Kin.
The scent and the feeling coming from the creature stalking the purple mare was familiar to Carapace. It didn't look like one of her kind, it didn't move like one of her kind. But everything in her was urging her to believe that it was.
Instinct told her to extend her fangs and move forward, help her kinscreature with its hunt. But, for some reason, she fought it.
The Queen had told her to hold these ponies' trust for as long as possible. They outnumbered her. So the wisest course of action would be...
Carapace gave into an entirely different instinct and leapt between the pony and the thing that might be one of her kind. She snarled viciously, dropping her fangs and letting her wings emerge with feathers. She lowered her head and spread them in an instinctual threat display, all but hiding the bewildered mare behind her. The message was clear--or it would have been if directed at a Changeling.
Mine!
Her opponent didn't react, making Carapace falter. She had fought before--with Elytra, Gossamer, random drones operating purely on base instinct--and this wasn't how it was supposed to happen. Fights always followed a specific set of rules, and this creature wasn't playing by them.
"Is that a--" the purple mare behind her began.
"I have no idea!" Carapace snarled back. "Stay where you are!"
She studied the thing in front of her, not sure if the nausea she was feeling was coming from the purple mare's fear or simply her own primal rage. There was no emotion coming from it. Just like a Changeling, or the red-coated unicorn stallion.
It took one step forward, and Carapace dropped the softness of her disguise from her legs and swiped at it with a perforated hoof.
The blow connected with its muzzle, and it staggered. Carapace lowered her head and headbutted the creature in the chest, forcing it back and away from the pony behind her.
Head up, fangs out, aim for the neck, bite.
Her teeth met hard chitin. It had the exoskeleton of a Changeling.
Before she could ponder this, there were strong forelegs around her torso, flipping her and slamming her to the ground. Carapace yelped, more out of shock than fear, then snarled again. Her wings beat futilely against the crystal path of the gardens.
The purple mare was screaming something that she couldn't make out. She struggled vainly under the Change-thing (as she had dubbed it in her own mind), trying to get its hooves off of her chest. It was nearly twice her size, and at least three times as heavy. And it wasn't budging. Panting, she stared up into its inexplicably equine eyes with a misplaced sense of wonder.
You're not like me. You're not like them.
What are you?
Then, to her complete and utter shock, it bent its head, studying her as closely as she was it.
"You protected her," it murmured, voice unmistakably male. "Why did you protect her?"
Carapace raised her head, intending on gouging its eyes out with her fangs, but the purple mare yelled, "Head down! Head down!"
She let her neck go limp. Her skull cracked against the ground, a humming sound came from behind her, and a bolt of magenta energy struck the monster in the side. Its weight vanished from her chest. And then the mare was standing over her with a frenzied expression on her face, hauling her to her hooves.
"Change back," she said. "You have to disguise yourself again! Hurry!"
Carapace retracted her fangs, recloaked her legs. Her wings vanished. The purple unicorn shoved her--hard--and they ran.
She cast a glance back over her withers. The Change-thing had been thrown almost ten feet, carving a swath in the delicate crystal beds. But not it was climbing back onto its hooves.
"Can you teleport?" the mare gasped. She glanced at her and shook her head. "Guess we'll have to do this the old-fashioned way, then."
They ran, leaping over crystal beds and ducking behind statues, trying to lose their pursuer. The monster followed them, but not in the conventional way. It ran in a straight line. As if it knew exactly where they were going to end up. The purple unicorn launched bolts of magenta magic at it frequently, but it had figured out how to dodge.
"What in the name of Celestia is that thing?" she panted as they cut behind yet another statue and collapsed in unison, gasping for air. "I've never seen anything like it!"
"And you assume that I have?" Carapace growled, struggling to her hooves. Drones of her kind were endurant, but the fight and the subsequent running had taken a lot out of her. Not to mention that a lot of her more important muscles were currently equine--and thus, inferior. "It's not like me. I don't know what it is."
"I wonder..." the mare murmured, then her eyes widened almost comically and she scrambled back into a standing position. "Aah! Run, Carapace, here it comes!"
Carapace did as she was told, though she noticed that her companion was moving considerably slower now. Which wouldn't have been a problem, they could make up for the lost speed by not stopping for awhile. But then she took a bad step, sending a razor-sharp shard of crystal up into the pad of her hoof.
She cried out, hobbled a few steps before the pain forced her to stop. Blood was gushing from the wound, she wasn't moving--and the mutant predator was right behind her.
What Carapace did next she did without thinking. Spinning around as she dropped the disguise from her legs below the knees, she snarled viciously. All feeling fled from her hooves as black chitin replaced the meat, cartilage, and spare bone of a pony's feet. The knife-like shards of the display that the pony had unwittingly stumbled into made no impression on her.
The monster was crouching, muscles bunching in its haunches like it was a pad-footed predator instead of an equinoid. There was no time to yell out a warning. Carapace pounced before the other thing had a chance to, landing heavily on top of what she had begun to think of as her pony and forcing her to the ground.
"Hey--"
The monster sailed over their heads.
Carapace waited for its hooves to crunch on the shards behind them, but the sound never came. She allowed her blue shell to return and rolled off of the mare she had just saved, then scrambled to her hooves. She barely even thought about how weird she would look if somepony came around the corner right then--a Changeling from the throat latch down, save for the tail and belly.
The monster was nowhere to be seen. As if it had just vanished.
A sudden flood of shocked gratitude, satisfying and hardy, prompted her to turn around. The unicorn was getting to her hooves, keeping off the injured one. Thin pink shards were embedded superficially in her chest and stomach, but she didn't appear to notice.
"That's the second time you've protected me," she said. Evidently, it was just sinking in, but Carapace was content to bask. The positive emotion was a good way to recharge after the training ordeal. "I...I'm sorry, Carapace. I guess I was totally wrong about you."
She just stared as the pony hung her head. She hadn't saved her out of friendship or common equine decency or even reflex--it had been an instinct to preserve a viable food source and keep it within the possession of her hive (or, in this case, just her). She technically owned the pony in front of her, and her kind tended to hold on to what was theirs.
She didn't have to tell her that, though.
So she just nodded.
"I hope you can forgive me." The unicorn raised her head and met Carapace's gaze. "We were never even properly introduced, were we? My name is Twilight Sparkle. Personal protege of Princess Celestia of Equestria."
Carapace knew who Celestia was. She was unable to hide a grimace, but she still took the hoof that Twilight offered. Pony names weren't her forte; she'd have to work pretty hard to remember this one if she wanted to keep up the charade that they were friends. Or whatever.
"Carapace of the Changelings," she said. "Swarm ambassador to the Crystal Empire."
Twilight smiled. Carapace hadn't seen a pony smile up close yet--it was strange, no teeth showing at all.
"Hey, when you're done here, you can come to Canterlot--maybe even Ponyville," she suggested. "I'm sure that my friends would love to meet you--oh, and Princess Celestia too, of course."
"Oh. Yes," Carapace replied, keeping her face neutral.
"Lady Sparkle! Ambassador!" somepony bellowed. They looked up to see two pegasi swooping towards them, little more than black dots against the dazzling sky.
Rings of green fire ran down Carapace's legs and back, wrapping her lacquered shell in a velvety pelt. Maybe these guards already knew what she was, but she wasn't taking the chance.
The pegasi stallions fluttered down into a perfect landing in front of them, glancing around at the ruined garden before settling on the bloody shards of crystal in Twi-something's chest. When she made to step forward, one of them held up a wing. His feathers were spiky, almost like scales, and he had dragon eyes. One of his parents must have been a kirin.
"Please, Lady Sparkle, allow us," he said. Their thick boots protected them as they waded into the crystal, heaved Twi-something onto the half-breed's back, and carried her out to the path.
While they were preoccupied with that, Carapace dragged both forehooves and one hindhoof over the crystal. It hurt like hay and it would translate to oozing clefts in her real hooves later, but she did not want to arouse suspicion.
The guards rescued her with the same care that they had Twi-something. Once both mares were crouched, exhausted but safe, on the path, the pony pegasus spoke.
"We'll take you to the infirmary," he said. "But the princess will want to talk to you as soon as your wounds are dressed."
A/N: Why was this so difficult for me to type up? I have no idea. But this will be the last chapter for awhile, as I warned. Enjoy.