of a pony again.

I opened my mouth to speak, closed it again, then folded my hind legs and just sat down on the cold stone floor.

"While I understand your reaction, sister, I am not the one to teach you about your new life," the other Changeling in her unicorn guise offered to me in a warm voice, motioning her head over to an opening in the cavern wall a few feet away.

"You woke later than expected; the other two of your batch are already down there to get briefed."

"Batch," I repeated blankly, and got a blank stare in reply.

"I can make this wholly unpleasant for you if you don't move, sister," the mare warned, the warmth leaving her voice.

I struggled back on my four legs, swallowing strongly. "No, I... I'll figure this out in my own time, I guess."

The unicorn smiled at me as I passed her by with uneasy step after uneasy step, headed in the direction I was told to go.

"Stop thinking about it; just walk," she suggested calmly.

I took a deep breath, sighed it out, and focused on the exit, rather than my individual steps. "Right."

With the Changeling/Unicorn's suggestion in the back of my mind, I actually started to make a good pace to the exit. I turned to look at her when I reached it, but she was already looking back at the collection of pods hanging about in the room I was about to leave.

I smirked as I realized there were a few new humans among them...

I looked down at my legs, stumbled upon trying to take a fresh step forward, but then focused on just going forward rather than my hooves again.

They were whole. Whole legs. Whole. While grey as the Changelings', there were no holes in them. I had expected holes.

I was still frowning about that as I passed through the short hallway and into another room; a smaller room, with a dozen school benches set up in it. Half of them were filled by other Changelings, and one other was stood in front of them like a teacher, pointing something out on a rudimentary blackboard.

I looked over the rows of horned-and-finned heads, their blue eyes focused on the teacher, and realized one of them had a set of round jampot-like glasses set on the desk in front of them. Too small for their new headsize.

There was an empty desk near the former teacher, and I snuck over to it as good as I could with my new form. Of course I was noticed immediately by the teacher.

"Ah, a new sister. Take a seat and listen up;" he demanded with a loud voice. "You're late, so you're already a failure. You're going to need to prove you were worth saving from the Equestrians' grabby hooves."

I quickly ran over to the seat I had aimed for in the first place, and wurmed my way into it in the most awkward fashion imaginable. I had to wriggle a bit on it before I could sit comfortably; my forehooves set on the desk in front of me like the others around me had.

"As I was saying; love is what keeps us fed. Love is what keeps us alive. It's the one thing we can't share among ourselves and the one thing we need to take from the races among us if we want to survive," the teacher boomed like a drill sergeant.

"You're going to need to get used to your bodies, and fast; By tomorrow you will have ran out of the nutrients provided by your pod and will start to feel the pit in your stomach. If you don't learn how to feed yourself, if even by imitating a lower lifeform, you will start to develop holes in your legs; that is your body feeding on itself."

I stared down at my legs and realized the rest of the 'class' was doing the same.

"Don't look at your freshly hatched legs, morons!" the Changeling teacher bellowed! "Look at my legs instead!"

He moved to stand in profile, each of his legs in a different position. There were great gaping holes in them, and he stared back at us smugly.

"The more energy you use, the deeper these holes grow. The more you feed, the more you...?" He looked at us expectantly, and the Changeling one row in front of me, and one seat to the left, raised their left leg up.

"...find they grow closed again?" she asked in a hopeful manner, her voice clearly feminine.

"WRONG!" The teacher returned loudly! "They stay! They'll never fully close up again, even if the density of your legs may increase, your chitin plating may take a healthier sheen, or your magic prowess will grow! These holes are to stay! You better get used to the idea!"

Several shoulders and heads in front of me lowered an inch or two, but I could not help but reach my own left hoof up in the air.

"Yes, sister. speak up?" Teacher offered, more calmly now the others were letting his message sink in.

"How... I mean, how can you tell our gender?" I wondered, "All I see around me are identical faces, identical body types, identical... Changelings, aren't we? We're Changelings, right?"

"It comes with experience," the Changeling teacher offered up with a light smirk. "You're newly hatched, so I understand your confusion, but your brothers have slightly more pronounced shoulders, sharper facial roundings, and lower voices among other details. You'll notice them before long, and then you'll ignore them as they're just natural."

"Considering our unique abilities; gender doesn't matter too much in our Hive family," he continued. "Some of our brothers or sisters emulate targets of different gender. It depends on what's needed to feed. It's your task to find out what makes it easier for you to feed and work toward the benefit of our whole Hive."

"But you are quite clearly a guy," I offered back. "You have a really deep voice and you just look very muscular."

The teacher stared at me a moment, then flashed green and stood in the guise of a little filly with a blue coat and yellow mane. "Are ya shure, mistah?" a tiny little filly voice came from the lithe thing, as she pranced toward me between the benches.

I stared in awe, shaking my head. "I retract my question."

Another green flash and the butch Changeling teacher stood a few paces in front of me, giving me a wicked smile. "This is what I mean, class; you need to learn how to blend in with your prey in any situation. Find out what works best for you to get the most amount of love and you won't have to work too hard at it. The less time you spend hunting for food, the more you can do for our Hive, and the more you'll make our Queen proud of you."

"Chrysalis..." I breathed out, my eyes opening a little wider.

Teacher gave a quick nod. "She's not here at this outpost. This is where we take you human types and prepare you for what's to come. If you don't take my lessons to heart; you're only going to hurt yourself. I don't care if you live or die."

He took a swift turn, and walked casually back up to the blackboard, leaving me - and a few others, looking down at our desks.

This was the gimmick, then. This was the reason we were sent here. To live as, what could be called, parasites in the lands we held so dear to our hearts. To be the corrupted element that was spreading darkness into the hearts of the ponies.

I felt a tear run down my cheek and quickly wiped it away as teacher resumed his lesson.

I had to pay attention if I were to survive long enough to figure out how I could do penance for my crime of leeching and spreading copyrighted content. I had to figure out if there was a quick way to get out again, so I would not harm too many ponies in my attempts to feed myself while I was forced to remain here.

04

It was a long day of being taught about all the different reasons why 'we' should remain as covert as possible, why we needed love to survive, and how ponies were better prey to target for obtaining it than random animals. There were some repeats in the lecture thanks to some new arrivals from some late-bloomers from our 'batch', allowing me ample time to stuff this new knowledge into my brain.

After the teacher was done, we were quickly ushered out into the next room; one bigger than the classroom had been, but still smaller than the cavernous hatching room. Several mirrors were set along the walls, with an equal number of ponies sat next to them.

The ponies were chained to the floor and looked utterly dismayed; their coats barely shining as vibrant as those of the two who had captured me, the matron of the pod room, or the filly example of the teacher in the previous room.

It was clear these were prisoners as much as we were, but clearly for different reasons than those for which we had been sent here.

A sudden flash sparked from a dark corner of the room and one of my brothers (or sister? I still could not clearly distinguish between us) yelped in pain, rolling on the floor while nursing their right forehoof with which they had attempted to undo one of the ponies' chains a moment ago.

"Theze poniez are not to be freed; they are your ztudy materialz," a painfully high-pitched voice called out, and a long-legged tall pony walked out of the darkness.

She looked much like one of the Alicorn princesses; having both a horn and wings, but was as thin as she could come; her bone structure was showing clear through the thin skin laid over them.

Her coat was a sickly white with a green hue to it, her slitted eyes a sharp green which appeared lit from within. She set them upon each of us "hatchlings" in turn, reaching out a spindly forehoof to motion us toward a mirror and pony pairing.

"You, there. You, to there," she pointed out in this fashion, and I walked on over to the Earthpony stallion I was assigned to.

The stallion's caramel-coloured coat was almost fully faded to grey, his eyes had dark rings under them, and he barely looked up as I approached.

"Hey," I spoke as I drew near, but the only response I received was that he set his auburn eyes upon me from under the overhang of his reddish-grey mane.

"How many of us have you seen, since you got here?" I asked softly, glancing at the tall alicorn via the mirror. She reminded me more and more of one of the horses of the apocalypse as I watched her.

"Too many," he whispered, pushing up from his seated position to stand in a faux-proud pose. "And every one of you acts like you give a damn about our situation... but none of you return to do something about it. Damn the lot of you."

"I'll hold off on making empty promises then," I sighed. "I wish it was different."

"You and me both. Now do that thing you do where you look like me and make that tyrant happy so you can move on and I can get a few minutes of sleep in," he grumbled.

I thought back at the teacher from the previous room and the theory he had taught us, and looked the stallion over. He really looked like he had been here a while, and I could not help but feel sorrow and guilt well up in me.

"Now, tranzform!" the high-pitched voice from the faux alicorn rang out, but I just couldn't. I felt too guilty for being one of these Changelings myself, now. One of the race who had captured these ponies.

I looked around myself and saw the other hatchlings look around as well. None had transformed into a copy of the ponies they had been assigned to.

The alicorn mare had walked up to the center of the room and was looking around at us as well, but I realized she was smiling - no, grinning.

"Zo, you cannot tranzform, can you? You hatchlingz feel too much emotion for theze poniez, do you?" she mocked us, and I caught a flash of green from my peripheral vision as well as throughout the room. "Look again at theze poniez."

I already saw what I did not want to see right now, but as I turned back for the 'stallion' who had stood beside the mirror moments ago, I was greeted with the face of a Changeling like me. Just like every other hatchling had found their assigned ponies to have shown their true selves to them.

"Every one of you iz the zame," the mare laughed evilly. "You feel too much for what iz our prey. You muzt let go of theze feelingz and realize what it iz you need from them. Why you need to look like them. Becauze you will die if you don't learn to blend in."

The Changeling before me grinned their fangs bare, and I just stared at them in disbelief. "Why?"

"Because you need to feed," they responded in a surprisingly feminine voice, reaching out with a forehoof to touch my right cheek. "You may hate our methods, now, but they are effective. Normally we are taught these things while we sleep in our pods, while we grow into nymphs, and work our way into adulthood."

I fell back on my rear end and shook my head a little, faintly hearing similar conversations around me.

"You don't have the luxury of years; you have to learn this in a few short days. And it falls on us to guide you," the other spoke softly, undoing their chains. "While you remain with us, you're our sister and we all care for you. We don't have the kind of love for you that could feed you, but we do care."

The other Changeling moved to wrap her forehooves around my neck and pulled me into a cold hug - our insectoid bodies simply not producing as much heat as my human body had before.

"Are we all done with the pleazantriez?" the mock-alicorn mare demanded, and 'my' Changeling snorted.

"Back to business. Just follow my lead, okay? Call me Oval if you need a name to hold onto," she offered as she pulled back from me.

I stared in her blue eyes and then dropped mine. "I have read so much fanfiction. There are so many names there; responses to earthly names, mockup names like "anon" and the like. I don't know what name I could give you which won't lead to some kind of trouble in the future."

"Then don't give me a name, sister," Oval offered with a smile. "We use the names of the ones we mimic when we need to do so anyway. It's only a bother to try to remember one name among a million."

"So, why Oval then?" I queried, pushing up again into a standing position since Oval was standing as well and I had been prompted to follow her lead.

"I can't fully round one of my pupils, no matter how much I try," she revealed, pointing at her fully blue bug-like eyes before realizing what she was doing. A green flash passed over her and a white mare with a deep black mane stood before me, grey pupils staring at me. As said, her right pupil was slightly more oval than her left.

"It's barely noticeable," I remarked.

"Yeah, especially to ponyfolk," Oval agreed. "We have some perfectionistic family members who will notice if a single strand of hair is misaligned however. That's why I was called over to help here."

"Ah. So, I'll just try to look like you, then?" I wondered, and Oval gave a quick nod.

"It's really much easier than it sounds at first;" Oval explained, motioning her right forehoof through the air in a bit of a circular motion, "you just sorta picture your target and push that image onto your own body. The rest is sorta automatic."

I looked Oval over a bit more, tried to form a picture in my head of how she looked, and closed my eyes. In my head I could see Oval as the white-and-black pony with the grey eyes, almost like a 3D printer preview image.

"Got the picture?" Oval wondered.

"I think so. Now just put it over myself?" I replied with a nod, my eyes still closed.

"Over the representation of you in your mind, yeah," Oval agreed.

I pondered that a moment, realized I still felt like a human on the inside, and let out a sigh of resignation.

"It's just... I've been a human for thirty-odd years," I offered softly, mentally replacing the image of a human with that of Oval's pony mimicry. "Farewell life... hello life?"

Oval let out a soft chuckle at that, but hummed after. Her humming was not so much a "hmm" as a response to something, or a hum-hum-humming of a tune... but more like she got stuck halfway through letting out a hum-hum-humming kind of hum and passed on into a hmm in the way of responding to something.

I opened my eyes to watch her scrutinize me, her head moving from left to right a bit as she looked me over at different angles.

"What?" I wondered, looking past her at the mirror to see a sort of half-Changeling, half-Earthpony with patches and blotches of fur and bare skin mixing randomly across my features.

"Yeah, so, you may need to focus a bit more on that mental image of me," Oval offered with a chuckle.

"Damn. And I don't know if I wiped my human identity out just now or whatever else it was that I did," I sighed, thoroughly annoyed at myself.

"Don't worry; if you get good enough at this you'll probably be able to mimic your old human self as well," the other Changeling suggested honestly.

I held my thoughts to myself, but the idea of a Changeling coming back to Earth and posing as the human they once were struck me with fascination and fear at the same time.

Nothing about my arrest had made sense. Hasbro didn't hunt down people like that; they did what they could to let their fanbase have their fun, because it led to more sales of their toy products.

The trial had been a great big farce, and I was unsure how much my lawyer had known about this practice before it unfolded before him. Being taken to this place in the middle of nowhere which so happened to serve as some gateway into Equestria could have almost been an expected outcome after that.

Oval tilted her head at me. "Hey sister? If you don't focus on the task at hoof we're not going to get anywhere with this."

I snapped back to attention. "Sorry, I was lost in thought a moment."

"Don't apologize to me; you're the one who's going to feel it when you don't feed," Oval smirked. "I just aim to help you get the best start with this."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Let me try again," I returned, pushing my heavy thoughts to the back of my mind and trying again to picture Oval fully.

05

It took me a while to get Oval's initial look down to the point where none of my Changeling body was shining through anymore, and she then only increased the difficulty by switching to a different look.

We went through a few Earthpony looks in this fashion, of either gender, and then she brought some Unicorn forms in as well.

The fact I had a horn myself had still not fully sank in, and I struggled to cover it properly where I had simply hidden it for the Earthpony looks. Oval gave some great pointers, though. I really warmed up to her. Looking around the room it was clear that the other teachers were doing their best as well, each with their own methods.

The Alicorn mare was just slowly walking around the room, prancing from one set of hatchlings and adult Changelings to the next, taking note of everything like she was the head mistress of a boarding school. It was creepy to hear those dainty hooves of hers pass by and watching that sickly form of hers in the mirror when she did.

After getting the Earthpony and Unicorn looks down, with Oval seemingly randomly switching between them, she moved to a few Pegasus looks. I stared at her and reverted to my Changeling base self while she unfolded her feathered wings.

"But how... does that work? I mean, our changes are purely cosmetic, right?" I asked, looking behind myself at the chitin plating on my back and realizing for about the first time since I woke up that I had wings sticking out from my withers. A pair of transparent insect-like wings, but still wings.

"Not entirely, no," I heard Oval suggest, while I carefully tested my wings and fluttered them a bit. They made a buzzing sound as I did.

"So, I can fly with these, and use magic with my horn, while I'm not mimicking anypony?" I asked, returning my attention to Oval while buzzing my wings enough that I felt I had some lift but not enough to lift me up from the floor.

"Yes, but that's beside the point. When you mimic somepony, you take their physical attributes as much as their appearance," Oval explained. "In the case of winged Pegasi like this form, that means the feathered wings are as much a part of you as the rest of the form you mimic."

I stared her down. "Okay, so a Pegasi is practically just an Earthpony with wings; so ditch the horn and then learn how to do the wings?"

"You're overthinking it a bit much;" Oval returned with a chuckle, "just focus on the picture in your head. Our species' magic does the actual work after that."

I focused as instructed, taking Oval's new look in just like I had with her previous ones, including the wings this time. I pushed the picture to overlay my own internal depiction of self, feeling my Changeling magic wash over me as my body took on the new guise.

It was not too bad a feeling, now I'd gotten used to it a bit. It felt a little like a shiver going down your spine, but more electric. I opened my eyes again as the feeling subsided to see Oval grinning back at me.

"Okay, good try; but you put your wings backwards," she offered, turning her side to me and wriggling her wing closest to me a little.

I looked back, realized she was right, and focused to fix that issue. A flash of green passed over them and the limbs corrected themselves.

"I wonder how I did that?"

"You most likely focused on me as a mirror image rather than correcting that?" Oval offered up. "Our magic can do a lot, but if you give it the wrong input it will just roll with it if it's not going to directly harm us."

"Hmm," I heard a high-pitched agreeing hum from behind me, and turned to face the tall Alicorn mare. "Zpread your wingz, hatchling."

I turned my head to look at my wings, but a sickly thin hoof moved to my cheek to prevent me from turning my head fully. "Without looking at them."

I swallowed lightly; I had no idea yet how it would feel if I spread my wings, or what muscles to use, so I just winged it, so to speak. I just focused mentally on spreading my wings out, hoping for the best.

"You zhould focuz on getting the featherz right. They are more like our finz now," the taller one suggested.

"She's only just learned how to mimic these types of wings, sister," Oval suggested. "She is going at a good pace, though."

"Make zure zhe getz it right zoon," the taller one remarked to Oval, then smiled weakly. "We already have a new batch waiting to be taught."

As she stepped away, Oval tapped me on the shoulder. "Okay, as sister said; focus on the looks of the feathers."

I turned to face her, my wings still extended awkwardly. "It's all work with her, isn't it?"

"We get groups of hatchlings in almost constantly. I did tell you we need to teach you fast," Oval shrugged. "She's just thinking of the greater good here."

I stared at Oval. "But we're effectively parasites, aren't we? We need to leech on others' love to survive?"

Oval smirked at that. "We can't change what cards we were dealt. Its our fate to have to feed in this manner. All we can do is minimize the impact we have on others while we do it."

I gave her a thoughtful nod in return, my eyes scanning over her feathered wings. I pushed the image of them onto the pegasus look in my mind and felt the magic flow over my wings again.

"Not everyone thinks that way; Even in human society there are those who would rather cause as much damage as they can," I remarked, turning my side to Oval for a wing-inspection.

"This world is no different, trust me on that," sister Oval suggested. "Okay, you're doing a good job at the overal look of the feathers. Let's run through a few more looks so you get the feel of the three main pony races and you should be ready to train yourself in the use of these wings on your own."

"I've seen Pegasi fly before. I can imagine how it's different from our Changeling wings; ours barely give any lift, do they?" I wondered, watching Oval switch to a Unicorn look and moving to mimic her.

"Pegasi wings allow you to glide more, yes," Oval agreed, watching me change and then changing herself again to an Earthpony look. "Our wings give enough lift once you learn to use them properly, but you'll expend less energy with Pegasi wings. The trade-off with having to mimic them is hardly worth it, though. Just keeping the guise intact while flying is a chore in itself."

I followed her lead as she switched between guises, trying to take in all the information she gave me. "So how does it work with size differences, then? Brother? in the previous room changed into a little filly as an example earlier and I had to wonder where all the extra mass went to."

Oval motioned a forehoof over to a different Changeling. "Ask sister Breeze over there once we're done. She's better at child forms. I can't figure foals out for the life of me."

I looked where she was pointing, noticing the hatchling and changeling pair currently looked like a set of foals already.

"If I can ask," I started, returning my attention to Oval and realizing she switched forms again. I quickly changed as well before continuing; "what are you best at?"

Oval changed into a Pegasus stallion, shrugging idly at me. "Stallions," she spoke in a decidedly more masculine voice. "Doesn't matter what species either; I just get them right on the first try. I can't figure out mare hairstyles. Stallions are far easier."

I smiled at Oval, almost automatically taking her form in and applying it to myself again. "I can see that," I spoke in the squeaky voice of a boy going through puberty, causing Oval to grin. "Over in the human world the girls have the most ridiculous hairstyles as well."

"You're going to need to work on that voice of yours;" Oval chuckled. "Other than that, you're doing a great job adapting your guise to mine," she stated, changing to a Unicorn mare and looking at me expectantly.

I changed my form again to match Oval's. "It gets easier the more I do it, but I am starting to feel a bit tired," I admitted in a far more feminine tone.

Oval gave a slow nod and reverted to her Changeling self. "Trust me, I know the feeling."

I reverted to my new base form as well. "The life of a teacher, right?"

"Yes, although the next batch of hatchlings is my last one before I can go back to the city," Oval agreed. "I've expended a lot of my reserves already."

"Can I ask what city?" I wondered.

"Oh, sure; I'm usually somewhere around Hoofton. I moved there from Fillydelphia a while ago and haven't looked back," Oval suggested. "I don't know, it's something about the climate or the ponies themselves. I feel more at home there."

"Maybe I'll come visit some time?" I suggested.

"Remember we need to stay covert while among them. Don't just come prancing up and calling me sister now," Oval joked. "If you can find me, we'll head over to somewhere quiet to talk. I'll probably recognize you before you'll even see me."

"Experience, I take it?" I offered, shaking my head a little at the thought of recognizing any individual changeling while they were using their disguise.

"Something like that, yeah," Oval agreed, then motioned over in Breeze's direction. "Go join sister Breeze and get her to teach you a few foal looks as well. I'm going to get a drink."

I reached over to pull Oval into a hug. "Thanks for the training, sister Oval."

"Heh... you're going to be allright out there, if you keep this up," Oval returned, but returned the hug eagerly. "Remember to stay low-key. Don't jump headfirst into situations if you can avoid it."

I agreed and we broke our hug, with Oval pushing me toward Breeze again. As I started off in the direction of the supposed foal-expert, Oval moved off to a dark corner of the room. When I looked back, I couldn't spot her anymore.

06

I asked Breeze to teach me about foals, as Oval had instructed me to, and sat through a few basic explanations about the differences between adult ponies and their foal versions.

It quickly became clear I needed a lot more training before I could pull a regular foal off, but when Breeze taught me about teens and their subtle differences with proper adults I reckoned I found my personal niche; it was far easier to do than going full foal size, but still a welcome change from the adult forms Oval had taught me.

When the tall alicorn mare decreed it was time for us to go to the next room, I thanked Breeze wholeheartedly, and left her in good spirits.

Our group of hatchlings moved on to the next room to find a number of changelings standing around a set of tables and buckets. We sort of naturally dispersed to each of the tables, and I gave the Changeling I approached a light smile.

"Hi, so what's the next thing to learn?" I asked, to which they spat a ball of green goop onto the table.

"Resin control," my Changeling brother suggested, motioning at the ball of green on the table.

"Oh, okay," I responded, watching him poke at it with his hooves until the ball resembled a square block.

"We can form a variety of resin types; soft, hard, quick-drying or nutrient-filled," the Changeling explained quickly. "You don't want to make the mistake of firing a nutrient-filled ball of watery resin at somepony when you want to disable them with a quickly-drying spat instead."

I shook my head at that. "No, I guess not."

"Now, you have resin glands in the back of your mouth," my brother pointed out. "If you don't control them, you'll spit normally." He spat some regular spit in the bucket beside him as an example. "Don't spit at me or the table until you get your resin glands working."

I gave a quick nod. "I can see how that would be a bad thing, yeah."

The Changeling pushed the bucket up my way and motioned at it. "If you spit normally, you won't feel them at all."

I waited for the next sentence to come, but he just stood looking at me expectantly, so I carefully aimed and spat at the bucket.

"Good. Now, to activate your resin glands you'll need to tighten your muscles a little," brother explained. "They're not quite in the back of your throat, mind; you're all making that mistake and end up choking on your spittle."

As if to illustrate his point, one of my fellow hatchlings doubled over coughing a little further in the room, and my brother frowned at hearing it.

"Okay, so the muscles are not in the back of the throat, but in the back of our mouth?" I asked, motioning my right forehoof to my cheek.

"That's what I said," he returned. "You're not going to get it right the first time anyway, so forget that. Just try finding the right muscles first."

I sat down and focused on my mouth. My tongue was the obvious biggest muscle there. It was a lot longer than my human tongue had been thanks to slight elongation of my muzzle, but there had been so many things that were new to me that I'd found no issue speaking with it.

Further back were the muscles that let me swallow, of course. They were little different from how they had been while I was still a human. But there was a twitch in my mouth just in front of my throat as I let my focus drift. On either side of my throat opening.

I tentatively let my attention drift to that area, trying to evoke another twitch, and homing in on the muscles as they did. These were muscles which my human self did not have.

I opened my eyes as I heard the sound of the bucket being pushed closer to me, and my Changeling brother nodded at it. "If you found the muscles, try spitting in the bucket while triggering them."

I gave a silent nod in return, opening my mouth a little while I tried to get those muscles to respond on command. All around me I heard spitting, coughing, berating... but I tried to tune them out and focused.

I spat at the next twitch of those muscles, feeling the weird sensation of something spraying into my mouth from the back of it, and leaking out of my mouth to drip into the bucket!

I stared at it, spitting more just to get my mouth empty again, watching the green goop collect at the bottom where clear spittle had been before.

The other Changeling leaned in to look at it before smirking at me. "Clear your mouth or it will harden and lock your jaw shut."

I took their warning by heart and licked around my mouth to get all the goop out of the corners of it, spitting it out into the bucket. Soon enough the resin started to crystalize and I was spitting out little crunchy bits until I had mostly emptied my mouth of them.

"Okay, so that's the quick-hardening resin," the Changeling in front of me suggested. "Remember how that felt?"

I shook my head a bit, continuing to spit out a few last bits of crystalized resin I had dislodged from between my teeth. From the sounds around me, the other hatchlings were having as much of a spittle-fest as I was having.

"I told you you wouldn't get it right on the first try. Well, if you get the urge to spray it again, remember to open your mouth a bit more," brother berated me.

I opened my mouth further than I had before and tried again; focusing on the sensation of my new muscles as they sprayed the resin out. It was not that these strange new muscles were difficult to control; there was a clear sensation of their limitations when I felt them contract. It was just that my brain was still coping with the fact I had them in the first place.

Under the watchful and demeaning eyes of my Changeling brother, I proceeded to spit a mostly random collection of resin blobs at the bucket between us. With every glob that passed my lips, I became more aware of how the muscles felt when I spat this or that type of resin, and soon I dared to try and control what type I released, aided by some factor of luck.

Once my tutor noticed I was aiming to spit the same type of resin in the bucket a few times in a row, he started making demands of me; "Loosen your muscles to spit out the soft resin."

I tried to comply, spitting out what looked most like green lemonade, much to my brother's satisfaction.

"You haven't created any hard resin yet," he noted. "You'll need to tighten your muscles and release your resin from your glands so it builds up a ball inside, then loosen the muscles to propel them outward."

I tightened my resin glands as much as I could, then tried spitting some resin. I could feel the area which held my resin glands expand as the muscles held themselves closed in front of them, but then released the tension as instructed.

A pair of crystalized blobs rolled weakly out into my mouth, and I had to spit them out once they passed my resin control muscles. My brother looked like he was expecting it and shook his head.

"You do need to keep up the pressure behind them, or they'll be useless," he scoffed.

"Well, you didn't tell me that, now did you?" I threw back, getting majorly annoyed by him by this point.

Surprisingly, the Changeling before me smiled up at my retort and reached a hoof up to poke me in the chest. "That's what I wanted to hear; get annoyed. Get angry. You can push more resin out that way. Puff your cheeks out."

I stared at him a moment, but then let out a snort. "I don't get half of this to begin with, and I've been made to feel inferior in the past three rooms. You're not making me feel at home or anything."

"I'm not here to make you feel at home," the other responded calmly. "I'm here to teach you how to use your resin glands so you can at least pretend you were born into our Hive."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Well, I can spit four kinds of resin now, even if you tell me I don't put enough power behind my spitting. Can you at least tell me what they're all used for so I don't make an ass of myself and this Hive everyone's on about?"

My brother grinned his fangs bare. "No, really; keep that up. The more you can push back against us, the better; you're going to need to defend yourself out there, and we're far from the biggest bullies around."

I reached up to poke him in the chest now, giving him a decent push back. "Shut it, will you? Just tell me what the resin's used for."

Still grinning, the Changeling spat a blob of wet resin at the almost-full bucket. "Nutrients; they're what you bring back from your travels and fill hatchling pods with. Good healing properties; spit it on a wound to have it heal faster. Be careful not to feed others this; it has the potency to turn one into us, as you have already experienced."

I stared at him for a moment, then sat down on my haunches. "Wait, you mean this is like the nectar bees produce?"

My brother shrugged idly at that. "In a way, I guess. But our 'honey' is not for other species to consume. Really; don't do it unless you're told to by our Queen."

I struck a cross over my chest with my left forehoof. "I promise not to."

My Changeling brother spat a new blob at the bucket, and I realized it was quickly crystalizing where it landed. "Quick-hardening resin. Use it to immobilize someone. Mostly prey. It fills holes as well. Most of the Hive is made from it."

"Check," I returned.

Another spat. This time it was a soft blob that bounced once before it rolled to a stop on top of the layer of crystalizing resin. "Our softer resin is like rubber, if you need an example; It's good for protecting things and storing things in. We use it as an inside lining to the hatchling pods or to make beds with."

"Beds?" I wondered. "I thought you slept in the pods?"

"Only if we need to heal; it takes too much time and energy to build a pod," the other explained. "Just spitting a layer of soft resin down is usually enough. It's also one of the two resin types which decomposes over time in air. The harder resin types tend to stay solid unless submerged in water."

"Water breaks down our resin?" I asked, confusion about how a Hive made out of the stuff would stay whole in a rainstorm.

"No, but it softens it over time until it breaks down like the other types," my brother reiterated. "It takes a few days, but it does keep our siblings busy over at the Hive."

I made a mental note not to build a resin house myself.

"And the fourth type?" I asked.

"The fourth type is the hard resin. You can use it as a weapon if you want, but it's often easier to just knock prey unconscious with a good blow." he stated. "Also, you can use it as rudimentary building bricks, although you'll need to fill in the gaps between them with quick-hardening resin if you want it to stay in place."

"Okay, so we have two types that pretty much do the same thing?" I suggested, rubbing my left hoof on the side of my head.

"I guess so, yeah. But the quick-hardening resin is easier to spray on moving targets," my brother chuckled. "Now let me get a new bucket and you can show me how well you control your resin glands."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "You're asking a bit much here."

"Oh, I didn't think you would be up to the task in the first place," my brother sneered half-jokingly. "After all, you were not born in our Hive."

"I know, I know, I'm a second-rate citizen here. Blow me," I scoffed.

Picking up the bucket's handle with his mouth, my brother set his wings in motion and flew off to a set of other Changelings off near a small pool of water. A couple of empty buckets were stacked near them, and brother picked one up after dropping our old bucket in the pool.

I ran past my new knowledge while he flew back with the new bucket, intending to show that Changeling I was worth more than his valuations of me.

07

Having filled another bucket, sharing sneers and insults between my Changeling brother and myself in-between spitting resin around, I quickly made it through another few... minutes, hours, days... Being in a cavern messed with my sense of time.

Soon enough we were called out as a group to make it to the next room, and I narrowly escaped getting punched in the flank by my brother as I passed by him. I spat a glob of quick-drying resin at him, which he barely managed to evade with a big grin on his face.

I was wondering if he didn't have a point with pushing me to fight back against it all. After all; I was learning how to defend myself. Every room had been about that; learning how to keep myself alive 'out there'.

I had been far too caught up in it all to allow myself time to come to terms with my apparent new life; just going through the motions of being told what to do in each room. And there was a clear looking down on us hatchlings here. We were clearly second-rate citizens, as I had remarked to my brother. Just because we were not born as Changelings but made such by the resin.

I slowed down a bit as we entered the next room, letting the other hatchlings pass me by while I stretched my neck out to look around it.

A set of circles were drawn out in the largely empty space of this new cavern; each having a Changeling stand near it. But there were only half as many circles as there were hatchlings.

"A dojo?" one of my fellow hatchlings remarked with a gasp, and I turned to them.

"What was that?" I prompted, making them inch away a bit from the realization they had spoken their thoughts out loud.

"This looks like a dojo; a place to practice martial arts. Notice the circles? They're like fighting rings? Or not... I mean, I don't know? This is just what I'm thinking?" she stammered in a timid voice.

I smiled weakly at her, giving a nod toward the room proper. "I think I'll have to agree with that notion," I told them, walking over to their side and bumping my shoulder into theirs in a friendly gesture. "Let's go see if you're right, hm?"

As we walked further into the room as a group, the Changelings closest to us had already made their picks, and pointed out a few among us. "You, here. You as well. You, there. Go over to that ring."

Paired up and spread out over the different rings, the tension in the room started to build quickly. It was clear we were going to fight among ourselves, but how exactly was the question.

The elder Changelings started explaining their methods as soon as each pairing arrived at them, and I looked sideways at the sister or brother assigned to me. Their build was similar to my own; there were some among us who were more bulky than others, but we were pretty well-matched.

"So, sparring?" I offered up to our teacher, who gave a quick nod.

"Oh, great. I have only been sitting around, standing around, and walking around since I hatched; I could use a bit of a workout," my brother exclaimed with some relief, his voice a bit lower than I had expected.

"Well, before you go chipping off your sister's chitin plating, let me explain the rules;" the Changeling teacher offered and I narrowed my eyes at them. Their voice was utterly androgynous, and I still was not comfortable judging our genders based on our looks alone. Especially not since Oval had switched genders faster than she talked.

"You're going to learn how to use your magic in the next room. You're going to have to learn how to dodge in this one," the Changeling continued.

"Oh," my brother by my side sighed.

"Do you want to be hit by a bolt of energy that could potentially kill you?" the Changeling wondered, taking a step closer to him while raising an eyebrow.

"Well, not particularly... no?" my brother coughed, taking a quick step back.

"I can see the use in dodging magical attacks; brother over in the other room dodged my resin spat quicker than I expected," I chuckled.

"We're not expecting miracles of any of you," the Changeling stated, shaking their head. "You're young, we've pushed you to learn as much as you can in as short a time as possible, and I'm sure you're starting to feel tired by now. The resin can do only so much to keep you running. It's not magical, per se."

"But it did change us from humans into Changelings. I gotta give you guys credit for that," I offered with a wink. "Really never expected that to happen, even in my wildest dreams or nightmares."

The other Changeling smiled up weakly at that. "Yeah, although you'll find few of us who are willing to see you as more than a necessary evil until you've proven yourselves."

"I'd gathered," I remarked flatly.

"I still don't get it; what are we going to do here?" brother wondered.

The Changeling in charge walked up to the circle nearest to us and pointed at it. "You both walk in here and stand on opposite sides. When I give the signal, you'll have two jobs; Push the other out, and don't get pushed out yourself. Whoever gets out of the circle first, loses."

I realized I knew this from something back on Earth; "Sumo!" I exclaimed. "This is like sumo wrestling back home, except we're not holding onto each other."

"Well, you can spit resin at each other if you want," the Changeling shrugged, "as long as you clean it up afterward."

I glanced over at my brother, who shook his head. "No thanks; I've spat enough today to have gotten a dry throat."

"I agree with him here," I stated, walking over to the right side of the Changeling tutor. "We'll just shove each other, right brother?"

"Er... yes sister. I'm not really feeling this family thing, to be honest," he muttered, walking over to the ring as well. "I get that we all look the same and such, but I just don't feel a connection."

"I dunno; I like the spunk of some of our teachers so far," I threw back. "Would love to be able to call you all family for a while. I have no clue how long we're going to be here anyway."

The Changeling looked between us a moment, then looked up at the ceiling. "Mother willing, a short enough time not to get in trouble, but a long enough time to make some friends."

"Amen," I responded to that.

"Okay, so take place in the ring on opposite sides," the Changeling instructed, and we each pranced on over to stand roughly on opposite sides of the ring.

I looked over at my brother, who tensed his muscles a bit in preparation for a spurt forward. I then looked over to the Changeling outside the ring and raised my left hoof; "Er, excuse me?"

"Yes?" she returned, lifting an eyebrow.

"Is flying allowed?" I wondered, buzzing my wings a little on my back.

A grin spread across our tutor's face, and she gave a quick nod. "If you think that will help you stay inside the ring, go for it. I'd love to see if you can hold your balance."

My brother looked back at his own wings and wriggled them awkwardly, and I realized I had the upper hand, or hoof, here. I had some rudimentary knowledge of how my wings worked, had already felt the lift they could provide, and was pretty confident I could at least launch myself up in the air if needed, while he looked far less comfortable with the idea of them.

"Do you have any other questions?" the Changeling wondered, but we each shook our heads to that. "Then go!"

My brother spurted forward, as I had expected, much like a bull trying to ram something straight ahead from them. With the ring being large enough to give me a second before they would impact with me, I decided to roll sideways from them and heard his hooves skid on the stone as he tried to stop his momentum before he would launch himself out of the ring.

I got back up on my hooves, caught him standing with his flank exposed to me, and pushed forward to bump my head into it, my hooves scraping over the stone as I tried to get him to roll over and out of the ring.

I did not have the strength to push him over, but I did make him slide a fair bit before he pushed off to get out of my way. In order to keep myself from falling over, I fluttered my wings to pull me back, landed awkwardly on my rear hooves, and then had to immediately dodge him again as he came at me from an angle!

I realized I did not have the control of my wings which I thought I had, and instead just used them to either help me go faster or slow me down while I dodged my brother's pushes and shoves.

Soon enough we were both panting and taking some distance from each other, all under the watchful gaze of the Changeling off to the side.

"It's a good idea to use your wings in that fashion, sister. Keep it up," she offered during our short break in the fight. "You're doing great trying to come at her from her blind spots, brother."

"I don't have the control I want, or I would have flown higher," I panted back in her direction.

"Flying lessons come after your magic lesson. We can't do it inside the cave system for obvious reasons," the Changeling chuckled. "But if you keep this up, you'll have a leg up from the rest in rudimentary control."

A buzzing from my brother drew my attention, and I realized he was testing his own wings out. Noting he was a little preoccupied by it, I quickly set in motion, my own wings starting to buzz as I picked up speed, and almost had him! He realized what I was up to just before I could catch him off guard and leapt off to the side!

My wings, which had powered my speedy assault on him, quickly had to switch to breaking my momentum, and I dug my back hooves in against the hard floor of the cavern while skidding to a stop.

"That was a foul! She came at me while I wasn't ready for it!" my brother decried, but our tutor shook her head.

"No, it wasn't; I did say everything goes," she corrected him. "The world out there is not fair either. If you don't learn how to evade attacks in a sparring match, you won't stand a chance out there."

I grinned and spat a blob of quick-drying resin at my brother's back, quickly coating his wings in it as he was not expecting it. "Stick to the ground, brother; leave the flying to me."

He stood in utter bewilderment for a split-second, but then his anger got to his face and, a heartbeat later, his actions. While he came roaring at me in his anger of having his wings coated in resin, I launched myself up into the air with a hearty laughter, trying my utter best to keep from tumbling over in mid-air.

Our tutor was visibly amused by my antics; a grin plastered on her face while her eyes flitted between my brother and I to see whether we would skip over the drawn line or not.

08

With me barely keeping myself level in the air, and my brother trying his best to get his anger under control, the match devolved in us both focusing on our own problems for a while - at least until I managed to set myself down on the ground again without landing on my face.

My brother immediately spat some resin at me, which stuck my right forehoof to the ground. I stared between it and him as he made his attack on me again, and moved my other hooves to prepare for his impact. As he hit me, I could feel the pull of the resin on my right forehoof, and I simply spun around a little - as much as the joints in my stuck foreleg would allow me.

My brother skidded to a stop behind me while I pulled myself back together, and turned to face me with a confused look on his face.

I moved to stare at him with a smirk. "Did you forget what our teachers told us in the other room already? This stuff is like cement; it hardens and sticks stuff together. Obviously I'm not going to get out of this ring any time soon now," I chided him.

"That's what I was going to say," our current tutor remarked calmly. "What this does mean is that sister has a harder time evading your attacks now. Don't stop attacking her just because she can't flutter away."

I gave her a quick sarcastic "thank you for that," before I spun around my forehoof again to evade my brother's next assault. While he was skidding to a stop, I tapped the resin covering my right forehoof with my left to see if I could chip away at it. It was doable if I had the time in-between his attacks.

"If I remember right; spitting softer resin on it won't do anything. Spittle is water, right?" I asked of the Changeling to the side, and she gave a nod.

"Correct, but do you have hours to let it work its way through that block?" she asked in return.

I jumped aside as much as I could as my brother came too close for comfort again, and continued tapping at the resin with my free hoof.

"Of course you could get out of it far easier if you knew how to use your magic," our tutor remarked casually, her horn lighting up with a green glow. "It's a shame you'll have to get to the next room over to learn that."

I danced around my brother's next attack, hearing him pant from excertion.

"Well, obviously!" I called back with my own anger flaring up. "And you're not going to tell me how to blast this resin off my leg while I'm here, are you?"

Sister grinned in my direction, but then brother spat another blob of resin my way, and the only way I could evade it was to roll over on my back, pulling my leg in an awkward position as a result.

Pain shot through my limb as I rolled over, and I gasped out from the ferocity of it!

"Hold!" sister called out quickly, a green glow enveloping me to both stand me upright and release me from the resin. My right forehoof was sticking out at an odd angle from the rest of my leg, and I dared not put any weight on it.

"Matron!" the Changeling tutor called out, using her magic to free my brother's wings from their resin prison on the side.

Another Changeling came rushing up to our ring, and used her own magic to pull my right foreleg up. She spat some soft resin on my leg, used her magic to snap my hoof back in its proper place, and then spat hardening resin around it and the softer resin until I was wearing a mockup of a cast.

It all happened within but a moment, but the other Hatchlings had stopped their own fights to come have a look at what was going on in our ring before it was over. The 'Matron' released my hoof and told me to set it on the ground, and I carefully did as instructed. The resin cast caught most of my weight, but I did feel a small shoot of pain go up through it nonetheless.

"It's not broken, but she'll have to keep her weight off it for a day or two," the Matron told our tutor sister, and I hung my head a bit.

"Well, this fight is obviously over," sister sighed, then addressed the group of onlookers. "Go back to your own, will you?"

As the group dispersed, my brother walked up to my side and gave a careful nuzzle at my shoulder. "Hey, I didn't mean to break anything... Are you okay?"

I gave a slow nod at his question. "Yeah, but I guess I'm fulfilling this whole idea of us being weaker than the rest here, aren't I?"

Sister punched me in the chest at that, and I stumbled back a bit on, mostly, three hooves, looking up at her in surprise!

"Hey, you can take a beating without dropping down and crying like a newborn babe. You're a lot tougher than I gave you credit for," she decided, giving me a wink. "Your brother, on the other hoof, still has to prove himself. Go have a seat next to the ring here. Matron coated your hoof, so all you can do is wait for it to heal."

Matron gave a nod to that. "Let's sit a little away from the ring. Knowing sister, brother has a tough fight ahead of him."

"What? H...hey!" Brother protested as Matron and I made our way out of the ring. Each step with my cast leg made me wince, so I opted to put as little weight on it for as little time as possible, making it to the edge of the ring with some effort.

"Oh, don't whine; I'll take it easy on you," sister chuckled, waiting for me to get out of the danger zone before taking position on one side of the ring. "Come on, kid; shove me out."

I sat down where Matron instructed me to, and she looked my leg over again in case she missed something while the fight between brother and sister started in earnest.

From the get go it was clear the fight was heavily in favor of sister. Brother's inexperience was a stark contrast to sister's agile movements. Where brother made a grand spectacle of himself, moving all over the place, sister only moved when she had to evade him. Most of the time she just stood watching brother tire himself out.

Had I made use of my wings in both attack and defense, sister's lay calmly against her chitin plating. Had she used her magic before to show off, get rid of our resin, and pull me off the floor after I awkwardly pulled my muscles where they had not wanted to go, now she was using it to juggle a couple of hard resin balls she'd spat out in front of her.

Brother was letting his emotions get the better of him at this display of utter indifference toward him. She was teasing him and he fell for the bait without a chance to fight it. Before long he was firing resin at her while trying to ram her, but sister had little problems evading them with a well-aimed spat of resin herself where she could not move out of the way quickly enough otherwise.

Soon enough brother ended up standing at the edge of the ring, panting heavily, clearly exhausted from the ordeal. At this point sister finally moved herself; walking up to him and just using a single hoof to push him over. He rolled out of the ring as a result, and remained resting on the floor where he landed - utterly spent.

"The trick to fighting someone who can only attack is to let them tire themselves out," sister remarked, using her magic to clean the ring and surrounding area of all the resin that was sprayed about. "Use their emotions against them; You get far too riled up, little brother. You can't think when you're angry and make mistakes as a result."

Brother made no effort to protest, but I did feel the need to speak up. "But what if you're well-matched, like brother and me? We have about the same build and stamina, from the looks of things. If I hadn't sprained my ankle... wait, I did sprain my ankle, right? This is my ankle?" I wondered, turning to Matron who gave a nod.

"Yes, it's your ankle, and yes you did sprain it," she agreed.

"Okay, well, so, if I had not sprained my ankle, I could have chipped away at the resin and brother would have had to deal with me flying about again as before. We would have tired each other out without really getting much of a successful attack in, right?" I continued.

Sister walked on over, using her magic to lift brother off the ground and deposit him on the ground near me. "You were both too eager to push each other out to think much of tactics there," she stated.

"While little brother here seems to think everything can be solved by spitting resin and ramming things with his head, you focused too much on trying to learn how to fly while in a battle," sister pointed out. "Both are bad decisions on your end, and I'm going to have to have you do the fight over again once your ankle has had time to heal."

"Wait," brother started, pushing himself up to a sitting position, but sister shook her head.

"No, I've made up my mind; I want to see you two get a fair fight in before you go on to learn magic and flying," sister decided. "Go get some rest in, go over what you've already learned, and come back in a few days when you're both ready to spar again. Matron will take you to the common room and I'll be over once we're done here."

"I can't help but feel like I've just proven the other Changelings right about us being weaker than the rest of you," I sighed, to which sister snorted.

"Don't make me punch you again, little sister," she scoffed. "Ignore the rest. It's more of an in-joke than anything. It helps you try to prove yourself, doesn't it?"

"I guess so; I do want to prove you guys wrong," I agreed.

"Don't tell the rest I told you this, but we're actually pretty excited about this whole thing, right Matron?" sister trusted to us.

Matron gave a nod in return. "Oh, yes; it's only been a short while now since we received visitors from the other world, and to have you come into our Hive to strengthen it is a big deal. I've even heard rumours our Queen is thinking of ways to take over the ponylands again, but that's still very hush-hush."

Sister coughed uneasily at that. "Hush-hush does mean we can't exactly talk about it, Matron."

"Ah, right," Matron realized, looking away.

"I think I can speak for most of us ex-humans when I can say this is all very overwhelming for the lot of us," I suggested, to which brother gave an agreeing hum.

"Well, you have two days of respite to get used to it before I'll have to retest you and toss you over to the magic teachers," sister chuckled. "Come to me if you have any questions, alright?"

I gave her a nod. "Sure, just as long as you won't punch me for saying stupid things."

"I can't promise that," sister laughed. "Go with Matron, you both. I'll see you again in a little bit and we can chat more openly then."

09

Brother and I joined Matron as she walked us out to one of the exits in the cavern wall other than that leading back to the resin study hall or the supposed magic room, with me stumbling a little thanks to my hurt limb.

"So why do they call you Matron anyways?" brother wondered before I could voice the question myself, and Matron looked back at us.

"Mostly because I've been in charge of the hatchling halls since before the rest of them were born," Matron explained. "I was there when the majority of the family you'll meet here were born; most are from the same batch."

I perked up at that. "Wait, we were told that we dozen or so were from the same batch as well. How many Changelings get born per batch exactly?"

"That depends," Matron offered, leading us into a longer tunnel than we had seen so far. It made a winding turn to the right and up, and I idly wondered if it would lead us out of this underground system if we followed it to the very top.

"In your case, we are wholly dependent on what our siblings send us from the other world," Matron continued. "Some days it's just one or two of you. Other days it's a whole group. Then there's the speed at which you transform; there are some of you hatchlings who start off as grand blobs of human, and it takes some time for the resin to work its way through that kind of mass."

Brother missed a step and stumbled over his own hooves a moment before he caught his rhythm again, and I looked back at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Something wrong there, brother?" I wondered.

"Just thinking of my family, is all; I've always been the lithe one there, thanks to an overactive thyroid gland," brother sighed out. "The rest of them are the stereotypical fast-food Americans, you know? I have aunts and uncles who can't even walk to the fridge without getting out of breath."

"You have left them behind, brother," Matron suggested calmly. "I'm not going to ask you to forget them, but you are no longer a part of their world. It's better to no longer see them as your family."

Brother's head dipped a bit lower at the thought.

"I never had much of a family to begin with; always was a bit of a loner," I suggested, giving brother a soft nudge with my left shoulder to his right. "Maybe we should both be looking to our new family as an improvement, huh? I mean, there's far more of them than we have even met today, and they're mostly kinda sleek?"

Brother smiled up a little, and gave a nod. "Sleek, yeah. I don't know. It's all been going so fast. So much to learn. But I think I feel kinda okay like this?"

Matron stopped in front of a split in the tunnel and turned to face us, her blue insectoid eyes peering at us both. "At this point you really don't have much of a choice, do you?"

I stopped walking, still holding the weight off my resin-cast leg, and looked back up at her. "That much was clear, yeah. I mean, we spent I-don't-know-how-long in those pods, and I'm not even sure how much time went past since we 'hatched' from them. It's been a long day... or week... or month?"

"Day," Matron corrected me. "It's almost dinnertime. I'll explain how you can feed yourselves."

"That would be handy," brother half-chuckled to ward off his gloomy feelings.

Matron pointed at the wall behind her with a hoof. "The common room lies behind this door. There are family members inside who may be sleeping or feeding or just spending leisure time together. Please don't raise your voices, don't panic, and don't hesitate to ask me questions if you're confused about something."

Brother and I shared a glance between one another, but then gave a nod at Matron.

"You're Changelings, both of you. This room is open to the outside and other Changelings may walk in and out when they choose," Matron continued. "Don't run, please. We haven't finished teaching you yet, and we're in a fairly hostile part of our world here. I can't promise you'll be safe out there."

I sat myself down on the tunnel floor, and made a cross over my chest. "I promise I won't run."

Brother looked less sure about it, a nervous flutter of his wings betraying his thoughts.

"I can't wait until we learn how to use our magic and get flying lessons, how about you brother?" I tried, smiling up at him.

He let out a deep sigh, then nodded his head. "I'll stay. There's a part of me which wants to take the earliest opportunity to run home... but I have no clue where we are, how to get home, or... how to undo this transformation."

"Pony guises are a lot easier to undo than our resin transformation, I'd imagine," I suggested. "I'll keep an eye on him, Matron."

"There are many eyes on you both, even in this tunnel," Matron suggested, turning for the bare wall behind her and putting her right hoof to it. With a little push from the Changeling 'mother', the wall dipped outward a little, and then she slid it sideways to reveal the common room behind it.

The room was large. About as large as the hatching room, if not bigger. Several walls throughout it partitioned the area into half-open rooms, with alcoves set in them. Some of these rooms were occupied by Changelings resting on resin beds.

The room was bathed in a green glow, and my jaw slipped slightly ajar when I noticed an intricate pattern of green veins connecting the ceiling to the floor, strung between stalagtites, stalagmites, and the various walls.

A few Changelings, I noticed, had pressed their mouths to the veins near to them, and I thought I could see them suckle on it.

As far as Changelings went; they were literally everywhere. From the sleeping ones to the feeding ones to the ones walking or flying about, or little groups of them conversing on their own resin-made pillows. There must have been a hundred or more spread around the room, and Matron walked ahead of us to add to the number.

Once I could tear my eyes off of the display in front of me, I gave a careful glance sideways to notice brother was about as shocked by it all as I was, and I pulled my jaw closed upon realizing both of ours were half-open.

"Brother?" I started, and he caught himself as well, turning his head to look my way. "How do you like this kind of a family?"

Brother just shook his head in amazement.

"Are you two coming so I can close this door again? There is a bit of a draft, in case you didn't notice?" Matron queried, looking back at us from the other side of the door.

We set in motion as one, passing through the door's opening, but brother continued on while I stopped to look at the 'door'.

It was just a boulder, really, but it closed off the entrance quite well once Matron pushed it back in place. I took a quick survey around the room only to notice several other boulders like it which I assumed to hide other exits.

"Let me find you two a place to rest at," Matron suggested, walking past me and tapping brother on the shoulder as she got to him. "Follow close after me, please; you may lose your way otherwise."

I stumbled after Matron, while brother fell back to my left side again. "Matron, the veins?" I started after a few paces, and Matron's head turned to look at the nearest ones coming down along the wall we passed by on the right.

"They are filled with nutrient paste; it's basically our nutritious resin, but we add an enzyme to it when we transfer it to the vein system so it stays healthy for longer," Matron explained. "You can stick your fangs through the outer layer to create an opening for you to feed on the paste, but do so when we get to your room. I'll put you in with your sister from the sparring room so she can continue to teach you."

I gave a nod to that. "So there's a fifth type of resin we can make?"

"Only us Matrons, I'm afraid," Matron suggested. "You're both drones, so don't worry about it. There's some difference between us all. You have mostly met drones and matrons so far. The guards are stationed outside to protect us."

I looked at brother at that. "So, like ants back home."

Brother gave a weak nod. "A drone is weaker than a soldier, I take it?"

"They are stronger and bulkier than us," Matron agreed. "Drones can be faster since you travel far to get food for the Hive, while we matrons are better with healing magic."

"But our first teacher was a bulky sort," I remembered. "Was he just an overly bulky drone or a soldier?"

"Bulky drone," Matron chuckled. "I know him from when he was still a hatchling. He was far smaller back then, but he does a lot of power training. I'm sure he would have made a fine soldier."

She turned into a room with walls barely twice our height, and motioned to the alcoves set in the three walls which didn't have a space in them for a mock doorway. "You will most likely want to make your bed in two of these. Which you pick doesn't matter to sister."

"Hello sister!" a voice called out from some distance away, and a different Changeling came flying down from a position higher up in the cave. "Did you get Breeze to help you out with those foal looks?"

I peered up and tilted my head a little. "Wait... Oval?"

"What's that about Breeze?" another voice called out from some distance away, but Oval stuck her tongue out in that direction.

"Nothing, sister; go back to sleep," she called back, then landed in the same room Matron, brother, and I were standing in. She looked us over a moment, then pointed at the resin around my right leg. "What happened?"

"She started it," brother decided.

Matron gave Oval a poke in the shoulder. "She sprained her ankle; she will have to rest on it for a day or two."

"Ow, never a fun time," Oval responded, moving in to pull me into a hug. I couldn't return it with my leg basically a lethal weapon now what with the blob of hard resin around it, so I just stood there and let her hug me.

"So you'll be staying with us for a few days, huh?" Oval wondered, pulling back again and noting brother had already moved over to an alcove. "You won't want to keep Matron busy for too long, or she'll get cranky. Why don't I teach you the ropes while you're here?"

Matron smiled up a little at the suggestion. "Done. You'll have to keep them out of trouble, or I'll know where to find you."

"Oh, hush; I'm about the best guide they can have around here; I'll teach them everything they need to know," Oval huffed.

Matron shook her head before looking me straight in the eyes. "Use your common sense; if something she says feels like the wrong thing to do, don't do it."

"Weren't you going back to watch the ringfights again, Matron?" Oval suggested, gently pushing Matron to the room's 'doorway'.

"I know where you live in Hoofton," Matron threatened. "I may need to come visit and give you as much trouble there as you've been giving me each time you return home, hmm?"

Oval waved the threat away. "I'd like to see you try, elder sister," she grinned, but then Matron turned around and pulled the other in a hug.

"Remember to visit a bit more often, Oval dear. It's been too long," Matron sighed out, and I could see she really cared about the other Changeling.

"I will, I will," Oval returned, hugging the other back.

I turned for one of the other alcoves to give them some privacy, wondering how exactly I'd go about making a bed out of resin there...

10

After Matron finally got on her way, Oval turned to me and gave me a nudge against my flank as she joined me. "I'm glad your leg's not broken. It looks worse than it is, huh?"

"It does hurt if I put my weight on it, but yeah; it could have been worse," I agreed. "I did start it, as brother said; I spat resin on his wings and he decided to glue my hoof to the floor. When I tried to evade one of his attacks, I sort of rolled over and pulled my leg the wrong way."

Oval winced a moment, then turned for brother. "Why did you glue her leg to the floor? Aren't you supposed to kick each other out of the ring or something?"

Brother snorted at the admonishment, sitting himself down in the alcove. "Sister had me fight her afterward."

"You mean Blaze, right? Loves to juggle resin?" Oval wondered.

"How do you know who we meant? I don't think she's told us her name," I asked, taking brother's example and sitting myself down in my own alcove opposite his so as to take the weight off my foreleg.

"None of the others would have sent you here," Oval explained. "There's three groups here right now. Blaze and I are from the same batch. She runs with a circus troupe out there."

"That explains her theatrics in her fight with brother," I chuckled. "She didn't give him a chance."

"Yeah, that's Blaze alright," Oval agreed, sitting down on my left side in my chosen alcove. "Matron explain to you yet how to feed off the veins?"

Brother shook his head, but I gave a nod in reply.

"Which is it?" Oval wondered.

"She told us to poke our fangs through the outer skin of it and suck on the paste inside, but told us to wait until we were in our room," I offered.

"Ah, yeah. She didn't tell you how to plug the holes again then; use the soft rubbery resin for that. It'll plug right up," Oval beamed. "Really, it's the difference between feeding and staying dry, or suddenly having a few dozen gallons of paste spray over you when you forget to plug the holes before pulling your mouth away; there's a bit of pressure in these veins."

I looked around me at the walls of the room, all of which were covered in a pattern of veins like the walls themselves were alive and required a bloodflow of sorts.

"So you have to keep your mouth closed around it while feeding, then?" I wondered, to which Oval gave a nod. "So how does this differ from that love we supposedly need to feed on?"

Brother flopped down sideways on the hard stone at my question. "So much learning..." he groaned.

"Well, how I experience it; when you get a target's love, you'll get warmed up on the inside," Oval explained. "It fills you up, you know? I mean, I got my holes just like everyone else, but it's like a target's love makes them go away for a little while."

"Not really, of course; they do stay in my legs," Oval pointed out quickly. "They'll stay with you all your life once they show up."

I looked between my unresined left leg and Oval's right, noting how I could look straight through the holes in hers.

"Does it hurt when they appear?" brother wondered, having rolled onto his back and moving his hooves through the air above him a bit.

"Hurt? No," Oval answered in the negative. "I don't think it's pain so much as... emptiness. Part of you just disappears, you know? And you need to get someone's love to fill that emptiness again."

"Do you consciously feel the holes, Oval?" I asked in turn.

"Only when I discuss it like this, with hatchlings like yourself or others," Oval told me. "As I said; it's a feeling of emptiness. You remember something having been there, but it's not anymore. It feels wrong, somehow. But I've gotten used to it over time; I hardly feel it when I go about my business. I just make sure to tank up on love as much as possible so I can ignore it even when I'm alone with my thoughts."

Brother let his hooves hang down a bit above him. "But you do feel it."

"Yes, I do," Oval agreed. "But it's as much a part of life as anything. You feel tired when you have to sleep as well."

"I think I get it now," I offered with a smile. "I mean, I don't... cause my legs don't have holes in them. Yet. But I get the idea."

I watched Oval from the side for a moment, then tilted my head in her direction. "So what's it with you and names?"

"Names, heh," Oval chuckled weakly. "Have you noticed how many siblings we have?"

Brother pointed a hoof up to the ceiling, and I followed his gesture to spot dozens of Changelings in alcoves hewn out in the ceiling above us. As I watched, several Changelings came flying over, their wings buzzing as they flew by. It was actually kind of busy up there, and I had just tuned it all out, focusing more on what was going on on the ground, in my immediate area.

"That's a lot..." I breathed out in awe.

"Yeah, so... names? They don't work in our family," Oval explained. "It's easier to just call each other brother or sister where possible."

"But you call yourself Oval, you pointed out Breeze, named Blaze, and there's Matron," I listed. "How does that work?"

"It helps when you're in the same clutch as one another, I guess," Oval spoke enigmatically.

"Okay, that's a new word; clutch?" I prodded.

"Well, when our Queen lays her eggs, she pauses from time to time. She doesn't lay the whole batch in one go - that would be too much to ask of her. So, she lays a batch in clusters of several eggs, which we call clutches. The Matrons make sure to keep each clutch grouped together while we grow, and we usually hatch together. You noticed how your group hatched in little spurts?"

I blinked once.

Brother turned on his side again and looked our way. "She came into the classroom by herself. A few others followed after, but we were already halfway through the explanations - and then brother started anew!" he exclaimed tiredly.

"Hey, make yourself a bed before you fall asleep or you'll have sore muscles in the morning," Oval warned. "Okay, so she was a loner. That happens as well. Did you hatch with some others, little brother?"

"Two, three, I dunno," brother mumbled, rolling out of his alcove and propping himself up on all fours next to it. "The soft resin, right?"

"The rubbery stuff, yes," Oval agreed. "Just lay it out in a row and it'll melt together."

She turned to me. "It's okay not to have any clutch siblings, you know? You're still a part of a batch, and of the larger family."

I shrugged at that. "I don't mind; I've always been a bit of a loner."

Oval smiled at me and moved a hoof around my withers. "That's the spirit. Now, Blaze, Breeze, and I were part of the same clutch. Matron was there when we all hatched and named us. Alpha, Ander, and Apex were before us. Center, Cinder, Copio, and Cutter hatched from the clutch after us."

"Copio?" brother asked in-between spitting out resin blobs into his alcove.

"He came out of his egg with a copious amount of resin fluid, apparently," Oval revealed with a light shrug. "It's not like he was small or anything; there was just a lot of resin washing out with him when he broke through his eggshell."

"So, you were out with the B's," I realized. "Oval's not the name Matron gave you, then."

"Ah, no," Oval agreed. "As I explained to you, little sister; Oval is the name I was given because I can't get the rounding of one of my pupils right."

"Soo... what's your name?" I wondered, grinning up a little as I expected Oval to feel embarrassed about it.

"Burst," Oval stated flatly. "I may have been a bit over-excited when coming from my egg, I guess."

"Or the names themselves mean nothing, and Matron was just plucking them out of thin air?" I suggested, stifling a yawn.

"You'd have to ask Matron that. It's probably too long ago for her to remember fully anyway," Oval returned, slipping out of my alcove. "Make your bed, little sister; we've pushed you guys too far already. I'm sure the others are teetering on their legs over at magic training now. Few from your batch will make it to flight training without seeing things move in the shadows."

I slipped out of the alcove as well, trying my best not to lean too much on my cast leg. "Rubber resin, right?"

"Like little brother over there, yeah," Oval chuckled, pointing over to where brother had finished making his bed and had rolled himself onto the rubbery resin mattress. "Just keep spitting; it'll smooth itself out just fine. I'll talk with Blaze about getting Breeze over here tomorrow so the five of us can hang out together."

"Maybe she can teach me a bit more about posing as a filly, then? I don't think I got it down yet," I suggested, but then focused on spitting balls of rubbery resin into the alcove. They bumped into the walls and each other and connected to one another as I spat, just as Oval had told me to expect.

"Huh, you know I never thought about asking her for some private tutoring in all these years?" Oval hummed, wandering over to brother. "Don't wander out in the morning; it's usually crowded and you may get shoved around a bit. Blaze or I will be around."

"Hmm-mm," brother mumbled, but he was clearly on his way to dreamland already.

I finished up with my resin bed as well, with Oval returning to look over my shoulder, and flopped on top of it when it looked like it had settled into a proper mattress.

"Hey, you're doing fine for a first day, little sister," Oval told me with a smile.

"Sure I am," I mumbled back, with a yawn following right after.

"Blaze doesn't just ask anyone to come and sleep over, you know? Hurt leg or not," Oval pressed. "I wonder what her plan is."

"She wants brother and me to do a rematch," I explained lazily, unable to keep my eyes open.

"Let's talk about that tomorrow. We're rotated out of the teaching roster tomorrow, and I'm not headed home for a few more days anyway, so we'll have plenty of time," Oval suggested. "Rest well."

I slowly nodded my head while drifting off to sleep...

11

I woke up to a Changeling taking off out of the cubicle which was the room I'd been sleeping in, and watched them until they flew off out of sight. Turning my attention to the room proper again, I found three Changelings were left; one of which was sleeping in the middle of the alcoves on a bed of green resin.

The other two were standing beside one another, and were shadowboxing with their forehooves while standing upright on their hindlegs. I guessed one of them to be Blaze; the Changeling who tried to teach brother and I how to push one another out of a ring, while the other was obviously my brother from the same batch as me, judging by the lack of holes in his legs.

He was fluttering his wings in an attempt to stay upright, while the other was standing a lot more solidly, which made me smile a little as it was obvious she was Blaze just from her stance. While I assumed other Changelings may have a similar body control as Blaze, she just added a bit of flair to it which came from her years of working in the entertainment business.

"I guess it's morning?" I offered up, and Blaze cast a glance in my direction.

"Yep. Get yourself some breakfast from the veins closest to you; we already ate," she stated, then continued with her training, with brother mimicking how she punched the air.

"Is he trying to turn back into a human or something," I wondered, moving a little on my mattress of resin until I got near to one of the veins on the wall near me, "what with you two standing upright like that?"

Brother snorted, almost lost his balance, and had to flutter his wings to remain standing. I had to wait with trying to feed until I got my laughter under control, much to brother's annoyance.

"You missed Breeze," brother threw my way. "She said she won't teach someone who sleeps through her visits."

Blaze punched him in the side, causing brother to fall over into his alcove.

"Don't listen to him;" she offered up, lifting one of her hind legs until she balanced on just the one - just to show off, "Breeze will be back later today. You're not going to do much in the way of transforming with that leg until that cast comes off."

"I figured, thanks," I offered, then sought out one of the green veins and carefully sank my fangs into it. A wicked taste filled my mouth as the nutrient paste leaked into it past my fangs - feeling a little like soft jell-o as it melted in my mouth.

The taste was not unlike that of certain mushrooms, or mouldy bread, and I was hesitant to swallow it.

"Spit out the first few sips. You're fairly low in the hall here, so there's a lot of old resin in there. Matron keeps forgetting to clean the veins down here," Blaze offered up, turning on her single hoof to face brother as he climbed out of his alcove again.

I spat my mouthful of resin out as close to a corner of the room as I could, took another draw of resin, and spat that out as well as it tasted about the same. The third mouthful was a lot sweeter than the first two, and it was starting to taste more like a good apple cider or non-alcoholic fruit juice than anything.

I cast a thankful glance at Blaze, but she was too busy evading brother's hooves as he tried to push her over to notice me.

I suckled idly on the vein, but I really didn't have to as gravity did most of the work for me here; the resin just continued to pour out of it into my mouth no matter if I suckled on it or not, and all I had to do was swallow it once my mouth filled up enough.

Burst, or Oval, had been right about it; it didn't warm me up or anything. The resin itself was room temperature, which in this cave system meant a few degrees below a human's body temperature. Even so it felt warmer than I had expected, and it slowly dawned on me why that was; Changelings were insectoids.

While humans were definitely warm-blooded, with insects this was a wholly different thing. And Changelings being a fictive species to begin with, even if I now was one myself, there was no telling what a normal body temperature for my new form was like.

It was most likely colder than a human's body temperature. How would we match up against the ponies, I wondered?

I cast my eyes on the sleeping Changeling near me and realized it must be Oval, considering I was told Breeze buzzed off for the moment. She had opted to turn her back to the room and had curled up a little on her mattress.

Her chitin plating shone almost like a blue mirror, reflecting the shadows of Blaze and brother training fighting techniques in the room, as well as our siblings flying overhead from time to time.

I idly wondered if my own chitin backplate reflected as much. If there was anything that could be said of us Changelings was that all drones looked alike. Male or female; we mostly looked like one uniform army of grey-skinned critters.

I could keep Blaze and brother apart from their mannerisms more than their looks, and most other Changelings looked the same to me as any other. I would probably not even be able to point myself out on a photo where I'd be among others like me, except maybe by the lack of holes in my legs.

I started to feel full, so I focused on forming a pair of soft, rubbery resin balls and used my tongue to lead them from my resin glands out to the holes I had poked in the veins. They washed right back into my mouth by the push of the resin, and it took me a bit of fiddling before I understood how to push them through the holes with my tongue so they would plug them from the inside.

I pulled away after the flow of resin stopped filling my mouth, and rolled over onto my back in the alcove, looking past the wall above me at the cavern's ceiling.

"Is it always this crowded in this outpost?" I asked out loud, and heard a pair of hooves impact with the floor a moment later.

Another set of hooves fell down, and a Changeling's head appeared in my view.

"You should come visit our main Hive some day, little sister," Blaze spoke, grinning down. "There are far more of us down there, and then there's all our siblings out in the field."

I stared up at her. "Burst told me you three were clutchlings, or something."

Blaze's eyes narrowed and she peered over to the sleeping Changeling in her alcove. "Clutchlings? I should kick her for that."

"Why?" I asked. "I'm a hatchling, right? So I guessed brother and I would be batchlings, but I'm the only one of my clutch."

"That's... one way of looking at it, I guess," Blaze agreed, moving away from me. I turned my head to watch her walk over to brother sitting in his alcove. "You two are from the same batch, yes, but there's no-one in our family who'd call you batchlings. We're all siblings of one another, unless we were born from a different Queen."

I pushed up into a sitting position, wincing as I put weight on my bad foreleg. "But brother and I weren't born from your Queen; we were transformed by your pods," I protested.

"But those pods were made by matrons who were born from our Queen," Blaze returned, sitting down next to brother since there were few other places she could sit at. "It's the same with us when we're hatched; the same matrons who cared for us have taken care of you."

"And that makes us siblings, then?" I asked, while noting brother inching away a little from Blaze.

"As good as," Blaze chuckled, then moved a foreleg up and around brother's withers to pull him in against her. "Little brother, I'd almost think you're scared of me, what with you trying to sneak away like that!"

"Ack, no!" brother protested, falling over onto Blaze's lap from her tug at him and struggling to get off it and the alcove onto his own four legs again.

Blaze laughed heartily, letting herself fall back into the alcove until she came to rest on the bare stone. I peered around me a bit, noting my own resin mattress was literally dissolving in front of my eyes and brother's had already disappeared fully.

"It really doesn't last long, does it?" I remarked as brother came to seek sanctuary in my alcove, sitting down to my left.

"The resin? A few hours, yeah," Blaze agreed, looking around herself. "The veins here are made from sturdier material, but the matrons keep quiet on how they make them. We drones can't make those veins. Our resin glands are different from theirs or some such. Ask Oval."

"Burst, you mean?" I suggested, to which I thought to see a sparkle in Blaze's eye.

"Oval, yeah," she nodded. "She doesn't mind either name, but Breeze and I have been calling her Oval for most of our lives now."

"Talking about Breeze," I started, but brother groaned and I cast a glance at him.

"You do a lot of it, sister," he remarked.

"There's a lot of things I want to learn about," I returned with a snort. "If you don't like it, get out of my alcove and sit down on the ground or something."

Blaze grinned at me. "You tell him."

Brother smirked at that. "Nah, I'm comfy here. Keep talking."

"So about Breeze," I started again, "Oval called her name out earlier last night and someone else seemed to take offense to it; "what about Breeze?" they shouted, but Oval stuck her tongue out at them."

Blaze grinned wider at hearing this. "Ah, that's an in-joke. Breeze went missing at some point. And we two, as her clutch sisters, were stuck hearing all sorts of stories about her while she was unable to defend herself. So every time someone brought her up, we'd jump at them and go "what about Breeze?" and they'd shut up."

I stared.

Blaze shrugged. "You should've been there, I guess. We're kinda protective of her. She may be the middle sister, but she gets in more trouble than Oval here."

"And she's the youngest then?" I queried.

"Yeah, although we hatched about at the same time," Blaze clarified. "Matron has a knack for figuring these things out, though."

"She's like a mother to you all, no?" I asked.

"In so much as we have mothers, yes," Blaze agreed, leaning back in the alcove. "I've seen pony mothers with their foals. They're not too far from how Matron treated us."

12

With Blaze's revelation that she saw Matron as a mother of sorts, I actually felt a lot better about this whole ordeal.

Sure, there were a lot of differences between my life in the real world as a Human, and this cartoon life where I was apparently destined to live my life as a Changeling; not the least being that I was in a cartoon world as a cartoon being.

But even with those differences, which were many, there were similarities between life as a Human and that of a Changeling.

We all came from somewhere; born or hatched. There was a definite love between siblings, and the way Blaze said she and Oval cared for their middle sister Breeze since she kept getting herself into trouble was much like how Human siblings would stand up for the weaker among them.

Even this whole common room thing; it was a bit like a dormitory of sorts. Little cliques sitting together, sharing stories, sleeping in groups, keeping an eye out for one another.

The heavy push on having us learn everything we could about our new bodies in as short amount of time as possible had done a good job of making me feel like this was truly my body now, rather than a transformation away from my old.

I looked sideways at my brother from the same batch and smiled at him as he looked at me in a puzzled fashion.

"You know, I think I'm going to like this more than I should," I told him.

"What do you mean?" he wondered.

"Well, I was arrested for breaking the law back home, even if it was a stupid law and a stupid charge, really," I started.

"So was I. Loitering, if you can accept that," he sighed.

"Loitering?" I repeated. "I was arrested for copyright infringement myself."

"I guess you're not allowed to hang about a school reading My Little Pony fanfics on your tablet," brother sighed.

I stared at him. "I spread My Little Pony media around the 'net," I trusted to him.

"My Little Pony?" Blaze wondered, and we both gave a nod at her. "That sounds like what Celestia keeps saying."

"Yeah, back where we're from, well..." I started, drawing an imaginary circle on the floor before me with one of my hind hooves.

"Yeah," brother agreed.

"Yeah?" Blaze repeated, slowly narrowing her eyes at us. "Out with it."

"Well, this whole world is fictional where we're from," I blurted out. "Fictional as in non-existent. Like, a figment of someone's imagination. Like, I was sure I was hallucinating this stuff when I passed through those doors."

"You and me both, sister," brother sighed. "There's like hundreds of fanfiction stories about this world. About ponies, changelings, and every other race imaginable."

"I'm sure someone'd get the idea to write a fanstory about this as well, brother," I chuckled.

"If I ever get back home, I'll be sure to write it myself," he decided.

"Fictional?" Blaze queried, shaking her head. "That's about what we thought of Humans before you started trickling in."

"I'm sure," brother mumbled, letting himself fall sideways against the wall of the alcove we were sitting in so he was half laying down.

"When did this all start, anyway?" I wondered out loud. "I mean, don't get me wrong; I was actually trying to say I'm feeling pretty swell here right now. I've got a hurt leg, but other than that I'm kinda okay with where I am now. You and your sisters are nice enough to us, and I think I'd want to learn how to do magic and fly around and such."

Blaze shrugged and rolled on over so she could fall on her four legs in front of the alcove, then motioned to the door. "Think you can walk a bit with me on that leg of yours?"

I let myself fall out of the alcove as well, and took a few steps. There was a noticeable pressure on my sprained limb, but it didn't hurt as much as yesterday. "Sure, if you don't make me run."

"Where are we going?" brother wondered, joining the two of us while Blaze started to the open doorway.

"Top of the mountain. You get a good view of the area from there," Blaze suggested.

Brother hesitated, and Blaze smiled weakly at that. "Don't worry; you're with me and not running off into the distance. The soldiers won't come beating your weak hide up."

"I'm not weak," brother huffed, falling in line next to me as Blaze started off and I moved to follow her.

Blaze led us through the maze of rooms laid out on the floor of the cavern until we came to a doorway, then pushed the boulder aside for us, and shoved it back in place again once we moved into the tunnel beyond.

We followed her as the tunnel sloped upward, with Blaze ignoring side tunnels when they crossed ours.

"It's been a few months now, maybe a year?" she called back, with the tunnel narrowing to the point where brother had to walk behind me instead of to my side.

"That's only a short time to set up something this intricate," I remarked, thinking of all the caverns and tunnels and things I'd seen so far.

"Well... we already had this place from when Queen Chrysalis decided to invade Canterlot," Blaze revealed with an embarrassed cough. "As said; this is one of our outposts. There are others. You may learn of them in time."

I cast a glance back to brother, who was just staring blankly up ahead with his blue Changeling eyes. Whatever he was thinking, he was keeping it to himself.

Blaze paused a moment at a junction, then motioned off down one of the larger tunnels. "Down there's where the soldiers have their quarters."

Brother and I stared down the dark tunnel.

Blaze waited a moment, then pointed up another way. "Flight school's there, I guess. I told you it can't be taught inside, so we have a bit of a clearing up there. We may see a group get trained while we're up where we're going."

"How much farther?" brother wondered.

"Well, we're going to the topmost exit, so a few more minutes of walking," Blaze replied, then stared past me at brother. "Unless you drag your hooves like in our fight yesterday."

Brother huffed at that and put his shoulder up against my rear. "Get moving, sister; Blaze wants to get to the top of the mountain."

I stared back past my flank, then blew air past my lips to make a farting noise. Brother stopped pushing and looked up with a few blinks while I heard Blaze laughing further up ahead.

"Don't push me; I have a bad leg," I threw at brother, then focused on the road ahead again and walked up over to Blaze, giving her a shove with my left forehoof. "And you stop teasing him, will you?"

Blaze chuckled at my admonishment, but gave me a nod. "Sure. Let's continue."

With Blaze leading the way without further interruptions, we made it up to the top of the mountain without too much effort. The bright sunlight hurt my eyes after having been in the dark caves for the past day or so, causing me to have to squint as I followed Blaze out into the open...

13

As my eyes got used to the daylight, I realized we were rather high up on a mountain to the East of the towering mountain that was Canterlot.

I was not entirely sure anymore of the name of the region, but Blaze helped me before I could ask by pointing around us.

"We're up in the Foal Mountains, here. This is but one of the smaller peaks, with the larger off to the East, as you can see," she pointed out.

I looked around and realized we were still below the snow line, on one of the lower peaks set in-between a set of larger mountains. Canterlot was clearly visible to the West, and I could even see some smoke from buildings over past the mountains to the East.

Probably Fillydelphia or Manehattan. I could not immediately remember how far North each was.

Brother peered down the slope rather than off into the distance, and Blaze motioned to the group of Changelings lower on the mountain.

"As I said before; we can see the flight training from up here," she mentioned, fluttering her own wings a bit to hover herself a few inches above the ground. "You did well trying to control your hovering during your fight yesterday, little sister. I'm sure you'll learn more advanced flight skills in no time."

I peered at her in an attempt to see if she was just fooling around, but she looked to mean it.

"It's a bit getting used to you being honest with us now, Blaze," I offered up. "Especially about what we can and can't do. I know you told us yesterday that it was all some kind of game, but it was still annoying to keep being told we were less than you regular Changelings, you know?"

Blaze gave a nod. "It's not my choice to do that sort of thing, really. It's what was decided to be the best way to train you all."

Brother looked back up at her. "Did that include mocking me in the ring?"

"Oh, no, that was not just for my fun," Blaze chuckled, "you were so wound up there; you needed to blow off some steam. Seeing as how I can dodge just about anything, I thought it was better if you went up against me instead of hurting someone else."

Brother snorted at that, clearly not believing her.

"Well, you did look like a bull pushed to the point of blind rage there, brother," I offered my point of view.

"You both need to work on your strategies; little brother is letting his anger get the best of him, and you focus on things entirely unrelated to the fight," Blaze pushed.

"Yeah, we got that," I sighed. "Now, why did we come up here again?"

Blaze walked off past a set of bushes, pointing down at a structure in a nearby valley. It looked like an old castle or fort, and it took me a moment to place it - until I spotted the double doors in front of the courtyard.

"That's where we came in through!" I realized.

"Yeah, we have a set of siblings stationed there around the clock - ever since you Humans started wandering in through the gateway there," Blaze revealed. "Do you see how close it is to Canterlot? We're not sure if the princesses know of it or not."

I looked over to the West and judged the distance to the painted cartoon castle on the painted cartoon mountain from where I stood myself on the much smaller cartoon mountain.

"Canterlot mostly faces West itself, doesn't it?" I realized. "It's likely they don't usually look this way."

"That is true; most of the train lines go around these mountains as well, rather than through them," Blaze agreed.

"And you said we started coming in through there about a year ago?" I asked, peering down at the fort again.

"I'm not exactly sure. The first human we met was a chance meeting which caused our Queen to call a lot of us back from where we'd been living among the ponies," Blaze offered in a soft voice. "I was travelling around with a circus troupe at the time, so they couldn't find me at first. They found Breeze easy enough, who got to Oval on her own."

"If you're going to say a Changeling called Tracker tracked you down, I'm going to go through those double doors there no matter the punishment I'll face," brother sighed.

"Ander found me, actually," Blaze chuckled. "They had to chase me for a week or so since our troupe had just packed up out of Tall Tale and were trekking through the Unicorn Range."

"Ander's from the same batch as you, but from the clutch before you, right?" I recalled.

"Yeah," Blaze agreed, taking a few steps over to a patch of grass and laying down in it. "I guess he's my big brother, in a way."

I stumbled on over as well, and flopped down to Blaze's right side, looking over the valley ahead of us and the strange fort located in it.

"So what do you think triggered that gateway's appearance?" I wondered.

"I don't know," Blaze shrugged. "Honestly, it's not something I keep myself busy with. I've just been told to gather here in our old outpost and help train the batches which come through."

"Oval made it seem as if she'd return to her home city soon," I offered up.

"She's always been the more optimistic of us," Blaze chuckled, closing her eyes. "No, I think our Queen is going to pull all of us out here to help her amass a new army based on your kind."

Brother let himself fall down on his side to Blaze's left, while sighing out deeply. "I'm not sure about fighting anymore now. Have you seen the sky?"

I looked up at the pastel-blue sky and its cute fluffy cartoon clouds. "What about it?"

Brother pointed Eastward, past Canterlot. "I mean that there; the floating cloud city. I'd like to go visit it."

"Ah, Cloudsdale," Blaze sighed longingly. "Never had a performance there, mostly because of the whole 'unicorns are not supposed to be able to stand on clouds' deal."

"You were posing as a unicorn, then?" I wondered, looking over at Blaze again, who gave a small nod.

"My most long-time guise to date. I actually had a lot of fun with it," Blaze offered with a tinge of melancholy to her voice.

"And then we Humans appeared, Queen Chrysalis pulled you over here, and now the three of us misfits are sitting on a mountain," I offered up with a smirk.

"Speak for yourself," brother snorted. "I'm not a misfit; I'm a bloody Changeling."

Blaze laughed at brother's protest, and gave him a friendly shove with her left forehoof. "You two will do fine. I'm not sure what the rest of your batch is doing, but you two will be fine. Stick with Oval and me, and you'll be fine."

"Didn't Matron say Oval was a troublemaker?" I recalled.

"Well, she's too smart for her own good, mostly. Breeze does what she's told, even if she may stumble in the execution of such," Blaze explained. "Oval will think it over and seek shortcuts so she doesn't have to expend too much energy. She's also lazy; I think she's been holding the same guise for the past twenty years."

"Well, if it works," I offered.

"Yeah, but try explaining to your pony partner that the reason she's not getting pregnant is because you're a different species than her," Blaze mused. "And not a different pony species at that, but a wholly different species altogether."

"Insects, even," I sighed softly.

"Yeah, although you don't have to say it like it's a bad thing," Blaze snorted. "You've been doing a great job at being an insect since you hatched, you know? The both of you, really. I mean it when I say it, and I'll say it a few more times so you get it ingrained in your little heads; you're doing a good job coping with this stuff."

"Oh, so this is where you went off to," a voice behind us spoke up, and we turned our heads to face Oval climbing out of the outpost entrance. "I had to ask the guards which exit you took."

"Hiya Burst!" I called out to her with a grin, and she stared blankly at me a moment.

"Did you put her up to this, Blaze dear?" she spoke flatly, but Blaze shook her head.

"Not at all, Oval sister. She's been calling you Burst since she woke up," Blaze explained truthfully.

I could just grin at Oval at that.

"Oh, well, that's okay then," Oval decided, prancing over. "I did tell her we don't hold to names that much in our family."

"I was just testing it out, Oval, I'll stop if you want?" I suggested, while Oval dropped down on my right side.

"Nah, it's fine little sister. At least one of my siblings will call me by my given name if you keep calling me Burst," Oval chuckled. "Besides, it sounds more masculine than Oval, doesn't it?"

"Psh, you and your stallion preference," Blaze huffed, letting her head drop down until she laid flatly on the grass.

"Juggler," Oval threw back, grinning my way. "So, what are we doing?"

"Waiting for the gate to spit out another Human," Blaze suggested, to which Oval peered out in the direction of the fort.

"Ah, that can take a while though," she remarked.

"Well, the little one here needs to keep her weight off her leg, according to Matron. I thought it'd be nice to sunbathe a bit. Show the hatchlings the world they're going to be living in from now on," Blaze explained.

"Ah," Oval remarked, laying herself down as well. "It's a good day for it; nice breeze."

"What about Breeze?" I asked of Oval, who turned her head to stare at me. Noticing the surprised look on her clutch sister's face, Blaze started to laugh heartily!

14

I lay myself down on the grass as well and breathed in the smells of the place, while Blaze calmed down to my left and Oval gave me a few odd glances from my right side.

The grass I was in smelled like normal, proper grass. It was grassy, this grass. It felt real enough, even if it was clearly drawn in a cartoonish fashion.

The light breeze that drifted past made the grass sway a bit around us, and I enjoyed the cool air on my back.

"Our tails are not that expressive, are they?" I mused softly, and heard a hum from my right side.

"No, although you'll find that changes when you take a pony form," Oval suggested.

"Yeah, my tail was a lot more expressive while I posed as a unicorn than it is now," I agreed with her, remembering how it sort of swayed on its own.

"How difficult is it to learn how to fly when you can't figure out how your wings work exactly?" brother wondered in turn.

"Well, you're going to have to figure them out in order not to plummet down seconds after taking off," Blaze offered to him.

"Breeze does a lot of Pegasi," Oval added, "I'm mostly an Earthpony when I'm over in Hoofton."

"A MARRIED Earthpony," Blaze snorted.

"Oh, please; I've only been married for a short decade," Oval threw back. "You're the one who's been making a name for herself as an entertainer for the past, what? Twenty-odd years?"

"It keeps me fed and moving; you're stagnating, you lazy bum," Blaze decided, taking a nibble off the grass in front of her.

"I'm not stagnating, sister. Do you have any idea how much love a spouse deposits on their partner?" Oval wondered rhethorically. "It's enough to have me full up twice in a day."

"You can actually get full on love, then?" I asked turning my head a little to look at Oval.

"It won't fill the holes," Blaze sighed out.

"It's a matter of speaking," Oval agreed. "It's not like you're actually full, but you feel more energized from it."

"Like a caffeine shot," brother suggested.

"That... works," Blaze chuckled.

"So tell me again why I'm forced to do nothing while it's not my fault sister's got her leg in a cast?" brother wondered for the nth time already.

Blaze pushed herself up from the ground and stared him down. "Hey, I'll make you a deal; if you can push me out of the ring; you can go and continue with your training on your own."

Brother looked up at her towering over him and laid his head back down. "No thanks, you're way beyond me."

I frowned lightly, then pushed myself up in a sitting position. "Brother, I think you should take her up on it."

Brother turned his head to look at me with confusion plastered on his face.

"Look, we both know Blaze is an entertainer; she put up a show yesterday to tire you out while knowing the rest of the Changelings and Hatchlings in the room were watching you both," I offered.

Blaze tilted her head at me. "Where are you going with this?"

"Who's here to watch?" I asked of her.

Blaze looked around and shrugged. "You and Oval, I guess."

"Right; you don't have the usual crowd. You don't need to show off," I told Blaze. "If you can promise brother an honest match where you'll teach him what he does wrong, we can both learn from it."

Oval sat up as well, nodding her head. "Hey, she's got a point. I can draw out a circle for you if you want?"

"I saw you shadowboxing with him earlier in the common room," I told Blaze. "You want to teach us, right?"

Blaze gave a nod to that. "Well, yeah. If little brother can keep his cool, I'm happy to teach him."

"And I'll be watching, so I'll learn as well," I grinned up.

"I'd say we do it, sister," Oval pushed.

Brother carefully moved to sit up as well, while Blaze was letting the idea roll through her mind a bit.

"We all know you're better at dodging than either of us. I don't know about Oval, but I know brother and I are no match to you," I pressed.

Blaze exhumed strongly through her nostrils, then stamped a forehoof on the ground. "Okay, I'll do it."

Brother tilted his head a little. "With the same rules? If I push you out, I'll get to go join the flight training?"

Blaze gave a quick nod to that. "Yeah, I'll give you as fair a match as I can give you, but I'm still not going to make it easy on you."

Brother pushed up into a standing position and lifted his right hoof up. "Hoofbump to seal the deal?"

"Gods, you're such a brony," I laughed.

"Guilty," brother stated, still holding his right hoof up in the air.

Blaze awkwardly raised her own and put it to his. "Right, I'm okay with this."

Oval jumped up and started off in a seemingly random direction. "I know just the right spot to draw the circle!"

I pushed up properly as well, and slowly followed behind her. My cast was starting to make my leg itch and walking with it was only getting trickier as a result.

Oval found a nice flat spot of land and drew the circle with one of her forehooves, and I sat down a little distance away from it so I was not in danger of having someone get tossed onto me as they were forced out of the circle.

Blaze and brother looked at the circle a moment, then walked up to opposite sides of it and waited for Oval to step out of it herself.

Oval, meanwhile, took on the guise of a white unicorn stallion with a fiery red mane and magically manifested a fake microphone.

"In the red corner," she started, but was cut off by Blaze.

"There are no corners in a circle, idiot," she huffed. "Get out of the way so we can get this started already."

"Bah, and here I was trying to make it interesting," Oval grumbled, reverting to her Changeling base look after making the microphone disappear and hurrying over to my left side. "This seat taken?"

I shook my head at it all. "Remember when I said I thought I was hallucinating? You're not making it any better by doing those kinds of things, Burst."

Oval grinned widely as she sat down on the grass next to me. "My sister's not the only one who can be an entertainer, you know? It's something about our clutch; Breeze is a natural joker, Blaze is a juggler, and I can't help myself tinkering a bit as well."

"Breeze trips over her own forelegs. That's not being a natural joker; that's being a klutz," Blaze snorted.

"Which is why we love her so dearly," Oval giggled. "Go take your positions already."

I watched as Blaze and brother took up their positions within the ring, on opposite sides, and felt the tension between them rise. This could turn out to be an interesting match...

15

With the sun beating down on us, unhampered by the few small clouds drifting through the sky, Oval and I sat comfortably on the grass watching Blaze and brother get ready for their match.

It was almost as if I was watching some old movie where there was some epic showdown; the light wind blowing over the mountain causing the grass to move while both Changelings stood relatively still facing one another.

"Well, are you going to do something or not?" Oval remarked, and received a nasty glare from Blaze in return.

"They're sizing each other up, I think," I offered to Oval. "The calm before the storm and all that."

"Beside; no-one told us to start yet, sister of mine," Blaze sneered accusingly.

"Oh, right!" Oval realized. "Get ready; and GO!"

Brother immediately started off in his usual way, rushing forward with no hope of catching Blaze off guard. She dodged his headbutt with ease.

"Okay, so; don't go straight for the enemy. You don't just give them ample time to dodge you, but they can easily counterattack," she explained as she moved one of her lower legs in his direct path.

Brother could barely avoid tripping over Blaze's leg, and only managed by shoving himself sideways, rolling once, and coming to a stop by spreading his legs out as wide as they could go.

He fixed his stance and narrowed his eyes at Blaze.

"If you want to surprise someone, you need to distract them and come at them from a blind corner," Blaze continued to explain.

Brother gave a slow nod at that, accepting the explanation.

"Let me demonstrate;" Blaze started, then quickly spat some resin to brother's left side, only to rush up to him while coming from his right instead.

Brother jumped aside to avoid the resin ball headed his way, moved directly in Blaze's path, and got the full blunt of her attack.

He flew sideways through the air, then suddenly stopped mid-air as a green glow enveloped him.

I looked over at Oval who set Brother back down on the inside of the circle before letting go of him, her horn's green glow dissipating as she did.

"You said the kid would get a fair chance, Blaze," she chided her sister. "That was way too fast for him to follow."

Blaze narrowed her eyes at Oval and walked casually away from brother until they stood on opposite sides in the circle again. "So we're going to play it this way, sister?"

"I'm only making sure the fight's fair," Oval offered up with a grin.

Blaze let out a snort, but then put her focus back on brother, who was idly rubbing his side at the spot where he got hit by her last attack.

"Okay, so if you think you can distract me; come at me, little brother," Blaze told him while trying to hide how annoyed she was at her sister's interference.

"I thought the object of our training was to learn to dodge magic, since we'd learn magic in the room after the fight training one?" I wondered of Oval, who gave a nod back at me.

"Blaze likes to forget that, really," Oval spoke back softly. "It's going to be fine; our siblings who do the magic training are expert magic users themselves. Benefits of a family as large as ours, you know? We have a lot of specialists among our siblings. Besides, there's matrons around to deal with the cuts and scrapes that may occur in case something does go wrong."

I looked down at my leg and smirked. "Still; I didn't expect to sit around for two days while this heals up."

Brother started to walk counter-clockwise around the circle, with Blaze eyeing him.

"That's just a rotten accident. It could have happened to anyone," Oval chuckled.

We both perked up as brother picked up speed, and Blaze started to move nearer to the center of the circle as it seemed brother was trying to skirt the inner edge of the cirle more than the center of it.

"What is he doing?" I wondered, and Oval shook her head.

"I couldn't tell you. This just looks stupid," she sighed.

Blaze looked over to us with a look of confusion as well. "What's he trying to accomplish with this?"

Noticing her attention was on us, rather than him, brother quickly changed his direction and launched himself at Blaze at an angle.

Blaze only noticed him in the last moment and turned away from his attack, causing him to only skim her.

While brother came to a skidding stop so he would not run himself out of the circle - digging up a set of grooves in the grass with his hooves, Blaze stood watching him with a raised eyebrow.

"That was... a surprisingly good use of distraction," she breathed out, looking back along her flank at where she was supposedly hit.

"Yeah, for a moment there I wasn't sure at all what you were doing, but you used our confusion as a tool, to help your attack," Oval agreed.

Brother beamed as he took up position again to face Blaze, grinning up at her. "To be honest here; I have no idea what I'm doing."

"I figured," she snorted back. "Still; a good effort. Now, you'll want to get closer than that before you launch a proper attack. That way, they won't have the time to get out of your way even if they do spot you. Like I did just now."

"He could've had you there, sister; you only spotted him in the last moment," Oval remarked, and got a deathglare from her sister in return.

"You'll also want to not run so much," I offered up. "Remember how Blaze told us to save our energy for when we really need it?"

"Yeah, I've seen Blaze in proper fights," Oval revealed. "When she's up against an opponent of her caliber, they hardly move until one of them makes a mistake."

"Wait, you guys do tournaments or something?" I queried, turning my head to look at Oval.

"Well, no... but we were both there during the invasion of Canterlot," Oval coughed uneasily.

"Failed invasion," Blaze recalled.

"Failed, yes. It was a good setup, but someone, who shall not be named, forgot to take care of one vital part of the plan," Oval sighed.

Brother walked up over to Blaze, then stopped a few paces away. "This is the distance where evasion is impossible, right?"

Blaze glanced between them a bit, took a half step over, and then drew a line between them. "No, this is. You're opening yourself up for attack by coming this close, though. Your opponent has no way to deflect a punch or kick from you, but the same goes for you."

Brother looked at the line, then backed away a bit more and looked thoughtful. "Okay, I think I get it now."

Blaze raised an eyebrow at him. "You get what now?"

"This whole fighting thing," brother suggested, then motioned to Oval and me. "Let's go join them, okay? I'm going to have to think this over."

Blaze shrugged at that, and started off towards us. "Sure. We can do this kind of fight any time you're ready for it."

Brother walked up over to Blaze's side as they came towards us, but then suddenly gave a fierce shove sideways into her.

Blaze's eyes opened wide at the shove, and she stumbled a few paces sideways and out of the ring.

"I win," brother stated calmly, sitting himself down where he stood, still in the ring himself.

Oval stuttered a bit as she tried to find the words, while Blaze looked at the line her sister had drawn up to serve as a ring, her body trembling from the shock from the sudden shove.

I just stayed quiet and watched Blaze as she tried to come to terms with the situation, until she suddenly dropped her head an inch and her expression fell.

"Shit, kid," she started, taking a few steps on over to brother and holding out her right hoof to him. "Do that hoofbump thing again, will you?"

Brother lifted his hoof up to meet Blaze's in mid air, and tapped hers lightly.

"That was a good one," Blaze chuckled softly. "I didn't expect it at all."

"Really?" Oval breathed out, then threw herself backward to land behind me in the grass with her limbs spread out. "REALLY?!? You're usually so competitive about things but you count this?"

Blaze gave me a light shrug. "We were still in the fight until we'd both left the ring. It wasn't exactly the most honest of tactics, but the world out there isn't exactly the most honest about most things either."

I shook my head at it all. "I'm going to have to go up against you once my leg is healed, don't I?"

Blaze smirked at that and shook her head as well. "Nah, I'll shove Oval up in the ring with you."

"Wait, what? When did I agree to this?!?" Oval protested while flailing her limbs wildly.

Blaze just grinned at that and gave me a wink.

16

Blaze excused herself, taking brother down into the outpost again so he could continue learning about magic and flying and whatnot.

I rolled over onto my side and looked over at Oval still trying to come to terms with her sister's joke.

"You're not the fighting sort, are you, Burst?" I asked of her, and she shook her head.

"Very much the contrary, I mean, I was mostly standing around at the sidelines during our attack on Canterlot a few years back," Oval sighed. "I don't have the stomach for more than just playfighting."

I let my head drop down in the grass and peered sideways out at the world. The sun was slowly making its way West, and shadows were starting to grow again.

"You know, I was told the outside here was a dangerous place," I remarked. "Brother and I were warned not to go out on our own."

"It's deceptively peaceful here, isn't it?" Oval chuckled lightly.

"Yeah; not much around that looks dangerous to me," I suggested, closing my eyes while I rested.

"Mostly that's because of the soldiers around us; this is a protected zone for us," Oval explained. "They stay out of sight most of the time, but this whole mountain is protected, right down to that gateway you guys came through."

"It's an old fort, isn't it?" I queried idly, really feeling more calm now brother and Blaze had left. They were both a bit high-strung, especially compared to the more laid-back Oval.

"From before the forming of Equestria, I think," Oval replied thoughtfully. "The brickwork is ancient."

"I didn't see more than the outside of it before I got resined-up by a pair of unicorns," I revealed, yawning lightly in the warmth of the sunlight.

"It's better to catch you as soon as you wander into this world. Imagine a Human wandering off and stumbling into the pony towns nearby; they would start a riot," Oval suggested, and I heard her move from her position only to fall down on the ground to my left again. "How's your leg treating you?"

"It's itchy," I chuckled, opening my eyes to look over at her. "The pain is mostly gone unless I put my weight on it, and even then it's not as much as yesterday."

Oval smiled back at that. "Matron is a good healer."

"Blaze said the three of you thought of her as a mother of sorts since she was there for your hatching," I recalled. "It helped me come to terms a bit more with my new situation."

"Oh, how so?" Oval wondered, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, as I told Blaze; back where we're from, this world is pretty much entirely fictional. There's a hundred fanmade stories about it, ranging from funny ones to absolute horror stories," I started. "Changelings are mostly antagonists in these stories; rash, hiveminded, constantly wanting to take over the world, and then there's our parasitic nature..."

"Ah, yeah," Oval sighed. "There are stories like those among the ponies as well. We've made some bad decisions in the past, and the ponies feel cheated for how we treated them back when."

I closed my eyes again, thinking back to all the stories giving Changelings a bad rap. "Yeah, you and your sisters are a lot different from how the stories claim you should be."

"It's a recent development, I'm sorry to say. We should have known better in the first place, but it's only been since Queen Chrysalis' failed assault on Canterlot that she's opened up to the voices of those of us who had lived among ponykind already." Oval revealed with a sigh.

"You learn a lot about a species when you infiltrate their society and spend your every waking moment among them," Oval continued. "While we still haven't been able to figure out why it is that their love feeds us, we did learn to reciprocate it."

"You mean, you learned to love others whom you may otherwise have just looked at as prey or such?" I suggested.

"Yeah, exactly. Back when I hatched, we were told ponies were evil; hoarding their love for themselves and unwilling to share it with us normally." Oval stated. "We were told that we had no other choice but to lie and steal it from them. So, for the first years of my life that's exactly what I did."

I frowned a bit and opened my eyes to look over at Oval frowning as well. "It didn't sit well with you, I'm guessing?"

"Right," Oval agreed, letting out a sigh while shaking her head. "It was just so stupid! We would knock out a target so we could take over their looks and position in life. It just didn't make sense; that other pony could have shared their love with another sibling instead of withering away somewhere."

I reached out with my left hoof to touch Oval's right. "You're not copying another's look when you're in Hoofton, are you?"

Oval smirked at that, but shook her head. "It's a bit of a mix of several guises. I'm just a random stallion among the rest of them."

"Are we hatchlings told how to do that sort of stuff, or is it expected we learn it on our own?" I wondered. "I mean, I don't know what's expected of us, apart from learning how to feed ourselves."

"Well, there's rumours about you guys," Oval suggested in a half-whisper. "Queen Chrysalis is planning something, but it's still unclear what it is exactly."

"Matron blabbed," I chuckled. "Something about us all going to invade the ponylands with us hatchlings as the fresh blood among your ranks?"

Oval looked upset about hearing that. "What? No?! That would be the stupidest thing to do right now! We've been working to change the way we're viewed by the ponies we live with! They saw us as a big threat some years ago, but nowadays we're mostly mentioned as a nuisance of sorts."

"An afterthought, huh?" I offered up.

"Yeah, not something to get the whole kingdom riled up over, but more of a necessary evil," Oval agreed. "It's still not the best view of us, but it's a lot better than it used to be. Attacking them now would undo years of hard work!"

"But it's the Queen who makes that decision, no?" I wondered, shaking my head a little. "From what I know of Chrysalis, she behaves erratically at best."

"She's been a Queen for a long time now, and there's only been one batch since mine," Oval muttered. "There are voices who wonder if she's still able to produce, if you get my drift."

"Oh, brother," I sighed. "Just my luck to be drafted into the ranks of a dying empire..."

"Don't call it that," Oval winced. "We're not dying, we're... stagnating?"

I smiled over weakly. "And that's why there's three batches of Changelings in this outpost here, all tasked with getting us Humans changed and prepped to join the family, I guess?"

Oval gave it a thoughtful nod. "Yeah, the Queen is investing heavily on this."

"Do you know if any of you went through the gateway to the other side?" I wondered. "I mean, my coming here was some crazy farce of injustice. I'm suspecting there's some infiltrators at work there."

"Possibly," Oval agreed. "I don't know everything that goes on in our family. Most of what I know is hearsay."

"It's too big a family with too many secrets for everyone to know everything," I mused. "I saw the different cliques in the common room; clutches sticking together, right?"

"With anywhere between ten and two-hundred hatchlings per batch, it's easier to stick with the couple of siblings from your clutch, yeah," Oval chuckled embarrassedly. "We know each other more intimately than even others from the same batch."

"I know the feeling; I came into this world with two other Humans, but they barely looked at me after we'd hatched," I sighed out. "I mean, sure; we all kinda look alike now, and I probably won't be able to keep myself apart from the rest of you once my legs get holes in them as well... but it still stung a bit."

"But you hatched on your own, right?" Oval asked. "I heard from Blaze. Most of us hatch together."

"Does that really make that much of a difference?" I wondered, shaking my head at it. "It seems like such a superficial difference."

"In our family, it does really make a difference, yes," Oval stated. "When you hatch with others, you get taken care of together, you'll go through each step of life together. Different clutches develop at different speeds."

"I didn't see much of a difference in speed with my batch?" I suggested idly. "I guess that was intended?"

"Yeah, you'll gather in the first room where you're taught the basics, and are then forced to go at the speed of the slowest member of your batch. That's how this outpost was set up. Don't ask me why," Oval agreed, smirking sideways at me.

"Too big a clutch won't stick together as well as a smaller one, no matter how much pressure is put on them," she decided after a moment of thought, then stretched out a bit beside me with a yawn.

"Hey, the sun is starting to go down the sky there, and soon it will be dark," the Changeling remarked, motioning in the direction of Canterlot and the mountain it was built on. "Canterlot's tall spire blocks out the sunlight far before nightfall."

I sat up and gave Oval a slow nod. "What are you suggesting, Burst?"

"Let's head back to the common room to get some dinner?" Oval grinned, pushing up from the ground as well and standing up properly.

I stood up as well and felt the need to stretch my limbs as much as I could, my right leg stiff from the cast around it.

"That sounds like a plan, but I must admit I liked being outside for the day," I agreed. "It's been informative, even if brother left us."

"Hey, that just means I can crash with you and Blaze again tonight," Oval laughed. "If only you could fly... we could've hung out in one of the upper rooms which have more than three alcoves."

"I'm sure I can learn to fly in no time," I suggested with a grin back at her. "Blaze keeps chiding me for having tried to fly during my fight with brother, but I was starting to get the hang of it before he stuck my hoof to the ground."

Oval raised an eyebrow at that, then grinned wider. "I'm going to want to see you try after dinner, little sister. In the worst case scenario I'd have to catch you as you tumble down."

"Har-har," I sneered.

17

Oval led the way back to the common room, which was literally buzzing with the amount of Changelings flying about through it.

I had forgotten how loud it was, but the sound quickly disappeared to the back of my mind like the first time I had visited. Much like white noise or other such background sounds.

I warranted a guess that it had something to do with me being a Changeling now as well; my own wings made that sound, so it was easier to tune out than back when I was a human. Back then it would have just been a nuisance.

We made our way back to one of the three-alcoved cubicles again, although I could not for the life of me figure out if it was the same one I'd woken up in or not, and Oval all-but rolled into an alcove at seemingly random.

I chuckled at seeing her lay down like a lazy mule, and moved to follow her example. The hard resin around my leg made it a bit tricky, but I managed to slip into an alcove as well and lay down in a comfortable position with my head near one of the veins.

"You know how to do this, right?" Oval wondered, but I poked my fangs into a vein instead of giving her an answer.

I did a quick taste of the resin paste as it poured out of the holes I'd made, spat out a mouthful or two to get to the fresher stuff, and then drank from the vein as I had done for breakfast.

Oval and I drank our dinner in silence, and as I plugged the vein for the second time that day, I realized I was feeling utterly comfortable where I was.

My life before my arrest had been mainly a collection of fast food, lonely days at my computers, and barely any interaction with others except of through forums and chat programs. I made my money off of advertisements and occasional donations from others, and spent it on frivolous things I really didn't need; like the dozens of little statues littering my home.

Life was much different here, and it was a breath of fresh air to me. I had walked more in the past two days than I must have in the year before that, but I did not feel overly tired from it.

My new body was much better equipped for the long walks I'd done, and I looked down at my four legs with a light smile.

"What's cooking in that brain of yours, little sister?" Oval wondered, and I glanced her way.

"I'm actually happy," I returned.

"About what?" I was asked as Oval wandered on over.

"This new life. It has its downsides, like anything, but I think I'm going to enjoy exploring everything that's still ahead of me," I spoke with a smile. "The downsides don't weigh as heavily upon me as this cast, for one."

Oval bumped her hoof against the resin cast a moment, then looked up at the ceiling far above us. "Yeah, that's going to drag you down a bit when you try to fly."

"Still want me to?" I wondered, looking up as well. "I'm not sure I can get up that high on my first try."

"Hey, I already said I'd catch you if you'd come falling down, didn't I? Maybe we should wait for Breeze to get back, though?" Oval suggested, rubbing her chin thoughtfully with her left elbow.

"I can at least try to hover in this cubicle here, right?" I offered up, climbing out of the alcove and standing next to Oval. "I already hovered a little during my fight with brother."

"Hmm, yes. That could work; you'll get a decent feel of how much the cast drags you down that way," Oval mused, her own wings starting to buzz as she lifted herself up from the ground a few inches. "Show me what you know, okay? We can do some prep work until Breeze gets here."

I set my own wings in motion, feeling the air displacement going down along my flank. "Well, I already tried to get some lift back when you were teaching me about how to take on different guises, so that part is easy," I started.

Oval just hovered a little higher herself, watching as I started to create enough lift for my legs to lose grip on the ground.

I wobbled a little sideways, definitely feeling that resin cast weighing my right foreleg down. I tried to compensate by pushing off faster with my right wing than my left, but that just made me go sideways toward the wall, so then I had to correct that again.

I stumbled a little in that fashion until I managed to hover in the same spot, barely an inch above the ground.

"There you go," Oval remarked from her position above me. "Now just push off a little more from the ground; keep in mind that you get less lift the higher you go, so compensate for drift."

I peered up a little and started floating backwards. Not wanting to lose my balance again, I dropped the idea of looking at Oval and instead focused on my flying again.

As instructed, I pushed off from the ground a little more, feeling the change in lift and how the air moved around my body, and I tried to compensate for it which led to more wobbling and swaying about.

It was a little tricky, especially with the gusts of wind from other Changelings passing by overhead, but I felt like I was still mostly in control of my own body. I was flying up a good foot or two and was starting to see the top of the cubicle's walls.

"Okay, now you've noticed the winds hitting you, right? It's only going to get worse once you get up over the walls," Oval warned me as I started to reach that point. "Forget about compensating for that; you'll be tossed aside if you try. The trick is to face them headfirst instead."

I dared to peer up at Oval, who smiled back at me.

"Or you can let yourself drop down into the room again and catch a breather?" she suggested, but I shook my head at that. I had come this far, and I felt the drive to push on.

I lifted myself up out of the cubicle for real and immediately got hit by a gust from a passing Changeling, who slowed down halfway past me and then stopped to look at me with a raised eyebrow.

I stumbled to correct my position in the air from that rush, but then had to correct myself again from another gust coming from a different direction.

I started to look around me more and more, trying to judge which Changelings around me were on their way to cause another problem for me, and turned myself to face them as good as I could.

Oval kept her distance, and as I looked around I noticed several other Changelings having stopped what they had been doing to watch me take my first true flight... I was starting to get a bit nervous under the watchful gaze of all those siblings of mine.

"Okay, you're just going to keep going up, I guess," Oval chuckled, and waved a hoof at me. "Okay, you recognize me, right? So come and follow me."

I raised an eyebrow at that, but she turned her tail on me and started off at a leisurely speed away from me. I realized she was going to fly off whether I followed her or not, and moved to follow her.

While Oval's path was straight as an arrow, mine was going all over the place as I was overthinking the corrections I had to make every time a gust of wind struck me. My head was turning far more than hers as I was still trying to catch our oncoming siblings as they came flying by so I could anticipate on how to compensate for it.

With some effort we made it to a group of alcoves about halfway up to the cavern's ceiling, hewn in a large stalagmite which reached up higher still. The alcoves were set all around the stone pillar like terraces, with the green resin veins snaking through between them all.

Oval led me over to an empty one and hovered nearby while I just about crashed straight into it, then moved to sit on the edge of it next to me and gave me a soft poke with her left forehoof.

I could only lay there panting, having exerted myself far more than I had imagined.

"You look around too much, little sister," Oval told me in a soft tone, half looking at me and half waving away the curious gazes from our siblings with her right forehoof.

I just groaned at that.

"I told you not to worry about compensating for the wind, right?" Oval wondered, stroking her left hoof over my headfin. I felt it fold down a little until her hoof left it, at which point it flopped back up again.

"You also told me to turn into the wind," I offered up, "so I tried to see where the wind was coming from before it hit me so I could turn into it."

Another Changeling lowered their head from the alcove above to look at me from their upside-down position. I noticed them focusing on me first, then on my legs, and then frown a little.

"Yes, I'm a hatchling, is anything wrong?" I threw back at them, getting a little annoyed by their judging looks.

"You can't anticipate on every gust of wind, hatchling," the upside-down one offered in a raw voice which made him sound like a long-time smoker.

"I've got this, brother. Thanks for your input," Oval offered up with a smile, and the other peered at her a moment.

"I had expected a different sister to give flying lessons," he remarked, but then pulled his head back up again.

"Breeze is a bit busy," Oval called after him.

"What about me?" Breeze wondered, flying towards us. "Scoot over, will you?"

18

With Breeze flying on over, I moved as much to the left in the alcove I was in as I could. I expected Oval to scoot over to the left as well, but instead she moved to the right, leaving a spot between us for the approaching sister.

Breeze expertly turned in mid-air as she approached, then dropped down in the alcove with us.

She looked to the right at her younger sister, who gave a grin back, and then left at me.

"Hey, sleepyhead," Breeze offered in her youthful voice. "How's the leg feeling?"

"Well, Blaze and Burst made me walk around on it a bit more than I think Matron intended me to," I suggested.

Breeze blinked and turned to face Oval again. "Burst?"

"Yahuh?" Oval returned to her sister, smiling brightly.

"I haven't heard that name of yours in ages," Breeze commented dryly.

"Blame Blaze," Oval sighed. "I think she's been telling little sister here our entire life's story."

"She must be feeling guilty for having let her get hurt under her watch," Breeze mused, then turned back to me again. "There's not a whole lot I can teach you until Matron takes that cast of."

"She said I had to keep my weight off my leg for a day or two, so I'm guessing it will come off tomorrow?" I offered up.

"Ah, that will take away your uniqueness," Breeze noted, tapping the hard resin on my right foreleg with her left forehoof.

"I still have questions about that," I started, but Breeze turned to Oval again.

"Why are you two up here in the first place? I take it you didn't give her a piggyback ride?" Breeze joked.

Oval snorted and shook her head. "No, just an impromptu flying lesson. Little sister wanted to prove she could do it, and she did fine for a first flight if you ask me."

Breeze turned back to me, with Oval grinning past her in my direction as well.

"Well, you made it halfway up to the ceiling, so sister must not be as bad a teacher as everyone claims she is," Breeze suggested, to which Oval's face fell.

"Hey, now," she started, and I had to giggle a bit at it.

"Do you think you can fly down with us as well?" Breeze asked, motioning a hoof down to the maze of rooms below. "Going up is usually not the problem. Going down without slamming your face into the dirt is where the problem lies."

I followed her gesture and realized how high up we actually were. It was a good few stories up, and there was a real danger of me breaking something if I could not slow my descent enough. I felt the fear rise in my underbelly as I thought of having to fly down while dodging the other Changelings.

Breeze noticed my hesitation and smirked. "It's easier than it looks. Sister and I can take up position next to you to keep the side winds away."

"I thought it better if she learned to deal with those as soon as possible," Oval suggested.

"She has a cast around her leg and you're having her dodge sidewinds?" Breeze demanded. "You can't take shortcuts with this or little sister will drill her head into the side of a mountain."

"I'm not so sure I like the sound of that," I coughed.

"Remember how we were taught; you start off small and work up to the more advanced techniques," Breeze continued to berate Oval. "Like how she started with mimicking you, and then came to me to train to pose as a filly."

Oval nudged her sister in the side, shaking her head with a smirk. "I get it, okay? So do you take her left or right side?"

"Right," Breeze decided. "That leg of hers is going to mess up her landing."

I looked between the two of them as good as I could, then back down to the ground so far below. "Can't we sleep on it first?"

Breeze shook her head. "Matron will want to have a look at your leg tomorrow, and she mainly stays on ground level."

Oval pushed off from the edge of the alcove and flew off in a semi-circle until she was hovering just about in front of me.

Breeze set her own wings in motion and simply let herself drift out of the alcove, then looked back at me. "Come on, we'll guide you down."

I moved a little closer to the edge myself, taking a few deep breaths. My wings worked, and I had got some energy back from resting in the alcove, it was just my irrational fear of heights popping up.

As a Human, it was understandable; I would have need of a parachute to make this landing safe.

As a Changeling, it was kinda stupid. I had wings. I had two sisters eager to help me down to safety in case I faltered.

One last inhale, and I set my wings aflutter as well, joining the pair of them in the air in front of the alcove.

"Falling is easy, but you'll want to stay in control of your descent," Breeze spoke, moving up to my right side - close enough that I could feel the wind from her own wings.

Oval moved up to my left side before I could slip sideways from Breeze's closeness, and evened up the airflow around me with her presence.

"I need to slow down my wing movements to go down, right? Easy enough," I voiced my thoughts.

"But not too much at once, and you'll want to push off again once you near the ground so you land smoothly," Oval suggested.

I focused on slowing down my wing motions, and almost immediately dipped lower than both sisters!

Breeze was the first to catch up, herself falling lower past me and only slowly pushing herself up to an equal height again, while Oval came down slower than her and stayed a little above me.

The three of us descended fairly quickly, and Breeze glanced sideways at me. "Okay, keep this speed and aim for the empty area down there."

I looked at where she was pointing and flew forward a little so I was coming down straight at it. Oval and Breeze matched my movement, and I was happy to have their support.

With the both of them on either side of me, the only side winds I had to deal with was the vortex created by them both, but it was far easier to do so than the sudden gusts from our other siblings.

Our wings sort of naturally settled in a rhythm which had Breeze's left wing and my right push off at the same time, and Oval's right wing matched up with my left once she fell back down to my side again, even if our wings were moving so much faster than those of Pegasi.

We came down upon the ground faster than I might have wanted, and I felt my fear rise again in my underbelly. Breeze shook her head, though.

"Wait for it," she spoke as we dropped a few more feet.

I glanced over at Oval who kept the same speed as us, and found some solace in accepting they would have pulled up themselves if they feared for their own safety.

"Okay, just push off a little to break our fall once we reach the height of the walls there," Breeze pointed out, "and then extend your legs while you make the last drop."

We continued our downward motion, but then suddenly Oval pulled up away from me as we reached the height of the walls around us and started descending between them.

I moved my wings a little faster as well, slowing my descent, and extended my legs as Breeze had said, watching Breeze herself slow down and land moments before I got to the ground.

She looked back up at me as I came down, but then quickly moved forward and supported me as I landed. Oval came down on my left side in the same breath, and caught a nasty glare from her older sister.

"You were supposed to help catch her," Breeze snorted over my back, while I limped a bit over to the nearest alcove and sat down on its edge - my heart racing from the successful drop down.

"Little sister was doing fine without our help," Oval suggested, moving over to me and giving me a soft nuzzle with her left cheek to my right. "You did great there, sister."

"It was more about mental support than physical," Breeze muttered, taking a few steps over before just sinking through her legs and laying down on the ground before me.

"She's fine," Oval threw back, peering at me with her big blue eyes. "You're fine, right?"

I gave a slow nod to that, slowly getting my heart to stop racing so much. "Yeah... just some irrational fear that doesn't want to die down."

"Nothing irrational about it," Breeze huffed.

"Well, at least we're all safe and sound on the ground again," Oval suggested, having a seat on the ground herself. "And in the perfect place to make our beds in."

"It's not exactly your house in Hoofton," Breeze chuckled.

"Let's hope there's a chance for little sister to come visit there after all this," Oval remarked, smiling over at me.

I licked around the inside of my mouth, then gave a nod. "I'm going to need some sleep first, though."

"Right!" Oval grinned.

"Don't tell me we have to teach you how to do that as well?" Breeze sighed.

"I can do this myself, don't worry," I threw back. I slipped off the alcove's edge, sticking my tongue out at Breeze, then turned my head for it and started spitting out the soft resin balls at it to make my bed...

19

I woke to find Breeze and Oval still resting on their own beds, and wurmed my way up a bit to one of the veins so I could get a sip of breakfast.

After cleaning my chin from some dripped resin, I sat up and idly rubbed my left hoof against the hard cast around my right leg, trying to get rid of the itchy feeling, but to no avail.

I peered between the two sisters sleeping in their alcoves, and tried to find some way to keep them both apart. They were just a pair of Changelings to me, just like all the other Changelings in the common room. They looked exactly like all the others.

Where my legs were still smooth and clear of holes, theirs were full of holes. They were set at various angles and I could see right through their limbs even from my position on my bed.

Their chitin plating was smooth and reflective, just like that on any other Changeling around. Their fins were shaped about the same as the rest, everything sort of looked the same!

I climbed off out of the alcove and limped on over to the one of them lying in the middle alcove, taking a closer look. They were resting comfortably on their resin bed, but I could notice a light twitching of their facial muscles as they dreamt.

A few paces away was their clutch sister, and I wandered on over to get a better look at her. She was slightly smaller than the other, which would usually mean she would be the youngest in the group.

Knowing Breeze had a penchant for passing as foals however, I guessed this was Breeze and Oval had taken the center alcove again.

Whoever she was, her eyes were opening to find me standing right next to her. She frowned a bit as she reached a forehoof up to rub at her cheek, poked her eye with it instead, and winced from the mistake.

"Good morning, Breeze," I spoke softly, to which she tried to waft me away.

"Bleh, I was dreaming about pancakes," she grumbled, pushing herself closer to the nearest veins to get some breakfast.

I turned away from her to give her some privacy during her feeding, only to find another sibling drop down into the room with us.

While I was still trying to figure out if I knew them, they walked up to me and punched me in the chest with a forehoof, grinning widely.

"Hey, kid, how's the leg?" Blaze wondered, while I stumbled to get my balance back.

"Oof, did you have to punch me, Blaze?" I queried, narrowing my eyes at her.

"Bah, you can take it," Blaze chuckled. "So, the leg?"

I looked down at my right leg and lifted it a bit so I could show Blaze the cast. "Itches like crazy, but I don't feel pain anymore."

"I spoke to Matron on the way down; she should be over soon," Blaze revealed. "Hey Breeze."

Breeze sat up in her alcove, and I turned to halfway face her again.

"Blazey, hey. You didn't hear anything about how long we're still stuck here for, did you?" Breeze wondered, idly rubbing at her face with her right elbow.

"Nothing substantial yet, although the rumour mill keeps turning," Blaze sighed, moving over to sit down next to her sister. Breeze let herself fall sideways against her larger sibling, and nuzzled her softly.

"Anything beyond what Matron already blabbed to me the other day?" I questioned, walking over to the pair and sitting down on the ground before them.

"Few new things; I found out where your batch went, so we can get you reunited with them once you're fully trained, for one," Blaze suggested, but then raised an eyebrow as I must have made a face. "You're not liking that plan?"

"To be honest; I hatched on my own, and then got my leg hurt during training," I started. "I've missed out on whatever it was they did together after that, especially since Matron pulled brother and me away to this place."

Blaze gave a thoughtful nod to that while Breeze seemed to be half falling asleep against her again.

"Having spent the past two days with you three, off and on," I continued, motioning my left forehoof in a gesture to encompass the two before me as well as the sleeping Oval, "I have more of an attachment to your clutch than I do my whole batch."

"I still can't easily keep you three apart when you sleep, though," I remarked, "although I guess Breeze is slightly smaller than Burst and you, Blaze?"

Blaze grinned up at that and looked down at Breeze leaning heavily into her. She gave her sister a few soft pokes to wake her again, then turned her attention back to me. "Yes, she is the smallest," she agreed. "To us it's... just natural to know who's who, I guess. I can pick these two out of a crowd from miles away."

"How, though? All siblings in this cavern look alike to me," I prodded.

Blaze smirked a little at my question, nudging a grumbling Breeze with her elbow to keep her awake. "I don't know what to tell you, kid," she started.

"I mean, I can look up at the ceiling there and point out everyone from my batch," Blaze continued, pointing her left hoof up at the ceiling. "Cinder's up there, Speck a little off to the left, and that there's Razor."

I looked up at the collection of grey bodies above me and gave a shrug. "I don't know any of them. I can't see a difference between them."

"That may be your issue," Breeze suggested softly. "We've lived with our siblings for years now, while you only hatched two days ago."

Blaze agreed with that, smiling down at her younger sister. "That's probably it; the better you know someone, the easier it is to recognize them."

I sighed at that, letting my forelegs slide forward so I fell into a laying position. "Well, I guess I also have the problem of being from a different world."

A yawn off to my left made the three of us peer over to Oval, who just turned around on her bed and curled up again.

Blaze let out a snort and stood up, walked on over, and punched her youngest sister in the flank. "Don't you dare!"

Oval all-but jumped up in surprise at the punch, hit her head on the curved ceiling of the alcove, and then crashed down on her bed hard enough that several resin blobs came flying off it in random directions!

"Who, what, where?!?" Oval cried out, turning quickly to face Blaze and setting her bewildered gaze upon her.

"I've told you time and again that you need to get up when you wake up; not turn over and try to sleep more," Blaze chided Oval, motioning back toward Breeze and I with a hoof. "Take a page out of their books; They woke hours before you already!"

"I wouldn't say hours," I mumbled, while Breeze moved to stand up while at the same time trying to stifle a yawn with her right foreleg. The result was her teetering over to the right until she bumped into a wall, and some confused blinking.

"Oh, please," Oval threw back to Blaze upon seeing Breeze stumble. "Breeze hasn't been up for more than half an hour; I know that dance better than you."

She slipped off her bed and onto her hooves next to Blaze, only to stretch herself out with a long yawn after.

"It doesn't matter how long ago they woke up; I'm talking about you, Oval," Blaze decided. "You always do this; you roll over and sleep through half the day, and then I have to explain to the others why you're not at your station yet."

"Mostly cause I sleep better when I'm home," Oval muttered, looking around herself as if she still was only half awake.

"This IS our home!" Blaze decried!

"Outpost," I corrected her, causing Breeze to giggle.

"She is right there," Breeze said as Blaze turned her frown upon me.

"Well, okay, outpost. But it's as close to the main Hive as anything," Blaze snorted.

"I meant my home in Hoofton," Oval mumbled, stumbling over to a wall and sinking her fangs into a vein.

"That's not your home," Blaze sighed tiredly, letting herself fall down to rest on her belly on the floor. "However much I liked it, the circus troupe was not my home either."

"I travel around too much as well," Breeze added, then gave a dumb grin my way. "Can't exactly be a foal without parents in one place for too long, or ponies will start asking questions."

I could see her point in that, but had to shake my head at the three of them. "As I said just earlier; I think I have far more in common with the three of you than the rest of my batch," I chuckled. "If anything; you're much more fun to hang out with."

21

Before lunchtime, in so far as I could judge the passing of time from within the cavern system, the five of us started off out of the common room and back through the tunnels.

Blaze was leading the way through the winding tunnel system. Oval came following behind her sister, giving casual looks back in my direction since I was following behind her. Matron had taken up the rear, with Breeze in-between her and myself.

After far too many turns going left, right, left again, then right again, I had lost all sense of direction. It was a good thing Blaze knew the way, but I wondered how I would find my way through the outpost on my own, or indeed the main Hive if I ever made it there.

We soon wandered into a room in which a waterfall rushed down to fill a small underground lake, which itself led out through another tunnel to form an underground river. The amount of moisture in the room was pressing, and I realized by the steam coming off the water that it was a hotspring of sorts.

A dozen Changelings were gathered around the lake near holes in the floor, some of their horns glowing green as they focused their magic on something inside these holes. It was not immediately clear what it was that they were doing, but Blaze was leading us along the walls in a clockwise circle around them rather than heading for them.

I quickly realized why when I spotted a small group of just five Changelings half-hidden in a dark corner of the room, just sitting, laying, or hanging about while watching the proceedings in the more lit areas.

One or two had already turned their attention for us as we neared them, and the rest of them had turned to face us by the time we got close enough to talk without disturbing the teaching in the main portion of the room.

"Hello sisters, brother," Blaze offered in greeting as she stopped in front of them, Oval walking up to her right side.

"Sisters," the Changeling closest to our little group offered in return, her voice clear as a bell. She looked past Blaze and Oval to me, raising an eyebrow.

"Is that Caster?" another sister asked, shaking her head. "Darn, now we need to find a new nickname for her."

"I thought we'd settled on Resinhoof?" The lone brother in the group suggested.

"Either way it's not going to work anymore," the earlier one voiced the general concensus, judging by the general shaking of heads.

"Give the kid a chance to earn herself a proper name, will you?" Blaze sighed with noticeable annoyance to her voice. "She's still needs to learn how to use her magic."

"Sure, we'll give her a chance," the Changeling in front agreed. "Did she pass your competence test then, Blaze?"

"Note how she's brought her whole clutch over," the sister behind her remarked, smirking a bit. "It's almost like there's something special about this Hatchling."

"Bah, she's too small to have come from a Queen's egg," the third huffed, looking back at her brother. "Do you sense any special magic aura around her or anything, brother?"

The male Changeling narrowed his eyes at me, but then shook his head. "No, but she could be hiding it."

There was a grumble from behind me, but then Matron trotted up past me in a huff. Blaze and Oval quickly stepped aside to make room for her as she walked right up to the group and straightened herself to full height.

"You all know better than to make jokes at another sister's expense," Matron told them. "I was there when you hatched and I have seen you stumble through your own training. Oh, the stories I could tell the little sister! She would never take you seriously again!"

The group as a whole looked shocked and backed away a little from Matron.

"Ah, I didn't mean to say she had no magic prowess at all," brother muttered back. "I mean, I'll train her if she wants?"

"Yeah, we were just fooling around, Matron," one of the sisters agreed.

"We're just a bit bored, Matron," another offered up. "There are fewer Hatchlings around than were expected for our rotation."

Matron glared at each in turn, but then pointed a hoof at one of them in particular. "Moonshine, if I remember correctly you've been studying pony magic in your guise as a scribe at Canterlot's Royal Archives? Have you made any progress applying this knowledge to our own?"

The sister shook her head and looked down a bit. "I can't even begin to comprehend some of the stuff I'm reading there, Matron. I would have reported back to our Queen at the first sign of a breakthrough, you know that."

"But you understand magic better than your clutch siblings, even if some are better at reading auras or have stronger magic prowess?" Matron enquired, to which Moonshine gave a nod which was taken up by the others around her.

"Then tell your little sister how she can manifest her magic without blowing herself or us up, will you?" Matron decided, stepping aside so I was left face-to-face with the other Changeling.

Moonshine glanced around to her siblings a moment, but they looked everywhere except at her. "Oh, thanks for the support, guys," she sighed.

Resolving to teach me, Moonshine walked forward - through the opening left between Matron and Oval, and gave me a weak smile. "Well, runt, I guess we're going to do some magic together. Follow me."

I raised an eyebrow at being called "runt", but moved to follow her as Moonshine passed me by and headed for one of the unoccupied holes near the lake.

Our movement out of the darkness caused a few heads to turn, but they either returned their attention to their students or were chided for it by their teachers shortly after.

Without the cast around my leg, I was just another Hatchling to them all. There was no sign that any of them had overheard the conversation taking place in the darkness near the wall.

Moonshine took a look in the hole as she neared it, then used her magic to pull a glob of green water out of it. She moved it out to the small lake and let it sink into the body of water so it wouldn't make a splash.

She then proceeded to lift a fresh blob of water out of the lake and deposited it in the hole she had just cleared. I watched as she stirred the water around a bit, then lifted it all out again and put it back in the lake.

I opened my mouth, intending to ask what she was doing, but Moonshine was not at all paying attention to me. Instead, she lifted another blob of the warm water out of the lake, put it in the hole again, and peered down through the rising steam.

I closed my mouth again, looking around me at the other Hatchlings. They were using their magic to do something within the holes, but the holes themselves were deep enough that only they and their teachers could see what exactly.

I heard a spitting sound and looked back at Moonshine, who looked up at me in the same moment.

"Okay, so you'll find a blob of hard resin resting in the water here," she pointed out, motioning toward the hole with her left forehoof. "All I want you to do is to look at it, and make the resin spin."

I raised an eyebrow at that, taking a step forward to look down through the rising steam at the green blob drifting in the small layer of water inside the hole.

"Okay," I offered, "so how do I do that?"

"Our magic is mostly transformative; we pick a guise and apply it to ourselves to appear as something else," Moonshine started. "You should have already learned how to do this while in a previous room."

I gave a nod to that, and motioned back toward the darkness. "Yeah, Oval taught me about most adult pony forms and I tried to learn from Breeze how to do foal forms, but I can't quite get that last bit down yet."

"Heh," Moonshine responded with a shake of her head. "If you want my advice; forget about the foal stuff. It's more trouble than it's worth."

"The thing you need to get out of this is that that magic was turned inward; you imagined something to happen and then turned it onto yourself so you transformed into a new guise," Moonshine continued to explain, motioning with her hoof to indicate the magic going toward her.

"In this training, you'll start the same way; you imagine what it is you want to have happen," she stated, then moved her hoof away from her instead of toward her, "but then you push it out, not in."

I gave another nod at that. "Sounds easy enough?"

"The trick is to control just how much magic you send out," Moonshine warned. "Our bodies can take a decent punch before we go down, so our transformative magic is mostly harmless to us."

I raised an eyebrow at that. "Mostly?"

"Yeah, don't worry about that for now. The resin cube down there can take a lot less of a punch, though," sister explained, her horn starting to glow.

"If you do it right, like this, you can make the resin turn around, like this," she continued, staring down in the hole.

I looked down in the hole as well, watching as the resin started to slowly spin clockwise, but picking up speed as I observed it.

"If you send too much magic out at once however," Moonshine continued, the cube starting to spin faster and faster until it finally exploded violently!

I stumbled back until I landed on my rear, my eyes wide from the ferocity of the explosion!

Moonshine simply stood near the hole, a green glow covering the top of it. She grinned up at me and withdrew her magic shield, which had been the sole reason I did not have a face full of resin.

"Okay, I see your point," I coughed uneasily, watching as Moonshine moved to clear the hole from resin dust and put new water in.

Moonshine spat another blob of resin at the hole, then motioned for me to join her again. "Your turn."

22

I hesitantly stood up from where I had fallen on my rear, and approached the hole again under Moonshine's watchful gaze. As I looked down into it, I could see the new blob of hard resin resting in the water below, steam wafting up around it.

"Just focus on what you want it to do," Moonshine repeated herself. "When you think you got it, gently push that image over to the resin. Think of it as if you're whispering your magic to it. You only need to give it a light push for it to start to move."

I gave her a slow nod and started picturing the resin spinning clockwise like it had while Moonshine had been controlling it. In my mind it was spinning fairly slowly, slower even than those spinning cursors on the computer when you have to wait for something to load.

I was overly cautious thanks to the shock of the explosion, even knowing that Moonshine had a shield in place, or would have if I messed up.

"Are you picturing it spinning?" Moonshine wondered, and I gave her a quick nod. "Good, now push that image out as gently as possible until it connects with the resin below."

I held my breath as I moved the picture in my mind out to the blob of resin in the hole in front of me, and watched it in my mind's eye as it was spinning over it.

Nothing happened.

I resumed breathing as the thing at least had not exploded in my face, and continued to picture the resin spinning. I continued to picture the resin spinning through my mind's eye as an overlay of sorts on the real thing.

Nothing continued to happen.

"Go on," Moonshine prompted softly.

"I'm trying," I offered back as a frown settled on my face. "I'm seeing it spinning in my mind."

"No, you need to push it out of your mind and at the resin," Moonshine suggested.

"That's what I'm doing!" I threw back, frowning more heavily as I kept my focus on the resin in the hole.

Nothing happened! Nothing!

"How are you doing it?" Moonshine asked. "Tell me what you're doing."

I continued to see the overlay of the resin spin right over the actual resin, with the actual, real, resin doing absolutely nothing in defiance of my attempts to manipulate it.

"Okay, so I imagined the resin spinning slowly in my head," I started, and heard an agreeing hum from the other Changeling.

"So I then pushed that image out of my head and to the resin in the hole," I continued, to another hum.

"And now it's sort of spinning on top of the resin like it's projected onto it, but the resin is doing nothing!" I finished in dismay!

"What? No, that's not right," Moonshine exclaimed. "Did you push it out through your horn?"

"I... what?" I stumbled, trying my hardest not to look up since I'd seen what errant magic had done to the former resin block, and I didn't want to accidentally explode my teacher.

"Did I forget to mention that?" Moonshine wondered in mild embarrassment. "Okay, so you push the picture through your horn and then to the resin."

I closed my eyes and let myself fall back until I sat on the ground, pushing the image of spinning green blobs out of my mind before I dared open my eyes again.

Moonshine was looking at me with a bit of a hesitant smile on her face. "Yeah, if you just put the image out there, nothing will happen."

"I figured," I muttered flatly.

"Our horn works as a catalyst to get the magic out there, just like with the Ponies," Moonshine explained, reaching up with her right hoof to tap hers gently. "We don't use it when putting up our guises since we keep that magic on the inside, but when you want to control something outside of your body, you're going to have to use it as intended."

"So I just push the image up into it, then?" I suggested, to which Moonshine looked difficult.

"Sorry, it's my first rotation to this class, and I had not expected this kind of a question," she sighed. "I've been using magic for so many years now that it just comes natural to me."

"So what do I do?" I asked.

"You hang on a moment," Moonshine suggested, then ran off to a nearby pair of other Changelings and struck up a conversation with them.

I sat watching them until I spotted a different Changeling come out of the darkness from where Moonshine and I had come. I tilted my head at them, but then a second Changeling appeared and pushed the other back into the shadows again while shaking her head at them.

I idly wondered who the pair had been; Blaze was brazen enough, but so was Oval. I chuckled softly to myself as I looked back to where Moonshine was, and saw she was on her way back already.

"Okay, so," Moonshine started as she got near enough for me to hear her at normal volume, "what you do is this; you picture the image, you push that image into your horn, and then you activate your horn while continuing to push the image out into the world."

"Activate my horn?" I wondered, and Moonshine gave a nod at that.

"Yeah, I sort of do that automatically, so I forgot how to do it consciously, but I asked around a moment," she explained her quick trip. "You need to feel the energy in your body fill up your horn. Like, now what did she say... Like ants running up your horn from the base to the tip of it."

I shivered at the thought of ants running over any part of my body, let alone my horn, but that thought alone made my horn fizz with green sparkles of energy!

"Holy crap!" I exclaimed, louder than I probably should have, and set my wide-open eyes on a grinning Moonshine.

"There you go. Now, remember that feeling, cause you're going to need to apply it to the resin," she offered up, motioning back to the hole with her left hoof.

I went cross-eyed, in so far as my full blue insect-like eyes could, as I tried to look up to the tip of my horn, then imagined ants running up over it again. It fizzed again, stronger than before, but then I felt a hoof poke me in the shoulder.

"Hey, Hatchling," Moonshine called me to attention, frowning at me while standing almost nose-to-nose with me. "Focus your magic, or it's going to blow something up that's not shielded by me."

I winced at the thought. "Yes ma'am," I stated, following Moonshine back to the hole again.

"The resin is down there," Moonshine pointed out again, and I looked down the hole once more. "Now you know how to activate your magic, make it spin."

I was far too eager, now knowing I was actually capable of doing magic, and thought of the spinning resin image, pushed it to my horn, sent the ants running out over my horn, and pushed the image out into the world about in the same second.

The resin in the hole disintegrated before my eyes, and a cloud of green steam rose up as all the water in the hole evaporated...

Moonshine let out a deep sigh. "What did I say about being gentle?"

I looked up sheepishly. "Sorry, sister."

Moonshine levitated a new batch of water over, spat another resin block into the hole, and motioned to it again. "You're not the only one blowing things up. Controlling the amount of magic you use is one of the more difficult aspects of it."

I took a deep breath, exhaled, and then set myself back to the task of spinning the resin again.

Image, horn, ants, sending the image out into the world, and... poof. Another resin block gone.

Moonshine shook her head at me and prepared the hole anew. "Softly, gently, carefully... please."

I tried again; image in my head. Push the image into my horn. Let the ants crawl up over my horn. Send the image out to the resin in the hole like the faintest whisper on the softest breeze in the... It exploded again.

"Goddamnit!" I cried out, while Moonshine cleaned out the hole again.

"If we're going to be here all day, I'm going to have to charge you for my time," Moonshine joked flatly.

23

After a lot of disintegrated blobs and rising steam, I sat down on my rear and wiped the sweat off my brow.

Moonshine had got used to prepping the hole in the ground for a fresh attempt, and just looked thoughtful while she absentmindedly floated new water into it and spat the resin into it from out of the corner of her mouth.

"I don't know what I'm doing wrong here," I sighed. "I mean, I'm trying my best to give that image the softest push imaginable. It floats down to the resin as slow as I can make it go. I even changed the spin rate until it was barely noticeable! What am I doing wrong?"

Moonshine shook her head while in deep thought. "I'm not sure. I'm trying to think of something that could help you, but I'm really not up to the task of teaching basic magic. Now, if you asked me how to transmutate one object into another, that's a different story. I actually know a pony spell for that."

"How fast are you charging your magic?" a familiar voice asked from behind me, and I turned my head to see two Changelings there, one slightly shorter than the other.

"Breeze?" I asked, and the larger one flashed green until an Earthpony stallion stood in her place, one eye more oval than round. "And Burst, of course."

"I asked; how fast are you charging your magic?" Breeze repeated, moving up to my left side and sitting down as well.

"Er, I dunno; I'm making ants run up my horn to activate the magic, right?" I suggested.

"Ants?!?" Oval laughed out loud. "I thought you were good at magic, Moonshine?"

"That Hatchling there said it felt that way," Moonshine pointed out, motioning to the pair of Changelings she'd been talking to earlier.

Breeze raised an eyebrow at Moonshine, but then put her attention to me. "If the idea was to describe a tickling sensation, then yes. Charging your horn does feel a little ticklish."

"I noticed," I remarked. "I just keep exploding those resin blocks."

"Yes, that's because you're most likely overcharging your magic," Breeze explained, while Oval flopped down flat on my right side.

"Ah, that was one option I hadn't considered yet," Moonshine suggested.

"I've been counting your attempts; you're up to your fourty-seventh now," Breeze stated. "This is ridiculous, Moonshine. You should have figured out what the problem was by now."

Moonshine frowned at the suggestion of incompetence on her part.

"She's probably overthinking it," Oval offered up. "Just like little sister here. Looking past the actual problem at things which are entirely unrelated."

"Tell me what you've been doing so far, will you?" Breeze asked of me, and I pointed my right hoof to the hole.

"Okay, so I've been imagining this resin ball spin around in my mind's eye," I started. "Then I push that image of the spinning resin into my horn."

"Good steps so far," Breeze agreed.

"How far up your horn?" Oval wondered, but Breeze glared at her. "Well, it doesn't matter, I guess..."

Breeze made a motion with her right hoof to prompt me to continue.

"Okay, so once that image is up where I think my horn is at, I make ants go up my horn because I was told to do that," I sighed. "Which I guess is wrong, considering what you just said."

"And what do you do after?" Breeze prompted.

"Then I send that image out of my horn as slowly as possible to overlay with the actual resin so it starts to spin," I continued, "and then it explodes instead."

"Yeah, you're overcharging your horn. Lay down," Breeze demanded, and I flopped down following Oval's example.

Breeze moved a little until she could put her right hoof up over my head. Looking in Moonshine's direction, she tapped me lightly on the top of my head.

"This is where your brain is," Breeze stated, "or in your case a random collection of information from both your old life and your new."

Moonshine raised an eyebrow, but I just went "Ahuh?"

Breeze's hoof slowly slid to the base of my horn. "This is where your magic comes from, but it can't go anywhere but into our bodies from there."

"Which is how we put up guises, right?" I suggested.

"Yeah," Oval agreed from my right side.

Breeze's hoof slid up an inch over my curved horn. "Your horn tapers from here to a point further up. If you send a lot of magic into the base, it will squeeze out of the top at greater speeds than you may want."

I shivered a bit at the feeling of Breeze's hoof moving over my horn. "A-ah?"

Breeze either didn't notice the shivering, or didn't care; her hoof sliding further up. "You can build up a great amount of energy in your horn before releasing it, which is great in case you want to explode something."

"Or someone," Moonshine noted.

"I'd rather try to avoid that," Oval sighed.

"Amen," I offered into the conversation.

Breeze finally tapped the tip of my horn once she reached it with her hoof. "And this is the tip; where you expel your magic from. Do you have a good feeling of how large your horn is now?"

I looked up at her as best I could. "Er, yeah... just about the same size as yours, right?"

"I didn't mean what it looks like to you, but what it feels like. Did you feel how big it is?" she pushed.

I gave a slow nod. "Yeah, it's more sensitive than I thought. I felt your hoof as it stroked up over it."

"You will always feel it being larger than it physically is," Breeze explained. "If you run your tongue over your fangs, they feel like grand protrusions, while they're actually a lot smaller. Which is fine for fangs, but a problem with magical horns."

"Because you accidentally load more magic into them than you intend to?" I realized.

"Exactly," Breeze returned with a smile. "Just a small bit of magic is enough for what Moonshine is trying to teach you. Don't make ants run up your horn. Think of a bead of sweat instead. A single, small bead of sweat. Just lightly tickling your horn as it runs past the base of it."

I couldn't help but envision it as Breeze spoke, and I felt the tickle on my horn again. A small green light flickered at the tip of my horn as I did, and I went cross-eyed again trying to look at it.

"That there is all the magic you need," Breeze chuckled. "Not even enough to read by, but enough to make a floating blob of resin turn."

Moonshine sat looking mildly offended, but I pushed up carefully, trying to maintain the tickling feeling in my horn, and approached the hole again.

Just a single drop of sweat, leaking past the base of my horn. That's all Breeze claimed was needed.

I looked down at the resin drifting in the water below, and imagined it turning again.

I pushed that image from my mind's eye over into my horn, let the imaginary drop of sweat run past its base, and then sent the image out into the world, to hit the resin where it lay.

For a brief moment the resin laid as still as before, but then it slowly but surely started to rotate clockwise until it went as fast as my mental image had!

A shiver ran through me as I realized I had actually performed real magic - beyond that of taking on a different guise - and had affected something tangible in this cartoon world... and the resulting magical charge made quick work of the resin blob.

I sheepishly looked up at Moonshine, who smirked at me. "Okay, that's a good start. We can go from here," she turned her attention on Breeze, "without further help."

Breeze lay down with a soft yawn, portently ignoring Moonshine and her words, and Oval seemed to have fallen asleep where she lay.

Moonshine let out an angry snort, but then went on her way to prepare the hole again for my next attempt.

24

Making the resin blob spin was one thing, applying different spinrates to it - while it was spinning - was a different one altogether.

Rather than having to reimagine it again, pushing it through my horn again, loading up my magic again, and then overlaying the image... again, I just had to imagine the spinrate changing on the object itself.

After all, Moonshine claimed, I already had a "connection" with the resin, so my magic would just change it as I needed it to.

So I put my focus on the resin blob, made it spin, and then tried to make it spin faster. Instead of doing what I wanted it to do, the blob decided to smash itself into the wall and break itself apart...

Moonshine made a fresh blob again, and I went to work on the resin again. Get it to spin, then spin it up faster... and it launched straight out of the hole to break apart on Moonshine's shield!

"You're applying force to it at an angle," Breeze muttered idly, rolling over on her side.

"Stay out of it, you," Moonshine snorted, then looked at me again. "You're applying force to it at an angle. Try to envelop the whole blob with your magic."

"That's what she said," Oval chuckled, apparently having woken up again.

"Will you two let me teach?" Moonshine decried, huffing a bit in distress.

I thought that over for a moment. Letting the magic envelop the resin... "Think in 3D?"

"Yeah, picture the whole picture," Breeze agreed.

"I'm going to paste your mouth shut if you keep this up," Moonshine grumbled.

I stared down into the hole again, and tried to envision the blob as if it was some three-dimensional simulation on the computer and I was turning my camera around it to see all sides of it.

This brought a new problem with it; instead of spinning clockwise, the resin started spinning in a wholly different direction! I tried to correct it... and the expected result happened again.

"Damn, this is harder than it looks," I breathed out. "I mean, I get the idea behind it, but now it spun in the wrong direction."

Moonshine beat Breeze to the punch and pointed a hoof at the hole. "Use the hole as an anchor. It's effectively a cylinder."

I slapped myself in the face with a rather hard left forehoof before I realized what I was doing and almost punched myself knock-out as a result!

"Ow! Goddamned... facehoofing is not nearly as pleasant as I thought it would be!" I exclaimed in pain, rubbing at my sore left eye with the same hoof which struck it a moment before.

Oval looked up at me from where she was still laying on the ground. "Should we call Matron?"

"Feh... no need. Blaze would punch me over this," I returned meekly, blinking my eyes a bit. "Okay, I can still see, so that's something at least."

Moonshine was just staring at me as I caught my composure back.

"I can see why she likes you lot," she stated flatly, "you're all accident-prone."

"Hey, I haven't had a serious accident since I moved to Hoofton," Oval snorted.

"Can we get back to the lesson without further interruptions, please?" Moonshine wondered.

"Yes, please can you guys stop distracting us as well?" came a call from further away.

Moonshine pointed a hoof in the direction of the other Changeling tutor. "See? That's my point here. You're keeping everyone distracted."

"Don't look at me; I'm sleeping," Oval remarked, closing her eyes again.

I took a breath and resumed my training, using the cylinder to at least make sure I had up and down worked out. When I pushed the picture onto the resin this time, it at least spun in the direction I wanted it to go in, so I had made some progress!

With some idea of how I could best manipulate the resin inside the cylinder, I slowly but surely managed to get its spin rate under control.

Breeze mainly kept herself quiet, only offering advice if Moonshine forgot to mention something or if I asked her a question directly, but her presence helped me understand the way my magic worked far more than if I'd had to rely on Moonshine alone.

Moonshine understood magic on a level I could not mentally grasp at. She experienced it more naturally than I did, and didn't have to think about things which I had trouble with.

She just took her magic for granted and had moved on from Changeling magic to Pony magic.

I suspected Matron knew that this was a weakness when trying to teach Hatchlings like me, and had picked her from her group just to make sure she learned a lesson in humility... or something like that.

Just after I thought I had learned to control the resin fully, Moonshine asked me to try it with my eyes closed.

"After all, you know where the hole is. You know where the resin is in the hole," She started. "You also know what you want the resin to do."

"Yeah, but how can I aim with my eyes closed?" I wondered.

"If you picture the resin ball inside the cylinder, and try to mind the distance factor, you should be fine," Moonshine suggested.

"If you say so," I muttered, closing my eyes.

"Put a hoof at the edge of the hole," Breeze offered, and I slid my left hoof forward until I felt the edge of the hole.

"Okay, so I focus on the resin in the cylindrical hole, with my hoof up above it at the edge," I suggested, doing it as I spoke. "I'm making the resin spin slowly and am pushing the image into my horn."

"Don't focus on us. Don't let anything distract you," Moonshine spoke softly.

"I'm activating my magic," I continued, feeling the tingle of the imaginary bead of sweat as it ran along the base of my horn. "And I'm pushing the image down to connect with the resin."

I just focused on keeping the resin spinning, hoping I had got the location right.

I felt a movement to my left and heard Breeze take a few steps.

"Hey, Oval, you got to see this," Breeze offered, and now there was movement on my right.

I tried to keep my focus on the spinning resin, keeping it going, not letting them distract me.

Oval clearly stood up and I heard her hooves hit the ground as she moved closer to the hole as well.

"Hm, open your eyes, little sister," she offered. "Just let it spin down on its own."

I banished the image of the resin from my head and opened my eyes, spotting Moonshine just staring down into the hole in front of her with a confused look on her face.

I could barely see her through the large amount of steam rising up from the hole. Was it my imagination or was there more of it than usual?

Breeze was standing off to the left of the hole, also staring down through the column of mist rising from it, but with a thoughtful expression. Oval was the only one looking my way, and she motioned for me to look down as well.

As I turned my head to do as I was prompted to, I saw the resin spinning in an otherwise empty hole. Without my magic to keep it going, it was quickly losing momentum. As it slowed down, it also spun out of place, and it rolled along the inside wall for the last few seconds before coming to a stop.

A green glow took hold of it, and Breeze lifted it out until it hovered between us all; a perfectly smooth green pearl.

Moonshine huffed at it. "Well, that was just a fluke, nothing else."

"You forgot to imagine the water that time, didn't you?" Breeze suggested.

"Er, yeah," I answered truthfully.

"All hail the power of gravity," Oval whispered in awe.

"Centrifugal force," Breeze corrected.

"Whatever it was that did it, I like the outcome," I decided.

25

Moonshine shook her head at yet another interruption to her teaching attempts, stood up, and walked away from us. "That's it, I'm done."

I wanted to call after her, realizing how Breeze had undercut her authority during our teaching session, but I also knew just how much I had needed Breeze to make sense of the things Moonshine had barely explained herself.

Breeze brought the pearl a bit closer to her face and frowned at it. "Hey, you've spun all the moisture out of it," she realized.

"I did what?" I wondered, turning my attention to Breeze and tilting my head at her.

"All our resin has moisture in it," Breeze offered. "This little marble does not; it's solid."

"Solid solid?" Oval asked, and the pearl jerked in mid-air as her horn started to glow.

Breeze frowned over at her younger, but slightly taller, sister. "Don't pull at it."

Oval just tugged a bit more, the pearl dancing as the pair of them had a magical tug-of-war with it as the prize.

"Okay, so it's solid," I shrugged. "What's that mean?"

"Nothing, really," Breeze returned, suddenly letting go of the pearl so it flew off to hit Oval in the face.

Oval winced and let go of it with her magic, and Breeze quickly took control of it again to float it between herself and me.

"Look, it's hard as a rock," the other smaller Changeling offered to me, reaching a hoof up and tapping it to the pearl between us. It made the sound as if her hoof had tapped a solid pebble.

I gave her a nod. "So I see. So if it means nothing, why are you so excited about it?"

"Because you weren't even spinning it hard enough to extract the moisture from it, as far as I could tell," Breeze told me. "Did you think of pulling the water out of it at all?"

"Not consciously, but I do have a bit of a dry throat," I realized, looking over as Oval nudged me.

"Hey, ask Breeze if I can have a look, will you?" Oval wondered, rubbing a hoof at the sore spot on her face.

I nudged my head in Breeze's direction. "She's right there, Burst," I stated pointedly. "I'm pretty sure she's heard you."

Breeze giggled softly and moved the pearl over to Oval. "I'm sorry, did that hurt?" she asked in a sugary-sweet tone. "And here I thought I was the foal?"

Oval snorted, but took the pearl over from Breeze with her own magic. "Brat," she tossed at her sister, then walked off in the direction of the lake, the pearl hovering in front of her.

"Er, where are you going with it?" I asked, giving chase.

"I just want to test something," Oval called back, dropping the pearl into the lake as she reached it!

Breeze and I both arrived at the side of the lake at the same time, her horn glowing and her head moving as if she was trying to find the pearl and lift it back up out of it again.

I didn't want to risk blowing a crater in the lake, so I let Breeze do the searching. Instead I turned to Oval, punching her in the left shoulder.

"Why did you do that?!?" I shouted, making heads turn to face us.

Oval lifted the pearl up from behind her, tilting her head. "Do what, little sister?"

I stared at the pearl, then back at the frantic Breeze, and groaned.

"Breeze, she's got it up here," I muttered, flopping down at the water's edge.

My left foreleg slipped off the edge from my movement, and my hoof dipped in the water. It was nice and warm, like a wellspring, and I enjoyed the feeling of the current washing past.

Breeze stopped searching at hearing my words and approached Oval, who was grinning broadly.

"That was totally unfair, sister," Breeze remarked. "Here I thought you were going to dissolve it."

"It's a stone, right?" Oval wondered, lowering the pearl down to the floor between us. "I mean, it looks like a pearl cut from an emerald."

Breeze dipped her head down to get a closer look, then nodded up. "It does look like that. We should take it to a geologist to have it appraised."

"Can I take a bath in this lake here first?" I wondered, to which I got a hearty laughter from both sisters.

"Oh, little sister, we can take you to a much better place if you'll let us," Oval suggested, while Breeze snatched up the pearl again and kept it close to her.

"Let's head to the storage room first to put this away safely," Breeze muttered. "It doesn't look like it could dissolve in air, but I'm not too sure about water."

"Well, that's on the way anyway," Oval shrugged.

Breeze's eyes grew at hearing that. "You're not talking about taking her to a spa, are you?"

"Why not?" Oval wondered. "She learned the basics of magic here, and she already knows the majority of other things she needs to know."

"That's true, I guess?" Breeze mused. "You took care of her basic flight training, even if I had to come in and rescue her in the end."

I lifted my head up at that. "Hey, I think I did pretty well there."

"Don't boast," Breeze told me. "You would have found it a lot harder to keep a controlled flight without us at your side."

"So she can pose as an Earthpony, then; no wings," Oval suggested.

Breeze looked around her a moment, then sighed. "Fine. We're only getting in the way here anyway, and there's no way she's going to get back into the rhythm her batch is in anymore. Blaze took care of that."

"I hatched on my own anyway," I remarked.

"Even if you're born alone, you don't have to stay that way, little sister," Oval chuckled. "I'm officially adopting you into our little band of misfits here."

"Wait, don't we have to put that to a vote?" Breeze wondered, to which Oval stared at her.

"She's been with us for barely two days and you already jumped in to rescue her from an incompetent magic teacher," Oval noted. "I take that as a vote for her to stay."

"Fine," Breeze sighed. "We'll have to go through the common room to let Blaze know where we're going."

"As long as one of you leads the way," I offered, pushing up to a standing position again. "I have no clue where we are in this cavern system, or how to get to the common room."

"Deal," Oval laughed, motioning over to a distant dark area. "Just follow behind me, and try to keep up."

26

As Oval darted off in her haste to lead the way to the common room, I gave a quick look at Breeze.

"I can find my own way, you should tail her," Breeze suggested matter-of-factly.

"For what it's worth; I really needed your help to learn how to use my magic properly," I told her with a smile. "Thanks."

Breeze looked away at my words as if they embarrassed her somehow.

Looking back to the quickly disappearing Oval, I realized I had to run after her before I'd lose sight of her completely, and nudged my right shoulder to Breeze's left.

"Sister is trying to run away from us, we better give chase," I offered, then set myself in motion in an attempt to catch up to Oval!

Not a moment passed before I heard Breeze's hoofsteps behind me, but I focused on Oval up ahead as she dove into a tunnel entrance.

I rushed after her, barely catching her tail rounding a corner, but I was catching up to her slowly but surely.

The tunnel went every which way again, and I was thoroughly confused about my location in the Hive Outpost again when I finally did catch up to Oval standing panting and grinning at one of the doors leading into the common room.

Breeze had been hot on my heels, and bumped into me when I had to stop to not bump into the boulder closing off the entrance, but then the three of us stood catching our breath in silence.

Once we had all calmed down again, Oval pushed the boulder aside and we stepped into the crowded common room again.

I drank in the sound of buzzing wings, watching my siblings fly by through the area, and felt something click inside. It felt good to be among family, even if I was still considered a Hatchling.

Knowing how our magic worked now, it made me want to learn more about the race I now belonged to. I wanted to belong to this group, even more so than I apparently already did according to Breeze and Oval.

We walked down through the paths between rooms, and I realized Breeze was walking a bit closer to my left side than Oval was to my right. I was just about to ask her about it, when a sibling passed overhead.

"Hiya Pearl," they called out as they flew by.

There was no response from any Changeling nearby, so I opened my mouth again to ask Breeze about her closeness.

"Hi Pearl," another Changeling offered up as she walked past us in the opposite direction.

I looked around to find out who they were calling out to, which slowed my pace. Oval slowed as well, looking back at me.

"Something wrong, little sister?" she asked, but Breeze looked pensive.

"I'm not sure," I started. "I may be imagining things."

I joined the both of them again, but we had not made two steps before another Changeling sibling called out to us. This time he was sitting on a ledge above our heads.

"Hey Oval, Hiya Breeze. I heard Pearl finished her magic training?" he asked.

Breeze nudged me with a hoof. "I think he means you."

"I, what?" I returned, looking between the Changeling above us and Breeze in turn, my face the very epitome of confusion.

"Blaze is going to kill Moonshine," Oval breathed out, shaking her head quickly.

"Who told you?" Breeze asked of our brother above.

"Moonshine came through here a few minutes ago babbling about some Pearl having done her teaching in. It was pretty clear she was upset about it, why?" the other explained.

"...and that's how nicknames are born," Oval sighed out.

"Pearl?" I asked of no-one in particular.

"I think you're stuck with it for now, Pearl," Breeze offered up.

"Blaze is three rooms over," our brother pointed out. "She's been pretty mad about something as well."

"Yeah, did you see her after Moonshine came by, though?" another sibling suggested, and our brother turned halfway on the wall he was on to look in their direction.

"Man, I thought I was going to choke on it!" he offered back with a grin.

I looked between Breeze and Oval. "I'm gonna need that spa now, I think," I stated weakly.

"We'll have to tell Blaze we're going. She may want to join us," Oval suggested, moving up to my right side and giving me a light nudge with her shoulder. "Really, as far as nicknames go, you could have gotten hit worse."

"Don't start," Breeze sighed, taking the lead since Oval had moved to providing emotional support.

We made it to the room Blaze was in with me still trying to work out what had just happened, only to find her sitting in the middle alcove in the room, fuming about something.

"Something wrong, sister?" Oval wondered, breaking away from me to find out what was bothering Blaze.

I wandered over to a side alcove and sat down on it, then leaned over to stab my teeth down in the nearest vein. I felt like I needed a drink, and this was the only thing I knew I could drink without issue...

It wasn't so much that I was now suddenly named Pearl, really. It was a good name as far as names went. It was more that I had wanted to find a name for myself, by myself. Over time, after I had figured out where I could go and what I could do in this world.

My human name didn't work, for obvious reasons, yet I had held it in the back of my mind as a backup. Now, though, I was "Pearl". To most, if not all, Changelings in this common room, I was now Pearl. The name had spread through the room like wildfire, it appeared.

"...but then she locks them away in the lower rooms and doesn't let us to them!" Blaze's outcry blasted through my thoughts.

I did a doubletake on that, plugging the holes I had been feeding from, and pushed away from the wall to sit up straight. As I did, I bumped into Breeze who had sat down on my left side while I had been feeding.

Where I expected her to pull away a bit for us to both have a comfortable spot to sit at, she instead leaned into me at the bump, her head lolling sideways until it touched mine.

While Breeze was smaller, she was only so by a few inches. The difference between us while we sat side-by-side could easily be ignored.

I gave her a questioning glance, but noted her looking worried and decided to just let her lean into me for now. I focused back on Blaze and Oval, who were apparently talking about something important.

"...have some use for them, right? Otherwise she wouldn't have us train them like this," Oval suggested to her sister.

Blaze shrugged at that. "When has our Queen ever explained herself to us?"

Oval hummed thoughtfully in response. "Well, we have some better news for you to mull over; Breeze and I adopted Pearl here to be a proper part of our group!"

"Pearl? Adopt? What?" Blaze stammered, looking over to where Breeze was very obviously leaning into me.

I lifted my right forehoof up and gave a weak wave with it. "Apparently that's my name now. Ask anybody here," I suggested flatly.

"Yeah, so she's our sister now and we can abuse her and throw her around and take her to the spa," Oval summed up, then nudged Blaze with her elbow. "Hey, that's an idea; why don't we all go visit the spa in the next town over?"

I stared at Oval's "expert" way of bringing the spa into the conversation, and Blaze turned to face her sister properly to raise an eyebrow at her. "You want to take a Hatchling to a pony spa?"

Oval nodded with a big grin. "Yeah! I mean, she's learned all the things we can teach her here, so it would be good training for her to be out there and hold a guise for a few hours."

Blaze seemed to consider it a moment, her head moving away from Oval to turn up so she could look at the siblings overhead. "It would give us a calmer spot to talk," she mused.

"Less eyes on us," Breeze commented from where her head rested against me.

Blaze let out a deep sigh, but then gave a decisive nod. "Alright, let's go."

27

Blaze, Breeze, Burst (Oval), and myself (Pearl), left the common room through a new exit, or at least it was new to me. Even so, the tunnel we entered was as windy and confusing to me as the others had been.

The one constant this tunnel had was that it kept leading down, putting some strain on my forelegs. I definitely felt the weaker muscles in my right foreleg as we continued down through the inside of the mountain, and I soon started to limp a bit in an attempt to keep the weight of my body on my left leg instead.

Blaze and Oval took no notice; walking up ahead of me, but Breeze nudged me on the right flank from where she was walking behind me. "Keep walking normally or it will take longer for you to get your strength back in that leg."

I glanced back along my right side, noting Breeze was still levitating the pearl which had given me my name in front of her and had used it to tap at my flank with.

"Yeah, I know," I offered back. "It's happening unconsciously."

"Then keep your focus on not allowing it to happen," Breeze decided as I turned my head to face front again so I could keep pace with our frontrunners.

"You're going to have to keep focus on your guise when we go out, on top of this," Breeze reminded me, "or we're going to get in far more trouble than it's worth."

I gave a nod to indicate I heard Breeze, and focused on just walking straight, even if it made my weaker muscles feel a bit cramped.

Blaze stopped at a crossing between tunnels, with Oval moving up to her right side before stopping as well. I zigzagged a bit trying to decide who to step behind, until Breeze pushed up on my own right and forced me to take position behind Blaze.

Oval looked back at me with a grin and motioned to the empty space up ahead, which was a nearly perfectly aligned straight crossroads.

"Watch this," she spoke merrily, and I peered past Blaze's body with some confusion.

There was a slight increase in pressure, and I moved my jaw a little to it, but nothing much else happened.

Breeze brought her head down to look at my foreleg, and I felt her breath on it as she did.

Nothing continued to happen while I tilted my head at Oval, who was still looking back at me eagerly.

I opened my mouth to ask what it was we were waiting on, but Oval shook her head and just motioned to the crossroads again.

I frowned at her as there was nothing special about the crossroads; it was just one tunnel intersecting with ours. The two tunnels made nearly perfect 90-degree corners between one another, but to say that was something to stand around staring at for a while... not really.

Breeze straightened herself again and leaned into my side, and I smiled at the show of affection, but I dared not look down at her in case Oval would claim I missed whatever it was we were watching.

Instead I just kept staring at the empty void before us, through the gap between Blaze and Oval, and started feeling increasingly more bored.

Just when I thought I couldn't take it anymore, there was a low sound starting to grow louder - fast. Oval's grin split her face in half and she eagerly pointed in front of her at the empty crossroads.

I was still watching, but now my interest in it was rising as fast as the sound getting louder.

A moment later, a rush of bodies passed us by, coming from the tunnel on the left and running at great speed through to the tunnel on the right!

They were Changelings, like us, but none of them had wings on them. They also looked bigger than Blaze or Oval, who were not the smallest among our siblings themselves.

The group of ten, twenty, thirty, or even more rushed by without paying attention to us, the thunderous sound of their hooves following them into the right tunnel as the last of them finally passed us by.

It was only then that Blaze finally looked back and motioned after them. "Soldiers."

"Our brothers and sisters who protect our Hives," Oval added.

"Blaze has a sixth sense for this sort of thing," Breeze offered up. "I've been overrun by them at least a dozen times myself."

"That's because you get caught up in your own thoughts and don't hear them approach," Blaze explained, turning her head to face front again. "It's safe to pass now. We're nearly to the storage room."

As Blaze set in motion to continue our journey, Oval kept waiting and motioned for me to continue past her instead. I glanced at Breeze who gave her younger sister a deathglare before pushing past me and going ahead herself.

I fell in line behind the smaller Changeling sister, and Oval waited for me to get to her so she could walk beside me for the last leg of the trip.

"Did you see the differences between them and us?" she asked me eagerly.

"They were going by really fast, Burst," I commented. "I didn't get a lot of time to look them over."

"Well, they're bigger than us," Oval pointed out. "Some of them are as tall as Alicorn Ponies, but they have more muscle mass than us as well. That's why these tunnels are big enough for us to walk side-by-side; they wouldn't fit in them otherwise."

I laughed softly as the mental image of a bulky Changeling getting themselves stuck inside one of these tunnels came to mind, and shook my head at myself.

"That's not funny, Pearl," Oval commented. "They need to be able to protect us, no matter how deep we are in the outpost. If they can't get to us, we're potentially in danger."

I shook my head at her.

"Nono, I was picturing a soldier stuck in one of these tunnels, flailing their limbs about comically," I explained. "I guess it's because of this world's cartoonish looks; I must have thought back to some old cartoons I've watched when I was young."

Oval stared at me without comprehension.

"I'll... explain some day," I sighed.

"I'm going to look forward to that," Oval chuckled weakly. "Anyway; they don't have wings either."

"But what if there's an aerial attack on us?" I wondered.

"They're stronger than us and are used to taking a punch more than us; they serve as living shields where they can't deflect attacks otherwise. Wings would only be a weakness in that respect," Oval explained. "While they protect the Hive, we can fly out to face the attackers; and we have numbers on our side in most cases."

"Given that I've seen the common room, I will believe that," I agreed.

"They're mostly here to protect the Hive's structure and those of us inside who are asleep or otherwise incapable of fighting, like the Matrons," Oval specified. "Once we're out there in the open, we are far more maneuverable than they are."

"I've seen footage of the attack on Canterlot," I revealed to Oval.

"Failed invasion," Blaze called back from the front.

"It's a sore point with her," Oval suggested.

"I had noticed, yeah," I agreed. "Anyway, I have a pretty good idea of the trouble we can bring in a large group."

"If the rumours of the last days are any indication, you'll experience it first-hoof," Blaze sighed out, stopping at the tunnel's dead end and moving to push the boulder aside.

I swallowed at the thought of having to fight as a part of a Changeling army... it was definitely not something I had ever thought to experience, and I hoped there was a way to avoid it if it ever came to that.

28

The storage room's ceiling was far lower than that of the common room, and had the added oddity of low walls hanging down from it to create as much of a maze as an equal number of low walls did on the ground floor.

These walls had alcoves hewn in them, as they had in the common room, but these were half the height of the ones in the common room and were stacked four above one another per wall. Another difference was that these were obviously not used as beds, but instead kept a large variety of objects in them.

The walls themselves were just high enough that a Changeling standing on their hind legs could easily reach the top 'shelves' while standing on their hind legs, with the upper walls having a similar height to them. There was just enough room left between both upper and lower walls for two Changelings to fly by each other at different heights without problem.

Blaze closed the doorway behind us again, while Oval led the way over to a specific shelf and pulled a backpack off from it, which she swung over her back immediately after obtaining it. I looked at the way the straps ran past her wingjoints and raised an eyebrow at her.

"Oh, it's more comfortable to wear after I take on my guise again," Oval chuckled to my unspoken question.

"We should pose as a single family if possible," Breeze mentioned, walking over to a different shelf and tucking the green pearl she had still been levitating near herself with her magic into a smaller backpack shaped like a flower.

Blaze walked past the three of us and disappeared around a corner, but as I made it to the same corner, she had already disappeared in the depths of the room's shelf space. Not wanting to get myself lost, I decided to walk back to Breeze.

"Cute backpack," I suggested, looking as Breeze fastened the small thing to her back with some effort. Not being in a filly guise, she had to loosen the straps considerably just to get it to fit her.

The backpack was shaped like a flower, with one of the petals having a button hole so as to serve as the flap. I wasn't sure what kind of flower it was exactly, but it looked far more cute than Oval's rough and battered backpack which looked like it had been in several road accidents since she started using it.

"Thanks," Breeze smiled up after working her forelegs through the straps. "I have to get a new one every time I move from one town to another. It's a bit annoying."

Oval shook her head at her older sister, motioning back to her own backpack. "I've been using this one for the past fifteen years now. It's served me fine."

"It shows," I offered to her. "The threading of it looks about ready to burst, Burst."

I received a snort from Oval in return, while Breeze grinned up at my joke at Oval's expense.

"So, you just store your stuff here and nobody else takes it, huh?" I wondered, motioning around the room.

"Pretty much, yes," Oval agreed.

"The family as a whole respects another sibling's property. We have to; if we can't trust each other, the Hive will fall apart," Breeze explained. "We have a different room for items that are for anyone to take; we all bring back at least one such item every time we come back from the ponylands. If we need to take on a new guise, it's better to drop all their old stuff off here and exchange it for new items."

I could see the thoughts behind that system. After all, you could hardly change identity only to be found out by wearing the same heirloom your old identity had been wearing. It was smart to change the items you carried along with you as you changed looks.

"We also have a vault for money and gems and the like," Oval added to Breeze's explanation. "Remember Iridium?"

I thought back to the eerily thin alicorn from the second teaching room, who had looked like one of the four horses of the apocalypse.

"She couldn't have made it into the ranks of Canterlot's high society without a starting capital," Oval pointed out. "Even if you just go to some random backwater pony town, it's smart to take a few coins along with you to pay for housing. Setting up a new guise can be costly."

"Which is why we bring back what riches we can spare whenever we return," Breeze smiled up.

"I see. So we all bring a little something back from our travels, to keep the family as a whole functioning?" I suggested.

"Pretty much," Oval agreed. "Now, what's keeping Blaze?"

Breeze giggled softly. "She's probably staring at that spandex suit of hers; she's more vain than she lets on."

Blaze let out a snort from somewhere nearby. "I am not that vain. I'm just trying to decide what to bring along."

Breeze flew up from the ground at hearing the voice of the eldest sister, and buzzed around a little until she pointed down. "Ah, here she is; two lefts and one right."

Oval and I took Breeze's instructions to find Blaze standing in the center of a small number of (duffel)bags and suitcases, most of them opened up. Breeze landed near one and pulled a bowling pin out of it.

"I don't think you'll need any juggling items, Blazey," the middle sister suggested.

Oval laughed softly. "Jeez, Blaze... it looks like you took half the circus back this time."

Blaze took the bowling pin out of Breeze's hold and stuffed it back in the bag it came from, then zipped it closed. "I've been on the road for a while. I have several different acts for different audiences," she explained.

"Different suits, too," Oval suggested, motioning to a bag near us which was filled with different brightly-coloured outfits. I wondered if I was looking at the cartoon-version of spandex...

Blaze grumbled and zipped that bag closed as well, stuffing it back in the alcove in front of her together with the bag the bowling pins went back into. A third bag was put next to them, although it had not been opened so I could not tell what was in it.

With the three bags set side-by-side in the alcove again, Blaze just stood between two suitcases, and pulled a few dresses from them. The dresses ranged from heavily decorated ones which were obviously made to impress the richer ponies, to simple designs made for comfort rather than show.

"I guess I could pose as the mare of the family, with Oval as the stallion," she voiced her thoughts, folding the dresses up again and dividing them among the two suitcases.

"Pearl does a mean teen impression," Breeze suggested.

"Complete with breaking voice if she does a young stallion," Oval added.

I coughed uneasily at that, pawing a little at the floor in front of me with my right forehoof.

"That decides it; I'll be the mare again," Blaze accepted. "But if you dare fool around again you're going to get buried face first in the dirt, Oval."

Oval looked innocent. "What'd I do?"

"Suggesting we'd consumate our marriage last time was going way out of line," Blaze grumbled.

"That was a joke, and you know it," Oval threw back in a huff. "The mood called for it; all the other stallions were making jokes along the same line."

"That doesn't mean you have to do it as well," Blaze decided, giving Oval a deathstare.

"Fine," Oval sighed, shaking her head a bit. "Moustache or no?"

"Do you intend to kiss me while we're out there?" Blaze wondered, pulling a few accessories like earrings, necklaces, and hairclips from the suitcases and giving them a look over as well.

"Are you going to punch me if I try?" Oval returned, and I raised an eyebrow in Breeze's direction.

Breeze gave me a smile and a nod and mouthed 'every time' to me.

"If you make a fool of yourself, yes," Blaze answered.

"Then I'll put on a moustache and leave it at that," Oval decided, then glanced in my way. "We're going to have to get Pearl something to wear."

Blaze raised an eyebrow at me. "Do you know if you'd prefer being a mare or a stallion while we're out, Pearl?"

I sighed and looked down a bit. "I honestly don't know yet."

Breeze walked up to me and smiled up. "Take your time with this. You need to feel comfortable in the guise you take on. It's easier to keep it up that way; if you don't feel comfortable with it you'll just continue to fight it internally, which will inevitably mess it up."

"Yeah, like Blaze's Pegasi forms," Oval chuckled, but then winced as Blaze punched her in the shoulder.

With Breeze still looking up at me with an encouraging smile, I mentally went over the pony OCs I had made on various online resources over the years as well as the guises I had taken during my training.

There had definitely been some guises which felt more... natural? I think that's the word for it.

On the other hand, or hoof as the case may be, there were other forms I could barely wrap my mind around. The most obvious of those were the foal forms Breeze was so good at, as well as those Pegasi forms with their wings.

I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath. "I think I know what I want to go for."

29

Under the watchful gaze of the three sisters, with Breeze standing close enough by that I felt her breath upon me, I focused on designing a pony guise in my head.

As I had learned from Oval and Breeze in the training room a few days ago, as well as the new information about how to 'see' an object in three-dimensions in my mind's eye from the magic training I had just today, I pictured the pony in my head from all directions.

Considering my name was now Pearl, I thought of a light grey, bordering on white coat. Mother of pearl would be hell to try and pull off, but maybe I would eventually learn how Celestia did that flowing mane thing if I stuck around for a couple of years. Light grey was the closest I could get to it.

In order to still give a nod to the resin which gave me that name, I pondered making my mane a green tone. For some reason Lyra Heartstrings came to mind, and I opted for the light aquamarine tone of her coat.

My mane's style was shifting as I pictured it, going through several short- and long- styles for a while, with my tail doing the same thing. I realized that it was my own subconsciousness planning ahead and tried to consciously affect it in order to find a style which matched the overal feeling I got when I thought of this guise.

I was going to be Breeze's older sibling while we were out there, with Blaze as our mother and Oval as our father, but none of them had taken a guise themselves yet. I suspected they were letting me come up with something since they were all far more experienced than me, to keep me from having to adapt to their looks.

This meant I was the deciding factor in what they were going to go for, excepting Oval's intent on getting herself a moustache.

Mares generally had longer hairstyles in the show than the stallions had, and I pondered the gender issue again. I had barely had time to get over the fact I was 'reborn' as a mare in this world, while having been male back home. The drive to learn things, get pushed on to the next room, and so forth, had not given me any time to stand still and think about it before I met Oval.

Oval softened the blow considerably by showing how she, a mare herself, took on stallion guises with considerable ease, and she had even joked about how I could take on a human guise as well if I trained enough on my mimicry.

My Changeling siblings all pretty much looking the same, whether they had been male or female, also helped a lot to stave off the angst that humans seemed to have around the whole gender issue.

Now that I actually had to pick a guise though, I was forced to deal with my feelings on the subject. Did I feel overly masculine? Had I ever? Or was I happy with my new role as a sister to the three Changelings near me?

The fact we were going to a spa pushed me over to aiming for a feminine pony guise; I had seen more episodes with mares visiting the spa than with stallions. I had those episodes to base my own responses on, whereas I had never visited such a place as a male human before in the past.

The mental image of my guise took on a definite female form as I made my decision, and I took another page from Lyra's book where it concerned the length of my mane; the hairs barely hanging down the top half of my barrel, just covering my guise's left shoulder.

I chuckled a bit to myself and realized Rainbow Dash's mane was just barely longer than that, but at least I did not have to deal with the long style that Fluttershy had on her. I could only imagine how much of a pain it was to have to comb that out every day.

Thinking of Rainbow Dash helped me to style the top of my mane, and I quickly decided against being a Unicorn. I just did not know enough about my magic to be able to levitate items around without accidentally exploding them, so my guise would be that of an Earthpony. It helped me to almost directly copy Rainbow's mane overhang from my memories of the show as an example.

I threw in a few highlights in my mane, using a lighter green-bordering on grey, and then pondered about my tail. Having just a mid-length mane, I would have to go for a mid-length tail as well. It just made sense to do so. A shorter tail would make me look lopsided, and I did not want to have to drag my tail around over the ground in case of a longer one.

I winced at the thought of having to be wary of doors with as long a tail as Fluttershy had.

I went through the list of ponies from the show, and realized quite a lot of them had a fairly common tail design. Trixie, Spitfire, Lyra, all had a style similar to Rainbow Dash; mid-length, a few hairs sticking out at odd angles, but generally the same design.

I put that kind of a tail on my own guise, added the highlights from the mane, and gave a slow nod to myself. It worked. I would not stand out too much in a crowd, but that was not the idea in the first place.

"Need some help, little sister?" Oval wondered softly, but Breeze immediately shushed her.

"She's thinking. Remember when Matron first taught us about guises?" Breeze whispered back. "Give her the time she needs."

"Blaze, our foal is telling me to shut up," Oval muttered, and I heard a soft thud. "Ow, damnit. Punch my other shoulder next time, will you? This one is getting sore."

I kept my eyes closed, and focused on the most difficult part of my pony guise; the cutiemark.

I ran through the designs from the show, the OCs I had made in the past, the OCs from others, and general clipart. This was the one thing that defined a pony in Equestria. It was the one thing they were supposedly good at and often fell in right with given name.

Pearl was the name I had been given, but the only thing I could think of that I was good at was sitting around asking questions and listening to my Changeling siblings explain about this world of theirs. I had done a lot of that these past days.

A thought came to me; what animal created pearls but certain kinds of shellfish? I recalled my time spent with family at the sea when young, and the shells I found on the beach. One specific one was clearly linked to the act of listening; the modest conch shell.

In a flash of ingenuity, I pictured the guise's cutiemark as a conch shell laying on its side, with a pearl resting in front of the opening and put that image on the pony's flank. It just worked. It made sense.

I sighed out as I realized this cutiemark deal really was not that difficult to figure out. After all, I had just done it in a matter of seconds; finishing my pony guise.

I rotated her in my mind's eye and scrutinized every little inch of her in an attempt to figure out if I forgot anything. I had set her up as a teenage mare, slightly shorter than an adult one, with a light grey coat, light aquamarine mane and tail, with some lighter green highlights set through them.

Her cutiemark was a brown conch laying on its side, with a shiny pearl in front of it.

I thought I was done, until I looked at the front of her; her eyes were just blank spots on her face. While our changeling eyes had no irises either, it just looked weird on a pony.

With my memories of the show, I knew that most background ponies' eye colour had some relation to their cutiemark, but there were rule-breaking ponies in the show as well. I tried the brown from the conch shell on my guise as irises, but I just did not see it. It looked bad.

I tried a dark yellow instead, bordering on light-brown, and felt that worked better. To keep the link with her cutiemark, I led the lighter yellow tone to a darker brown in a few short steps, just like I had remembered from the show.

With my guise finally feeling finished, I took a deep breath and pushed it to my core, letting my magic overwrite my Changeling identity with my new one.

I felt the flow of my Changeling magic passing over me, and waited for the tingle to finish before I opened my eyes and turned my head to look back at me.

The expected light-grey colour of my flank, with the conch cutiemark, and the light aquamarine tail with lighter highlights came into my view, and I let out a sigh of contentment.

"I think I can hold this form," I mused, trying out flicking my tail a bit and watching it move through the air. It felt a little weird to have a more expressive tail now, but the feeling of the wind going through the collection of hairs was kinda nice.

I turned my head back to look at the rest, noticing the big grin on Breeze's face, the thoughtful look on Blaze's, and the curious one on Oval.

"Let me see your eyes?" Oval asked, taking a step closer and staring me right in the face. I blinked a bit while staring back at her fully blue Changeling eyes, until she smiled up. "Yeah, they're nice and round. Good job."

"Those are some good colours as well," Blaze remarked. "I have used silver and green in a few of my guises before."

"I like her cutiemark," Breeze decided. "We can keep calling her Pearl now."

"What's with the shell?" Oval wondered, moving past me to get a better look at my flank.

"Well," I started, "I thought about how pony cutiemarks are usually related to the thing they're good at, right? But I can't exactly say I'm good at anything right now; I mean, I stumbled through most of the training you guys gave me in my short stay here."

"You did fairly well on your guises," Oval commented.

"Yeah, but I can't exactly tell the ponies that, now can I?" I offered back. "So I thought about what else I did; and I listened a lot to what you all had to tell me. Not just during the training, but also about this world, our Changeling family, and how we all work together to keep the family going strong."

Blaze smiled up weakly. "It's a conch. You can hear the sea through them."

"Yeah," I agreed.

"I've been to the beach before, and have held these shells to my own ears in the past," Blaze explained.

"I've only seen them in stores," Oval stated. "Usually marketed as some sort of decorative item. My mare is the one who decorates the house; I just keep the money coming in."

Breeze giggled at that. "Yeah, you're not the best at decorations, mane design, or anything that requires artistic thought."

A green flash spread over Breeze until a young Unicorn filly stood in her place. She had opted for a light green coat herself, with a yellow mane and tail. Her flank was lacking a cutiemark, and her backpack was starting to slide off of her back thanks to the loose straps around her smaller form.

While Breeze redid the straps with her Unicorn magic, which made her horn glow yellow, a green flash moved over Blaze as well.

I looked over to see her having taken a silver coat for herself, with her mane a shamrock green, darker than my own. Her Unicorn horn peeked out from her overhanging mane, and it glowed a silver tone with her magic as she lifted a few of her dresses out of the suitcases again.

"I think I have just the outfit to complement this guise's colours," she mused in a soft motherly voice, turning away from us to focus on her dresses. As she turned, I noticed a picture of a beam of light aimed on an empty stage on her flank.

"Bah, mare clothes," Oval huffed in a low baritone.

I looked on over to see a sturdy Earthpony stallion to my right, his mane, tail, and bristly moustache a yellow tone with some grey streaks through them. His coat was a dark moss green, and there was a hammer hitting a nail on his flank.

I raised an eyebrow at Oval. "Not your thing, 'dad'?"

Oval rolled his brown eyes at me. "No, I'll just find some overalls and a pipe in the supplement storage room instead."

"No pipe," Blaze decided calmly while deciding between two outfits, and Oval stomped one of his forehooves down with a deep frown.

"Do you have to ride my tail about every little detail?!?" he decried! "I would have thought after... wait, how long are we supposedly married for?"

Little Breeze pointed her right forehoof at me. "Considering her supposed age, you should have been married for at least fifteen years."

"Round it up to twenty," Blaze stated, deciding on a relatively simple summer dress and moving to pull it over her head.

"Shouldn't we be nicer to one another after twenty years of marriage?" Oval wondered. "I mean, I already have grey hairs in my mane; You don't have to push me into my grave."

I shook my head at it all. "I think this is going to be an interesting outing, if you two keep this up."

Breeze moved to stand on my left side and leaned into me, her smaller form allowing her to nuzzle her head at my chest. Her small horn bumped into my chin a bit at her nuzzling, but it was not a bother to me.

"Don't worry, big sis," Breeze chuckled. "They'll settle into their roles before long. Just roll with it."

"I might squash you if I roll with it right now," I muttered down at her, giving a slight nudge sideways, and received a merry laughter in return.

30

After Blaze got herself dressed to her liking and put her suitcase away, we made our way over to the supplemental attribute room, or however it was called. It looked exactly like the previous storage room, but the items were sorted by type; clothes in one corner, bags in another, and so on.

A few others were in this room with us, walking or flying about while sorting the shelf spaces or gathering items from them. Some were in pony guises, like us, while others were wandering about as their Changeling selves.

Oval immediately went over to the section with stallion clothes and rummaged through them in his search for a set of overalls. I stuck with Blaze and Breeze, and Blaze directed us to an area close to where Oval was, but which had obvious feminine clothing instead.

Blaze pulled a few outfits off the shelf spaces and held them up between us, but just as quickly put them away again.

"So, what do we call each other out there?" I asked.

"You're easy; we're just going to keep calling you Pearl for now," Breeze offered from my side.

"Just call me mom," Blaze told me, holding up another dress between us.

"Summer Breeze," Breeze offered.

"Just keep calling me Burst," Oval offered from the path over.

"You're Sturdy Hoof," Blaze called back.

"Damnit," Oval muttered loud enough for us to hear.

"I'll just call you dad," I offered up, staring at a very fancy dress Blaze was pulling out of the stack. "I'm not sure how I feel about wearing something like that, 'mom'."

Blaze shook her head at it as well. "No, I agree; we don't want to appear overly chique. From the outfits stored here, I worry that our family has been rising a bit too fast through pony society."

"You mares just have a rich taste," Oval suggested. "There's only a few such outfits in this aisle. Mostly from Canterlot or Manehattan from the looks of things. Wait, no, this is Baltimare style. I recognize it."

"That's a first," Blaze remarked, pulling a simple sky blue shirt out from a shelf and studying the stitching.

Oval came around the corner, still wearing his battered backpack, but with a blue dress shirt and pair of dark-blue pants under it. I thought it made him look a bit like a businesspony, save for the backpack.

"I can't very well call you mom," Oval suggested to Blaze, who gave a humourless shrug in his direction. "What's riding you?"

"Nothing," Blaze deflected. "Let's look at the next aisle to see if there's something for Pearl to wear."

I sat my rear end down, startling Breeze a bit.

"No," I declared. "I've been noticing it as well; you're moody."

"It's just a game between Oval and me," Blaze suggested, but Oval shook his head at that.

"Not like this. You're constantly griping at me as if I've done something wrong," Oval stated. "Is it the news you told me earlier?"

Blaze looked down a moment, her pony ears drooping. "I guess it has kept me busy."

"Blazey, you don't have to carry it all on your own back," Breeze suggested, walking over to the other and giving her a soft nuzzle at her chest.

"Maybe I'm obsessing a bit over clothes because of it," Blaze muttered weakly, lifting her right forehoof to stroke through Breeze's mane.

"There are plenty of ponies running around naked, mom," I pointed out. "I wouldn't be the first."

Oval smiled from under his moustache and gave a nod. "Right you are, 'daughter', and I think we should talk about the news when we get to the spa, Blaze."

"Spotlight," Blaze corrected him, "but, yes. We should talk about it somewhere that's not here."

"Spotlight," Oval mused. "Spotty, Spot..."

Blaze narrowed her eyes at him, and I decided to give Oval a punch in the shoulder so he did not have to get one from Blaze again.

"Let's get moving then, before I murder my stallion," Spotlight (Blaze) suggested, nudging Summer Breeze to walk with her.

Sturdy Hoof (Burst/Oval) and I fell in line behind them and I frowned up at him. "That was pushing it too far, dad," I suggested.

He smirked back in my direction. "I can't help but try to lighten the mood, Pearl."

"I think you have to change targets for your joke for a bit," I offered. "I might only know her for a few days, but it looks to me like mom's at her limit for how much she can take."

"Are you offering to be a lightningrod?" Oval wondered, grinning over.

"If I have to be to keep mom from going on a murder spree, yes," I agreed. "Besides, I want to know what this news is you both have been talking about. I don't suppose it's anything good?"

Dad's face darkened considerably, and he shook his head. "No. Our idea for a spa treatment came at the right time; the news is upsetting at best."

"I can't wait to hear," I responded with no small amount of sarcasm.

"Nor I; she was already halfway through her rant by the time we got to her," Oval mumbled. "Barely made sense; something about locked rooms."

I shook my head at it, not wanting to think of it yet. "Yeah, that spa is sounding more and more like the best idea right now."

Oval agreed, and we continued after Blaze and Breeze as they led us out of the room and through a tunnel which opened up to the outside of the hive outpost.

It was a short trek further down along the slope of the mountain to the nearby forest, and the darkness of the canopy made me step a little closer to Oval until I was practically hugging his side.

It was comforting to know that Oval, who had been the first of the sisters I met, was walking next to me as my supposed dad. It made me feel safe since she had practically taken me under her wing from the moment she had dropped her guise.

Blaze and Breeze were walking together in a similar fashion, with little Breeze nuzzled in against our fake mother's side as if she was even more concerned than I was.

It was a little silly, really; they were from this world. They knew what they could encounter. All I had to go by were stories from various Human media. There was no telling how much they got right or wrong about the region.

20

While the sisters had gone through their morning ritual, a fourth Changeling had arrived at the cubicle's doorway. She scraped her throat after I finished talking, to draw the attention of three of us; Oval too occupied with getting some breakfast in.

"Matron!" Breeze voiced excitedly, hurrying on over to the new arrival. She stumbled halfway over by somehow crossing her forelegs in front of one another, and ended up landing on her face and sliding to a stop...

Matron smiled down at her and used a hoof to stroke the top of Breeze's head. "Breeze, how many times did I tell you to watch where you put your hooves?"

Breeze closed her eyes at both the stroking and admonishment, and I shook my head at it a bit. "She does a lot better once she's actually woken up, if my experiences with her are anything to go by; she helped me fly down yesterday after I took a bit too high a leap up."

Matron gave a nod at that. "She's a good flyer, but a little overenthusiastic," she chuckled, while Breeze picked herself up from the ground.

Matron wandered into the room with Breeze practically bouncing after her, and I noticed an immediate change in Blaze's demeanor. While she had been dismissive and stern toward Oval earlier, now she was far more meek and modest as she moved to meet Matron halfway.

"Good morning, Matron," she offered with a dip of her head.

"Hello Blaze," Matron returned the greeting, then turned her attention to me. I felt like I should stand up and moved to do so, but Matron shook her head at me. "Let me have a look at your leg first."

I flopped back down at Matron's words, and she approached me while her horn started to glow green. The resin cast around my leg split in half, then started to dissolve as if the air had finally taken hold of it and was trying to make up for lost time.

My hoof was dry in moments, and Matron carefully looked it over. "Turn your hoof a little, tell me how it feels."

I looked down at my right hoof as well, tilting it forward. The muscles felt a bit tense as they had been stuck in the same position for too long thanks to the cast around it, but there was no pain.

I mentioned this to Matron, who told me to move it some more. We spent a while with me moving my leg around in every direction it would go in while Matron watched me closely. She finally pulled away after I was starting to feel my muscles get tired.

"It looks like it healed fine, little one," she offered to me in a kind tone. "All that's left is for you to walk around on it so the muscles get their strength back."

"It's only been two days since she sprained it, and she's a strong one, Matron," Blaze offered. "When do you think she can do her sparring match over again?"

Matron frowned a bit at Blaze, but then reached out with her right hoof to brush it lightly against my left cheek. "If she takes it slow today, she'll be fine by tomorrow. Her leg is fine. I hope you're not the one she has to fight, dear?"

"Ah, no, Matron," Blaze answered. "I had thought about putting her in with Oval; she hasn't fought in ages."

Oval half choked on her breakfast and quickly plugged the vein she was drinking from to turn to the rest of us. "I never agreed to that, Matron!"

Blaze snorted. "You need the training as much as little sister."

I glanced between them, but then Matron chuckled and I put my focus back at her, idly noting how Breeze was leaning into the larger Changeling's right side with her eyes closed.

"Can you believe these girls, little one?" Matron suggested, and I shrugged as response.

"I've come to enjoy their company, Matron," I answered truthfully. "They helped me get a new look on life."

Matron smiled up at Oval as she joined us, and gave her a nudge in the chest with her right elbow. "What have you been filling her head with, hmm?"

Oval frowned at the nudge and nudged Matron back in the shoulder before moving to pull Breeze away from her. "Nothing, I swear! Come on, Breeze, let Matron stand on her own."

"I'm sure Oval made her far more lazy than little sister already was to begin with," Blaze remarked dryly.

"I've actually been running around far more these past days than I had back before I came here," I revealed, noting Matron was having far too much fun with all of this.

"See? I'm totally innocent here," Oval suggested, sitting down with Breeze in the alcove the latter had been sleeping in before.

"Well, I did have to rescue you and her from a spot up there," Breeze muttered, pointing up in the direction we had flown down from just yesterday evening.

"She was doing fine on her own," Oval threw back again. "You were more worried about her abilities than little sister was herself, I believe."

"If anything, I now know how to take off and land without breaking a leg?" I offered up, standing up from where I was still laying on the ground and carefully putting some weight on my right foreleg again. It felt a bit weak, but I could at least use it again without the silly cast around it.

"Don't you dare break a leg," Blaze grumbled. "You're already behind on your training."

Matron grinned up at Blaze and pulled her into a hug. "Always the strong one."

"Oi, get off!" Blaze grumbled, struggling to get out of Matron's hug.

I chuckled at their antics, but moved to walk around the room a bit to test out how much weight I could put on my right foreleg and generally get the blood flowing through the limb again so it would stop itching so much.

Not having the weight of the cast on it helped already; I felt I was limping less than I had the previous days.

Blaze, Breeze, Burst (Oval), and Matron let me walk around, instead focusing on their own family dynamics. Matron was clearly enjoying her time with the girls, and it was clear each of them respected her like a maternal figure, even if Blaze and Oval were far more rebellious toward her than Breeze was.

To be fair, Matron was giving them a harder time than she was Breeze. I was reminded of that in-joke Burst and Blaze had told me about.

Breeze had mostly managed to appear sturdy enough, like all the other Changelings around, but her struggles to wake up fully, her tripping over her forelegs earlier, and the way she had fallen to a far more timid demeanor once Matron wandered into the room had made me realize there was much I didn't know about her.

I kept walking in circles, going counter-clockwise around the room, getting my leg some exercise while I did my observing and pondering.

The conversation at hand, or hoof, was that of what Queen Chrysalis may have in mind with us Hatchlings, mostly because Oval was feeling homesick.

"We've been here for weeks now, and I thought I was going to go home yesterday after my teaching session was over," Oval sighed.

"A lot of siblings are wondering when we are going to get rotated out," Matron agreed. "I remember the first week here when there were a lot more rotations."

"That brings up a question little sister asked me the other day, Matron," Oval started; "do you know if any of us went through the gateway to the other world?"

Matron glanced in my direction as I passed her by, but I made a point to continue my rounds.

"I think there may have been a few, yes," Matron answered Oval. "We weren't as organized in the first week or two. Most of what we were told was that we needed to set up a training center here, so we were still working on the details when the first Humans were starting to get brought in."

Blaze snorted. "Say what you will about our family, but nobody wants to pick up the leading roles when it comes down to it."

"Well, there's that alicorn poser," I suggested as I wandered by.

"Iridium is a special case," Matron chuckled. "She worked her way up to a fairly high position up in Manehattan's society and is loathe to let go of the respect she feels she deserves as a result."

"But she's not an alicorn while in her usual guise," Breeze muttered. "That's just her trying to be special in front of the Hatchlings."

"Yeah," Blaze agreed. "She's got her focus in all the wrong places."

"Like you?" Oval wondered with a grin.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Blaze threw back with a frown.

"Well, all you seem to be able to think about is when you can toss little sister and me into some mock fight so she can show how good she is at dodging," Oval pointed out. "Have you failed to notice how she's grown already while staying with us? She can fly relatively well now. I'd say leave the fight for what it is, and just push her on over to the magic room."

Blaze turned to face me and held out her right forehoof in my path, so I stopped walking to look back at her. "You think you're ready to learn magic, little sister?"

I sat down on my rear and looked between them all. Oval looked excited at the prospect, giving me a warm grin. Breeze shrugged a little as I turned my attention on her. Matron just raised her eyebrow at me, and I could not figure out what she was thinking.

I closed my eyes a moment, took in a breath, and then gave a slow nod. "My leg feels fine," I offered up to Blaze, opening my eyes again to see her stare at me intently.

"I think I can dodge most attacks, especially now I feel a bit more comfortable about my wings," I decided. "I wouldn't say I know what to expect, but I think I'm ready to give it a go. Worst that could happen is that I get a bolt of energy to my flank, right?"

"Or get your wings singed," Breeze suggested calmly.

Blaze shared a look with Matron, who gave a slow nod.

"Well, Matron thinks you're ready," Blaze offered with a growing grin. "I'm going to enjoy watching you mess up your magic training, Hatchling."

I snorted in Blaze's direction. "Psh, I'll show you."

"I certainly hope you will," Oval cut in. "I'm betting on you to do better than Blaze here on her first day learning magic."

I smiled up weakly at Oval's show of support, while Blaze turned back to her sister and mockingly punched her in the shin.