The changelings at Queen Chrysalis’ newly restructured and relocated hive had been focusing keeping themselves and their leader fully thriving on love. However, while Queen Chrysalis managed to retain a strong army and swarm, the hive lost many drones over time. And by that, they left to either live a better life somewhere in Equestria, or to just join Thorax’s kingdom, whether they were aware of his sickness or not. But Chrysalis and her drones were well aware of this event repetitively occurring, even when she wasn’t looking.

Why? Because that’s what a former subject of hers, Thorax, did before he took away most of what she had. No, all of what she had. Her army, her throne, her dignity, her family. The fact that she was just able to gather the drones remaining—the drones who are not even half loyal to Thorax—was just sheer luck, at least in her eyes.

Amid Chrysalis’ subjects, who were either too miserable to consume another once of love from another innocent pony or too busy paying attention on how much they were starving, one certain changeling drone was certainly enjoying himself. Literally.

“Claw ring, horn ring, earring...”

Inside a dark, dark chamber within the queen’s hive, Venom Stinger was counting up the total amount of possessions that he had stolen from ponies and other creatures in a small stash in a corner of the chamber, creating blue light from his sharp, curved horn that illuminated the otherwise pitch black room he was in. The blue-eyed changeling was primarily trying to sort them into certain categories, like jewelry, gems, brooches, and so on. It was not only hard when you were trying to do it in a singsong tone, which was what Venom was attempting and failing to do, but it was also quite difficult when there were most pony objects that you weren’t familiar with. And since most changelings in general weren’t familiar with pony society, nor did they know much about certain pony objects in general, Venom Stinger was no exception.

”Leg ring, another leg ring,” Venom continued muttering after a long pause of silence to search in his stash, pulling out a necklace. “Uhhh... Neck ring?” he guessed, not familiar with the silvery, chain-like trinket that had tiny gems carved in the shapes of roses at the lowest part of it. He shrugged and put it in the pile that was apparently for stuff he had absolutely no clue about.

He then pulled out a large diamond that hogged most of his attention, thanks to it sparkling visibly as the blue light from his horn shined onto it. When Venom eagerly picked it up, however, he noticed a large crack in it right away. He was told that diamonds were, in fact, the hardest, toughest, strongest mineral to exist. So, the changeling was unable to think of what could possibly destroy a tough-skinned gem like this. Whoever had owned this, Venom theorized, wasn’t taking very good care of it.

“Broken diamond...” the changeling grumbled disappointedly, and carelessly tossed the half-transparent, half-translucent object behind his shoulder, before slightly jumping once he heard the audible noise of the mineral crash-landing to the stone cold floor. His azure blue eyes went unusually wide as he looked behind him, searching for any sparkling fragments in the dark. Did he actually break it? Venom was unable to tell, since his only light source wasn’t enough to reach the farther corners on the opposite side of the chamber.

This wasn’t just Venom Stinger being a picky, regal object-obsessed drone. He didn’t favor the ancient objects that have fit for royalty. Whether they were owned by a royal ancestor from long ago or not, the blue-schemed drone judged objects for how cherished they were, how long they stayed in mint condition, and how much they taken care of. In other words, he favored the most loved treasures of the past and present days of Equestria and beyond.

He turned back to look into his stash, seeing what else he had in it, adjusting his slick, sapphire blue, hole-infested mane during his long expedition in the fairly sized pile of trinkets. In it, he salvaged the objects that he stole from one of the Equestrian train stations while his siblings were out:

“Chain clock... Chain clock... Another chain clock... Silver chain clock...” the boredom and dissatisfaction in the drone’s tone and voice grew every time he pulled out what he thought was a more valuable item that turned out to be merely a boring pocket watch.

“Golden chain clock... Broken chain clock.” Venom put the former item aside with the other pocket watches he found, before throwing the latter object behind his shoulder in the exact same manner he did with the cracked diamond.

That’s when he pulled out out a silver crown that was bejeweled in multiple spherical gems in five colors: sapphire blue, emerald green, ruby red, aquamarine, and amethyst purple.

Venom grinned, showing his sharp, gleaming white fangs; he didn’t care whether the five colors clashed or not. He didn’t care that it wasn’t his size. Heck, he didn’t even care that the crown was dusty on the inside and out, as if it hadn’t been polished in a week or two, which was one of the things Venom was most fastidious about when it came to treasures like these.

He didn’t remember where he stole this one from, or if it was real or not. Despite those issues, he decided to keep the crown simply because it reminded him of two things of the very few things he genuinely cared about; himself and his siblings.

After the blue-schemed changeling gazed at and admired his reflection in the “vanity” in front of him—which was actually a large, broken-off piece of reflective glass that was attached to the wall of the empty chamber— the drone looked for a place to put the stolen crown at. Again, that’d be easier for him if the room wasn’t completely pitch black.

Or if one of the changeling generals hadn’t come barging in.

”Venom Stinger!” The explosively loud, booming, deep voice combined with the chamber’s intense level of darkness made the changeling jump much higher than he did the last time, his forelegs fumbling with the crown a bit. Luckily, he caught the object just when it was only inches away from the hard, stony flooring, with a deep indigo aura that radiated around it and allowed it to hover into a random spot in the chamber.

Venom sighed in relief after saving the large, heavy trinket. He turned to the entrance of the room, where a certain changeling from the army stood. It was wearing the usual black and blue armor: the ones that had what resembled mandibles that reached past the possessor’s jaws. The armor-wearing drone held a firm gaze on the narcissistic changeling.

“Oh... General,” the blue-schemed changeling started. “You gave me quite a scare... Scarab.” He forced a fit of chuckles, fully aware at how lame his joke was. He expected General Scarab to lose even more of his patience, or at least for him to call him out for his stupid pun. Scarab, however, as if someone froze him or as if he were a statue, kept his solid glare at Venom. This would’ve lasted a minute or two if Venom hadn’t seated back down in his small area, in front of his reflection with his snout in his forelegs, and asked, “What do ya want?” in a “whiny teenager” sort of tone he sometimes used.

Scarab finally spoke after that. “You scared me more than I scared you. And you know that.”

“Why? I’m not even part of your dinky little army,” the teenage drone replied with a scowl. By “dinky,” he was obviously referring to the swarm slowly shrinking ever since that traitor “Thorax,” along with his band of misfits, saved Equestria’s most well-known heroes and took more than half of Chrysalis’ swarm.

“We all know how much our kind’s population has been decreasing,” Scarab continued, unintentionally lamp-shading Venom’s insult.

“And what do I have to do with it? I’m not part of any of the armies, nor do I get sent to go hunting, and there is NO way I am stepping back into that stinkin’ grub nursery again. It took me two hours to fully clean the gunk out of my holes!” Venom hissed in disgust, shaking his front hooves.

“Venom, that took you five minutes-”

“Two! Dreadful! HOURS!” Venom shouted as he suddenly slumped onto the hive’s floor, his annoyedly complaining tone suddenly whiplashing to melodramatic. He would’ve pretended to wail for good measure, as he recalled seeing a certain white unicorn doing it a few times, whether it was genuine or not. For personal reasons, Venom decided not to. For he always despised the very concept and existence of crying itself.

“Get off the floor,” Scarab groaned flatly, rolling his electric blue eyes at the changeling’s exaggerated misery. “I’m not here to go over your personal hygiene,” the general continued as soon as the blue-schemed drone got up. “Whether you have a job here or not, what’s important here is that we’re here when the queen needs us. And she needs us now. You know why?”

“Because she can’t feed herself?” Venom’s snarky attitude returned as soon as Scarab expected it.

“Because a swarm meeting awaits,” the general answered, once again ignoring the drone’s snippy comment.

“Tell it to wait outside! And that if they need an irrelevant, totally unimportant drone, come and talk to me!”

“We’re going now, Venom...” the general made his way outside the chamber, leaving Venom Stinger no choice but to follow him, but only because he got bored with his stash anyway, grumbling the remaining complaints he had to himself as they made their way into the throne room.

The walk there was unsurprisingly not very far from the chamber where Venom has been hanging out in.

However, if one was to visit the hive in this time around they’d be rather baffled at how little non-reformed drones there were left. The swarm itself, which once consisted over thousands, almost millions of drones, was now reduced to under only a few hundreds of them. And for them, it only got worse from there.

Despite the population rapidly shrinking over periods of time, Venom usually had trouble finding his way around the throne room when the entire pack was inside it. Just like he did now.
The main reason why it usually took him so long to find his place in these meetings, was that he was always looking for a certain group of drones he most definitely knew.

“Venom!”

It had been the second time today that a loud voice was calling for the same blue-schemed drone. This time it came from someone he actually wanted to see.

Venom turned to see his siblings among the many other colored drones, and immediately dashed to greet them.

“Hey, hey, hey, Change Gang!” Venom grinned, seeing that his 4 siblings had returned from their attempted mission, despite the fact that none of them were sent to do so. “What happened out there? Did ya manage to take on those eyesores?”

“Almost. That guy really put up a fight..” Scorch replied to the middle sibling of his. “Guess we know that we’re not getting a role in the army anytime soon?”

“What’d you bring back from late-night robbing then, Venom?” Cricket asked his younger brother.

“Ooh! Ooh! Did you manage to earn a rank of a thief or something?!” Flutterwings asked eagerly, bouncing on the stone floor.

Venom was about to answer his siblings’ many questions, but the sudden outburst from the Queen prevented him from doing so.

“SILENCE, MY SUBJECTS!” Chrysalis’ voice echoed throughout the room. A hush fell over the crowd of subjects as the meeting was seconds away from properly beginning.

“Weevil,” Chrysalis returned to the proper volume she needed to talk to one of her subjects, “go see if there are any stragglers out there and bring them here. This is an important topic to discuss, so we certainly must have everyone gathered for.”

“We are gathered, my Queen,” Weevil responded solemnly, his head bowed low. “There’s no one else to bring here.”

For a brief moment, Chrysalis’ expression slightly mirrored the drone’s, as she remembered how many drones have left her over the past months; and how much she and her former subjects have drifted apart since then. “Er... Right,” she said before continuing like nothing happened. “Anyway, we are all aware of the depopulation issues that we’ve been having, yes? No?”

Her subjects nodded slowly.

“My queen!” another drone suddenly made his way through the crowd. “Our scouts have returned from gathering information about King Thorax’s kingdom, and half of the troop is already missing!”

Several drones gasped at this message, others simply shook their heads; they were mostly used to this by now, due to how much it’s already been happening.

“Here we go again,” Venom Stinger quipped. Neither he or his siblings were surprised.

The queen simply rolled her eyes upon being informed of this... For the second time.

“Yes, Stonefly, I know all about that issue... Now go get the chart for me will you?”

“But my queen-“

“I said NOW!”

“Yes my queen...” Stonefly looked down at his hooves, grumbling to himself before flying off. In almost no time at all, he brought back what appeared to be a bar graph that consisted a ratio involving the two species of changelings: reformed changelings and non-reformed changelings.

“So, this is what the ratio of our changeling types once was.” a random changeling drone started to point at the bar graph: The bar that resembled non-reformed changelings reached to the top of the graph; there was no bar for reformed changelings in sight.

“Soon enough, it began to change over time,” the drone explained as he began flip the pages one by one. Every bar graph per page showed the reformed bar growing in size as the non-reformed bar started to shrink more and more rapidly.

“And this—” the drone got to the final page which showed the reformed changelings’ bar practically a skyscraper compared to the non-reformed changeling’s bar, which was only as tall as a house “—is the ratio of the changeling types Equestria has up to date.”

The crowd’s expressions went wide-eyed at the demonstration, but the drone wasn’t done yet.

“So if we don’t take action about this issue, here’s what we’ll be in the future.”

Out of nowhere, the drone quickly tore off the right side of the bar graph—the side that the non-reformed bar was on.

This was enough to make the entire room gasp in shock, as the drone crumpled the torn up paper into a ball, tossing it out of sight.

“Thank you, Netwing.” Chrysalis clapped her hooves slowly when the changeling was finished. “I’m sure if we worked hard enough, we’ll show those traitors what’s it’s like to be... ripped off a graph!” she began to do her signature cackle after that sentence.

The crowd only stared silently, perplexed about the bizarre metaphor she just used.

Chrysalis stopped upon realizing that. “Just go back to your duties!”

As the crowd then poured out of the throne room, the Change Gang briefly met up with Netwing.

“Heya Netwing, I betcha my science brother Spiny could rip a graph in two like that!” Venom exclaimed. He knew how much Spiny was into science and logic.

Netwing only rolled his amber-colored eyes and flipped his bright orange mane as he uttered annoyedly, “Get a job, Gang.”

After that, the Change Gang returned to their empty chamber in silence.

“Well, the entire swarm’s tending to their duties,” Spiny muttered aloud, “so we’re tending to ours.”

He and his siblings had no choice but to sit in the empty room, since they had no errands to tend to, nowhere to scout, no jobs in the hive.

“If we can’t contribute to the hive, what hope does our kind even have?” Cricket rested his head in his hole-filled forelegs.

“I don’t know, Cricket, but anything’s better than nothing,” Scorch answered, trying to cheer up his shy brother.

“Of course it is!” Venom jumped up. “We formed this group for a reason. For only our hive!”

The other siblings turned their heads at the blue-schemed drones as he continued.

“We’re not gonna just let our kind get torn up into pieces! Are we, Gang?!” Venom encourages the others.

“No!” they all said.

“Because one day we’ll get to contribute to our home’s development! We’ll show those traitors what we’re made of!”

“Yeah!” all 5 siblings suddenly shouted.

“Ahem.” a voice cleared her throat.

The Change Gang turned around to clearly see who it was: A fuchsia-eyed drone whose pink mane was tied into a long braid.

“Ahem.. Ignore that randomness,” Venom chuckled embarrassedly, walking up to the pink-schemed drone. “So um.. Thistle Thorn, right?”

“Yes, and I am looking for... The Change Gang?”

“That’s us.” Venom Stinger wrapped a foreleg around Cricket Cluster, who shied away from the newcomer.

“Good,” Thistle replied, “because Queen Chrysalis needs—“

“—A moment please.” Chrysalis appeared behind Thistle, finishing the pink-schemed drone’s sentence.

Author's Note

When you realize that the first official chapter you post is shorter than the prelude.

Still, I couldn’t help but post another chapter not long after I did the prelude. It was especially fun putting together Venom’s “angsty teen meets Rarity” type of attitude during his moments with Scarab.

Anyway, thanks for reading and stay tuned!