Why You Dont Sneak Behind Thieves
Green fire danced on orange embers and coals with tattered ashen white speckling its surface. Luna's night sky was starry and bright to everything beneath its concealing shade.
Everything of course, except them. The race that had failed an invasion, the parasites.
Not like he and his team could care, or at least they tried their best to not. Getting angry tended to cloud their judgment, which is exactly why a group of twenty swiftly turned into just a trio of what a pony could call close friends. But they were more like colleagues, never know when a manticore makes someling their next mark.
A weak chitter came from Vivisect to his left, coming in. The cave they were in provided some shelter, and they were far out enough that a fire shouldn't be noticed. "Well. No water, but I did find these!" She hauled some glass bottles on her back, craftily tied to her carapace with a vine to avoid wasting magic. The amber liquid inside sloshed, and the label was roughed up and slightly ruined from moisture.
Contrary to her name, she wasn't a fighter, but was a good tactician, an excellent infiltrator, and great at sneaking around.
"Well, it's something at least." Chiton said, warming his wings by the magical fire. Just another black and blue-eyed changeling like the other drones, but just a tad smarter, enough to earn him the name of some sea critter beyond the South Luna Sea.
"Could be worse, there could be fewer of us." Prothorax tried to be somewhat cheery, morale is hard to come by these days.
"Or a stuck-up leader could be here lashing us right now." Chiton countered. Smart mouthed bug. "Ha ha, very funny." He wasn't like the other squad leaders assigned, sure he could be... Is... Stringent, like the others, but he wasn't that bad.
Mostly.
"So... Gonna share that?" Chiton chirped.
"No, I'm obviously going to throw it in the fire." Vivisect deadpanned, popping the caps off the bottles and passing them around. Love was a primary part of a changelings diet, but so was simple things like water.
Even if said water was in the form of cider.
Chiton was ready to guzzle down his share in one go had Vivisect not intervened, and Prothorax stared at the dancing flames in thought. He wasn't very special, except for his horn being a little longer and with a slight zag to it, making his somewhat reminiscent to the queens.
Taking a sip of his drink eased him a little, but he could still feel the nag on where the rest of his kind were. Where the camp once was, was now infested with guards and curious ponies prodding them like they weren't a product of their expansion.
He took a deeper swig of his bottle again.
It looked like Vivisect and Chiton were trading stories, the infiltrator talking about pony life and Chiton about his admittedy meager role in the invasion. Prothorax was impressed a drone survived this long, life expectancy was low in the hive, even lower on workers.
Then he heard the noise of an elytra rubbing together, kind of like a rough guitar.
"Chiton, what are you doing?" Prothorax asked, tilting his head. Glancing at the cave opening it didn't look like anyone was here, or crossing the detection spell placed a few feet away from the cave.
"Trying to see if I can make a guitar sound with my wings, Vivi been talking about music and I just wanna see if I remember a little bit." The drone slightly slurred on his words.
The changeling leader shot Vivsect an unimpressed look. She just grinned and glanced away. Anything happens, it's your fault.
He took a sip of his cider. Half empty now. Chiton still strumming his joints with a few pointers from Vivisect until suddenly a smooth catchy tune formed. It was simple, and not very complicated.
"You should try to sing, I think that'd soften up his hard old shell." Vivisect also knew just how to get under someone's chitin. Cider mightve been an oversight on her end if they were about to devolve into a song.
Well, better die happy.
Prothorax sighed and tossed a small branch into the flames. Chiton seemed happy, and all he hoped that for that whatever happened, it wouldn't be terrible.
"O - o - h, Ooh"
"I'm a changeling."
"I haven't slept in five years, I've got gray flecks on my eyes."
(She hasn't seen them, but so she's been told)
"I'm a changeling, I run around without a head they kicked it off with their hooves in their armor."
"Oh the commander shouts, his horns missing from a spell gone awry."
"Pink love, green cotton wool won't heal us"
"I'm a changeling!"
"A premature grub of war."
"I'm a changeling!"
"Mother won't you please tend to our wounds?"
"I'm a changeling!"
"Fighting for our forsaken hive."
"Oh I'm a devil you'll say, can you tell me from which novel?"
"I'm a changeling!"
"It's vexing when there's only enough for one last shot." Prothorax joined in. "Either me or the colt. Last flight home, a million like us in the ground than up above."
"Oh, oh, o-oh."
"I'm a changeling!"
"I know my duty, my job is to cast, may my spells strike where they need."
"Mother this reggae it is for you."
"I'm a changeling, we're all changelings, we're all change-"
The little drunken dirge the three had was interrupted by the sound of a twig cracking, and their attentions snapped to it so fast it broke the sound barrier. The pony that had foolishly snuck up on them, alone, was now trying to backpedal away slowly.
Changeling eyesight isn't based on movement.
Three was now four with the addition of an orange mare in a rough cocoon thicker than usual and uneven, and three would wake up in the morning confused and with a mild headache.
"We really aren't going to-" "Silence, Chiton. No. No we are not going to talk about it. Let's just scram."
[Extra] Don't Tell The Guard We're Under Canterlot
Antennae sat in the cave, holding a leg with splintered chitin jutting every which way. With some luck, he'd be finding his way home with the other sixteen members of the force that had been sent out this far. He'd been left behind, every-ling else had left to gather what meager sources of love they could around night-time.
Green magic tried to adjust the shards to be more orderly but every attempt just kept shooting pain into him instead. At least it stopped oozing. He thought he was going mad, and kept hearing steps echoing around, but that should be impossible, nobody could have followed him here.
Weary and alone, he saw no reason to be foolish all to himself, and he buzzed his wings, the elytra rubbed together in soft, low strums. He remembered seeing one of the drones do this before said drone was told to cut it out.
...
Did he fall asleep? He stretched, remembered the state of his shell, and contracted his leg again. His wings hummed together again in low vibratos.
"Hello sister dearest, how are you?" Antennae closed his eyes. "The roads at home must be covered in mud again."
"Stars are falling in Luna's dawn sky-y. Just don't tell mom where I am." Trying to get love from memory from his time in disguise was foolish, but comforting.
"We had a bad raid from the wolves, our sachem's gone and she's coming home with black tulips." A weak tune, it'd suck if he croaked from singing.
"It just makes me want to curse this bloody war..."
"It just makes me want to curse this ponies w-a-ar!"
It felt good to let these things out. "Tomorrow is coming, we'll clean our shells and forget the war." His muzzle scrunched up "It reeks of copper and no-ling wants to sleep, it was a hard battle."
"Three of us didn't come back, it makes me want to cr - y" He paused with a breath. "Just remember, don't tell the guard we're under Canterlot."
"The convener wants to counter-strike, under cover of night. The Canterlot Fortress."
Antennae smiled and felt his blue fins flutter. "But I've still got Roptera with me, I bet he'll make it out of this."
Again, he swore he heard footsteps in between the strums of his elytra. "I'm with my friends and Baetis, I bet we'll make it out of this."
"Just don't tell Chrysalis we're under Canterlot," he murmured. Oh boy, not a single changeling could've anticipated how south things could have gone.
Hey, if we come back with a few ponies, would that make her send more of us out here, or less?
He took a deep breath. His thorax didn't like that very much. "Again pony I give you my warmest regards," the strumming of his wings continued for a moment before hearing the steps suddenly stop. "But for some reason, you haven't struck first."
"So I ask you one little thi - ing. If they ask you what you saw, just li - e!" Antennae opened his spell-struck eyes and saw a grey pegasus staring back at him through the static he called vision. "Just don't tell the guard we're under Canterlot."
"Just remember, you won't tell the guard we're under Canterlot." He repeated, exhaling.
Then he hacked up a green resinous glob directly at the ponies face, confused and sightless it fluttered its wings and made itself open for another glob to its wings.
"Just remember, you can't tell the guard we're under Canterlot."
