So edgy I fell off a cliff
Chrysalis was one who actually enjoyed spending time with her children despite the way she acts outside. Today was a new hive that she had just started to grow a few weeks ago, and she had come with a small group of nurselings to aid her in nurturing the younglings.
The changeling queen took in a deep breathe and exhaled. "Ahhhh. The smell of mucus in the nest is always my favorite. It really gives me a sense of," Chrysalis twirled her hoof."...drone care."
"Whatever you say, my queen," one of her nurses replied.
The fifteen of them stopped in front of a fork in one of the tunnels where around thirty holes had been dug, but Chrysalis didn't care. This was just a baby's playpen in comparison to her grand and glorious hive. She wasted no time directing her nurses through each tunnel towards a nest of changelings waiting to be integrated into the hive and took her own way forward. The dark, dirt tunnels reinforced with changeling spit were large enough for Chrysalis to fit through and were illuminated by phosphorescent mushrooms varying from various shades of blue and green. The tunnels were also occasionally illuminated by said mushroom's spores, making Chrysalis wonder if she shouldn't bring them to her hive for a bit of decorum.
The queen came out of the exit into a nursery composed of multiple, interconnected rooms all leading to an enormous chamber rising ever higher like a hollow column. Pathways of dirt extended around the walls like rings, but not a single set of stairs could be found. After all, changelings could fly. Why would they need stairs?
Unfortunately for Chrysalis, the second she stepped creepy-crawly hoof into one of the nurseries, she saw that there was only one changeling present, and it was mumbling something to itself while tracing its hoof across the floor.
"Hello, youngling," Chrysalis cheerfully called out. The little bug did not not answer, causing Chrysalis to start worrying. "Are you okay, youngling? Are you hungry?"
The changeling huffed in response this time, but Chrysalis was starting to get angry and grabbed the changeling by its shoulder to spin it around. and get a good look at its face.
"What is the meaning of this?!" she shouted.
"Gah! Let go of me!" the changeling responded as it slapped the queen's hoof off of its shoulder.
"What?!"
The changeling's crane, tail, and wings were all a deep shade of red while its crane was hanging in front of its face with the tip transitioning into pitch black.
"What's your deal?" the youngling asked.
"What's wrong with you?" Chrysalis grabbed the changeling's head and looked to see if there were any signs of poison. "Did something attack you? Are you ill, my little changeling?"
The bug squirmed its way out of the queen's hold and glared at her. "I'm not sick, and I don't identify as a changeling, you filthy lower-than-average!"
Chrysalis cocked an eyebrow and her face distorted heavily from confusion. "...Less than...What?" She stomped the ground and bared her teeth. "What do you mean you don't 'identify' as a changeling?"
"Because I'm not," the changeling stuck its nose at the queen. "I identify as a quad-gender, half-demon, half-alicorn, half-unicorn griffon named 'Blood Claw'." It turned its back to Chrysalis and finished its sentence. "You wouldn't understand."
Chrysalis started mumbling to herself then looked at her hoof and shaped several magical fingers on it for help in counting. "Wait, you're a half demon, half...alicorn, half...But then there's the griffon...That's five halves...But...How can you be a unicorn if you're an alicorn, and how can you even be a 'half' of those?!" She threw her hooves forward. "Where does the FULL griffon fit into all this? AND WHAT IN THE ABYSS ARE THE OTHER TWO GENDERS?!"
"You just wouldn't understand. You're a total less-than-average."
"What does that even mean?!" The queen put a hoof to her forehead and took in slow, deep breaths to relax. "Okay, aside from your abhorrent math skills, you're a changeling. You look like a changeling, you breathe like a changeling, you have the abilities of a changeling. Therefore, you ARE a changeling!"
"That's just what you think because you judge things by their appearance. I totally don't convert to that kind of thinking, you filthy conformist."
"...Are you calling me a pony?"
The changeling sighed and looked down to the ground. "If only I could transform. I'd be able to take on my soul's true appearance."
Chrysalis looked at the youngling with a despondent expression. "You can transform. You're a changeling."
The youngling looked at itself then said "Oh yeah" before quickly being engulfed in green flames.
"Oh, so for that you accept that you're a 'changeling', but not for anything else!"
When the flames diminished, Chrysalis felt her eyes vomiting. The changeling had turned into a jet black pony with the rear of a lion, at least four wings on its back: two being pegasi and two being bat-like, four red horns on its forehead, sharp fangs coming out of its mouth and blood red eyes with jet-black crosses as pupils. Its hooves were also blood red and were the roots of the mane and tail that both flowed like Celestia's.
"I shouldn't have told you about that..." Chrysalis sighed. "What kind of phase is this?!" Chrysalis bellowed.
"IT'S NOT A PHASE, MOM! This is who I truly am," the changeling sighed sadly. "And my past is a tragic one."
Chrysalis' eye twitched and she bolted out of the room to vomit in the column chamber. "Oh Queens, what has happened here? They can't all be like this?!"
She flew up through the empty space of the chamber and landed on the third floor. Cautiously, she rounded the entrance and looked around, hoping to find someone sane. Surely that was just an isolated incident that could be taken care of very quickly.
"Hello?" Chrysalis said. "Anyone there?"
"I am!" a cheerful, extremely effeminate voice shouted.
A white...equine creature emitting a blinding amount of light and preventing Chrysalis from getting a proper view of her appearance.
"Who are you?" Chrysalis asked whilst covering her eyes. "Are you the cause of all this?"
"Of all what? Surely, you wouldn't hate Sparkles CreamButter?"
"...What kind of stupid name is that?" Chrysalis answered without emotion.
"I knew it. You hate me too. Everyone hates me."
Chrysalis could tell that she was faking it and that the idea was absurd, so she didn't jump onto that patch of quicksand. Unfortunately, she overheard several changelings coming to her to console her to which she rebutted their words, and then so on and so forth. Chrysalis had already left the room before anything could continue enough to give her a reason to kill herself.
"Ugh. What have the others been going through?"
Chrysalis focused her magic then started to speak telepathically to her nurselings. "Nurseling One, what have you encountered in the hive so far?"
"It's terrible, Queen Chrysalis. These younglings are all...vomit inducing. They keep transforming into their...'OCs', as one of them has called them."
"OCs?" Chrysalis changed to another nurseling. "Nurseling Seven, what have you encountered so far?"
"Annoying as Abyss younglings that don't seem to have a grasp of math nor of colors other than black, red, and white."
"Really? All I've been getting are rainbow colored abominations," the fifth nurseling added.
"Ew. They're like ponies, now. 'If I can't choose one color, I'll just choose them all! Why be judgemental?'"
Chrysalis 'disconnected' herself from the nurses and went to the twelfth floor just in-case she could at least find one sane 'ling here. The first room was a failure. The second as well. The third caught Chrysalis' attention and she approached it.
"What are you supposed to be?"
The pony turned around to reveal itself as a mixture of traits from all four known alicorns. It wasn't enough that the mane looked like star-flavored cotton candy, but the eyes and cutie mark were a jumbled mess.
"I am Celundancight: Mother of all alicorns."
Chrysalis didn't bother with this one and shot a beam of light through its head to end its misery. "Next," she grumbled.
The next room was relatively in comparison to what would scare even the apocalypse away. There were six ponies here with the usual , bright colors they were known for, and it disgusted Chrysalis tremendously. She hoped that they were just training their transformation abilities, but when they turned around, she found herself a bit disappointed yet tremendously relieved: They were just the colors of the Elements of Harmony with the wrong colors. Twilight was a bright shade of green with a mane comprised of cyan blue with a stripe of golden yellow and candy pink. Rainbow Dash was a bright shade of purple and her mane was colored with various stripes of deep and bright blue. Pinkie Pie was cyan blue with a blonde mane, Rarity was green with a mane of candy red, Fluttershy was deep red with a mane of olive green, and Applejack was sunflower yellow with a lavender mane and tail.
"This is good, younglings, but those aren't the right colors of those wretched ponies."
The ponies looked at each other in confusion. Twilight stepped forward. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"Well, Twilight isn't green. She's purple."
"But I'm not Twilight."
"...What?" Chrysalis blurted.
"I'm not Twilight."
"But you clearly look Twilight, just like how SHE looks like Rainbow Dash and that one looks like Rarity and so on."
'Twilight' shook her head. "No. I'm my own character."
"But you look exactly like Twilight Sparkle. You ARE Twilight Sparkle, just with the wrong color."
"But I'm not Twilight. I'm Minty Sunshine."
Chrysalis dragged her hoof across her face. She grabbed the changeling and wrapped her foreleg around it. "Look," she started. "You have a flat, well kempt mane, yes?"
"Yes."
"And you have two stripes of different color going through your mane, yes?"
"Yes."
"And you're very good with magic and books, I assume?"
"Spot on."
"Therefore, you are Twilight Sparkle."
"No. I'm Minty Sunshine."
Chrysalis strained her voice as her muscles trained under the weight of her anger. "Look, just because you changed the colors of your 'characters' does not make them 'original'. All you did was take the appearance of another, already existing person and performed minor changes to their appearance." She crossed her forelegs. "Net you thing you know I'm going to find myself with a different color walking from around the corner and looking at me with an apathetic look."
Chrysalis' anger made place for worry as she and the others looked at the corners of the room, expecting what she said to arrive, but she sighed in relief upon seeing that there was no such thing approaching. She turned around and was met with another her, this time with a very dark blue, chitinous carapace, and blonde where green should've been present.
"Who are you?" The blonde Chrysalis asked whilst poking the real queen on the chest.
"I'm Chrysalis. Who are you supposed to me?"
"What? No, I'M! Chrysalis! You clearly aren't her."
Chrysalis frowned intensely at this...horrible statement. She flew away from the room, leaving everyone to see the face Chrysalis with her head plastered into the dirt walls and the Mane 6 origami caricatures hugging themselves in fear.
"Nurselings, evacuate the hive. It's a lost cause."
"Finally! I've been sitting here looking at some sort of naked monkey surrounded by ponies with no consequences or logic to the situation."
"...You what?"
Everyone went outside and waited upon Chrysalis who, immediately upon exiting the tunnel, bolted above the dirt mound and blasted it to bits. The entire creation crumbled to dust and was filled with flames that roasted everything within the catacombs alive. The queen sighed and smiled, content at her actions. She could finally rest.
"Are you sure this was the right thing to do?" a guard asked.
"I don't know," one the nurses interjected. "That naked ape thingy did seem rather interesting."
The normal changelings slowly craned their necks towards the nurse and paled when they saw Chrysalis looming ominously over the changeling.
"But--"
She picked up the nurse and threw it into the fires, wiping her hooves clean of the filth.
"Did you really need to do that?!" the same guard asked.
"It was the only way. I couldn't let it...spread. I just hope the next hive isn't like this."
"We all do, my queen," the guard sighed.
