Bait trudged back to his room with the trepidation of a condemned man walking to the gallows, or a coltfriend following his mare into a department store. Sure, his Queen had done a lot to soothe his wounded self-esteem, but what had he really accomplished during his short time with her? A promise for an Internal Affairs investigation? He knew those changelings, and wouldn’t have trusted most of them to tell the difference between their asses and a hole in the ground, much less track down murderers and foalnappers bent on destroying the government. Still, the Queen’s will was her own, and even with a record as impressive as his, he had no right to question it.
Still, she did raise a few valid points…
His ears folded back again as all the evidence swirled around in his mind. Now that he looked at it, he could see how completely circumstantial it all was. Everything he had could be explained away as half-baked conspiracy theories and coincidences. There was nothing at all to prove his queen wrong. So that raised the question: was she? Or was ol’ “Bait the Irate” rearing his ugly, paranoia-filled head again? Perhaps some changelings did have a reason to doubt every word out of his mouth. There were the Martian conspiracies he ranted about at tunnel junctions, the Illuminati threats he’d spent months tracking down, the supernatural creatures he could spend weeks chasing in the lower sections of the hive. Now that he looked back at it, didn’t so much of it appear kind of crazy? Didn’t it look like the actions of some changeling who was just stark-ravingly, frothing-at-the-mouth…irate?
For reasons he couldn’t quite understand, his trot picked up into a strong gallop. Suddenly, he just wanted to be back in the kitchen with his charge again. At the moment, he could use somepony calling him “smart,” and for some other reason he didn’t quite understand, when she did it, his chest felt all light and his heart got all poundy. He was so focused on getting back to the kitchen that he didn’t notice the changeling walking in his path until he bounced headfirst off the guy’s carapace.
“Ow…” Bait groaned, holding his head. “Why dontcha watch where you’re going!?”
“Why don’t you try…Bait?” Said the other changeling.
Oh no. Bait knew that voice. He wanted to groan, but managed a small, painfully awkward smile. “Hey, Switch.”
“Hey,” the larger changeling coughed, rubbing one foreleg over the other. “You…uh…you okay?”
“Yeah,” Bait sighed. “Haven’t seen you much since…you know…”
“Yeah,” Switch cut him off. “Yeah, I know.”
A silence as deep as it was awkward fell between the pair. “Welp,” Bait said finally. “I should probably get back to my charge…”
“Yeah…maybe…”
Bait paused suddenly, a thought crossing his mind. “Actually, you know what? My charge is…looking a little…down.”
“Yeah?” Switch thought back to Fluttershy, to those soft rosette curls, the gentle curve of that body. “Yeah, mine too.”
“You think we could arrange a…playdate? Something like that? Help them get each other’s spirits up?” And maybe give me some time with her around others so I can control myself, he wanted to add but didn’t.
Switch grinned. “Sure thing, buddy. That sounds like a great idea.”
“Yeah,” Bait smiled back. “Yeah, I think that will work, so long as nothing goes wrong before tomorrow...”
He suddenly paused, then lifted his ear, cocking his head queerly. Switch raised an eyebrow (or again, a bit of chitin over his eye where a brow would be). “Bait?” He asked. “What is it?”
“It’s…nothing,” Bait sighed. “It’s just that lately, for some reason, whenever somepony says they have to get moving before something happens, they’re interrupted by that something happening.”
“That’s…pretty crazy, dude. Even for you.”
Bait opened his mouth to protest, then closed it with a grimace. “Yeah, I…I know,” he sighed, awkwardly looking away
They were both interrupted by a loud, piercing shriek, coming from the direction Switch had been walking from. Both stallions froze for the quickest heartbeat of a second, then took off, their hooves sliding on the polished crystal floor as they frantically made for the daycare, Switch leading the way.
“Me and my big mouth,” Bait lamented.
“Just keep running!” Switch panted. “Whatever’s going on back there, it can’t be good!”
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Fluttershy didn’t think she was a bad pony. Quite the contrary, she thought she was fairly decent, at worst. A bit withdrawn, but she was working on it! And certainly that was nothing worth great punishment! So why, oh why, did fate find it necessary to throw irate dragons, escaped demon lords, and feral hellbeasts at her at every turn? Why was she currently being held against her will in a land that was supposed to be her vacation? And why was she staring down a couple big, nasty-looking changelings, now standing between her and the door?
The changeling foals all gathered around her, cowering against the pair advancing into the room. Some of them shivered. She could hear at least one of them crying. She would be crying too, if she didn’t have so many foals to look after. The changelings at the door looked so angry, and so cold…just something in the way they carried themselves really put her off, something so completely unlike the guard tasked with keeping her here. Something that would make a mare who spied this changeling on a street corner at night walk a little faster as she passed.
Still, she had foals in her care, so she stood her ground as they advanced, even managing to meet their eyes. The stallions just smirked at each other and closed the distance, one striding right up to her.
“Well, hey there, little pony,” he said, one corner of his mouth lifted in an expression that was more sneer than smile. “What’re you doing in our Queen’s palace?”
Suppressing a frightened squeak, Fluttershy cleared her throat and stepped between the stallions and the foals. She mustered all the courage in her body, channeling as much of Rainbow Dash or Applejack as she could, yet still her voice only came out as a frightened whisper: “I-I’m here because Chrysalis wants me t-to feed the foals.”
“Oh? She wants you t-to f-f-f-feed the foals?” The changeling cackled mockingly, looking to his friend, then over at the small group of little changelings cowering at Fluttershy’s hind legs. “Well, they look plenty full to me, don’t they, Dave?”
“They sure do,” the other stallion strode up to the pegasus, touching a hoof to her chin. She cringed, but remained where she was. “I think they’ve had enough now. I think it’s time we got some lovin’ too.”
Tears rolled down Fluttershy’s face. She sniffled, squeezing her eyes shut. She knew exactly what this was now. No use foolin’ herself any longer, as Applejack might say. “Please…just, not in front of them…not in front of…”
With her eyes shut, she didn’t even see the blow coming until it had cracked against her jaw. Even then, she didn’t realize what had happened until she was lying on her back, looking up at the crystal ceiling with her wings splayed out behind her and blood trickling out her nose. For a split-second, she thought she could convince herself that the arrival of the pair of changelings had all been a terrible dream, and that she had just tripped and bumped her head and conjured the entire encounter up in her fearful, anxious state. Those fantasies vanished once a rough set of hooves picked her up and stood her on her hooves.
“Up,” one of the stallions barked. “Bitch, you don’t get to tell us what to do, you just do like you’re told.”
“She’s got a point though, Dave,” the other changeling said, keeping a hateful glare on the foals. Most of them cowered away and shrank beneath it. “Even I got my limits.”
“You idiot, dontcha see the collar?” The changeling holding Fluttershy snarled and held up the tether binding her to the wall. “This shit’s used to keep manticores in check, we’d never get her outta here in a million years! ‘Sides, we gotta be gone in a hurry. We’re still supposed to be on goo duty, remember!?”
“Eh, you’re right,” the other changeling shrugged. “Alright, fine, but do it behind somethin’ alright? Just so the li’l ones don’t get no free show.”
“Whaddaya take me for? I ain’t no pedo!” Dave growled, searching around. Eventually, his eyes fell on the blackboard tacked up along one wall, next to the toy chest. Grinning, he dropped Fluttershy, walked over, and gave it a good yank, letting its top bindings pop out of the wall. The board fell with its bottom still secured, its top bashing the hard floor and forming a crude tent. “There. Ritzy enough, princess?”
“Just hurry up, we both gotta fit in before that big doofus gets back!” The other changeling grumbled, an eye darting to the door and back.
Fluttershy was dragged towards the gaping maw with all the tender love and care of a crocodile with a gazelle. She stumbled to keep up, her mind frozen in terror, tears and blood mixing on her cheeks. She had read about things like this before, but never in a million years could she have imagined anything like it happening to her. She was a celebrity (sort of), living in a quiet town where the threats came in the form of overactive hydras and manticores with thorns in their paws. The monsters weren’t shaped like her; the big terrible crimes were reserved for places like Canterlot and Manehattan. This…this was something that didn’t happen, not to her!
As she was shoved towards that dark place, she heard the clopping of hooves, and her rapist-to-be paused and looked over his shoulder. She followed his gaze. One of the foals had broken away from the pack, barreling towards them at full speed. “You leave ‘er alone!” He shouted, his voice confirming that this was, in fact, Jason: the first changeling to feed on her, the one with the funny name and mouth to go with it.
Of course, Jason barely made it halfway across the room before the other stallion scooped him up, wrapping his hooves around the foal. “Dammit kid, just let ‘er go! What’s one stupid pony to ya anyway!?” The stallion snarled, trying to keep the squirming child in his grip.
“Lemme go!” The colt yelled, bucking and squirming and flailing with his hooves, trying anything to break free. Of course, it was all for naught. Anypony could see that the little colt was far too weak to break free of the much larger changeling, but that didn’t keep him from trying. It honestly would have been heartwarming, were it not for the circumstances. Still, the outcome was totally inevitable; anypony could see it, which was what made the stallion’s actions so much more surprising.
Without warning, the larger changeling reared back and smashed a hoof into the smaller’s side, knocking the air out of his lungs. “I said calm down, dammit!” He bellowed as the smaller changeling fell over and wheezed.
Fluttershy’s jaw dropped. She had never, in her entire life, seen a more brazen display of complete jackassery. Something so awful, so pointlessly wicked, as striking a foal needed to be answered, and never one to step up to the plate if she could help it, she turned to the stallion still keeping a hoof squeezed tight around her foreleg. On seeing the look on his face, her jaw bounced a little, having nowhere to go since it had already been dropped once and hadn’t had time to pick itself back up again. Dave was actually smiling, grinning in approval of the monstrous display. As if to stamp his own mark into the tiny, beaten body at his friend’s hooves, as if…
As if…
All at once, Fluttershy’s fear melted into the purest rage that it was possible for a pony to feel. Her wrath was channeled into a needle-like focus, honing in on the nearest target as if it could destroy the stallion through sheer force of will alone. How could he!? On some strange level, she could understand rape. It was an awful crime carried out by the most pitiful excuses for stallions, but there was some demented, horrible logic behind it. They had a need and they could fill it. It was the sort of logic behind most murders and muggings, but it could be understood. But foal abuse? To strike a defenseless foal for no reason? What kind of…what horrible stallion could…how could they even…
“How could you?” She whispered.
That brought Dave’s attention back to her. He immediately wound up, ready to deal another blow, but it was too late. All she had to do was look at him. His jaw dropped. His hoof went limp. Her Stare intensified.
“How could you?” She whispered again.
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Gary did not like the way things had gone ever since Dave had approached him with the idea that they teach one of these little ponies a lesson. That she was an Element Bearer had sweetened the deal though, and the fact that the mare in question was utterly gorgeous certainly helped, but then came with it the stipulation that they’d have to sneak into the local nursery. A changeling didn’t just walk into the nursery and assault a staff member, even if that staffer was a Prisoner of War! Not if that changeling didn’t have plans to spend the rest of their life in a very small, very lonely hole in the ground, that was.
And now, here was this kid, rushing to help the pony out like he thought he was some knight in one of those damned fairytales ponies were always telling each other. Just what he needed. Even a good belting to the side hadn’t been enough: the kid was still struggling and still shouting, even though the pain in his side was visible in his movements and the way he kept a hoof pressed to the chitin there. Jeez, what would it take for this kid to learn? Maybe another good belting would get the lesson through…
A low-pitched gasp interrupted Gary as his hoof wheeled back for another hit. He paused and looked up, his hoof still wound back, and emitted a low gasp of his own. Dave, one of the best and toughest changelings he knew, was backing into a corner, his jaw working up and down in a look of absolute terror. In front of him, the pony just stared, sitting in one place, not even moving, just…staring. Which was weird. Forgetting all about the colt, Gary took a few steps towards his friend, who was still apparently determined to materialize through the wall just with sheer force of effort, his hooves sliding on the crystal floor.
“Dave,” he said. “Dave man, you…”
Then the pony turned that Stare upon him, and the rest of the world disappeared behind a white sheet of terror. It was as if the clouds had parted and those eyes specifically had appeared from them, focused on him and only him. He was nothing. He was tiny. He was an insect before a wrathful god.
“You!” The pony hissed in a voice like the howl of some wretched thing in the woods late at night. “You think you can just hit helpless foals because you feel like it!?”
“I…” he trembled, swallowed, tried again. “I’m sorry, I…”
The pony’s eyes widened, and-
In third grade, Gary had stolen Miss Woodfellow’s apple right off her desk. He didn’t mean to, he was just so hungry…
Last winter, the changelings two holes down asked for some extra fuel, and he told them he didn’t have any to spare. He lied. One of the fillies in that family froze to death that same…
Stop…
For a joke, Gary had set a timberwolf pup’s tail on fire back in the fourth grade. It was funny until the fire spread. The pup had screamed so much…
Stop! Please!
Last summer, a pretty little mare from the next hive over had stopped by the bar he liked for some refreshments. She’d been easy pickings, no family, no friends, so easy to talk right into bed and leave behind the next…
STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP!
Mercifully, it stopped then. Gary collapsed onto the ground, whimpering, his whole body trembling. Somewhere far away, a door burst open and he was picked up by someone who obviously didn’t care if he got whiplash from the force of it or not. But now, Gary just couldn’t bring himself to care about that. Gary didn’t care about a lot of things just then.
A massive changeling held him in his grasp. A face he recognized from a time before all this fear and terror was glaring down at him. Gary recognized him immediately. “Switch?”
“Yeah?” The changeling snarled, the same changeling who, five summers ago, Gary had broken wind near and blamed it on him, spoiling his date with a pretty little mare from the mining quarters.
“I’m sorry, it really was me, I’m the one who farted, I fucked up your date,” Gary whimpered, then broke down into tears.
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There were many things Switch had been expecting when he’d heard the scream from the toddler’s nursery. A child that had stumbled and fallen, and was now bleeding with ichor all over the place and poor little Fluttershy sitting in a corner, totally overwhelmed. Perhaps a fire that had broken out which was now cooking the trapped pony alive while the children could only watch. Some part of him, albeit a small one, even worried that she had simply snapped and now stood over a pile of dead colts and fillies, though the rest of him was quick to scoff at that idea. The other possibilities involved gas leaks, a fire, an assault by a pack of feral gryphons, all ratcheting up the ridiculousness levels until he started wondering if a tear in the walls of the space-time continuum had allowed some Lovecraftian horror with spike-covered tentacles to slip through and drag the nursery’s inhabitants off to some hellish other dimension.
In other words, the last thing Switch had expected to see upon ramming through the door into the nursery was Dave the Dick, curled up in the fetal position in one corner, and his buddy Gary crying how sorry he was for some stupid farting incident he could barely remember! Nearby, Fluttershy kept some odd glare up, switching between the two changelings rapidly, watching them like a guard at a prison camp.
“F-Fluttershy?” He asked. “Are you alr…”
She turned that glare on him, and…
His screams filled the forest. The little colt, the one he’d spent so many hours in the Hive mocking, laid against the tree, blood gushing out his mouth, breathing heavily, as those awful roars filled the air…
“B-Bait…” Switch whimpered, sinking to his stomach like a whipped dog. “I’m so sorry…it was all my fault, all of it. I was so stupid.”
“Mister Guard!?” Fluttershy gasped, blinking once. Just as suddenly as it had arrived, the glare disappeared, and so did that awful, wretched feeling of doom. Shaking his head, Switch rose to his hooves, finding a visibly distraught Fluttershy.
“What happened!?” He gasped. He’d only wanted to ask as a question, but she cowered and whimpered as he barked at her out of simple fear and frustration. Realizing his mistake, he quickly backed off. “Er…I’m…”
“You leave her alone, too!” Another voice chimed in, this one belonging to the funny little colt from earlier. Jeremy, was it? “She was only trying to protect us!”
“Protect…” Switch looked the colt over, currently being tended to by Bait. The little changeling had an angry, pulsating green mark on his side, the chitin dented in the distinctive shape of a hoofmark. It didn’t take Marelock Hooves to figure out what had happened here, and surprisingly, the anger which flared up inside him immediately honed in on the other stallions in the room, rather than the obvious suspect.
“What. Did you do?” He hissed out the corner of his mouth, not even turning to see Dave there.
The only response was a whimper, as well as a half-gasped apology from the other stallion behind him. Switch’s hooves trembled. Dave had always been the kind of stallion who enjoyed leaving firecrackers in teacher’s desks when he wasn’t feeding them to unsuspecting woodland creatures, but this…
“David?” He whispered. “Gary? I know that’s you there. You assholes are always together when you’re pulling shit off.”
Switch waited an extra minute or two, then heard a shaky: “Yes?”
“You’re going to follow Mr. Bait here,” Switch nodded in Bait’s direction. “You’re going to follow him to the throne room and turn yourself in to the Praetorian guards. You’re going to tell those guards everything that you did here, and Mr. Bait is going to listen. And if you leave out any of your crimes, if Mr. Bait tells me you forgot to even mention the scratch you put on that chalkboard in the corner there…”
He motioned to the chalkboard, and then reared up against the other stallion, glaring into his eyes. “I will kill you. I will personally drag you out of the barracks in the middle of the night, slit your throats, and leave your bodies in one of a hundred thousand holes in the hive which noling ever goes down. Believe me, they will find the cure for feather fever, the flu, Tatzlworm rash, and testicular cancer before they find you. Do I make myself clear?”
Not the cleverest of threats, certainly, but it did the trick. The wide-eyed, almost child-like look of fearful understanding in Dave’s eyes was all the confirmation Switch needed. With a snort, Switch turned away and sat with his eyes away from the door until he heard three sets of hooves leaving and the door shutting behind him. Then, the massive stallion let in a long, slow breath, his wings buzzing faintly on the exhale. Thank goodness Bait had been quick enough on the uptake to get those two shitbags out of there, and thank Chrysalis he’d found the self-control to turn away when needed. Another moment in the same room with the likes of those two, and Switch might have easily pounded their brains in, foals watching or not.
Suddenly, the sound of soft weeping filled the air, like someone who was desperately trying their hardest not to cry and failing miserably. He turned to where Fluttershy still laid, letting out another long breath at the tears cascading down her cheeks.
“Hey,” he said carefully, slowly approaching her, his ears and wings folded back submissively. Again, he extended his hoof with as little aggression as possible. “It’s alr…”
He didn’t even get to finish reassuring her before she leapt into his hooves, sobbing into his shoulder. In shock, his black hoof still extended out, he only stood there for a few minutes as she bawled. Eventually, he found the presence of mind to wrap his hooves around her, hugging her close, letting out another sigh. “It’s alright…” he repeated, his head whirling with how fast things had gone wrong. All at once, Bait’s suggested playdate sounded like one of the best ideas either of them had ever had.
“It’s not,” she sobbed. “It’s not, it’s not, it’s not! It’s all my fault…Jason got hurt, and he was just…”
As her crying devolved into a mess of incoherent babbling, Switch nearly face-hooved. The kid’s cries had summoned him in the first place, and here he’d practically forgotten all about him! Some soldier he’d made. Slowly, with near imperceptible pressure, he turned and twisted with Fluttershy until he could catch a good look at the mass of foals behind him, all without disturbing her. To his surprise, Jason was currently in the middle of a mass of fillies, all oohing and aahing over his “battle-scar.” One of whom, the shy little filly Switch who’d had so much trouble during feeding time, had even worked up the courage to stroke little Jason’s neck. As he continued watching, Jason looked over at him, grinned, cocked his head in the shy filly’s direction, and winked once.
Okay, that damn kid was way too cool for his own good. If he didn’t slow down, he would wind up ruling the mares of both the Hive and Equestria without even trying. He’d be able to knock his hoof against the ground, and have a lineup of mares pop up next to him asking what he was doing that night. On the plus side, with that handled Switch was left totally free to console Fluttershy. So points to the kid.
“Fluttershy,” he whispered into her ear. “I want you to listen to me very carefully, do you understand?”
It took a little while, but she nodded.
“You didn’t ask for any of this,” he hissed, his tone firm. “Just like somepony doesn’t ask to be mugged because they walk into a poorly-lit alleyway at night, what happened here isn’t your responsibility in the slightest.”
“B-but I…”
“Some ponies are just nasty, mean mother…jerks that need to locked up, and that’s all,” he said. “You didn’t ask them to barge in where they weren’t welcome, that’s a decision they made all on their own. You didn’t ask them to interpret what happened earlier as some sort of aggressive stance against their status as bad-colts, that was another decision they made all on their own. Your only crime here was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Please tell me you understand.”
He felt her nod against his cheek, and then waited a few extra minutes for her to break the hug. She backed off again, and his heart sank at seeing her muzzle poking just slightly out from behind her mane. Dear sweet Chrysalis, if she would just peek out from her mane, let him drink in that gorgeous face…
Wait…did he really just think that of some pony mare? And one of the Element Bearers responsible for the failure at Canterlot, no less!? He had to get control of himself!
“I…say we should call it quits for today, huh?” He said, the words practically tumbling over each other in a race to get out his mouth. “I mean, after all this excitement…”
“Awww…” all the foals moaned.
“Now, now, I’m sure Miss Fluttershy is very tired after today’s…events,” he said, trying to put a near-rape that was partially his fault as nicely as possible. Yeah sure, and Sombra was a bit of a jerk and Discord got a little out of control at points. “She must be just aching for…”
“Actually, I was hoping I could spend a bit more time here,” Fluttershy put in, her hoof scraping bashfully against the crystalline floor. “I-I think I could use some time to…to cope with what’s happened…”
Switch gazed up into those baby-blue eyes and said yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Anything you want, everything you need, please just ask. For you, I would climb the tallest mountain, fight off the worst scum of Equestria, all to make sure you had what you needed to keep on being you, to keep doing that shy little lip bite, that bashful little mane-flip, because every time you do those things I feel like I could rule the world, just tear down this world and build up a new one, all for you, all so you can feel…
“Well, if you say so, Miss Fluttershy,” he said, shrugging his shoulders as he waved off the dream or hallucination or whatever the hell that voice was that stopped his heart every time she talked. “Just worried for you, is all.”
“Oh, please don’t be,” she said as she walked past to join the foals, and he quickly raised a hoof, touching it to her chest.
“On one condition!” He said quickly, amazed by how soft and warm her coat felt, even through his chitin.
“Oh…wh-what’s that?” She stammered.
A kiss…just one, please… “You have to tell me what you did to those two,” he whispered, jerking his head towards the door, making sure to lean in so the foals couldn’t hear. “Just in case it’s permanent.”
“Oh, no, my Stare is never permanent,” she said.
“Your…Stare?”
“It’s…an instinct, sort of. I can usually only use it on animals, but if I’m stressed enough, or angry enough, I can use it on sapient creatures, too.”
“Ah,” he nodded. “I get that. What almost happened here would surely get anypony enraged enough, completely understandable.”
“Thanks,” she sighed. “But it’s really not nearly as great and powerful as all that, it took far too long for my Stare to kick in, honestly.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, it wasn’t until they hit Jason that it switched on,” she said casually. “I…I was totally useless until then…”
Switch blushed as the pegasus’s lips curved into a thin smile. At that moment, he realized something utterly and completely terrifying, something that caused his stomach to twist into knots and his jaw to disengage and his knees to weaken: that he had never wanted anything more than to kiss those lips right there. He wanted to pull her into his embrace, shower her with kisses, inhale the scent of those beautiful rosette curls, and finally look into those gorgeous, living pools that she called eyes and tell her she would never have reason to be afraid again, that he would lay down his life for her, hold her, keep her safe for the rest of all time if needed. In that moment, he would plunge into the shadows and make war with the entire Praetorian guard themselves if it meant allowing her a single night of restful sleep.
Then the moment passed, leaving a large, scarred-up changeling quivering on his knees, his mouth too dry, his body too weak, and his mind reeling with the ramifications of what he’d just felt. She was his charge, dammit! She was supposed to just be a food source for the hatchlings!
Except she wasn’t. She had revealed herself to be so much more, and there would be no going back to his old image of her. So where did that leave him? Stuck, that’s where. What should have been a simple assignment meant to give him a break from actual danger had just transformed into a heart-breaking exercise in endurance, forcing him to remain close to something he yearned for but could never have. What was he supposed to do, ask his prisoner out on a date? If she didn’t cringe in fear or laugh in his face, he knew she still deserved far more than some scarred-up soldier from an enemy race. No, all he could do now was sit here, watching what he could never have, picturing things that could never be, and hope he could retain his sanity long enough to return to a life where she would be out of sight and, hopefully with time, out of mind.
At least then, the spike of pain shooting through his heart every time he looked at her might lose its barbed point.
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Walking back to the kitchen from the throne room, Bait couldn’t help but wonder if he’d forgotten something, something of mild importance…
“Eight-hundred and twenty-five thousand, six-hundred and forty-eight bottles of pop on the wall! Eight-hundred and twenty-five thousand, six-hundred and forty-eight bottles of paaahhhhp! Take one down, pass it around…”
Oh, right.
He passed by a pair of spear-wielding guards as he made his way to the kitchen. Well, maybe “spear-wielding” wasn’t a good description. Perhaps “spear-lying-next-to-while-rolling-around-and-clenching-ears-while-foaming-at-the-mouth” would fit better. Stepping over the fallen guards’ bodies, he hopped in and found Pinkie exactly as he’d left her.
“Eight-hundred and twenty-five thousand, six-hundred and forty-seven…” he snickered and tapped his hoof loudly, and in an instant, the solid chunk of rock sitting in the kitchen vanished, allowing the pink mare to fall.
“Woah!” She started, but he was under her in a heartbeat, catching her before she could hit the ground.
“Baity!” She sang. “Hiiiii!”
“Yeah, hey,” he said, setting her back on all four hooves.
She giggled as she stretched her legs, working out any kinks that might have popped up. “Welp, not the first time I’ve had a stallion under me, and definitely not the shortest,” she said cheerfully. “So kudos to you!”
“Er…oh for the love of…” he started.
She giggled again. “You got that a lot faster than Twilight,” she snorted, and Bait decided right then and there that the snort, in fact, only added to the adorableness that was Pinkie Pie’s giggle. “So, how did it go? You got your own awesome super-secret badass team of agents to help you destroy all evil?”
Bait drooped instantly. The few seconds he’d spent in her presence had already made him forget the reason he’d left in the first place, but now it all came roaring back. His shoulders dropped and his ears drooped, his wings folding close to his back.
“Ohh, guess not?” Pinkie said, her eyes glistening with concern.
Bait shook his head. “She was right to,” he said quietly. “Everything we have is circumstantial; we’ve got nothing that can prove something’s really going on here.”
“But…what about that mare? The one who disappeared? And what about whoever killed those other changelings?” She said sadly. “Are those baddies all just going to get away?”
“The Hive has its own police force and internal affairs teams to investigate those things,” he sighed.
She picked up on what the sigh meant the moment it left his lips. “But you don’t think they’re gonna do much good.”
Bait snorted derisively. “I’ve met those guys. Buncha fat pencil-pushers more concerned with promotions and who’s supplying the donuts for the next conference than they are with actually tackling crime,” he grumbled, walking past her and tying his apron back on. “Don’t get me wrong, some of ‘em are alright, but most of them?”
Bait shook his head, taking his frustrations out on the bowl of batter sitting on the stove, which he whipped up into a froth within seconds. “Couldn’t find their own asses with all four hooves and printed instructions! Great if you wanna hand out some tickets to jaywalkers, but against a massive military conspiracy comprised of guys with combat training? No way. Not in a million years.”
He paused at the sound of her giggling, followed by another snort. “Their own asses with printed instructions, good one!” She guffawed.
Bait paused in his rage-fuelled whisking to listen to that giggle a while longer. Nope, not bad at all, he confirmed with a little grin.
“Well, I just hope you had a good chat with the Queen,” she said, sliding in beside him and taking her place cracking eggs into a bowl. “You were gone such a long time: I got over a hundred thousand bottles of pop!”
“I noticed,” he said with a grin. “Actually, I was helping my partner out with something.”
“He’s the big one? Switch, right?” She asked.
“That’s him,” Bait pointed out, feeling far better than he should have about the fact that she’d actually paid attention to the hours he’d spent rambling about his life in the past day. “Bit of a dick, but probably the best friend a stallion could ask for.”
“What’d he need help with?”
“Oh, he needed help with his charge…” he replied as nonchalantly as possible.
Pinkie paused in her work. He gazed up at her: her mane had visibly deflated a few inches, and her eyes shimmering with tears. Her breath started coming in heaving gasps. “What happened to Fluttershy?” She whispered.
Bait blinked, wondering just how in the hell she’d pieced together that her friend was his friend’s charge. Ugh, it must have been the way he’d danced around the topic of Switch’s current duties in the hive. It only made sense that if he was assigned to Pinkie, then Switch would be charged with the yellow pegasus. And now he’d just revealed that something had almost happened to her. Crap, he was in it now.
“There was an…incident with another changeling…” Bait started.
“A stallion?” She whispered.
Bait grimaced. Damn, but she was good! “Yeah. N-nothing happened, though! I swear!”
“No, but it almost did, didn’t it?” She was still quiet.
Bait bit his lip at that. He had a sudden flashback of the time his teacher had asked him what exactly had happened to his fang and wing. He’d wanted to lie then as badly as he did now. Except he couldn’t. Nothing he could come up with on the spot would sound nearly believable enough. “Yes. It could have.”
The gasping became full-on hyperventilating now. Tears brimmed in those humongous baby-blues, and before Bait knew what he was doing, he’d swept her up in his hooves.
“She’s okay, I promise, really,” he whispered, his brain still adjusting to the fact that he was consoling one of the key ponies responsible for the Hive’s failure at Canterlot.
“On the outside, maybe,” she whispered back, her tears soaking his cheek.
Bait inhaled and exhaled. He knew where this was going. Still, he saw no harm in it. After all, they would be right there, and where was the harm in letting it happen while they were supervising? “You want to see her?”
Pinkie sniffled, but he felt her nod.
“Alright,” he said. “I’ll arrange for it. I can’t promise anything, but…I’ll try.” A playdate, as he’d put it when he’d talked with Switch.
She sniffled again, pulling away. “Thank you,” she whimpered. “And I’m sorry.”
He tilted his head at her, but then quickly waved her off with a hoof. “It’s alright. I’m the one who went to the Queen so prematurely; it’s not your fault she shot me down again.”
She matched his confused head tilt for a second, and then a tiny smile lit up her face. “Oh, I wasn’t referring to that. I was referring to other things, like blasting you in the face and calling you a loser during the invasion.”
“Aw, that,” he shook his head. “That was war, Pinkie, it’s okay. I’ve been beat up way worse.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, see this?” He held up his foreleg so she could see one of the holes, which was a little bit wider than the others and cracked along its edges. “I got this from a bandit’s spear out in the Badlands. Wound up breaking his jaw in seven places before he finally gave up.”
“Ooh!” She said as she went to work inflating his male pride. “What about this?” She pointed to a bit of chitin on his side that was indented.
“Bank heist in Trottingham,” he said. “One of the security guards got his hooves on a sledgehammer and managed to do a number on me before I glued him down.”
“That was you!? I saw that in the Equestria Times!” She gasped, sending his ego skyrocketing. “And then they found all the bits were donated to an orphanage in the Griffon Empire!”
“Had to make sure the greedy bastards couldn’t reclaim it,” Bait snickered.
“Wow, you guys have done a lot!” She gushed, looking him over before finally falling on his crushed ear. “Hey, what about this? I bet that’s a great story!”
His wings flicked a bit, then drooped, his ears following suit as best they could. “It is…but…it’s a little more private…”
“Oh,” she quickly retreated. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pried.”
“No, don’t be sorry, you have a right to be curious,” he replied. “I’ll tell you later, alright? Now’s not the time.”
“Okay,” she nodded. “And again, I’m sorry.”
“I already toldja you don’t have to be.”
“No, this time I do,” she said, grinning sheepishly. “I just noticed I kinda left a little bit of snot on you before I pulled away earlier.”
“You what!?” He gasped, and then he finally noticed the cold, quivering blob stuck to his cheek. He shivered, his lips pursing, his eyes squeezing shut. “Ew.”
“Sorry.”
“You don’t have to be, you know why?” He grinned evilly and prepped himself. “I’m gonna give it right back to ya.”
Her eyes widened as he advanced. “N-now Baity…” she said, backing away. “W-we can talk about this…”
“Talking time’s over, pony,” he grinned, and then lunged. She quickly side-stepped, squealing in panic as he whirled around and dove, grabbing for her. This time, she twisted to toss his body into a pile of flour sacks gathered in the corner, sending up a cloud of white dust.
“Another victory for Equestria!” She gasped cheerfully, pumping her hooves in victory.
“Not quite!” He bellowed, shaking himself off as he leapt out of the flour. “Changelings aren’t so easily defeated, little pony!”
Squealing like a filly, Pinkie rounded the counter, the white-coated changeling close on her hooves. The pair ran a couple laps around the kitchen before Bait finally had the bright idea to bound over the counter itself, upsetting a bowl filled with melted chocolate as he tackled Pinkie to the floor.
“Hey, no fair!” She giggled.
“All’s fair in love and war, balloon-butt,” he snickered, keeping her pinned by the shoulders. He mused quickly how he’d been consoling this same mare just moments before, and now they were giggling and rolling around like foals. Well, such was life with the mental rollercoaster that was Pinkie Pie.
“Oh?” She asked, her big, goofy grin narrowing to a little smile. “And which is this, then?”
Suddenly aware he was now pinning down somepony he had already determined to be a highly-attractive mare, Bait’s mind emptied out entirely, any attempt at finding a clever counter falling flat before it even reached his lips. “Umm…” he said.
Pinkie’s little smile turned into a curious, cocked eyebrow. “What?”
“Umm…” he repeated intelligently.
She watched him with that raised eyebrow a few more seconds before her eyes widened. “Bait?” She asked.
“Umm…” he continued, lowering himself a little closer. “I…uh…”
Fate can oftentimes intervene in our lives in mysterious ways. A misplaced set of car keys can mean the difference between a fatal accident and an uneventful commute to work. A few degrees of heat can determine whether or not grandma slips and breaks her spine during her morning walk or finds a penny in a puddle. Barring something as creative or random as these, there’s always the classic standby: an inconveniently-timed interruption from a colleague.
“Sir!” A changeling guard gasped, storming into the kitchen. “I heard something and…”
It took the newcomer all of five seconds to drink in the scene and come to the only reasonable conclusion: his fellow guard, the prisoner, him on top of her, the bowl of upturned chocolate, the flour coating the changeling…
The newcomer drank it all in with his eyes wide, then slowly backed away, tilting his helmet low as he quietly retreated back to the hallway. “I didn’t see nothin’,” he mumbled, then latched the door shut.
Bait rocketed back to his hooves, helping Pinkie up when her hoof popped up. “Thanks,” she said, looking after the kitchen door and giving another one of those snort-giggles. “Wow, that must’ve looked really bad.”
“Yeah,” Bait sighed. But that bad? Really, would it have been that bad?
Pinkie quickly yawned and trotted back to the small, tucked-away corner of the kitchen she’d taken as her quarters. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Baity,” she said. “I’ll just tuck myself in tonight.”
“R-right,” he said, catching himself before he could watch her go, studying that delightfully-rounded, pink flank dancing in his vision…
Bait sighed and shook his head, trotting out the door for his shift in the caverns. This job was seriously getting to him. If only…
Then he paused mid-step, rolled his eyes, and trotted back to the kitchen.
“Baity?” Pinkie called. “Are you still there? I just realized changeling pods aren’t like normal beds. I can’t just tuck myself in.”
“You and me both, sister,” he snickered, laughing at his own stupidity. “Hang on, Pinkie, I’m comin’.”