Lavender looked up at the immense apartment building where she would be working, finally. Belbel was an odd region, and the boat she took instantly vanished when she looked away for a second, but she shrugged it off. It wasn't the first time she had something odd happen to her so this wasn't anything new. At least this one was helpful for her this time. The day was a bit chilly and the clouds above let through the blues and whites of the sun and the sky. The ponies and changelings that wandered through the streets mostly ignored her as she moved along with her rolling suitcase.
The mare took in a deep breath, stressed out of her mind to start her new job. A plethora of questions started to flood her mind as she saw three, violet changelings and a pony in a yellow hazmat suit standing in front of the large, metallic entryway of the beige-colored complex. To their left stood the entrance, sticking out like a tumor from the mega-complex filled with what Lavender assumed to be hundreds of ponies. It had many dirty windows on its twenty floors and the fake plaster meant to make it look pretty had eroded and fallen off in some places. Looking back at the changelings, she realized the pony wearing the hazmat suit was carrying a metal box in their magic. Whatever was in it was oozing black substances through the cracks and fighting to get out until a changeling pointed out the occurrence and the hazmat-wearer pressed something on the cage with a hoof, producing a loud screeching noise and crunching sounds.
Lavender hurried over once she made sure her saddlebags and hindleg covers were nestled tightly over her flanks. Startled, the bug ponies bounced back. The three of them were wearing fancy blue suits with white undershirts and black, metal hoofshoes. Golden buttons kept their clothing shut and matched with the military beret the older changeling wore.
"I'm here!" Lavender said as her chest heaved up and down. "I'm here. Sorry for being a bit late. I didn't know which one I was supposed to show up for."
The beret-wearer changeling looked to his fellows, unable to speak for several seconds. "Who are you?" he asked.
"Lavender Staar. I applied for a job as a doorpony and was accepted! So I came here by boat for the job," she said eagerly.
The changeling looked at his colleagues, lost. "But we didn't send out a recruitment poster," he said. "Balfuffer isn't even open! It--"
"It's right here," a changeling stammered. She levitated a clipboard with a bunch of paperwork and showed one of them to the beret-wearing male. "See? Greet and train Lavender Staar as a replacement for drone two-two-seven-five."
The changelings looked at Staar, then the paper, then back at Staar.
"Uh...ok?" the third changeling said. He shrugged. "I guess you're the temporary replacement, then? Where did you come from?"
Still with a nervous smile on her face, Lavender shuffled nervously in place. "I'm from Equestria."
The bug's eye twitched. "But we--"
"Come inside with us," the beret-wearer ordered. "We'll talk about what you'll be doing."
"Okay!" Lavender said.
The clipboard-holder saluted the two and left while the hazmat wearer saluted them and walked over to a large, yellow container, pressed several buttons on the side and then a large red one, opening a hatch at the top. Staar didn't get to see more when the doors hissed open, greeting her with a sterile hallway of beige floor tiles and peeling wallpaper whose original color and design had long since faded away.
"ID and entry request," a voice chimed through a loudspeaker, startling Lavender.
The changeling pulled a badge from his coat, and the mare saw some strange, purple powder fly off of it. "Ah. Go ahead, chief."
"I'm with a guest. She'll be taking over for you," the beret-wearer explained.
"Oh, finally. I was about to go mad!" the changeling complained. "Can't wait to get back onto the field." Her words were quickly followed by the sounds of chains and a loud, metallic thunk.
"Go ahead outside and wait for us," the chief ordered. "We'll explain everything to the...replacement."
The mare passed by her workstation shielded by metal blinds and wondered nervously what was inside. A set of doors behind the group slammed down behind them and lifted in front of them, revealing a thin changeling eager to leave.
"Hurry up and press the button in the office so I can leave! I hate staring at those things all day without punching them!" she pleaded.
The chief rolled his eyes and moved past to another hallway leading to two more doors and a path immediately to the right. The office entrance at the end opened up to a variety of filing cabinets and a desk with a controller to open and close the doors, file holders to the right of the window, various papers carrying a variety of information on them strewn about the wall, and a big red button.
"So, this is where you'll work," the chief explained. "Every day you'll get a list of ponies that go in and out of the complex and will need to be screened by you before they can come in." He pointed to the red button. "If there's something wrong you press that button, dial the number next to it, and we'll come and handle the rest."
Lavender rubbed her chin. "So...why changelings specifically? I'm not one."
The chief shrugged and shook his head like the answer was obvious and she had just asked a stupid question. "We're better at spotting any strangeness in those that mimic and use transformation magic."
The other changeling put a hoof to his chest and looked at the pony smugly. "That's kind of our thing, after all. We're the best at it."
"Okay?" Lavender pulled the chair out and lied down on it, angling it so that her forelegs could reach the table and her hindlegs were touching the floor enough for her to be kept in place. "I get it, I get it." She paused. "Seems a bit excessive for someone just being an imposter, though."
The chief droned 'uh' as he tried to come up with a proper answer when his colleague chimed in. "We don't usually say this, but it's necessary for what you're doing: There's a group of nasty changelings that are trying to harm everypony by disguising themselves as them and then entering the apartment complexes illegally." He nodded and spoke like Staar was a filly. "Of course, they're really bad at their disguises and you can usually spot the newer changelings trying to change everything."
Lavender raised a brow as she got back up and set her suitcase next to her. "Okay? Is that why there was someone with a hazmat suit outside?"
"Oh, their magic is also rather toxic. It's very primitive," the chief quickly interjected.
The other changeling nodded. "Right. Right! Yes! That's why." He sat on his rear and joined his forehooves together. "Just, please, pay attention. These ponies depend on you," he pleaded with the Equestrian. "You just need to do this for about two weeks and everything should be fine."
The chief leaned his head back. "We'll get back to you about a room in this complex, but you'll be handsomely paid for this job." He pointed to something under the wooden table. "That manual should explain everything to you if you get lost." He raised a hoof in the air instantly. "Don't forget!" he shouted.
Lavender panicked. "What?! What?!"
"Push the red button and call that number as quickly as possible if you find an imposter," he added with a smile.
Lavender put a hoof to her chest and exhaled. "Don't do that. I'm nervous enough as is. I want to do this job right!" she said with determination.
The changelings shook their heads at each other, as lost now as they were earlier. They walked back into the hall, letting the Equestrian press the button to let them out and waving her goodbye while she looked around, exploring her workspace.
The changelings, however, were nervous.
"Something isn't right," the chief said. "She didn't show any signs of being one of those things," he said. He looked back at the apartment and frowned.
"The paper was there. Nothing gets through without the heads mentioning it, and they don't know what's across the sea. They just know what's here in Belbel," the other changeling explained. He put a hoof on the chief's shoulder. "Don't think too hard about it. We have some time before she dies."
Disgusted, the chief removed his comrade's hoof off his shoulder. "You mean if."
The other changeling shook his head. "Come on, Chief Fivety. You know what happened when non-changelings took those jobs."
Fivety grumbled and looked down in shame. "Yeah. I know. Let's just hope that there aren't any clever ones that are capable with their transformations."
Lavender made herself comfortable on her seat holding her belly up and letting her rest her head on the neckrest. She had pulled out a book and started reading through it, doing her best to repeat and memorize passages. She was quickly interrupted by a buzzer growling when somepony entered. It was a mare with a teal coat; red-and-white, horizontally striped mane, and two baby-blue eyes. Two documents were dropped through the little slit beneath the armored window, letting Staar take a peek at their contents.
"Candyswirl..." the nervous mare read aloud. She looked up at the mare waiting patiently. "Okay. Let's see if this all checks out." The mare pulled out the folders from the holders on the wall and cross-referenced everything, but she had to do several things multiple times to be sure it was all good. "Everything checks out," she said while pressing the door button.
Candyswirl huffed in annoyance. "Finally. You changelings can be so meticulous sometimes," she said when she started walking away.
Staar reached out to the mare instinctively. "But I'm not...Okay."
She was immediately greeted by another pony whose eyes were far too small for their head and had four of them. Being no stranger to mutations, the mare checked her folder and the credentials and realized that this was just a poorly disguised changeling.
"Come on. You can do better than that," she scolded the changeling. She smirked, pressed the button, and became startled when armored blinds slammed down in front of her and sirens started blaring. "Oh. These must be really nasty changelings to go to this length. Mmm...where's the number?"
After using an old rotary phone to dial the four numbers, she was greeted with 'We'll be right over' almost instantly, and in just a few seconds she was blinded by a bright light peering through the edges of the protection before the system deactivated and Staar was greeted by a hazmat suit wearing pony coated in black ichor.
"Everything sterilized. Continue," they said before leaving.
Staar leaned over to try and follow the pony, but he was too close to her side to be fully visible. Staar was left to freely read without issue until a new pony came in. This stallion was elderly with fatigued eyes and a rough, unkempt red mane.
"What about the I.D.?" Staar asked.
The stallion paused. "Uuuuh...what's an I.D.?"
"Me press button now," Staar mused.
Another siren, another sterilization, another moment of silence. Some black smudge was left over on the walls, after the agent left, but Staar didn't want to use the button just for that and let it be since it just added more color to the sterile passage, whatever it was. Shrugging it off, the mare went back to studying her guidebook. When she opened it, however, she was greeted with an odd, gaping hole in the pages that showed her in the booth from the opposing wall. She could see herself looking down at the book. Lavender rolled her eyes and brushed the substance off with a hoof into a trashcan next to the chair.
"Very funny, imposters. That's not going to throw me off." She chuckled and went back to reading.
The 'her' in the slimy 'mirror' stared at Staar as it melted away, face unchanging.
The next few tenants passing by were uneventful in their appearances and let Lavender relax while she studied and got acquainted with her workstation. At the end of the day she was met with the chief changeling passing her documents to enter.
"Hurry up, newbie," he ordered.
The mare raised a brow and checked an extra addendum on the table to call the changeling's pager and make sure it was him before checking anything else. To Staar's relief, the changeling started buzzing and pulled out said tiny, gray object and opened the entrance to the complex. Turning herself in the chair, the mare quickly looked back to the locked area, certain that something like a dark figure had reached out to grab the insectoid equine, but there was nothing there. Staar went to meet her employer, pulling the door closed behind her. A black hand grabbed the door handle and slowed the movement to close it quietly and far more gently.
The Equestrian shifted in place nervously, worried about what her employer would say to her. "Did I do alright?" Lavender asked nervously.
Still confused about the whole situation, the changeling nodded slowly. "Yes..." he trailed off. "Uh...The sensors didn't detect anything unusual in the compl-" He put a hoof to his head and shook it. "Wh-wh-wh-who sent out the recruitment contract to you?"
"No one," Lavender replied. She rubbed her foreleg. "I found the job posting in a newspaper and came here straight away after getting a positive response for my application."
The changeling rubbed his forehead. "I see. Well." He pulled a key from his hat and handed it to Lavender. "You'll be on the first floor so you can get back to work as quickly as possible when you wake up."
He was startled by Lavender smiling widely. "I can go directly to my home for breaks? This is the best job ever!"
"Uh...y-yeah...okay...Mind...letting me out?"
Lavender blushed. "Oh. Of course! I'm so sorry."
Back outside, the changeling pulled out a walky-talky. "She says she found the posting in a newspaper."
"Remind me why you let her take the job again?" a voice asked on the other side. "This random stranger who claims she's from Equestria?"
"Because those things don't know what exists outside of this place, sir," the chief defended. "They're more focused on devouring the ponies and multiplying than learning of anything else outside of here."
There was a loud bang on the other side of the walky-talky. "That didn't stop them from killing our own! Keep a close eye on that pony! I'll see how something got both in and out of this quarantine."
"Yes, sir."
The morning came by quickly and Lavender was already in place, eager to work. Smacking herself on the cheeks with her hooves, the mare got ready to welcome in the night shift workers. "I'm ready for-oh. They added in a plant. That certainly livens up the place I guess?"
In the corner of her vision was a tall, green fern with drooping, crenelated leaves sitting in a white pot with brown trim and faded brown, swirling patterns flowing down like water drops from the rim. It looked like it was dying in the artificially illuminated entryway.
The first pony to come in that morning was a tired mare with drooping eyelids. Lavender went through her documents and realized that the ID number didn't match what was documented.
"M'am, your ID is wrong." Lavender rubbed the material. "This isn't even laminated. You just wrapped it in plastic film." She smirked at the nervous-looking 'pony'. "Oh, you silly billy. Can't let you in."
"So you found a small error," the 'pony' pointed out. Its eyes started melting out of its skull and its teeth started to elongate into black, inky tendrils. "At one point you'll slip up like the others. Soon, very soon. When you do, we--"
Lavender pressed the button, activating the alert and calling in the agency that immediately cleaned up that situation. "Moving on," the mare mumbled to herself as she reopened the rulebook. She received a call on the dial-up phone and answered it, unaware that something had passed it to her. "Yes?"
"This is the chief. Just here to warn you that one of the tenants was...removed by the changelings," he explained. There was a long pause. "Be careful. They might have the paperwork of that pony. We haven't tracked it down yet, and they're sneaky little bastards."
"Will do," the pony answered.
The job continued rather uneventfully over the days, and Lavender even started watering the fern she expected was about to die. She took it as a sign to stay strong herself. She was doing pretty good as far as she knew, and the many changelings she spotted were all terrible at their disguises.
Late in the evening of the fifth night, a pony came in whose mane was missing, unveiling a pink, pulsating brain underneath. An immediate red flag. The next had strange worm-like shapes undulating beneath their skin. 'From working out' they said.
The mare was off-put when one pony popped up jubilously. She seemed mostly alright, but her face would occasionally vibrate in every direction.
Lavender felt concern overtaking her. "Are you okay?"
"It is just a tic," the pony waved dismissively. "Nothing abnormal." Noticing that this inhabitant had a sister, Lavender smiled nervously as she dialed the apartment number. "No need to call anypony," the tenant chuckled.
Lavender hung up the phone then leaned forward, hiding her muzzle with her forelegs. "The tenant just told me that her sibling has recently died," she said while raising a brow. "Want to explain yourself?"
The 'pony' frowned. "Taking on your appearances is so difficult, but you would go this far to prevent my nourishment?" It sniffed the air. "Wait, one of us already got through. You should be replaced already."
Lavender shrugged in response. "Looks like you're wrong."
The clock behind her sprouted five extra, twisted arms that started to rotate in directions the 'changeling' couldn't perceive. "Using weird tricks won't stop us."
"What tricks?"
When she reached for the button, the creature chuckled as its fleshe sloughed off of it and holes grew in place of its face to run along its neck and shoulders and it thinned out to a narrower degree. "We've had enough of you all always stopping us. It's time we took things into our own hooves." It reached out to touch the glass, testing it for faults, and revealing its 'hoof' split apart. "We've taken out each and every one of your ilk and replaced them before getting caught again, but there's nothing stopping me from just tearing this place down and getting us all into the building!"
Lavender immediately pressed the emergency button, dropping the protection down, but she wasn't able to dial the number before the metal dented in and shattered the reinforced window. Fragmented hooves lifted up the metal blinds as the lights flickered off, revealing white, worm-like entities glowing in the creatures' 'holes' wriggling and writhing about before focusing on the Equestrian.
"Looks like we accidentally broke your communication to the outside," the creature mocked. Its voice was hoarse but quiet like a whisper. It leaned through the hole and put its 'hooves' onto the table. "I'll just take your place and let my fellows clean this place out, okay?"
Staar was frozen in place, her eyes locked onto the creature's. The room had become completely silent, but before the 'changeling' could grab the pony, something wrapped around its shoulders and knitted itself through the holes of its body, slowly pulling it back against its will. It, too, became terrified as it watched some sort of floating hook latch onto the base of the broken window and phase through the concrete as it went down, pulling the blinds above with it. A familiar flash of light peered through the crevices of the wall, followed by a blood-curdling scream. After several seconds of nothing happening, the blinds were lifted back up and a hazmat-wearing pony appeared in its place.
"Don't call us for electrical issues," she complained.
"What? I thought you took care of the imposter just now. It broke the window and damaged the blinds," Lavender explained.
The suit-wearer looked around the room and became stunned. "Uh...but we...we didn't do anything." They checked their suit for damages. "We heard a scream when we got to the door and there was nothing when we came in." She looked around, confused, and stopped at the plant. "We'll get the electricity back on soon. Don't worry."
Right before they walked back out, Lavender waved a hoof. "Thanks for the plant! it livens the place up somehow."
Back outside, there were a dozen changelings armed with electrified swords and spears as well as several ponies in hazmat suits waiting at immense, pressurized containers linked together with ridged tubes.
"So?" the chief changeling asked. "How many got in?"
The pony shrugged. "None, apparently. It destroyed the blinds and window, but the mare is still there. No signs of replacement."
The changelings and ponies relaxed slightly, confused.
"What?" the chief said. "How?"
He was met with a head shake. "I have no idea. She claims she thought we did it." She looked back at the complex. "And thanked me for the plant you put in there."
The chief froze in place and let his sword drop to the ground by its tip. "What plant?"
"The one in the hallway? It's sitting next to the gate."
"We didn't put a plant there. We're not supposed to. It's protocol."
"Then...where did it come from?"
Lavender hurried over to the fern after the lights went back on and quickly did her best to clean the strange, black ooze coating its leaves. "They could have at least cleaned you up. Can't have this nasty stuff ruining your leaves."
Author's Note
I know it's not fantastic. I'm just experimenting with a fun little idea I had and thought 'Why not?'
