The Queen of Canterlot

The Queen of Canterlot and her changeling army loitered behind the abandoned grocery store.

They called themselves a hive, but there was not one among them who had ever set hoof in such a place. None of them spoke vespid, and they all wore dog tags. A hive was to them not a reality, but an idea, the notion that they were something else, and every night they loitered behind the crumbling brickwork, they huffed aerosol, talked trash, and tried to figure out just what they were.

So ignorant were they, and secretive in that ignorance, that they were not entirely certain if Chrysalis really was their queen, and if so, what had marked her as different from the rest of them. All they knew is that she was bigger, and only Chrysalis knew for certain that was not a shapeshifting trick.

Several suspected her of putting on airs, but they never once questioned her. Perhaps, they thought, a queen was part of what she wanted to be. They admired her voice, and they envied her power, born of a true love most ponies would never know.

Nothing would have come of it, if Cadence had been a better liar. If her public persona as a deeply loving and kind alicorn were a fiction for public conception. If she wasn’t so damn nice.

If she didn’t spend her free time wandering around the city, looking for ponies in need. She gave advice to those in troubled relationships, gave money to ponies in financial distress, cared for children who needed a big sister figure, and housed ponies with nowhere to live.

She found the changelings behind the old grocery store, two dozen drones and the queen in the middle. One was spraypainting the wall with his green-flame tag, one was spraypainting his shell. Chrysalis watched over them, as it is the role of the condescending and powerful changeling queen to watch over her idiot children.

“Hey, everyling,” she said, offering a little wave. “You know, if you want a place to hang out and practice your street art, there’s a community center a few blocks away. They have a wall for spraypainting.”

Chrysalis’s mouth began to move, her hoof begin to lift, to speak, to wave, Hey, Cadence! But then she remembered who she was, and at the last moment clamped her jaw shut. In a panic she was left to wonder, what did Cadence see? What had her fault given away? If only she’d seen Cadence coming from further away she might have fled, but the mare had been out of sight until she turned the corner, and there they were, face to face again.

Surely, she’d noticed the awkward silence, the panicked delay. “Some of this is pretty good.” Cadence was admiring their wall. “Someling here is a talented artist.”

Panic overcame itself. Chrysalis spoke: “It is traditional to bow your head when entering the court of a peer.”

She shaped the rebuke like a master sculptor shapes stone, even as she screamed inside her own head. Her straight-backed pose, arch gaze, and that deep multi-tonal voice were an elegant work of form and contempt, and her hive responded in kind. Trash cans became objects de art for a changelings royal court, punks hive guards, the alley a great hall. The dumpster Chrysalis was sitting on became a throne, and the crumbling grocery store her castle.

She imagined Shining’s voice in her head, shouting, demanding what are you doing as she extended a hoof for Cadence to make her obsequience -- perhaps to kiss it, perhaps merely to bow her head as requested. Cadence momentarily froze, unsure how to react. “Okay, I can take a joke,” she said, “but really—”

“I can take a joke,” said a changeling, in a perfect mimicry of her voice.

“I can take a joke,” said another, and in a green flash, they transformed into a distorted mirror of the pony in front of them. The drones had not the strength to take the form of an alicorn, but they rendered Cadence in every other species: earth pony Cadence, unicorn Cadence, pegasus Cadence, griffon Cadence, and one particularly pink dog, each playing back that recording. “I can take a joke.”

“Okay,” Cadence lifted a hoof in moderation, like a holy figure forgiving the sins of the common folk. “I’ll leave you alone. I only want to make sure you’re okay.”

And all Chrysalis had to say was nothing.

“My dear princess,” she said, oozing down from her scrap metal throne to approach this intruder, until they were muzzle to muzzle, until Cadence could feel Chrysalis’s hot breath -- produced not by speaking, but for her benefit alone. “Are you laboring under the misapprehension that we have nowhere else to go? That we’re poor, unwanted, children of broken homes? Cast out into the street? Left to fend for ourselves.”

The copies of Cadence turned back into changeling drones, and from there into changelings drones that had Cadence surrounded, the alley’s exit blocked. “It seems quite hypocritical if so,” Chrysalis went on. She took a moment to obviously admire Cadence’s jewelry, lips curling into the faintest sneer as her eyes danced over the gold. “After all, you have a palace to call your home, and you’re here.”

“I’m always looking for ponies who need help,” Cadence said, years of public speaking practice keeping her voice level, though the faintest glance at the drones that had cut off her exit betrayed her. “Who need support, friends, a place to be.”

“A changeling that is not loved, starves.” Chrysalis said the last word with relish, whispering it directly into Cadence’s ear, sending the princess stumbling back at the uninvited physical contact. “Every drone you see here has a loving family. Many are from good homes, the children of wizards, royal guards, merchants, scholars. The best and brightest of Canterlot.”

“Okay,” Cadence said, taking another step back from Chrysalis, only to find her tail pressing against the drones who had blocked her exit. Her look behind her then was not subtle, but the obvious turn of a trapped mare. “Then why are you here?”

Chrysalis cast a slow gaze over her court. Drones buzzed, they giggled, they whispered between themselves of Cadence and her fate. “Because we’re happy here, Princess.”

“You wouldn’t be happier with a decent roof over your head,” Cadence suggested, trying to regain some control over the conversation, “and a place you can practice your art that doesn’t smell like pee?”

And Chrysalis spoke.