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Weakness And Strength

"Elle! Softshell!"

Elle stepped to one side, letting the soccerball go by without trying to block it. That was close. She was still trying to come to terms with all of the changes that had occurred in the last two days. She and Lance had already started working on different codewords, to remind her of those differences, so she wouldn't accidentally get hurt. Perhaps the most important was 'Softshell'. It reminded her that she no longer had an armored carapace to protect her from harm. The soccer ball she had just dodged would have bounced harmlessly off of her old shell, but now that she was a pony, it would have hit her hard enough to hurt had it connected with her face.

She had so many things she needed to learn, and to remember. And just as many things that she would have to forget.

The lessons in changeling magic that had been forcibly imprinted into her brain by her mentors were now useless: Pony magic works in a completely different fashion. She could not cast any of her old spells, and would have to learn magic again from scratch. Likewise, pony joints moved slightly differently, so her previous agility and grace was completely lost, as well as her wings. She now stumbled and fell over often. She no longer possessed compound eyes, severely limiting her field of vision. Her physical strength (which had been based primarily on the strength and rigidity of her chitin) was diminished by half. She now possessed the body of an ordinary unicorn filly...

And she couldn't be happier.

Running after the ball, she stumbled, caught herself, then stumbled again, before reaching the ball. Turning back towards Lance, she called out, "Ready?" Lance nodded, grinning. Whipping around, she reared both legs back, and kicked as hard as she could. The ball flew, not very quickly, but accurately, back to Lance, who caught it with both forelegs.

Lance dropped the ball, grinning, and said, "That one was a lot better. You're getting the hang of this."

Elle felt like this was a situation that called for a smile, so she allowed herself one. She was still... uncertain about emotions in general, and about facial expressions, but she felt she was getting a little bit better about using them. Flower Mantis had joked about how the little filly had come out of her shell in more ways than one. While Elle felt like that wasn't entirely accurate, she did feel much more... free than before.

Lance called out, "Ready?" Steadying herself, Elle nodded, then prepared for the next throw.
--------------

Shining Armor and Flower Mantis watched the two ponies at play while they talked. Elle had a long ways to go before she could even think about beginning the training necessary to put her back at her previous physical prowess, but so far, the former changeling had not shown even the slightest interest in becoming what she had been only two days before. She seemed much more focused on just being happy.

"...So, tell me more about this Braconidae character."

Today was a bit more about debriefing than anything else. While the older changeling and the unicorn had managed, over the last couple of days, to establish an odd sort of friendship, she understood that the knight had a duty to protect the peace of Equestria, and in order to do so, he needed to make certain that changelingkind was no longer a threat to ponykind.

Mantis, keeping her voice low enough to keep from being overheard, said, "Braconidae was the leader of the infiltration corps. His agents would infiltrate a city weeks in advance, weaken the target from the inside, and then, in a single night, secure the city for capture. He lost a great deal of relevance when the queen decided that she was the best actress ever, and decided infiltration should be a one bug show. However, his agents were still very skilled spies, and he still managed to maintain a pretty strong hoof in the politics of the hive."

Shining Armor nodded in understanding, then asked, "And you've heard about him since?"

Nodding, her expression neutral, Mantis said, "Mostly rumors, but given how spread out the hive is now, anything is better than nothing. I've heard that he took his agents and a few loyalists to the crown south across the badlands. I don't know if they were looking for the queen, or they just wanted to get out of Equestria while the getting was good, but most changelings wanted nothing to do with him. I'd say he'd have no more than twenty followers, possibly thirty if they were desperate and he was the only one they could turn to. Braconidae is not the kind of bug you'd want to serve if you could help it: he views subordinates like chess pieces. And the thing about chess pieces is, by the time the game is over, there's a lot fewer of them than when you started."

The knight raised an eyebrow, and asked, "And it was his idea to try and turn Elle into a weapon?" Flower nodded. "Why?"

The changeling shrugged, and said, "He was convinced that we'd need a secret weapon. He may have been a sociopath, but he was a brilliant strategist and tactician. He saw that things were getting worse in the hive, that each invasion was getting harder and harder, and that the number of kingdoms we could raid and expect to successfully extract love from was reducing yearly. Had the queen not forced us to migrate north for Equestria, we'd have had to go someplace else, or starve, if not in my lifetime, then in Elle's. Brac thought that, if instead, we had a new weapon, one that could surpass anything else that our enemies could throw at us, we'd be able to extend our stay in the southern kingdoms. His ultimate goal was to create an army of changelings, raised from birth to know only violence and destruction. Elle was a prototype..."

Shining Armor looked over at the changeling as she slowed to a stop. Flower's expression was one of extreme sadness, most likely because she'd been a participant in such a terrible project, albeit unwillingly. Guessing her thoughts, he said, "Well, there's little that we can do to change the past. The best we can do is to make certain that the future we build is one where little bugs and ponies aren't forced to become weapons."

Smiling, Flower said, "That's something I'd be happy to dedicate the rest of my life to. Now, let's discuss a happier subject. You said you'd gotten a report about several other changelings revealing themselves?"

Grinning, the knight said, "Yup. And some of them make for pretty funny stories. Can you believe a filly actually hired a changeling to be the monster under her bed, for the sole purpose of scaring away the monster in her closet?"

The two shared a laugh as they continued to watch the two youngsters play.
-----------------

Lance yelled, "Ouch!" His back leg twisted, and he fell. He looked down at his leg, realizing that he'd not seen a gopher hole that he had just stuck his hoof into. Thankfully, his back leg wasn't seriously injured, but he'd need to put ice on it. The last time he'd had a twist like this, he'd had to stay off it a day or two. He hated to say it, especially since Elle was having so much fun, but they'd have to stop for now.

He looked up from his back leg to see Elle standing over him, a faraway look in her eyes, and her horn beginning to glow with energy. Suddenly, the pain in his back leg faded and vanished. He looked back at his leg, and saw the painful scrapes that had been there only moments ago were fading away, as well. When the spell ended, it was as if he'd never hurt himself at all. Standing up and putting his weight on it, he found his back leg was good as new. Grinning, he asked, "How did you do that?"

Elle tilted her head to one side, then to the other, then said, her expression completely serious, "I have no idea. I saw that you were hurt, and I didn't like it, so I wished that you were better. I..." Suddenly, there was a flash of light, and upon Elle's flank, a mark appeared. A staff, framed by a pair of angelic wings. Only two days a pony, and Elle had just earned her cutie mark... in healing magic.
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"I don't believe it," Shining Armor said, his jaw dropping. "A genuine healing spell. There hasn't been a unicorn who could cast one in a thousand years..." It was considered a lost art, something out of myth and legend. And he'd just seen it cast right in front of his very eyes.

Chuckling, Flower said, "Well, there hasn't been a crystal unicorn in a thousand years, either. Kind of makes you wonder what other lost spells might turn up when other changelings start becoming ponies, doesn't it? And who knows what a crystal pegasus might be capable of?"

A smile began to form on the knight's face as he said, "That's something to look forward to. Well, right now, there's Ling, Ladybird, Mole Cricket, and you: four commoners living very different lives in Equestria. Want to make a bet on which one of you becomes a pony first?"

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