Love Me

Silver Spoon thought for a while whilst her mother looked on. If I tell my parents everything they will insist on letting the Ponyville section of the Royal Guards know. The Changeling will die fighting, be locked up or at the very least be chased far away from Ponyville and be too scared to return. Diamond Tiara and perhaps her whole family will be in disgrace and maybe in trouble with the law for sheltering a Changeling within Ponyville. They will be out of favor with the Princess and their status at court will fall, whilst the status of the loyal Spoon family could only rise as the family who uncovered the enemy of the ponies in our midst. On the other hand...

"Silver Spoon, please tell me what's wrong," Silver Tray said, worried by her beloved daughter's silence.

"Diamond Tiara Rich is a fillyfooler, and she's in love with me! She wants to kiss and cuddle me and make me into her marefriend. She says that I won't need the colts when she's around and she...she drew obscene pictures of me being my back and then tried to kiss me! That's disgusting." Only a partial truth, but I'm good at lying and besides the whole truth would get her into even more trouble. I'm not ready to do that...yet.

Silver Tray hugged her daughter and put her hooves around her. "That's horrible. If she bothers you again let me and your father know and maybe we can get a restraining order out on her. You should not have to share a classroom with that sick filly."

Over the next few hours, Silver Spoon decided to let everypony she could know that Diamond Tiara was a fillyfooler. Seeing Snips and Snails walking down the street together, two ponies who she normally had no time for whatsoever, she went up to them. "I have a secret, but you must not tell anypony. Diamond Tiara is a fillyfooler who wants a marefriend." She went on her way smirking. Surely those two would blab the *secret* to all sorts of people, and Diamond would find herself scorned at school the next day.

Sure enough the next day Diamond found herself being stared at and giggled at by colts and fillies alike. Those that she was on speaking terms with before suddenly had nothing more to do with her. Her former best friend Silver Spoon cornered her in the playground at break-time and said quietly. "You know that it's not too late for me to tell the Guards about your Changeling friend? You may wear the tiara but I now have the power. What would you do to avoid getting into trouble? Hang around and play with the blank flanks that you so despise? Date Snips or Snails and kiss him in front of everypony? Steal the financial secrets of your family and bring them to me?"

"Silver Spoon, we've been friends for so long...why are you doing this to me? Why?"

"Mostly because I still can't forgive what you did behind my back, and perhaps am still doing. Getting a Changeling to pretend to be me so that you can fulfill your Celestia-dammed desires with her...or him, who knows with a Changeling...yuck. Partly because you shaped me into who I am now, a pony who teases and bullies her fellow ponies at every opportunity and despises the weak. And by messing around with that Changeling and getting caught doing it you just made yourself very weak indeed. Think about it.And it's all your own fault."

Diamond did think about it. When she got home the faux Silver Spoon was waiting for her in her bedroom and greeted her with a kiss. "How has your day been? You really don't look happy."

"It's Silver Spoon, the real one. She is blackmailing me about you and thinks that she has me over a barrel. What is it like when a pony is replaced? Is it deadly? Or painful? Is the pony drained totally dry of his or her love and turned into a Changeling?"

"We don't kill as that would be pointless-the dead cannot love and leaving dead bodies around in such a peaceful place as this would just cause trouble and outrage and make other races fear and hate us even more. Changelings are born from eggs, not converted from other races. Love is very hard to exhaust.It can be exhausted, hence the divorces in your country. But the way we harvest it in our hive is, we put the captured pony or griffin or whatever it is into a tough pod of webbing, that both prevents escaping, and stops bodily damage and decay, and whoever is in the pod thinks they are living a more idea version of the life they were living anyway. Causing their love to seep invisibly out of the pod where it is used to feed the grubs or just any passing Changeling who needs a meal. Mainly the grubs though, as except in times of great scarcity, taking food from hungry grubs is greatly frowned upon."

"If you replaced the real Silver Spoon, are you sure she would not suffer?"

"Not one bit."

"Then I give you my permission to locate and replace the real Silver Spoon, as she is blackmailing me and making my life a misery. For your sake and mine, she has to go. You'll love being her full time. Not only are her parents very rich indeed but they deeply love their only daughter. I've seen it in the look in their eyes, the way they hug and kiss her occasionally and the care they take for her safety and happiness." Diamond told the faux Silver Spoon where the real Silver Spoon lived and watched her turn into a pegusas pony with a net cutie mark and fly away. Soon enough the blackmail threat will be over.

*****
Chilek, for such was the real name of the Changeling that Diamond Tiara had found and rescued, did not take long to locate the Spoon's Ponyville mansion, but had a problem as every door and window was closed tight shut, even the small ones. If a small window had been open, she could have turned a leg into a tentacle, reached in and undid the main window, and flown inside, but this was not the case here. Whilst she was circling the mansion again and again and considering going down a chimney she heard a voice snap out "Pegusus, you have to report to the reservoir. We need every possible pegusas in the area so we can create a thousand wing-power tornado to siphon the water up to Cloudsdale. We need our water too as much as everypony." Looking at the source of the voice, it was Rainbow Dash, sitting on a nearby cloud.

I'll have to do whatever Rainbow tells me for now, otherwise I'll mess up my cover. Damm it, I'm not used to this sort of thing Chilek thought.