Another morning, another day at the grindstone, but that's how it is for any working man.
"Off to work again dear?" The love of my life asked.
"Yeah, gonna make a lot from these jobs."
"Well, don't mess up, you've got a family to support." She held her belly.
"I'll never forget that sweetie!" I kissed her.
Call me Ishmael. No, that isn't my real name genius. My girl? You can call her 'Shirley' if you gotta call her something. You'd laugh at the joke if you knew our real names.
So what am I? Can't you tell from the mix of happy bright colors? I'm a changeling of course! A 'new grub' is the technically 'correct' term thanks to that whole 'new foal' nickname, but everyone and their mother prefers 'new nymph.'
So we're all gonna have to turn into petting zoo freaks with superpowers or die of radiation poisoning... Not exactly a hard choice if you ask me.
The Elvis impersonators were LIVID when Las Vegas began hiring out changelings, heh, turns out that it takes more than looks to make people think you're The King back from the dead!
All the theme parks, video game and comic book movie makers want'em cause they can now have performers who really can look just like their copyrighted-till-the-end-of-time characters!
Yeah, my dame and I aren't the same species, changelings can't feed off of each other's love after all. They'd be a perpetual motion machine if that was the case.
We had a long hard discussion about what species to become, you don't just jump into this since there's no undo button, but ya don't deliberate until the cows come knocking (not kidding, some moved into the neighborhood).
We knew one of us would be a changeling, our line of work made it the perfect species for us, but since we needed one of us to provide love, one of us would have to be another species. We eventually settled on me becoming the shape-shifting bug-horse that feeds on love. With that settled, it then came down to deciding what species Shirley would become. We looked through every possible choice.
She was NOT becoming a donkey, yak, or cow, or some dang dog, she was clear about that last one! She wasn't interested in becoming a little horse neither, she wanted something that still had opposable thumbs! Not to mention once we became a family, our children were gonna be whatever she chose to be.
She naturally wanted to be a dragon, who wouldn't? But then she learned she'd be biologically back in kindergarten if she took the dragon potion. Also, there was a cap on how many people could become dragons the other aliens had worked out, since they didn't want a billion adult dragons to worry about in a hundred years (they aren't as stupid as they look). And so few dragons would mean standing out a lot, which would be awkward.
That all being said, she did consider becoming a breezie. Small, cute, disarming, adorable, easy to hide, easy to get in and out of places without being noticed... but Shirley likes to be able to take care of herself, and Breezies were kinda infamous for being fragile.
Then there was griffin, but Shirley was really set on going around on two legs, which griffins might have been able to do, but they preferred to go around on four. The flying was great, and I did kinda try to push her in that direction, that way we could become part of the mile high club without an airplane! But Shirley thought the Abyssinians looked less bulky, were quicker, and she said they suited her needs more. Plus they did have claws and fangs, which Shirley said was "A real plus!"
Also, thanks to changes in decency laws, due to talking horses going around in the street naked, she can go au naturel too if she wants (saying that male Abyssinians were allowed to go around naked but females couldn't was sexist). She wasn't sold on the idea herself, until she admitted clothes tended to chaff on her fur.
She used to help out more before she got a bun in the oven, but I don't want her to risk the baby, I hadda beg and plead with 'er first, but she came around like a light switch. If you ask me she loves being treated on paw and claw, and she just liked to watch me dance to her tune, and that's why I love 'er!
And that love she gives me is all I need to live and then some!
Society doesn't approve of our alternate life-style... of liberating currency from the mentally unfit and emotionally underdeveloped. It's immoral to leave money in the hands of fools.
I've had a couple other side jobs: recovering stuff that's fallen out of people's pockets, collecting on-the-spot discounts from stores, and on occasion letting people know their house's security needed work and deciding my own fee. I mean, what if some blood thirsty psycho comes along? People need to invest more in security!
Hey, don't you go getting all high and mighty! I said we liberate money from morons. I DIDN'T say we were involved with dung like murder, rape (she's the only girl I need!), arson, human trafficking, drug dealing... Competition in that business tend to be dangerous, and the cops become more relentless when you're taking people's liberty or life instead of some rich idiot's bank account. I don't wanna leave our child without a father, and I don't wanna go setting a bad example for 'em, ya know?
Why don't I become an actor or a security inspector and earn a 'honest living'? Because I'm good at this. And it makes me feel alive. Yeah, the guy who went to Hell and got everything he wanted with no effort and went nuts because what made him happy was stealing stuff, not having stuff, I saw that TV show too! I provide for my family, same as any working man.
Does my girl know? Of course she knows! She's not one of those 'stay at home' housewives! I told you she helped out more before getting pregnant. Heck, we first met when I was one of HER marks, getting me to buy drinks for her that were more expensive than the menu said they were. I told her how she could make more money than what the bar was giving her a cut of.
And as an Abyssinian, she's great at getting money out of naive lonely furries! Ha! Seeing her work from the outside is like seeing poetry in motion, she has them wrapped around her finger in no time, she knows what they want before they do!
While being pregnant is likely to turn off for these pathetic shut-ins, that just means I need to bring home the bacon. Hmmm, bacon. I can eat the stuff, but my stomach is tiny now, and my sense of taste isn't what it used to be. But unlike some blokes I'm not about to throw a hissy fit over something I can't change. There's always trade offs.
I bet you're wondering how I can have kids with her, actually it's really easy, I just shapeshift into something that can! HA ha! Apparently there were changeling spies who did the same thing as part of their undercover missions before the ponies replaced their queen with a king who was friendly and subservient to them: Realpolitiks are the same even on other planets in other universes!
Also, Shirley 'acquired' a slew of 'temporary transformation' scrolls that can change any sapient creature into another sapient creature, but unlike the potion it’s a form that's 'super imposed' on your 'real' one, while the potion makes what you become your natural state (or that's what it said on the instructions)! Our love life is never dull.
So yeah, we're partners in crime! And we're gonna be more than that soon enough.
Yeah, I'm gonna be a father. Nobody likes changing diapers, but hey, it comes with the territory. Will I teach my kid to steal stuff too? Well hey, a dad passes on his life skills, it would irresponsible of me not to. Do I expect my boy to follow my 'hoof-steps?' I'm not one of those tyrannical all controlling dads, or I hope I'm not gonna be, the kid's gonna have to decide for themselves what they're gonna do with their life.
And being a shape-shifting bug-horse goes a long way to help me in my line of work. And since I'm now a changeling, no one bats an eyelash at me reading up on every species' strengths and weaknesses.
I wasn't about to get an illegal potion, like say sirens or umbrum, apparently ponies think they're genetically predisposed towards being sociopaths due to feeding off bad vibes. Personally I think ponies want to simplify everything down to either a few good apples or a few bad apples in each barrel.
And the Yeti potion got slapped with illegal status too, not like the minotaurs because it kept backfiring, or the siren for supposedly making those it changed 'evil' or some silly crap, but because it was discovered that the Yetis were using the fortune left behind by their King in various treasuries to buy modern weapons from many different shady dealers. Machine guns, rocket launchers, kevlar vests, Humvees, ya name it. And hiring professionals to teach'em how to use'em! Gold and gems speaks. Apparently the ponies and their allies are worried about the Yetis building a new army.
Speaking of money, there's been an insanely huge restriction put on jewels coming from Equus to keep the entire Earth market from crashing. Doesn't stop smugglers though (willing to change their species ahead of time for money, I can appreciate that). I don't get PER and HLF, there's plenty of 'interesting times' to be had without the 'alien invasion' dung.
After I said goodbye to my fingers, I even considered faking being a hippogriff and shapeshift into a 'seapony', but there's too much of a paper trail surrounding pieces of that macguffin of theirs (how many pieces can that thing be broken into?!).
Heh, there was a guy who, after his paperwork fell through, led a raid on a shipment of DRAGON potion, and he downed it on the spot. They caught him ... but a jury of his peers, meaning other dragons, led to jury nullification, if he was willing to go through all that to become a dragon, they wanted him among their numbers with open arms!
And this is where you think I dug my own grave right?
I know there's bad blood for changelings by some ponies in Equestria, but I also know that particular prejudice is no worse than any other on Earth, and that 'color coded on the nice and naughty scale' is in full effect with the changelings as far anyone else is concerned.
IE, if a changeling is black, they're bad, if they're colorful, they're good. (The black community in America, including the ones that drank the potion already, of course, had demanded they be called 'rogue' changelings please.)
Those ponies are naive, they don't understand that people can love and still do evil things. Like how Nazis had loving families, and would go home to those loving families after a hard day's work at the death camps!
And the best part is? Even if they realize all my work were by the same guy? They'd be looking for a changeling that looks like black swiss cheese! Ha ha!
And of course, nobody thinks it's a changeling, since if it was a 'bad' changeling, there would be a trail of drooling love drained vegetables in their wake.
One of the perks of being a shapeshifter, I can walk down the street as ANYTHING, and nobody bats an eyelash. And I've got the Crystal Empire culture customs down, the Yakyakistan dos and don'ts and accent, and the dragon body language to know the difference between 'get out of my way now' and 'I challenge you to a duel to the death!' (you'd be surprised how close those two are), just to name a few.
I walk by police, spy drones, zebra, a merpony in her wheelchair, a big bald guy with groceries, and nobody pays me mind, I always know what form to pick to always blend in the crowd.
Oh, that on the TV in the electronics store window? That's just a commercial for the latest video game crowd-funded by the HLF. No, I don't play video games, but my cousin does, he says he doesn't care about the politics, he just likes the gameplay. He says it's a nice callback to the days when Nazis and demons in first-person-shooters attacked the player character with kamikaze bloodlust. And he says the voice acting, music, and graphics are all cutting edge. It's got new-game-plus, trophies, online multiplayer, insane levels of player character customization, the whole nine yards.
Apparently they based the hero on the sniper who took a shot at Prince Shining Armor. They can't say that in game of course. For instance, you get tips, power ups, yada-yada from the spirit Disorder. And you fight Queen Solestia's minions the Components of Unity, except Buttershy, who betrays the group to help you and is martyred and is replaced gameplay-wise by Byra Loveharp who loves to say how humans are so much better than her own kind. And you free Queen Solestia's baby sister Woona from her moon prison. Gleaming Barding is the penultimate boss. After killing Queen Solestia the game ends with the ponies humbly surrendering the obviously more badass humans while a ticker tape parade is given for the hero with him kissed by swimsuit models as he gives a speech stolen right from Shakespeare about the greatness of humanity that the Bard wrote to be ironic.
Heh, you should see the slew of 'website download only' 'indie games' made by PER members! I didn't think it was possible to make humans look that ugly, and I've seen ugly!
I'll admit, most cons only work so well because it's the own mark's greed that gets them. For instance, this one I shall perform right now. It's called a pigeon drop according to some. Become an old unicorn with a violin, eat something at a fancy restaurant, claim to have forgotten my wallet, and leave behind the violin and collateral. No, that isn't the con, THIS is the con! I shapeshift into a griffin, and say I've opened a pawn shop, say the violin is worth a fortune! And offer to 'buy' it at my 'store' but I'm late for appointment and away I go!
And bada-boom, I come back as the old unicorn, with the money for my meal, and human nature follows as the mark pays me a little fortune to get the big fortune, and I leave him with a fifty-dollar violin. And the police look for a griffin and a unicorn and don't even THINK of a changeling because there are no zombified vegetables in town, and even if they do, they don't even LOOK at the colorful changelings, because only the black love-starved or parasite changelings are 'evil.'
You haven't seen anything yet! Let me show you what else I can do with a violin! I got this idea from a comic book!
I do some internet searching and detective work, and find a rich idiot whose own youtube videos show his talent at music leaves much to be desired. And as a nice pretty female unicorn (Shirley gave me some pointers on this one), I tell 'em about my 'magic' fiddle that can make anyone a musical genius... in reality it's just a small radio hidden inside. But since magic is so 'fancy and new' and not many humans even get how it works, and he wants a quick and easy way instead of hard work and practice, the rich idiot buys it.
Though I guess rich 'idiot' isn't quite the right word. An idiot isn't going to be impressed by all the fancy talk. Idiot marks look for the simple solution, smart marks look for the easy one.
Also, let me put some of your righteous indignation to rest, I've never stolen from the poor, everything is about risk vs reward, and why risk jail time with someone who isn't worth scamming from?
Here's another classic, yesterday I went into a store as a 'one-eyed griffin', who'd lost his glass eye, and offered a big wad of cash for whoever finds it. Then I come in as a male earth pony, and claim to have found the thing in the store, and of course, the store owner, wants that reward for himself, and is soon bargaining with me, wanting that glass eye and the reward! I walk away with the money, and the 'one-eyed griffin' never comes back.
Let me tell you, coming up with all these different personas isn't easy, you can't just have'em be cardboard cutouts, or someone is gonna notice an accent or body language that's the same as another, and things can go south after that.
As for robbing the rich, you think anyone is gonna lose any sleep over some stupid millionaire who hasn't worked a day in his life having to buy a smaller speed-boat?
Then there's the classic money making box... I tell them how it uses MAGIC to create perfect replica dollar bills... never mind why the hell I'd be selling a money making box if I had a money making box. And since it's MAGIC, it's not REALLY counterfeiting is it? (Of course it is.) And it's not like I'm counterfeiting, since the bills I put in the fancy looking box are real. And if they go to the police, they have to admit they were trying to commit counterfeiting! And they never find that rainbow colored unicorn with the mustache!
As for suckering ponies... let's just say the 'I'll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge' scam has gotten new life! Not me personally, ponies have different 'rules' than humans. But speaking of which?
People love to think they're smarter than others, and the more different you are from someone, the smarter than them you are! And ponies are as different as different could be. So I find my mark, and I appear as the pink Earth Pony with the cheese cutie mark (or maybe it was something different, heh, I'm not telling,) and I come to a land developer, excavator, the kinda people who miss the 'good old days' when you could just sucker the locals into signing away all their land rights with some fancy talk thinking they're signing for co-ownership! And I talk about the 'useless' 'liquid black stuff' and 'yellow rocks' that are on this land I own, and nobody in Equestria wants it, but maybe since 'humans are weird' they'll want it?
They can't sign the exchange papers fast enough. And these guys aren't going to convert until the last possible moment, hoping for some kinda alternate solution to present itself, because of course it will, there's no way that this could possibly affect THEM right? This whole 'turn into petting zoo creatures' only happens to the POOR people! And they'll have rights to land stuffed with oil and gold and have complete control of sharing it to keep the price from dropping. Of course, that land doesn't actually exist.
And me selling the 'useless yellow rocks', for an absurdly lower price that gold would never be worth? ... Of course 'that diamond dog' (me) never called them 'gold', they just assumed it had to be gold... And they bought a buncha fool's gold! Buncha fools.
And the best part is, they can't say a thing, or they have to admit they were trying to take advantage of some poor sap themselves!
You gotta understand, this is something of a 'sweet spot' for hardworking family men like me. This time of transition, it's the only time a lot of these scores will work anywhere near as well as they are. In a couple decades? Nobody is gonna be falling for 'em!
Now I'm sure you've heard all this before, this is where I get caught by the cops right? Naw.
What's more annoying is that if it had been a crooked cop looking for our stash, at least it would have made sense. Instead, like every other poor sap in the world, sometimes bad stuff happens to you that has nothing to do with you.
We'd moved to the 'country', away from prying eyes. Sadly this is what made it a great place for others too! We heard the van drive up fast to the house. I changed into a breezie and flew upstairs and looked to the window.
We first thought it was a police raid, we'd been prepared for that, instead, we had to deal with what some jokers would call 'our own kind.' No, not Queen Chrysalis and her 'rogue swarm.' I bet she's running a brothel in Cuba right now.
We had men come out of a white van, wearing black hockey masks, armed with guns, and bags filled with cash. Bank robbers. We'd heard it on the radio, but didn't think we had anything to be worried about. Well, now we did.
Also, one of those masked men had two hooves, fingers, a tail, and a head like a bull's, a minotaur. That was the really bad news, no, EVEN WORSE news!
He may have been wearing a mask, but he didn't hide those blood-shot eyes, or that his hands couldn't stop shaking. A new minotaur, there was no nickname for them, because there hadn't been that many created. 'Bad things' had happened to those who signed up to test it. The media all SAID that all of them were locked up, but I've learned to never take stuff at face value.
The mad-minotaur sniffed about and snorted, a blood stain visible under his mask where his nostrils were. "Dang, I was hoping for humans. But it smells like every other kind of creature is around here. What is this, a whorehouse?" He sounded like one of those guys who'd kill you soon as they look at you. Hey, cold readings come with the territory!
"Don't worry Clyde, we'll find some hobo nobody will miss," said another of the masked men in an assuring voice, patting him on the arm.
"Thanks big brother," Clyde said in a much more stable tone.
Then I'm afraid to say, I fell into the ether. That emotional state that you want your marks in, where the analytical part of their brain shuts off and they're in 'fight or flight' mode. I got stupid.
"TAKE the money, and junior, and go!" I told my wife. We should have all bailed, but I wanted to play Superman and save my family from the bad guys.
"Screw that!" She snapped.
"Please honey, no time to argue! Keep junior safe!"
She gave me a death glare, took the money, and left my sight.
I thought I was probably gonna die, but I'd made my choices; I had no regrets.
These guys weren't too clever, since they hadn't just ditched their weapons and masks and come in politely asking for a place to stay with the money out of sight, but that might just mean they're too greedy and blood-thirsty to think this through.
I knew this wasn't an action movie. If I rushed in there like Batman against three armed men, I was going to die. I could shape shift into a dragon, but while I knew dragons could survive skinny dipping in molten lava, there hadn't exactly been a lot of testing on how dragon scales held up against hot lead. I could try a breezie: Tiny target, fast, but fragile as stained glass. Or just go with another minotaur, and hope all that muscle mass saved me. But there's a reason early man's first bow gave him an advantage over the wolf or the tiger. In short, if I went up against these guys, I'd end up dead.
Fun fact by the way, in the olden days? The 'Scooby Doo Hoax' was an actual factual thing when people were more likely to steer clear of a place they thought was haunted than have it become a tourist trap. There's a reason they've switch to stuff like 'gas leaks' to scare people away. So no, I can't make these jokers think the house is haunted or something.
So I put my acting talents to their ultimate test! The robber came in through the back door, and I shifted to different forms and didn't stop.
"Get the shotguns dears! Sounds like we've got company!" I shouted in a woman's voice. Moving about so it sounded like each voice came from all over the house, echoing so they couldn't figure out where.
"Yeah mah!"
"Yes mother!"
I said in completely different voices. I bellowed like a minotaur. "Let me at 'em!"
"I'll claw'em to bits!" I screeched like a griffin.
"SMASH!"
"No, I wanna burn them!" I audibly spewed flames for dramatic effect.
"No, I'm gonna burn 'em!"
"No me!"
"Me!"
"Whoever burns the most wins!"
Thankfully, with so many scents all over the place from my transformations, the minotaur was at least fooled. And the bank robber's adrenaline must have been running high, because I faintly heard 'em wanting to go back the way they came. I'm guessing they also had no clue if bullets could stop a dragon, let alone two.
Sadly, I made one fatal miscalculation: one a working family man like myself should have seen coming a hundred miles away. Retreating from obviously out numbering hostiles is the rational thing to do, but it's not what a new-minotaur with a blood-lust addled brain is going to do.
"BRING IT OOOOON!!!" Clyde bellowed and ran up the stairs smashing everything to splinters on the way. Oh crap. Oh yeah, pretty sure I had somehow just escalated things maybe.
"CLYDE! CLYDE COME BACK!" I heard his big brother shout.
"Damn mad cow!" I heard what I guess was the third robber cuss.
"Don't you EVER call him that!" Clyde's brother snarled.
I could use this. ... If I knew how to throw my voice. I could sneak out of the house, and just creep up behind them and mimic the other guy's voice. Again, if I hadn't been in the ether, I should have just flown away, screw everything. We weren't going to be staying this house after this anyway, the police would definitely investigate it.
"That damn mad cow of yours gonna kills us!" I mimic his voice, with the noise Clyde was making hopefully they wouldn't realize the source.
"I TOLD YOU NOT TO SAY THAT!"
"I DIDN'T SAY IT YOU FUCKTARD!"
"You just did!!!!"
Given they were looking each other in the face now, there was no way in Hell they were going to fall for that trick again. But at least I'd stirred the pot and they'd forgotten about everything else going on.
Clyde however, I think he was too deep in the idea of having something to tear limb from limb to care about the argument down below. Yeah. I was definitely being stupid now. How the Hell was I supposed to get them out of the house? I'd been making one stupid decision after another here. So think moron. Think Ishmael. Your job wasn't to get these goons out of your house. It wasn't to take them down. Your job was to keep them busy and give Shirley and junior time to get away. Keep their attention on each other, or you. The other two's attention was on each other, so keep Clyde's attention on you.
Clyde had forgotten his gun in his blood lust, I should have filched it and shot 'em. For once in my life the law was completely on my side, these men had broken into our home. Who knows? Maybe I was doing him a favor. But dead bodies always led to deeper investigations. And I wanted myself, Shirley, and junior to have a peaceful retirement after the 'gold rush' had ended.
So the show begins. Yes, I own smoke bombs, cliche, I know, but sometimes you gotta go with the classics. Griffin flies behind him and claws his back, also cutting his gun strap just in case.
I know the absolute basics of how unicorn telekinesis works, thankfully changelings are close enough in that regard. When he turns around I hit him in the face with a blast of force that amounts to a poke in the eye, but it's enough to get him even more mad.
I run between his legs, and he tries to grab me, but thankfully if there's anything any grifter with a back-up plan is good at; it's running.
Back into the smoke, a Yak smashes into him from behind, causing the top heavy muscle brute to go toppling to the floor.
Sun Tzu said, reinforce your left, your right will be weak, and vice versa, and reinforce everywhere, and you'll be weak everywhere. Gotta keep Clyde thinking he's fighting an army and keep him unfocused and prepared for everything so he's not ready for anything!
’Am I imagining things or are Clyde's muscles getting bigger?’
I shape-shift into a dragon before he gets up. Then he grabs my face, trapping my muzzle shut, his muscles definitely get even bigger, and he smashes me into a wall. Ow. Then he used his increasing mass to weight me down, and began bending my wings the wrong way, and pulling at them, I'm in more pain than I can imagine. I cry out. I faintly hear the other two burglars laughing.
Then Clyde shuddered, lost his grip, and fell over, I actually felt his muscles shrink enough for me to push him off me.
And I laid eyes on a blond diamond dog bitch, yeah, the form she hated, and so no one would think it was her if they ever spotted her as one here. She was holding a cattle prod we owned, the kind used to subdue a seventeen-hundred pound bull.
"What?" Shirley asked. "Did you expect me to leave you behind?"
"... " I smile. "Not a chance babe!"
"Hey! Clyde! You okay up there?!"
We heard the other two robbers coming up the stairs.
"MOVE IT YOU IDIOT!" She snarled hooding her stomach.
Twelve hours later, two Abyssinians, (well, at least one, and one who could pass for one) were on a plane trip out of the country with 'creative' passports.
By the time this is read by anyone, anywhere, Homo sapiens will have joined the dodo, carrier pigeon, and Tasmanian tiger! And we'll be out of the country, and raising our kid retired on a tropical island, or maybe Europe or Alaska, I'm not telling! Ha!