Chrysalis drew herself up to her full height, which wasn't all that impressive in this world populated by bipeds. But nonetheless, she was a queen! Well, she wasn't a queen, not anymore. That was the whole reason for her excursion to this strange world, after all.
No, she was a queen, she decided, and she would act the part, even if nobody else acknowledged the fact. And queens always held their heads high. So she wore her most regal expression as she knocked with one hoof on the unassuming door on the second floor of the even less assuming apartment building.
And to her mind, she kept up that regal bearing even as she was startled by the squeaking of the door, jumped several feet back into the hallway and dropped into a defensive posture with a hiss at the strange creature twice her height.
"Yes?" the creature asked, blinking and eyeing Chrysalis up and down.
The regal thing to do, Chrysalis decided, was to make the eyeing up and down mutual. After all, one did not ogle a queen without some reciprocity. The creature walked upright, had a shoulder-length red mane, no other fur, and was clad in a red t-shirt, grey sweatpants and, curiously, a single slipper on her otherwise bare feet. The female, Chrysalis assumed it was a female based solely on the fact that she didn't think males were cut out for the sort of job she had in mind, was also wearing very nerdy-looking glasses. "Are you ... the one they call the Bug Hunter?"
The woman shrugged. "I guess some people call me that."
Chrysalis nodded cautiously. "Yes, well. I suppose code names are common in your line of work."
"Meh, sometimes, I guess. I've had a project or two where a pseudonym was called for."
"I see. Well, Ms. Bug Hunter. I have a job for you."
The woman motioned with her hand. "Come on in."
The former queen proceeded forward, always on the lookout for hidden traps people of this particular repute inevitably put up. What she saw gave her pause. A rather messy room with clothes, books and what probably were meals in the distant past strewn about. Machines with bright monitors - torture devices, Chrysalis assumed - hummed all around. That at least made sense. Then it clicked. Of course camouflage in a place of residence was essential. For all Chrysalis knew, this was the home of the last target and was now used as a temporary residence until the heat died down.
"Tea?"
This time Chrysalis played over her startled hiss at being caught unawares with a cough. "Yes, thank you."
The woman placed a tea set on the coffee table in front of the Changeling Queen and sat down in her office chair.
Chrysalis paused, then took a sip, reasoning that it was bad for business to poison the tea of a potential customer. "Lovely," she lied. "You seem very relaxed for being in my presence."
The Bug Hunter hummed, pulling one leg towards her chest with her arms and resting her chin on her knee. "Believe it or not, you're not the weirdest potential client who walked in here today ... yet."
"I'll cut right to the chase then," Chrysalis began, "and I'll double any price your other clients are paying for preferential treatment."
"Rush job, huh?" The woman rummaged around her desk drawer for a legal pad and pen for a moment. "Alright, what are the requirements?"
"I need you to do what you do best, hunt a bug for me. They say nobody is as skilled at ... eliminating them as you are."
She nodded. "Bug hunt, got it. So we're talking an existing system here. I'm gonna need full access. Sources. Code."
"I can get you access," Chrysalis promised. The secret code words had probably changed since her time, but she knew all the secret entrance ways in and out of the Hive. A map could be provided.
"I'm probably gonna have to debug the entire system," she said absent-mindedly while scribbling notes.
Chrysalis blanched, which was a neat trick for a creature with a black carapace, especially at the coldness and factual nature with which the statement had been uttered. "I'd rather you didn't," she said finally. She was planning to win her throne back. It was hard being a queen without subjects. "Just the one will do. ... Thorax."
For the first time, the Bug Hunter showed some emotion, a dry smile. "You gave it a name? Must be an annoying one."
It? Did this woman not even consider her targets people? It was the kind of cold-blooded intensity that Chrysalis usually admired, and yet she felt a cold chill down her spine. Chrysalis remained silent. Even Thorax was ... Maybe this wasn't how ... No, there was no turning back, she decided. It had to be done.
"How old is the system?"
"It's only been in place for a couple of months," Chrysalis replied, glad for the segue, "things used to run so much smoother before that." Indeed, the Age of Queens had lasted for millennia. This ... experiment in a reformed Changeling state could not be over fast enough for Chrysalis' taste.
The Bug Hunter nodded. "Yeah, rollout of something new is seldom smooth. But I'm good at precision problem solving, especially with sensitive data on live systems."
Chrysalis beamed. "Your reputation as the Bug Hunter seems to be well earn..."
"STOP!" The former queen was interrupted when suddenly the last person she expected burst from the next room.
"YOU!!!" Chrysalis screamed with a hiss, backing away in the face of the current Changeling head of state who came towards her and then planted his face on the floor after stumbling over the low coffee table.
A million thoughts went through Chrysalis' mind. What was he doing here? Was he also ...? Did he come here to place a hit on ...? She almost felt a tug of pride for her wayward former subject. Perhaps the burdens of rulership had made him face reality at last. But another thought won out. "That's him! That's your target! Do it now, my offer stands! Double what he was going to pay."
The Bug Hunter blinked, her hand reaching over for, what Chrysalis realized with a knot in her stomach, wasn't a weapon but a coffee mug. "Pardon?" she inquired mildly while taking a sip.
"You," Chrysalis cried, "you're the Bug Hunter! I've been told you eliminate every one you set your mind to. I'll be paying you a Queen's ransom. That's the bug!"
"You misunderstand," Thorax said, having risen from the floor. "She's not the Bug Hunter, she's the Bug Fixer!"
Chrysalis looked at the woman who shrugged in return. "Yeah, some call me that, too."
"Then..."
"I came here," Thorax began, "to get her advice. On how to best rule the Hive and how to help those Changelings clinging to the old ways, to make them see things in a new light, to fix them."
Chrysalis stared at the Bug Hunter/Fixer. The woman just took another sip from her coffee mug. "Yeah, to be fair, you both seem to have a slight misunderstanding going on about what it is that I actually do." She swirled the coffee in her mug around. "Huh, so I didn't accidentally put whiskey in here. There's really two bug horses in my apartment. I threw my slipper at the first one, the second I just rolled with."
Chrysalis let out an exasperated scream. "I can't count on anyone! My own Changelings! Clones of annoying ponies! Those two idiots who thought Discord was actually the real Grogar! Even Woody abandoned me! I thought at least a professional could help me."
"Moth..."
"Don't," Chrysalis hissed at Thorax, "you dare finish that word, you traitor."
There was a tense silence in the room as the current Changeling King and the former Changeling Queen stared each other down, only occasionally broken up by the sound of a bewildered software developer taking a sip of coffee. "This is just a hunch," the woman finally said, "but are you two related?"
Thorax' jaw tightened. "Yes. As much as I sometimes want to forget it, she's my ..."
"You are no son of mine," Chrysalis said bitterly. "What kind of son ..." She trailed off, clamping her mouth shut, startled into silence by the hurt that had crept into her own voice.
"Mother," he said quietly. "I swore to reform every last Changeling. Pharynx came around. That just leaves you."
The programmer put down her coffee mug. "You know, I may be able to help the both of you, after all. Whenever I had a fight with my mom, this is how we used to make up."
Chrysalis and Thorax both remained quiet, never letting their eyes leave the other as the woman reached up for a grey box with some wires attached atop a closet. Plugging the machine into one of the many monitors, she handed the two Changelings a controller each and pressed the Start button.
Three hours later, the clacking on the keyboard of the Bug Hunter stopped. She checked the output console one last time, saw the checkmarks of the unit test procedures turn green and nodded with satisfaction. Finally done with her work, she tried to take a sip from her empty mug like she'd tried a couple of times for about the last half hour, only this time it actually registered on her mind.
Taking her headphones off and rolling her shoulders, she stood up to address her guests. "I'm putting on some fresh coffee. You guys want anything?"
"You're going down, Thorax," Chrysalis was saying, ignoring the woman she'd meant to hire for something that was 'kind of' still on her mind at the moment, albeit in a slightly different context. Her eyes were glued to the monitor while her magic hammered buttons at random.
"I won't let you win," Thorax replied intensely, dodging the incoming attack, barely a sliver of red still on his health bar, but missing the timing for a perfect counter.
"You're one hundred years too young to finish me off," Chrysalis gloated. "FALCON PUNCH!!!"
"Arghhh!!!" Thorax threw his hooves up as he saw his avatar fly off the edge of the screen. "Not again! That ledge is so tiny!"
The Bug Fixer smiled, turning towards the kitchen. She was certainly curious, but she would ask the female Changeling why her wings had started glittering halfway through the match later.
Author's Note
I know what I did. And I'm not sorry about it.
