* * *
Derplicity
Jeffrey C. Wells
* * *
Deep within the bowels of the ancient pony fortress that now housed her Great Hive, Queen Chrysalis of the changelings gazed with stern and gloating maternal pride upon her new secret weapon. It was the best secret weapon, she mused, that she had ever given birth to.
The weapon's name was "Malpighi." Her body was sleek and dark and beautiful like anthracite coal, with eyes that glittered like sapphires in the gloom of the Hive. Her hooves were flinty, her fangs were like diamonds, and her gnarled horn was as sharp and strong as a driftwood spear. Chrysalis had packed an awful lot of particularly fell genes into this one, and she had nearly paid the ultimate price more than once in raising the creature up from its nymph state. The blessed thing had even given Chrysalis's ovipositor a considerable gash in the laying of the egg which contained her. Malpighi was a killer from birth, and before.
Oh, well, thought Queen Chrysalis, family ties are often difficult. Thankfully, the judicious use of an arcane shock collar throughout the course of her upbringing had brought the winsome little creature into line, and although Malpighi was still a seething, barely-contained knot of organic fury, she was now an obedient seething, barely-contained knot of organic fury, and that was the important part.
"Motherrr hasss sssummoned thisss one?" hissed Malpighi, ducking her head low.
"Yes, daughter," purred Chrysalis. "I have brought you here on the eve of your departure to the northern land of Equestria to ensure that my orders have properly taken root in that knife-like mind of yours."
"Yourrr daughterrr isss obedient," said Malpighi, cowering even lower and straining her neck to one side in her zeal to avoid the Queen's eyes.
"Your obedience I do not doubt," said Chrysalis. "It is your focus. State to me your mission, Malpighi."
Malpighi jerked bolt upright. "Dessstroy," she hissed. "Feeeeed."
"No!" barked Chrysalis, slamming her fistulated hoof down upon the arm of her throne, producing a noise not unlike that of a bamboo wind-chime. "Your mission, properly! Lest I bring out Mister Shocky again!"
"Thisss one hatesss Missster Shocky," snarled Malpighi, baring her fangs and gazing at Chrysalis straight-on. "Hatesss him!"
"Then state to me your mission," said Chrysalis, leaning back upon her throne. "Correctly, this time."
Malpighi flinched. "Thisss one is to find the castle of the high ssspire. Thisss one is to locate the pink pony princesss. Thisss one is to report to Motherrr on all that the pink pony princesss is, all that the pink pony princess doesss."
"Correct," said Chrysalis, superciliously. "This is the beginning of my two-year plan, Malpighi. In two short years—with your help—I will flawlessly impersonate and replace the smallest and weakest of the alicorn race, the young Princess Mi Amore Cadenza. From her hoof-boots, I will bring about the downfall of Canterlot itself, and convert all of Equestria into a feeding-ground for our people. And no pony will be the wiser until it is all over."
"Yesss," said Malpighi, squatting on her haunches and momentarily losing herself in reveries of love and death.
Chrysalis's mien darkened. "And this time," she finished, "I am going to manage to do it properly and not be forced to resort to my stupid mind-control spells. I am, after all, an artiste of sorts. I have my pride."
"Motherrr isss cunning," hissed Malpighi.
"I am, aren't I?" said Chrysalis, flipping her ragged mane a bit. "And now is your chance to show me you are one-tenth the changeling that your mother is. Present for me the primary infiltration form you have devised for the purpose of your mission."
The changeling weapon grimaced and called forth a sheet of sickly green glamour which wrote hide upon her chitin and feathers upon her papery wings. When it passed, the creature that stood before the throne was indistinguishable from any one of the ponies of that soppy and love-soaked realm to the north. Gray she was, gray like the first line of an approaching storm. Her mane, tail and eyes were a golden color that evoked in Chrysalis thoughts of new dawns and inexorable triumphs, and the ridiculous pony-mark upon her flank resembled a spray of soap bubbles; the perfect glyph, thought the Queen, for a creature who existed as little more than an iridescent and empty shell for the her own grand will.
"I suppose that will do," said Chrysalis, intentionally hiding her pleasure. It was not good for children to start thinking you approved of them. It made them lazy and complacent. "You will, of course, discard this crude shape when you reach Canterlot and have found a well-loved subject of the royal house to serve as your hoofhold. Eliminate your first target, feed on the love these silly creatures lavish upon their friends, and begin to work your way, identity by identity, into the inner confidence of the pink princess."
Chrysalis's eyes went half-lidded, then, and her gangling form was wracked with a horrible phlegmy cough. She brought her neck around like a lashing whip and expectorated a clump of luminescent green resin into a shallow depression near the throne. It settled slowly into the lens-shaped divot, glittering unctuously as it began to crystallize. "Here," said Chrysalis, prying up the hunk of enchanted biomatter once it had solidified entirely. "This will be my link to you. In eighteen months, I will expect a report on the activities of the pink pony princess so I may perfect my impersonation."
"Motherrr'sss will is thisss one'sss own," said Malpighi.
"Good," said Chrysalis. "Now, get you to the castle kitchens, where the ponies who once lived here prepared their ridiculous 'foods.' My workers have been laboring to recreate some of the native dishes of Equestria so that you may familiarize yourself with them. They will provide you no nourishment, of course, but you must pretend to share the ponies' physical processes in order for them to not grow suspicious of you. Do you understand, worm?"
"I go," said Malpighi, trying to blot out thoughts of Mister Shocky. "I go!"
"Make haste of it," said Chrysalis. "Lest I grow bored and feed you into the recyclers."
When Chrysalis next looked up, Malpighi was gone.
"I," said Chrysalis, relaxing upon her twisted organic throne, "am the best queen ever."
* * *
"Hey!" said a hatefully cheery voice, hovering directly above. "What'cha doing?"
Malpighi stalked down the long, vaulted corridor leading away from the Queen's throne toward the old castle kitchens as though she were personally accusing the cracked flagstones beneath her of wrongdoing and meting out justice with her little gray ponified hooves. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead.
"Hey!" repeated the hatefully cheery voice. "Hey! Is that Malpighi in there? You're Malpighi, right? Are you on your mission?"
Malpighi had not been alive long, but already, she had developed a burning hatred of hangers-on.
This particular hanger-on was named "Pupa," a particularly asinine specimen in Malpighi's eyes. One of the admittedly unfortunate side effects that had arisen from the Queen's decision to pack all the Hive's best and brightest genes into a single organism (herself) was that some other members of the same clutch had been, well, shorted. Such was the case with this one. Pupa was fundamentally symmetrical, at least, which was not something that all her sisters could claim; but something was seriously the matter with the alignment of her glittering blue compound eyes. Her fangs were a bit blunted, too, and although Pupa was a confident flyer, it was a somewhat misplaced confidence inasmuch as she had no sense of direction whatsoever. For lack of a better job, Pupa had been tasked with moving the Hive's larger and heavier egg-clutches from place to place to make room for new growth and expansion. It had been generally agreed by the overseers that the little worker with the funny eyes was not to be trusted with any of the more valuable clutches, i.e., the soldier and worker changelings. She was assigned exclusively to the drones, because, in the end, one more or less boy hanging around didn't really affect the grand scheme of things much, and if some of the clutches were mislaid for several months (or didn't arrive at all), well, no great loss to the Hive.
Pupa had appeared shortly after Malpighi quit the throne room, hefting a disproportionately huge cluster of membranous egg sacs and buzzing about Malpighi's head like, well, an insect. Pupa's presence was making Malpighi's already-long trek into a positively interminable one.
"I see you're a pony today," said Pupa, swooping in and admiring her from all sides. "I like the color. Are you going on a mission to the pony country? You make a really beautiful pony, but then again, I think all ponies are beautiful. They're so fuzzy and feathery and they have such shiny wet eyes. I like the ponies with wings the best because you can be a pony and still be able to fly!"
Pupa zipped up to the corridor's high ceiling to demonstrate the concept of "flight," then swooped across to one of the gargantuan and crumbling rampant pony statues that lined this corridor, statues that well predated Chrysalis's occupation of the fortress. "Someday I hope the Queen lets me go on a mission to pony country," she said, admiring the statue. "Not that I don't like delivering big heavy egg bundles. Making egg deliveries takes me to all sorts of neat places in the Hive. Even if I'm, um, not actually supposed to be making deliveries there." Pupa shrugged, then, hanging her head. "I get lost sometimes," she admitted, unshouldering her burden of egg sacs for a moment and cementing the heavy mass of biology to one of the statues' outstretched hooves with a gobbet of saliva. "And then there was that one time that I dropped an entire clutch of drone eggs into the recyclers and the Queen kept complaining for days and days about how she couldn't find a good man 'for love or money,' but as long as I don't do anything like that too often, I figure I'm bound to get assigned to a real mission some d—"
"Shut up!" shrieked Malpighi. She burrowed down deep into the mass of pony jargon that had been wedged into her neural ganglia in preparation for her mission and emerged with an appropriate slur. "You are ssso... derrrpy, little Pupa!"
"'Derpy'?" said Pupa, blinking. "What does that mean?"
"It meansss you are an embarrassssssment, a rrrude thing," snarled Malpighi, her pony teeth bared. "And if thisss one were the Queen—as thisss one aimsss to be sssomeday—thisss one would have fed you rrright back into the rrrecyclersss the moment you hatched!"
"Oh," said Pupa, looking a bit downcast. "Well, at least Queen Chrysalis believes in me!"
"Do not be ssso sure of thisss," said Malpighi, flapping her gray pegasus wings, rising to Pupa's level and jabbing her in the chest with one gray hoof. "Thisss one would wagerrr that the Queen looksss for but one more 'derrrp-up' from you beforrre sssending you to that sssame fate."
"Oh," said Pupa again, increasingly crestfallen.
"'Oh,' indeed," sneered Malpighi. "And now you will ceassse wasssting thisss one's preciousss time! Thisss one has an imporrrtant meeting in the old kitchensss, and thisss one will not be delayed any longerrr by a ssstupid inferrriorrr derrrp-up!" With this, Malpighi viciously shouldered Pupa aside, sending the little worker crashing into the decaying base of the titanic statue nearby.
A moment of silence passed as Pupa lay dazed at the foot of the statue, trying to recover her wind.
Then there came crisp noise, a bit like burning paper, and quite suddenly the base of the statue (which had just barely been holding solid for several years now) finally gave up the ghost. With nightmarish slowness, the enormous stone pony above her began to topple. Pupa sucked in a breath as her eyes tracked up the crumbling stone figure. The egg-cluster! The one she had glued to the forehoof of the statue! Horrible visions danced in front of the little worker's eyes, visions of the bundle of eggs tumbling to the flagstone floor and bursting, scattering changeling goo everywhere. And then... and then Malpighi would report the broken eggs to the Queen!
Thoughts of the recyclers filled her head. One more derrrp-up, Pupa...
Pupa squared her mandible. Call her stupid, call her slow, call her misdirected and clumsy, but the one thing that Pupa was not was a quitter. As gravity tightened its grip around the ancient statue, Pupa lifted her wings and flitted upward, her misaligned eyes fixed as best as possible on her precious charge. With less than a second to spare, Pupa crashed into the egg-cluster and severed the gluey bonds attaching it to the statue with one quick bite, then seized the bundle in her hooves and rocketed up to the ceiling, pulling it out of harm's way.
Far below her, the statue finally struck earth and shattered into jagged boulders with the noise of an avalanche. Pupa coughed at the raised clouds of dust as she clutched the egg-bundle tightly to her plated chest, holding it clear of the wreckage as though her life depended on it, which, according to Malpighi, it actually did. There would be no derp-ups today. She swore it.
Eventually, the dust began to settle. Pupa coughed a couple times and hesitantly inspected her bundle of eggs. Intact! Whole and sound! Joy burbled up in the back of Pupa's throat. No derp-ups from her today! No recycling! No, Sirree! She gave the world at large a big smile, all wicked and fangy and sunny-bright. "Hey, Malpighi!" exclaimed Pupa. "I saved the eggs! I didn't derp up! Not even once!"
Silence from below.
Hesitantly, Pupa buzzed down to the catastrophic wreckage, waving away the ancient dust with her forelimb. "Malpighi?" she said, hesitantly.
Out from beneath a two-ton chunk of displaced stone dribbled a small rivulet of black ichor.
"Oh," said Pupa.
At that exact moment, a small resinous lens that had been thrown clear of the falling rocks began to chime.
* * *
Chrysalis was lounging crosswise on her throne sucking out the love that cockroaches have for dark places and discarding the husks when she heard the thunderous commotion from the general direction of the kitchens. Doubtless another piece of the old castle collapsing, she thought, with a dark scowl. Probably ought to have left an engineer or two alive for this sort of thing, but then again, the love that craftsponies had for their work was so very delicious. She tossed her current roach away half-consumed and pawed at the arm of the throne for the oily lens that represented her half of the link to Malpighi.
"Malpighi!" she barked at the lens, summoning up its glamour with a dull whine. "I heard that noise! What in Tartarus is going on?"
It took a full five chimes for Malpighi to finally respond, but eventually she did, the gray face of the infiltration-mare form showing up fuzzy and distorted by the curvature of the lens. "Um," said Malpighi. "Um... hey! Hey, Queen Chrysalis!"
"Malpighi," said Chrysalis, settling back down, "please tell me that my entire home is not crashing down around my ears again."
"Um, no!" said Malpighi, sounding painfully earnest. Her emulation of the pony voice was quickly improving, thought Chrysalis. Good notes of soppy sentimentality and an undercurrent of anxiety and the desire to please. Not for the first time, Chrysalis congratulated herself for her excellent spawning job on this one. "No! Everything's fine!" Malpighi continued. "Just, uh, one of these old statues falling down!"
"Just as well," said Chrysalis. "I hate those things. I keep worrying that one is going to tumble over on me or something."
For a moment, there was nothing but silence from the link. Chrysalis sat up and squinted into the lens, trying to get the image to resolve. "Malpighi," she said, "what are you doing? Are you feeding something into the recyclers?"
The image of Malpighi whipped around as a fresh crackle washed over the face of the lens. "Would it, um, make you mad if I was?" Yes, the voice was better, but now something else was a bit off. What was it...? Ah.
"Eyes," said Chrysalis, disapprovingly. "Your eyes are crooked, Malpighi. Fix them."
"I'll try!" said Malpighi, in tones of failing despair. "Really, I will!"
Chrysalis sighed heavily. "See that you do so. I really don't want to have to order you to feed yourself into the recyclers and start all the way over with this."
Again, there was no response from the link for a moment.
Then, Malpighi spoke. "Um, Queen Chrysalis," said Malpighi, looking downcast, "I, um, I got something to confess to you."
"For the Utter Darkness!" exclaimed Chrysalis, rolling her eyes. "I can tell you with absolute confidence that I have no interest whatsoever in anything you're about to say right now!"
Malpighi visibly brightened. "So... so what I just did... doesn't matter?"
"No! All that matters to me is your mission! And as you've apparently gone scatterganglia'd again, state it for me!"
Malpighi screwed up her face. "F—feed?" she essayed.
"Idiot!" cried Chrysalis. "Find Canterlot! Find the castle of the high spire! Find the pink pony princess! And report to me on everything the pink pony princess is, all that she does! This is not so very difficult!"
Malpighi gasped. "You're sending me to pony country?" she said, gleefully.
"Yes!" shrieked Chrysalis. "Of course!"
Malpighi raised her chin, her eyes bright. "Okay!" she said. "I won't let you down, Queen Chrysalis!"
Chrysalis relaxed. "See that you don't. Fail me, and you may consider yourself an outcast of the Hive. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Ma'am!" said Malpighi, saluting.
"Mm," said the Queen, waving a hoof absently. She could already feel the headache coming on. "Just... just get yourself to the kitchens."
Chrysalis terminated the link. There was still a chance this could go right, she thought, picking up another cockroach and eyeing it critically.
* * *
There was no chance at all that this was gonna go right, thought Pupa, scudding hastily through the air toward the castle kitchens. She wasn't a trained soldier! She wasn't an infiltrator! She hadn't even ever been outside the Hive; well, except for that one time she got really really turned around. But...
...but Queen Chrysalis had faith in her. Faith! Even after she had squashed Malpighi like, well, again, a bug. The Queen had given Pupa an order. Pupa had a mission, now. She was to report to the kitchens. That was the first step. Report to the kitchens. Then, find "Canterlot," whatever that was. Find the castle of the high spire. Find the pink pony princess. Report back to Chrysalis. Pupa clutched the lens to her fuzzy pony breast as she fluttered through the dank and stagnant air of the Hive, having ditched her egg-clutch in a cross-hall some way back in favor of this new, much more important, mission. Report to the kitchens. Find Canterlot. Find the castle of the high spire. Find the pink pony princess—
—and just then, Pupa's litany was interrupted as her chemical sensors detected something in the air. Something quite magical.
She stopped for a moment, struck still in mid-air. That smell! Pupa had never chemically sensed anything like it! It was the smell of summer, the smell of burrowing into something warm and sweet. It was the smell of hot grain-fields and ripened fruit. It smelled, thought Pupa, like the whole, big, beautiful world outside the fortress doors. And it was here! Inside the Hive!
And it was coming from the kitchens! Joy! She could follow Queen Chrysalis's orders to the letter and check out that wonderful, incredible, amazing smell! Fluttering dreamily along, as though literally wrapped in twirls of the odor, Pupa flitted her way toward those long-disused relics of pony occupation, the food-preparation chambers.
"Oh, hey, Malpighi," said the worker changeling on duty, who was improbably wearing a poofy white chef's hat. "The Queen told us to expect you. We've been slaving all morning over this crazy plant stuff that ponies jam down their craws instead of love." The worker turned around and removed a tray of vaguely-circular chunky brown dumplings from the hot oven using a pair of floral-print oven mitts. "These are 'cookies,'" said the worker, gesturing at the tray. "Go on, have some."
Pupa's mouth began to water. So distracted was she by the lovely alien pony food that any thoughts of correcting the worker's misapprehension of her identity instantly fled her mind and were gone. These 'cookies' were not the source of the sublime aroma, but the cheery little brown circles did smell awfully good in and of themselves. Pupa knew that there was no real nourishment to be found in them, but they were carefully prepared and sweet, and Pupa knew enough about ponies to know that sweetness made them happy. And in the end, wasn't happiness a kind of nourishing love, too?
Pupa hovered over to the tray and scooped up a cookie. Hesitating hardly at all at the unfamiliar experience of eating solid food, she crammed it into her mouth, scattering crumbs everywhere. Her eyes went half-closed in rapture. Bliss! A second and a third and a fourth followed.
"Wow," said the worker. "You can really put those away."
"They're good!" said Pupa, over a mouthful of crumbs. "Show me more!"
"Well, okay," said the worker. "This here is 'pie.'"
Pupa gasped, practically drawing crumbs into her windpipe. It was beautiful! A big circle of flaky bready substance covering a luscious mound of sliced cinnamon-sprinkled apples! She had to have a taste! Two pieces of the stuff joined the cookies in her gullet. "More!" she cried.
And more followed. Doughnuts. Turnovers. Danishes. Cakes. This, thought Pupa, licking a few errant crumbs of streusel from her hooves, was the best mission briefing ever. No question about it. Give it the prize and send the audience home...
...and then, the smell again. The one that had brought her close to the kitchens in the first place. It rapidly intensified as though it were drawing closer, and finally reached its zenith as the worker set down an odd, bumpy pan with a series of cup-shaped depressions punched into it. Nestled in each depression was a perfect golden sugar-topped confection the likes of which Pupa had never before seen, or even dreamed. Her eyes went wide. This. This was the smell. This was the smell of perfection.
"What... what are those things?" asked Pupa, in a tiny, awe-broken voice.
"These are 'muffins.'"
Pupa emitted a brief, gasping sigh. Her little body shook.
"Do... do ponies eat muffins all the time?"
The worker blinked. "Sure, I guess," she said, shrugging. "Research says these babies are common as phlegm up there. Why?"
Pupa did not answer as she hovered in close to the old butcher block table that supported the pan of muffins. She eyed them close, not daring yet to touch.
"This mission," said Pupa, "is gonna be perfect."
* * *
Canterlot!
Pupa was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the place! The bustle! The sophistication! The glamour! And not just in the faerie-magic sense of the word! It was the largest community that Pupa had ever seen. She marveled at the whitewashed cottages with their cheery thatched roofs. She marveled at the huge, multi-storey pavilion in the center of town. She marveled at the beautiful little library, carved straight into the middle of a living tree. Canterlot was bigger and more wonderful and more spectacular than she had ever dreamed it would be!
Pupa squeezed her eyes shut as the bustle of big-city life surrounded her like a gently frothing sea. But. But. She had a job. Queen Chrysalis had entrusted her with a mission, and she mustn't lose focus. It was going so well so far! She had located Canterlot, which turned out to be surprisingly easy. Step one: Complete! She was fairly certain that any number of buildings around here could be categorized as a "high spire," so that part was done as well! The last thing that remained for Pupa was to perform her first replacement, to take the form of "somepony" that everyone loved so she could begin stocking up provisions for the long mission ahead of her. Then, she would find the pink pony princess, and begin her observations!
It was at this moment that Pupa stopped walking, her eyes going wide; because she had suddenly realized that the mission briefing had not technically included a description of her target of observation. A finger of dread poked her in the stomach. How would she even know who the princess was, when she saw her? All she had to go on was a color!
Pupa looked left. Pupa looked right. She saw many, many ponies. None of them were pink.
Hm. This was all turning out to be a little more tricky than steps one and two had been.
Pupa looked left again, hoping that maybe something or someone would—
"Hi!" shouted a pony, square into Pupa's face.
Pupa stumbled a few steps back from the apparition. Standing there quivering before her was a creature of brilliant white teeth and brilliant blue eyes. Her face was surrounded and topped by a mad, glorious tangle of mane, frizzing out to all sides and rising to a majestic pompadour like a wave crashing over a rock.
She was pink.
The Princess, thought Pupa, excitement growing in her breast. That was definitely a royal mane. No question about it. Despite herself, Pupa took a split second to admire its poofy, frizzy regality.
"Hi!" shouted the pony, again, moving swiftly in to cover the ground that Pupa had lost in her backwards stumble. "You must be new here! You know how I know you're new here? Huh huh huh?"
Pupa began to quail inside. The Princess was incredibly responsible! It turned out that she showed up in person to greet every single one of her subjects, even the brand new ones!
The mission had just gotten very, very difficult. In truth, Pupa hadn't counted on being accosted so soon, before she could perform her first replacement. She was still in her primary infiltration form! And she had been asked a question! By royalty! How should someone answer a question posed to her by royalty? Was there a special protocol you needed to follow? With a frantic, scrambling feeling, Pupa realized that she had been woefully under-briefed for this mission. Thoughts of the terrible recyclers filled her head. Here she was, face-to-face with the pink pony princess, the very target of her observation, and she was about to blow it!
A few seconds ticked past.
Pupa threw caution to the wind. "No?" she hazarded.
The pink princess beamed, not missing a beat. "Because I know absolutely everypony! And absolutely everypony is my friend! And I've never seen you before, and that means you must be new here! So... welcome to our little town! What's your name?"
The panic in Pupa's breast rose anew. A name! She had forgotten to pick out a name! The primary infiltration form didn't even have a name! She was supposed to have ditched it by now!
Pupa looked frantically around her, trying to find inspiration. "Cottage!" she blurted out.
"Cottage?" said the Princess, cocking her head.
No! shouted Pupa, at herself. That's probably a silly pony name! She's on to your deception! Desperately, she tried again. "Lamppost!"
"Lamppost?"
No! thought Pupa, again, inwardly kicking herself. Architectural features? What was she thinking? Ponies probably weren't named like architectural features at all! She needed to find something around here that wasn't an architectural feature, and fast! What could she see that fell into that category?
She looked down. Her eyes lit on her little forelimbs. "Hooves!" she cried. Yes! That sounded good!
The pink Princess frowned. "Okay, your name is 'Hooves'? Is 'Hooves' like a first name, or a last name?"
Well, the gig was up now. Pupa had been ensnared by a clarifying question she couldn't possibly know the answer to, broken by the coils of the Princess's merciless, relentless grilling. Now that Canterlot had been alerted, there was no way she could pull off a proper infiltration. Even if she were to escape now, what home would take her? The Queen had as much as promised banishment from the Hive if she failed in her mission; either that, or the recyclers. And the terrifying, awesome pony princess before her would doubtlessly show her no mercy.
Pupa slumped, her shoulders weighted down by dread fate. "I guess I'm just derpy," she said, in a small voice.
"Okay!" said the Princess, cheerily.
Pupa looked up.
"'Derpy' it is!" said the Princess, extending one hoof, clutching Pupa's own, and shaking it vigorously up and down. "Pleased ta meetcha! My name is Pinkamena Diane Responsibility Lamppost Cottage Cubic Zirconia Humble Pie. Do you prefer 'Derpy' or 'Miss Hooves'?"
What a name! thought Pupa. She glowed with satisfaction; there was no question now that she had found her target, as one thing that Pupa knew about royalty was that their names were really, really long. Also, ponies apparently had names like architectural features after all! It turned out she was really good at this infiltration thing.
Outside of Pupa's head, the Princess continued to gush. "Wait! Maybe you're a 'Doctor Hooves,' like that funny colt with the light-up screwdriver! Or maybe a 'Missus Hooves'? Do you have a super-special somepony in your life? And are you esquired to anypony else? I need you to tell me all this because I need to know what to put on the banners because you're getting a party!"
The Princess's manic grin relaxed into an expression of easy confidence. "It's just something I do," she concluded. "It's a new-pony-in-town thing."
"A—a 'party'?"
"Yep!" said the Princess, proudly, snapping back to her manic demeanor. "There'll be cakes and pies and cookies and bars and cupcakes, which are just like cakes only smaller and cuter, and we'll set up a chocolate fountain and ooh I can use your welcome party to try out my new industrial-strength fondue pot!"
Pupa's eyes glimmered. Her jaw trembled.
"What—what about... muffins?" she asked.
"Are you kidding?" said the pink princess pony. "We'll have gobs of muffins, if you want 'em! Muffins aren't really party food, they're more of a breakfast thing, but if you want muffins we'll have a muffin party! Heck, we can have a whole breakfast party if you want! I can still break out my fondue pot! We'll just have... muffin fondue!" The Princess gasped. "Muffin fondue!" she practically screamed. "Muffins dipped in melted chocolate! Ooh, this is gonna be great! My new muffin fondue will revolutionize muffin technology, and it'll be all thanks to you, Derpy Hooves!"
A smile crept across Pupa's face in the silence that followed. "I think... I would like that," she said.
"Great!" shouted the Princess. "This is going to be my best welcome party ever! What's with your eyes?"
Pupa blinked. "Huh?"
"Your eyes!" said Pinkie, leaning in close until her nose was practically touching Pupa's. "They're funny! Don't get me wrong, they're not bad-funny. They're actually happy-funny. They go in all different directions. That's so crazy!"
"I guess... that's just how I am?" said Pupa.
"Derpy Hooves," said Pinkie, earnestly, putting a hoof on Pupa's shoulder, "I love how you are."
A trickle of emerald nourishment wound its way down Pupa's changeling throat. The Princess's love was delicious, warm and sweet. It was without guile and without subterfuge and was provided generously, with absolutely no sucking required. It was very nearly the best thing that Pupa had ever tasted in her short life. Second only, of course, to muffins.
Pupa's mission to infiltrate Canterlot was back on track, in the most delectable possible way.
* * *
One and one half years later, Derpy Hooves was relaxing in her bed with a muffin nightcap after a hard, fulfilling day's labor at the Ponyville Moving and Storage Company. Derpy's tiny bedroom, located in a little nook above P.M.&S.Co.'s primary warehouse, was crowded to bursting with trinkets and souvenirs and photographs and all sorts of things that made the little changeling smile. Derpy loved her pony job, and not just because they had given her a little place to call her own. Mover-pony work was really fun! It was just like what she used to do in the Great Hive, except ponies had so many more and different things to move than just egg sacs! Big heavy things like pianos, and safes, and anvils! She hardly ever dropped any of them on anypony, and when the day was done, the foreman gave her a pile of shiny tokens called "pay" which could be exchanged for muffins at a very favorable rate of exchange. Yes, Ma'am, if there was one thing that Derpy Hooves was good at, it was moving heavy things from one place to another.
Also, she was apparently really good at devious clandestine changeling infiltration! It had turned out that the pink pony princess actually had a job besides being a princess; she was a baker! And that was just about the best thing for the princess to be, because every morning before dawn Derpy would stop in to the bakery before starting her shift and get a pony-style breakfast to start her day out right! And while she was there, Derpy would perform her daily observation of the pink pony princess over her muffins and juice, just like Queen Chrysalis wanted her to do. Of course, no matter how much she enjoyed the taste, she didn't need (and could not in fact use) the nourishment from the pony food. But that was all right. She had all the provender she needed. Everypony loved the funny little gray moving-company pony. They loved the way she tried so hard. They even loved it when she failed, because she was a plucky creature, and would always pick herself back up again after a fall. They loved her passion for muffins. They loved her spirit. They loved her bright, funny eyes. Derpy Hooves was a happy and well-fed changeling because love followed her everywhere she went.
And every day her list of observations about the Princess grew longer. Derpy wrote about the Princess's silly giggle-snort. She wrote about her bounciness. She wrote about her funny little twitches and wiggles. She even wrote at length about that one time that the Princess accompanied the new town librarian into the dark, dangerous Everfree Forest and brought the sun back from where it had been hiding, putting an end to a long, long night. Derpy Hooves prepared her reports with the careful eye of a master. She never shirked, never slacked. Though it would have been easy to simply lose herself in the muffins and the moving heavy things and the muffins, Derpy Hooves never forgot the reason she had been sent to Canterlot, which the locals called "Ponyville," presumably because of the high concentration of ponies to be found there.
Still, even though her mind never strayed from her mission, it came as a bit of a shock to Derpy when the lens linking her back to the Great Hive finally began to chime. It took her a few rings to even remember the thing's existence, but when she did, she was out of bed like a shot. Could it be? Was her mission over already? Was it time for her to give her report? There was so much she still didn't understand about the pink pony princess! For instance, the way she would sometimes face a blank wall or a patch of empty air and talk to it, just as though there were invisible ponies standing right there she could communicate with. Derpy still had no clue about that! Or the way she could stretch her neck out to a yard long, or hang suspended in empty air. It was princess-level magic, to be certain, but Derpy had no idea how she was doing it!
Nervousness gripped Derpy's little dorsally-mounted changeling heart. No time for any of that now. Her report would just have to be good enough. Working quickly with her nimble little hooves, Derpy pried up the loose floorboard beneath the bed, retrieved the chiming lens from its hiding-place and polished away the thin coating of dust that had deposited itself on the artifact. "Hey, Queen Chrysalis!" said Derpy, waving at the distorted image of the Changeling Queen that flickered in the depths of the lens.
"Greetings to you, little worm," said Chrysalis. "I trust your infiltration efforts have gone w—"
Chrysalis blinked.
"In the name of the Utter Darkness," said Chrysalis, "what are you doing?"
Derpy wiped the crumbs from her chin. "Eating a muffin, Your Highness!"
"No, no, no!" said Chrysalis. "I don't care about that! What are you doing still wearing your primary infiltration form? Why haven't you taken the shape of one of the Princess's hoofmaidens or something? You haven't even fixed your stupid eyes!"
Derpy frowned. To be honest, she couldn't quite recall having been briefed on that aspect of the mission. "I... don't know?" she said. "I kind of... like the way I look?"
"What you 'like' is completely immaterial!" fumed Chrysalis. "You shouldn't be alive if you're still in your primary infiltration form! That identity doesn't actually exist! No one knows it! No one loves it! Why haven't you starved to death long ago?"
Derpy Hooves thought this over. "I think," she said, "that maybe they love me for who I am."
"Impossible," snapped Chrysalis. "No one loves a changeling for who they are." She waved off the line of inquiry as though dismissing a smoke-cloud. "Very well," she said, "you've proven your resourcefulness. Do you have a report for me?"
"Oh, yes!" said Derpy Hooves, rummaging around in her belongings for her Pink Pony Princess Observation Journal. "Got a whole book, right here!"
"Good," purred Chrysalis. "Begin reading. I should like to hear everything you've found out about the young alicorn princess."
Silence fell over the little room for a moment.
"Alicorn?" said Derpy Hooves.
* * *
Deep within the heart of the Great Hive, Queen Chrysalis terminated the communication link and stretched, luxuriantly, like some sort of obscene insectoid cat. Her secret daughter-weapon had fulfilled Chrysalis's every expectation. Malpighi's delivery had been hesitant at first, almost as though she were pulling facts at random out of thin air, but then it had started to pick up speed as she grew more enthusiastic and confident about her report. Queen Chrysalis now had a veritable bounty of information about this Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, and considered herself ready. Yes, the whole "wedding" thing had been sort of thrown into the mix rather suddenly, but Chrysalis had faith that, with these exhaustive notes, her impression would be flawless even under such demanding circumstances.
"What is her everyday personality?" Malpighi had replied that Cadence was a short-tempered witch of a princess, prone to falseness and insincere pleasantries. Good. That would be easy to emulate.
"How does she treat her fiancé, Royal Guard Captain Shining Armor?" Formally. Sternly. Little overt affection. Again, simple.
"Any old friends or relatives I should know about? And what of the Captain's family?" Shining Armor was apparently an only child, with no living parents. Excellent.
"How would she treat her bridesmaids? Her wedding staff?" Disrespectfully, Malpighi had reported. Cadence would be cross and crabby to those who tried to help her with the party food and the wedding reception, and would order endless revisions to her gown, never expressing satisfaction with it. Wonderful. The more she thought about it, the more this "Cadence" sounded a lot like herself. She would hardly have to work at this impersonation at all.
Chrysalis permitted herself a small smile. This day was going to be perfect.
* * *
"I'm telling you!" said Twilight Sparkle. "Cinnamon is a natural antimicrobial! Look it up!"
"I think you're just saying that," said Applejack, "so's you won't have to throw away that snickerdoodle that you just dropped."
"Ridiculous," said Twilight. "Let's approach this rationally. The primary reason that the 'three-second rule' is a fallacy is that germs from the floor can easily contaminate the surface of the food within a three-second period. But the antimicrobial property of the cinnamon on top of the snickerdoodle extends the contamination window to three seconds, at least! I'm in the clear! Here, let me draw you a chart—"
"Hey, girls," said Derpy Hooves, the little gray delivery-mare, peeking her head in through the door of Sugarcube Corner. "How, um, how was the royal wedding?"
"Hey, Derpy," said Rainbow Dash, looking up. "Wedding went awesome, if you forget about the whole 'society teetering on the edge of collapse' thing."
"It really is hard to forget that," admitted Fluttershy, glancing at the floor. "But at least, um, everything turned out okay, right?"
"Yep!" said Twilight, proudly. "All thanks to my brother and Princess Cadence! In the end, it was their great love for each other that saved the day."
"Your brother?" asked Derpy.
"Yeah, my brother," said Twilight. "Shining Armor. The groom."
"Oh," said Derpy, looking a little downcast. "I didn't know that. Um, was the changeling queen... was she mad?"
"I expect she was, darling," said Rarity. "I think if I were tossed halfway across the continent by a wave of pure love energy, I'd be a little miffed, yes."
"So radical," said Rainbow Dash. "Pow! Smacked in the face by love! Yeah, that old crone was howling like a banshee all the way home!"
"So you think she'd be... pretty ticked at anyone who helped bring that about, huh?"
"Probably," said Twilight frowning at her. "Why?"
Derpy shrugged. "No reason," she said, and flitted back out the door.
Twilight Sparkle shook her head. "Weird little pony," she said.
"Yep!" said Pinkie Pie. "But everypony loves her anyway!"
Twilight's face softened. "Yes," she said. "We all do."
* * *
As the sun began to set, gently, in the west, a small gray pegasus pony hovered over the little village of Ponyville (which was apparently not a clever nickname for "Canterlot" after all) taking in the peaceful evening sights and sounds of the town that had become her home over these many months. No point in returning to the Great Hive now, she thought. There wouldn't be any second chances. Not after this. She might even have to lay low for a while here in pony country, to not show her face for a bit. Just in case.
How had any of this happened? How had she managed to mistake "Ponyville" for "Canterlot" for well over a year? How had she confused the earth pony Pinkie Pie with the pink pony princess she had been assigned to watch? How had she derped up her mission so incredibly badly? Her report to Queen Chrysalis had been completely made-up, of course, but it had been based on good solid educated guesses grounded in all her previous experiences with royalty.
Had... had she wanted to fail? Deep down?
Derpy sighed. It was pointless to wonder about it now; she just didn't know what had gone wrong.
Well, she thought then, mustering her courage, it was time to face the facts: she was now, officially, an exile from the Great Hive. She had always been told that this was the worst possible thing that could happen to a changeling. But as Derpy Hooves mulled it over, this long-dreaded event seemed to slowly retreat to a position of surprising insignificance in her neural ganglia. She had a job. She had a place in the world. She had all the love she could eat, and this was because—and she eventually had to admit this to herself—she was, herself, a lovable thing. And last, but not least, she had muffins. Delicious, delicious muffins.
It might not be perfect, thought Derpy Hooves, née Pupa the changeling, as she looked out over a happy little town full of happy little ponies almost, but not quite, just like her. But it would do.
Author's Note
Once again, thanks to S.R. Foxley and Ghost of Heraclitus for the beta, and thanks also to SolarSpark for the neat cover art.
