//------------------------------//
// Thoughts from an Ambassador 
// Story: Common Ground 
// by LunasCaptain 
//------------------------------//

	"Please don't hurt me," Carapace whispered, curling up on the floor of her cage and flicking her tail around herself.  She wasn't used to having one this long.

The tall white unicorn stared at her with an emotion that she couldn't identify.  She couldn't remember his name, even though she recognized him from the Queen's lessons.  But that didn't matter.  He was dangerous, but he was also prey, and he was reacting positively to her current form.  She didn't need to know his name to take advantage of that.

"How," the unicorn asked, taking a step forward--and panicking the armored ponies around him, "do you know what she looks like?"

"What who looks like?"  She scooted backwards, lowering her head and peering up through her bangs.  Carapace could do this particular unicorn mare very well, but just to be safe, she had enhanced a few of the more childish features.  Larger eyes and hooves, shorter legs and horn, so that she would be a cuter, more infantile version of the real thing.  Nopony hurt larvae.  Not even her kind.

An involuntary rush of tenderness came from the white unicorn, even as he stooped to glare at her.  Carapace pounced on it, barely caring that it was tempered by disgust and fury.  Love was love and there had been nothing but hate and fear since she arrived.  It had begun to give her a stomachache.

"My--never mind.  You know what?  I don't care how you learned to change into Twilight."  He looked away, and whatever knee-jerk affection response her appearance had triggered vanished.  "I just want to know why you thought that doing it would somehow protect you."

"You're listening to me, aren't you?"  Carapace stood, the organs that did the equivalent of a pony's heart for her body pulsing rapidly with the realization that she was confronting prey-turned-enemy.  The enemy, the one that had so violently expelled her kin from the main hive of the ponies.

The white unicorn squeezed his eyes shut and lowered his ears.  Carapace smiled openly and cocked an eyebrow, which she felt was a nice touch.  It was things like that that made her the best shifter in the Swarm.  Pony faces were much more expressive than those of her kind, and their owners took advantage of that.  A fact that Gossamer and Elytra had never seemed to notice.

"That won't work," she said.  "After all, you can still hear me, can't you?"

He made no move, though the armored ponies shifted uncomfortably.  Maybe they were unnerved by the sight of a child in a cage.

"Now, please..."  She lowered her head and scraped one hoof despondently along the floor of the cage (another nice touch--she congratulated herself).  "It's so cold...I'm frightened.  Couldn't you just take me up--"

The unicorn stallion's eyes snapped open, and he glared at Carapace with hate so strong that she felt it like a kick to the stomach.  Nausea, dizzying enough to make her see spots, forced her to her knees, and she retched out of reflex, feeling her fangs return.  Green fire crackled weakly around the edges of her body, exposing frail hooves and a ragged tail and torn ears.  

The hate subsided.  As some of her strength returned, she dragged herself to the other side of the cage.  Panting, she allowed her disguise to dissolve, taking with it her status as a mare and her identity.  She waited for another onslaught.  It never came.

The unicorn examined her--it, now--for several moments.  It wasn't sure what it saw in his eyes.  Pity, perhaps, which it could have fed on, if it didn't feel like it had been bucked in the bands.

After an undefinable period of time, the unicorn turned away and said simply, "You aren't my sister."

With that, he left.

Carapace blinked after him.  It hadn't been certain of the exact significance of the purple mare, but would it have guessed sister?  Concubine, maybe, or some other kind of companion, but not sister.  There wasn't any familial resemblance that it could see.

It lowered its head to rest on its pockmarked forehooves, sighing deeply.  It hurt, deep in its guts, the parts that the iridescent gray bands protected.  But the ever-present hunger was returning, considering that there was nothing but the apathy of a pegasus in the corner.  And while that particular emotion wouldn't make it violently ill, it was pretty much indigestible.  

Carapace tried to make a small ball of dust and hair roll across the floor of the cage by blowing on it.  It was going to be a long day.


----O----


"Hey."

The voice was soft, but just loud enough to wake Carapace.  Startled, its eyes flew open and its head jerked up.  It wasn't frightened as much by the young stallion in front of it as it was by the fact that it had woken up.

Its kind only slept when wounded, hypothermic, or starving.  Unconsciousness was a very bad sign.

"Hey," the stallion said again.  Carapace irritably turned its attention to him, trying to forget about the possibility that it might be dying.

Barely out of colthood, the stallion had the large eyes and slender build of a very young pony.  Carapace bared its fangs.  His armor barely even fit him--what moron had stationed him here?  It would be surprised if his flanks were even marked yet.  It was just insulting, to be guarded by something little more than a larva.

Though he seemed to be the only one in the room doing his job.  It must have been near the end of the shift; everypony else was just chatting quietly and leaning against the walls, eager to go home.  Did they really consider their captive monster such a small threat?  They would rather make small talk than observe one of their young try to talk to it?

"I know you can understand me," the little stallion said, tapping impatiently on one of the bars with a hoof.  "You talked to the Princess that first night."

Carapace turned and glared at him, trying to arrange its near-expressionless face into something resembling annoyance.  It would have spoken, but it had learned relatively fast that the voice it had hatched with made ponies nervous.  And that kind of thing was like swallowing nails, for it.

Seeing that he had gotten the monster's attention, the stallion blinked.  He was curious, maybe a little bit afraid, both emotions not quite strong enough to hurt Carapace's already-damaged innards.  Well, beyond causing a mild stomachache, but that was nothing new.

"Can you do me?" the stallion finally asked.  "I mean, like, can you turn into me?"

Hissss.

Being asked to perform by prey.  'Humiliation' didn't even begin to describe it.  Carapace's brain was wired for little other than primal rage, and that was turned on full blast right now.  Its lips withdrew completely, exposing all four inches of its scythe-like fangs in a vicious snarl.

"Is that a no?"

Carapace stood and backed away from the green eyes that suddenly filled its vision, hissing in revulsion at the stallion's nearness.  Disappointment--it was like having a belly full of mud.

One of the other ponies had finally noticed what was going on.  She stalked over and took the young stallion's ear in her teeth, dragging him away from the cage.  

"Remind me, Tags," the mare began through gritted teeth, "just what the one condition of you coming down here was."

"Stay--ow--away from the--ouch!--Changeling."

"Ah, c'mon, Pike.  The colt's fine," a winged pony called from his position near the doorway.  "The thing's caged, after all.  It couldn't hurt him."

"If I'm ever on the wrong side of the bars down here, remind me to specifically request that you aren't one of my guards, Silver," the mare replied.  "I'd rather not have foals nosing around my cell."

The pegasus grinned.  "Sympathy for a Changeling?"

"I'm equine.  It's only natural."  The mare cast a glance back over at the cage.  Carapace tucked its hooves beneath its body and blinked.  She was softhearted; it'd have to remember that, it it was ever in need of anything.  This particular pony was a more plentiful food source than most.

"Very noble," the pegasus stallion observed.  "Of course, I'd probably find it easier to feel sorry for it if it weren't so bucking ugly."

That prompted hearty laughter from the rest of the ponies.  Carapace bristled.

A red-coated unicorn trotted into the room, putting an abrupt end to the light mood in the room.  Carapace noted that he was taller than the others, and much...colder.  It couldn't taste any emotion at all from him.

"Everypony, back into position," he barked.  "The Princess is coming to talk to the Changeling."





A/N: ...well?

First chapter written through the perspective of a non-canon character.  How was it...?

Was shifting gender pronouns based on what form the character was occupying too confusing?  Should I go with a consistent pronoun?  If so, what?