It was an ideal day in Ponyville, not merely due to the weather team’s fastidious work. A day of celebration, everypony bustled about the streets in preparation—not the foals. The foals, they scattered and idled as they played with one another. Today, Kevin was a foal. Specifically, a blue unicorn colt without a cutie mark.
For the ponies, the air was refreshing to breathe. For Kevin, the atmosphere charged him with high prana. Such an ambient dose of love had been far too rare in his northerly home hive. The luck of the mailbag deposited an invitation to a changeling feeding frenzy right to his door. One of his hive’s spies looked through the mail cars of the train as it stopped to swap out cars and made hectographs for later analysis. While the event was billed as the marriage of Cranky Doodle and Matilda, rudimentary assumptions made it clear it was a feeding frenzy of changelings. His hive’s council selected him as the worthy worker drone. Kevin and a few elders argued it was worth risking the whole hive to attend. Still, they were overruled by dual concerns over the heightened security and by the possibility that the Chrysalis hive would start a turf war if Kevin’s arrived en masse. “You’re young, hungry, and can store the spare love,” they told Kevin.
Kevin played buckball with the other foals, passing off his inexperience as the inexperience of an out-of-town colt. Their joy at having the day to play filled him with abundant energy to fuel his physical movements. Bugbears, bass cannons, the entire town rushing—OK, that last one grabbed the foals’ attention as they galloped to Ponyville’s town hall for the ceremony. Realistically, only Kevin galloped—the other foals were less enthusiastic about being in the presence of fancy adults.
Inside the hall, Kevin took his place near the back. The consummate balance between where the architecture will allow the ambient love to gather and remaining inconspicuous. Nopony’s eyes would stare at the back of his head and wonder why he wasn’t in sync with the celebration while he feasted.
The low rumbles of bass and cello provided the soundtrack to Kevin’s banquet, vastly different from the icy bowed vibraphones and reed organs south of Yakyakistan and the Crystal Empire. Words drifted overhead in an irrelevant murmur. Something about love, yes. The specifics mattered to the ponies. He was not equine.
More and more, his head swam through the mixed sea of affection, eros, philios, and agape. His chitin fortified from the bath of nutrients.
He felt that his chitin had fortified.
With an icy heart, he looked at himself. He was naked. Obsidian chitin sat on the chair formerly occupied by a foal.
Ages passed as he willed the green flash to convert him back into a colt. Far too slow. Nopony seemed to care.
Mayor Mare continued to monologue; the romantic tension between Matilda and her groom grew impatient. Kevin resumed feeding off the affirmations and positive vibes of the ponies before him. Yes, the Royal Sisters were guests of honor. Had his body been devoted to tasks other than gorging himself on an overdose of love, he may have wondered why Equestria’s boss mares had selected a wedding of donkeys in Ponyville to spend their day. Instead, he was too busy digesting all the ethereal emotions to care much.
Too busy to maintain his disguise.
Just like the dreams during infiltration academy. Betrayed by his own body. A black exoskeleton in a sea of pastels.
Luckily for him, Equestria’s ponies lived up to their (in)famously unobservant reputation.
Like the happy ending to those dreams, where he could fly freely with nopony to notice his presence, neither fly spray, nor bug swatters, nor friendly greetings hounded him. Kevin’s mind relaxed against its own will and surrendered to his true chitinous nature. Eased into letting Ponyville’s collective feelings directly penetrate his spiracles for more efficient respiration. A group of mares clustered away from him at the rear of the hall, too swept up in the moment's passion to notice that they were avoiding a changeling.
Perhaps I can live my happy dream, thought Kevin as he tried to exit his seat to be the ghost in the room.
Nope, too fat to fly—physics and metabolism precluded that option.
He transfigured into a second Celestia to burn off the backlog of calories, the concentration of fervor clouding his judgment. Not only was he conspicuous, he now became disconnected from his body from the sudden energy drain from an unprompted size change. Like his dreams, his consciousness drifted through the crowd and absorbed the residual positive feelings while Celestia’s body double sat rigidly on the (now-flattened) chair.
“You may kiss your very special somepony,” announced Mayor Mare from the front of the room, but Kevin was nowhere to be found.
“You say your janitor found him after the wedding?” asked an incredulous Twilight.
“Yes,” answered Mayor Mare for the fourth or fifth time.
“But how? We secured the area and chased off a bugbear.”
The mayor snorted.
Clack.
Twilight kicked the ground in frustration. Her castle’s lab was very much unfinished. She’d have to ship the changeling corpse to the Crystal Empire or Canterlot for proper analysis. Chrysalis was believed to have fled south or west after Cadence and Shiny repelled their invasion with a similar love shockwave. By all appearances, this specimen was adapted to the cold, if her intuition on chitin was remotely accurate (which she was wise to distrust). Did Chrysalis change direction?
“SEND NORTH,” his body engraved on itself.
Pure morbid curiosity also piqued Twilight’s thirst for knowledge. After her BBBFF’s wedding, the changeling husks she helped clean up were husks. Empty shells no longer occupied by their buggy residents. This specimen was dense and full like his body had packaged itself to sustain crystalized emotions.
Mayor Mare handed Twilight a basket of dry ice, which Twilight nimbly levitated to pack around the specimen for safe transport.
