"Traditional changeling family values are different," King Thorax remarked.
Princess Twilight Sparkle looked around the dark, gloomy banquet hall. Changelings and foreign visitors sat around a long, flat-topped chunk of solidified green phlegm. The actual food wasn't bad...some of the Hive's infiltrators seemed to have learned to cook, during the years they'd spent masquerading as real ponies in order to steal love.
But still, that table.
"Yes," Twilight said. "I can believe some things are a bit different here. But you have love, right? Isn't that what really matters?"
Thorax sighed. "Let's not talk about it right now. I'll show you after dinner."
***
Thorax led Twilight through a maze of hallways and tunnels. The only consistent direction was downwards.
"Heh heh," Twilight laughed nervously. "If I didn't know I can just teleport out of here anytime I want to, I'd be pretty nervous right now."
Thorax shook his head. "I wouldn't trust that. Do you remember how Queen Chrysalis had the Hive surrounded by a magic suppression field? We're still trying to find all the bits and pieces of her anti-magic defense system. I don't know if we'll ever get it all."
"So...if this tunnel were to cave in right now...maybe I COULDN'T just teleport the two of us to safety."
"You could TRY it. I just don't know how far you would get." Thorax shook his head. "But instead of worrying about that, let's just talk about OTHER unhappy things." Thorax led the way into a large, gloomy cavern. "Behold...the unreformed changelings!"
"What?" Twilight shouted. "Is this...safe?"
"Sure!" Thorax said. Pony-sized bugs with drab, colorless bodies swarmed all around. "They know I'm their meal ticket, so they shouldn't hurt me."
Twilight looked back and forth uneasily. "What about ME?"
"Don't hurt her!" Thorax said. The changelings clacked their mandibles and gave Twilight evil looks. "She's...I'm using her as a source of love! Without her, my plan to make sure there's plenty of love for everyling won't even work!"
"Oh," a changeling said. "Why didn't you TELL us?"
Thorax looked sad. "You should have just TRUSTED me. I shouldn't have to explain everything."
Another changeling remarked, "We shouldn't have to TRUST you. You should give us detailed orders so we know what to do."
Thorax's antlers drooped. "But should I really?"
"Sure! It worked when Chrysalis did it. No matter how little sense her plans made, we always knew what to do, because she ruled with an iron...foot. So we were safe!"
Thorax laughed. "Safe, except we didn't know how to generate love ourselves, so we were always on the edge of starvation."
"Sure, we always depended on stealing love from outside, but at least we were free and independent!"
Thorax wailed, "But that doesn't make any sense! If we can feed the hive ourselves, we're MORE free and independent!"
"But do we get to enjoy constantly tricking and crushing our enemies?"
Thorax shook his head. "If you crush a pony to death, you can't get any more love from her."
Another changeling said, "But if we make other creatures lose, that's how we know we're winners."
Thorax turned to Twilight. "You see how it is? They don't understand that by sharing love, everycreature can win."
Twilight looked around at the angry, petulant, unreformed changelings. "It's terrible."
A changeling said, "She agrees! It's terrible! Revolution now! Invade the outside world! Conquer everycreature!"
Dozens of changelings shouted and cheered. Thorax sighed. "You see?" he said. "With some of these lings, it's really hard."
Twilight glanced behind her, noticing several changelings blocking the tunnel mouth by which she and Thorax had entered the chamber. "Yes," she said. "It's looking harder by the moment." As a changeling transformed to look like Thorax and charged at her, Twilight put up a pink, bubble-shaped shield around herself and the real changeling king.
Thorax put his muzzle to Twilight's ear and whispered, "Thanks! If I try to do something myself to defend against my own subjects, it looks kind of bad."
Twilight whispered, "So I'm not overreacting?"
Thorax glanced upwards. On the roof of the cavern, several transparent green cocoons held the shriveled remnants of rainbow-colored changelings.
Twilight followed Thorax's gaze. "Are those changelings up there...sick?"
"Almost dead. This whole cavernful of changelings put them in cocoons and have been sucking all the love out of them ever since. If we don't help them, they won't survive much longer."
"Oh, no!" Twilight said. "We've got to rescue them. If we teach these changelings that sharing love is the right way to live, maybe they'll release their prisoners, and we can help everyling be happy and well again."
Thorax shook his head. "We already thought of that plan. Those poor, suffering rainbowlings in the cocoons are the lings who tried it."
Angry changelings butted their heads and bodies against the pink bubble, making it ring with their strikes.
"Ugh," Twilight said. "All that noise is giving me a headache." Her horn flashed again, creating a second pink bubble barely inside the first. "We might be doomed to have all the love sucked out of us, but at least the last minutes of our lives can be quiet." Twilight blinked. "And now I can think a little better."
"Great! So what's the plan?"
"I have no idea. Thorax, I thought you were going to tell me about how changeling family values were different? If you tell me what I don't already know, maybe that will give us an idea. Maybe?"
Thorax took a deep breath. "Do you know where little changeling grubs come from, Twilight?"
"Well...I suppose when a mommy changeling and a daddy changeling love each other very much--"
Thorax snorted. "It's not like that at all." He thought for a moment. "Do you know much about ants, or bees?"
"Sure!" Twilight said. "Usually all the worker ants or bees in a hive are sisters, and their mother is the queen."
"Yes," Thorax agreed. "And do they ever meet their father?"
Twilight bit her lower lip. "Their father...that was before the hive was even established. You might say he was a very 'fly by night' character. Because that's how ants and bees do things. By the time the workers are born, their father is long gone."
"Yes," Thorax agreed. "So you can see how Father's Day is a very awkward holiday for changelings. Back when we used to infiltrate pony society and steal love, we lost a few changelings to Father's Day every year. They didn't really understand the holiday, and they made mistakes."
"Mistakes? Like what?"
"I can't tell you HOW many infiltrators made cards with messages like, 'I'm so glad mom didn't kill and eat you.'"
Twilight giggled. "So. Changelings have fathers, but fathers you would never expect to meet. Not like how most ponies do things."
"Yes." Thorax looked outside the bubble. "Those angerlings sure are looking hungry."
"I suppose we'll have to do something." Twilight's horn lit up briefly, but nothing happened.
"Were you trying to teleport?"
"I was. I guess I'll have to think of something else." Twilight's eyes looked a little distracted, as if focusing on something far away. "Tonight reminds me of one of the biggest mistakes I ever made in my whole life."
Thorax frowned. "That bad?"
"Um...I remember you didn't seem to be in a hurry to tell me about how your reform government is partly a failure? How there are still changelings who want to...do I don't know what to you, exactly?"
"They see my rainbow hues, and they feel the love, and it makes them want to trample me and trap me in a cocoon, and suck the love out of me by force. If I was full of nastiness and evil like Chrysalis was, they would feel that and respect me more. It's my lack of evil that makes them want to destroy me."
"Hmm. Well, I wasn't thinking of turning you EVIL, exactly..."
"So don't!" Thorax's eyes widened with distress. "I'm NO GOOD at evil. That's why I had to change. That, and I LIKE being good. Being good is fun."
Twilight nodded. "Oh, I'm not asking YOU to be evil. But that mistake I made in Ponyville, years ago..."
"What? Did YOU go evil?"
"Aww, it was just for part of an afternoon. I cast a spell on my old Smarty Pants doll, that made everypony who saw it want it more than anything in the world. They loved it more than they loved anything else. If I can change the spell a little, and keep from making some other terrible mistake..."
Thorax laughed. "I see. You want to cast a spell, to make those changelings love each other."
Twilight shrugged. "It's better than dying. And better than letting them starve, or start a new war to steal love."
A soft glow appeared around Twilight's horn. She muttered softly, "But I need to use something as an initial spell focus, and I don't have Smarty Pants here to...oh, that should work. Take a deep breath, King Thorax."
"What?"
The pink glow whirling around Twilight's horn burst into many points of light. The sparks of magic flew through the bubbles and struck all the attacking changelings.
Thorax watched the changelings beating against the bubble. "Um...they're still doing the same thing. Shouldn't they be different now?"
Twilight asked, "Do you trust me, Thorax?"
Thorax stared at the attackers. "I...I don't know."
The outer bubble burst, and the changelings ran right through the inner bubble's wall, with a clatter of clacking body parts and hurrying footsteps. "Help me, Twilight! Help!"
A wave of changelings crashed into Thorax from every direction, covering him with hugs. Sometimes a brightly colored antler or leg stuck up out of the tangle, but someling noticed and embraced it, babbling about how they loved their foster father so much, and they loved their brothers and sisters, and they were so glad to finally be able to love and appreciate their families just like other creatures can.
After a while, Thorax rose out of the exhausted crowd of well-wishers. He was looking frazzled, but quite alive. Twilight was hanging by three limbs from the ceiling, where she'd cut into a prisoner's cocoon. Twilight whispered to the prisoner, "I love how you were willing to try so hard to save your fellow changelings, even when they didn't know any better." As Twilight nuzzled the sick, faded bug, the changeling seemed to unshrivel somewhat, and regained a bit more color.
Twilight looked down at Thorax. "Well? Aren't you going to get someling to help me?"
Thorax started to laugh, but the laughing turned into coughing. He looked at the changelings on the floor, and tapped the one who he thought seemed least tired and love-bloated. "Go up to the School of Love," he said. "Tell them I need six teachers, stat. Say it's a love or death situation."
Still lying on the floor, the changeling saluted. "Yes, dad." The changeling struggled onto its feet, and staggered out of the room.
In the newly opened space, Thorax collapsed back onto the floor. "Twilight. How could you do this to me?"
Twilight grinned mischievously. "Happy Father's Day."
Author's Note
It's appropriate this story is for an event put on by SockPuppet, because SockPuppet has written some fun stories about being a father, and I'm hoping this story might also be fun.
One of SockPuppet's funny stories is the T-rated "What Fluttershy Saw."
Something we see partway though this story is reminiscent of something in NavelColt's "To Hold and to Cherish" and "To Love as His Own." There's also an entertaining Hearth's Warming story by TheDriderPony, "Improvise. Adapt. Celebrate."
