//------------------------------// // The Prince and the Training Montage // Story: Outcast of a Hivemind // by NovaSethyr //------------------------------// Chapter 3 The Prince and the Training Montage The very first thing I was aware of was how cold the ground was. The second thing was that I had no pain in my head, which was not my usual experience with waking up after being knocked out for who knows how long. From my position, it seemed as if after they carried me, the changelings had unceremoniously thrown me to the ground. My eyes struggled to lift their lids, and only succeeded for a short moment before a bright and harsh light forced them closed again. I opened them again and made sure that I didn't burn my retinas out of my skull this time. The light that had once blinded me had become a dull flame on a nearby torch that hang from a wall. Examining the rest of the wall, there were other torches that extended beyond my current range of sight. Tilting my head up, I saw the other wall was lined with torches as well. The second thing I saw were steps. I was closer to them than I'd like, and I had to lift my head to get a good look at what was on top of them. I almost wish I hadn't; cause standing there, looking down upon me with so much interest, was a tall changeling with a sharp and twisted horn, long green hair that spilled onto its shoulders, and even darker green eyes that stared right into mine. This wasn't Queen Chrysalis, but they looked so alike that it could have been her twin, and if they were, which one was the evil twin? I also should mention that the animators of the show really toned down of the creepiness of the changeling royalty. Didn't wanna scar the little kids too much; that's a job reserved only for the internet. I scrambled to my feet and turned around, getting a good lock of where I had ended up. I was in a long hall, barely ten meters wide but nearly thirty meters long. I was flanked (Ha! My first pony pun!) by three changelings; one to my immediate right, and two standing a few meters behind me. There was a throne behind the tall changeling. It kinda reminded me of the Iron Throne, if it wasn't made out of swords but rather out of greenish wax. Now that I had a good look, I could see that pretty much everything was entirely made of some sort of dark green wax. The walls, the floor, the throne, everything. Well, being in a hive would probably mean there'd have to be some sort of wax involved. Didn't expect it to feel exactly like dirt, though. I wondered if I could ever feel anything through my chitinous exoskeleton anymore. There's probably lots of little details about my new body that reminds me I'm not human anymore, and I had a feeling that I would never get used to that fact. "Drone, what have you brought before me?" The gravelly voice brought my attention back to the giant changeling pony about to pass some sort of judgement on me. The changeling to my right stepped forward, and I couldn't tell if this was the same changeling who found me until she spoke, "Prince Pupae," she paused to glace at me when I struggled not to laugh, "I found the drone trying to enter our Hive without proper identification. When questioned, his answers were... well, they were odd. He claimed that he was sent as a part of Chrysalis' guard after an incident somewhere in a place called Cantarpot. Then he was going to look over the edge, but he thought that the Crystal Ocean was the sky. After that, Drones 689 and 343 arrived to investigate and we had decided to bring him to you." With that the female changeling gave a small bow before returning back to her position at my side. Prince Pupae took his sweet time descending the stairs, and his glare pierced right through me the entire journey. His name may not have been threatening, but he sure could pull off a scary look when he wanted. He waltzed right up to me, which made me realize just how tall this guy was. I only reached up to his chest, and I had to tilt my head so that I would be looking almost directly above me just so I can meet his gaze. I involuntarily gave a small gulp as I did. "You are indeed a strange one. You are a drone, yet you have the eyes of royalty." He started to trot circles around me, causing me to turn my head around to hold his gaze steady. "You look as if you could fit right into the colony, but you act as if you were hatched only yesterday. Tell me, who exactly are you?" Recalling my past experience with bluffing in an unfamiliar territory, I decided to stick to the truth. See, I can learn, too! But before I could answer, I felt the eyes of the other three drones on my back, drilling through me in search of information. My mouth clamped shut, causing the Prince to tilt his head curiously. I glanced at the two other drones behind me and looked back at him. I hoped the guy would see the pleading tone my eyes gave. He smiled as he motioned for me to answer again, only this time with a small curl to his mouth. I was beginning to think this guy was sadistic. I sighed to mentally prepare myself and took a deep breath of air, closed my eyes, and scrambled to get the words out as fast as I could. "If you must know I was only hatched today and I have never been in a place like this so I don't know what's going on or who you are or what the Hivemind is and I've never seen the ocean before so I really thought it was the sky below me andIamcompletelyLOST!" The echo died after a few seconds and the silence that followed was deafening. The way the wax curved and made wavy shapes on the floor was way too interesting for me to actually look up at everyone. All four changelings stared at me, and I stared at my holey hooves. When no answer followed, I expected them to deem me insane and toss me in a loony bin. So imagine my reaction when the guy responded with something that wasn't an immediate death sentence. "Despite the oddity of your hatching, you are still a changeling. You also have no connection to the Hivemind, which leaves me to decide whether you would be a benefit to the hive, or a liability that must be taken care of." I felt a chill go up my spine from something other than the coolness of being underground. "I believe that it would be best if we figured out just how useful you can be. After all, no sense throwing away a perfectly good tool, is there?" The other changelings nodded at the same time, whether because they thought so as well or because he was royalty I would never know. "A test of your abilities would be adequate, but a little too boring for my tastes. I've decided to send you on the reconnaissance mission that I've assigned to Drone 473 as of right now." I didn't even have to look at the drone to guess that she was just as surprised as I was. The poor drone had no sense of courtesy as she yelled out, "B-But Prince, you can't send him on a recon mission with us! He could stay here and learn how to be of use rather than out in the field where he could be a hindrance!" Any other objections that she was planning on shouting in front of me was cut off when the Prince raised his hoof. He stared into the unwilling drone's eyes, and something passed between them. I wasn't sure if it was something that was a part of the Hivemind, or if it was something that the Prince exuded that quelled the small rebellion, but the drone lowered her head and allowed the Prince to continue. "You two will go down to the seaside town of Minnow's Rest. I want you to deduce exactly how we can harvest food, and if you see an opportunity to create anger, then do so. We will need much more food if we are to compete with the other tribes." Most of what he said went way over my head. "Wait, don't changelings feed off of love?" I looked around to see who had said what I was thinking only to see the two changelings staring at me. The sudden attention surprised me, and I was suddenly interested in the green wax on the floor. When the Prince coughed politely to drive off a dry chuckle, Drone 473 spoke up. "The only changelings that feed off of love are Chrysalis' own breed. Unfortunately, we cannot feed off of such a prominent source of emotion. We only feed off of anger, and everything that it stems from: revulsion, contempt, bitterness, resentment, and everything in between. It's our source of food, and our worst enemy." At my confused look, 473 gave a small glace to the Prince and gave him the floor. "You see, little drone, anger is a powerful emotion. It can cause ponies to hurt each other, something that the peaceful race tries to avoid. If a pony can get too angry, other ponies start to try and help it. If they dig far enough, they can find traces of a changeling's magic and follow it to the source, our hive. Time and time again, we have had ponies find our hive and attempt to destroy it. Most of the time, we move to another hiding place and start anew in a different town. The constant moving, however, is starting to take it's toll. Counting the drones in this very room, there are a total of seven drones from my tribe left. Two of those drones are incapacitated from our last escapade, and unable to perform. The other four must stay here, and patrol the hive in case some pony wanders in by mistake." Two of the changelings in question nodded their affirmative. "Now, about the mission. The town is small, but closely knit. Everypony knows each other, which makes blending in difficult. If we do get in without detection, it will be downhill from there. Everypony knows how to push the other's buttons, and all we have to do is push them enough so that there will be a little resentment between townsfolk. Not enough to start a fight, but just enough that the ponies can't stand to be in a room with the other. That should be enough to settle in and slowly build our hive once again. After we have grown, we will spread out and plant a few drones in each city, gathering little bits of anger here and there. We cannot gather large amounts of anger anymore, it has proven to be a disastrous method in the past." He pointed his hoof at me and 473, "You two will leave for Minnow's Rest in the morning. If you want your new partner to be sufficient, I suggest you start teaching him. An important mission such as this requires success, there is no room for failure." At the last sentence, he fixed a deathly glare on both of us. Shivers ran down my spine again, and I had to respect the guy for being able to instill such fear. With that, Prince Pupae motioned for us to leave. We trotted down the long hall, a smoldering glare piercing into the back of my head. Once we left the room and entered a tunnel big enough for both of us to walk side by side in, the changeling walked in front of me to fix her burning stare at me. "Look, kid, I don't know what exactly Pupae is thinking, but if he thinks he's going to let some random changeling into a mission that could save our hive because he found you interesting-" "Then that's exactly what's going to happen. You wouldn't want the Prince of the entire hive to give punishment to one of his most important drones, especially when the amount of help he has is limited to the single digits. I suggest that you do what he says, if not for the safety of the hive, then for your own well being." I continued walking past her as her mind wrapped around my sudden ability to talk. She buzzed and hovered over to my side, piercing me with a questioning look. I ignored her as we continued down the tunnel. Eventually, I got fed up of her glare, "What is it?" "You. When I first saw you, you were talking about stuff that didn't even make sense. You thought the ocean was actually the sky, you mentioned someplace called 'Cantarpot,' but you never told us what that is." "Canterlot," I corrected. "See, you know something that we don't and that's something that could come and bite us in the flank if you don't come clean. And then you become an incoherent moron in front of the Prince! Your eyes have the royal color, but you obviously have no idea who Pupae is." "That's another thing, Pupae? Really? I've heard more threatening names. Chairface Chippendale, for example." "What? I mean, really, what? You've got to be one of the strangest changelings I've ever met, and I've known a lot back in the day." "You mean when your hive was more than a spare handful? Judging from your number alone, I'd have to say you must have known at least 472 other changelings. And then there's the Hivemind, I don't know what that's about, but I'm guessing it's this sort of collective consciousness in which you and every other changeling that's hatched is connected to all the time, right?" "Stop talking, please. I just wanna get the mission over and done with." "Well you can really finish the mission unless you properly train me. Speaking of which, can I cast normal unicorn magic like telekinesis? Or am I limited in what I can perform based on whatever pony I'm disguised as? And feeding from whatever emotion I can absorb?" "Yes, no, and yes. Why are you so talkative all of a sudden, anyways?" "Cause I wanna know more about changelings, and I wanna know more about my partner if we're gonna be infiltrating a small community together." "Whatever, let's just get you to the surface. If you're gonna have to learn how to be a changeling, we might as well do it now." With that we both fell silent. I was overflowing with questions, but they all would have to wait until we got out of the tunnels. As we continued the trek, my mind turned to the mission. If I wanted to get out of this alive, I had to break family bonds and ruin friendships. Anger is never an easy emotion to deal with, no matter how little of it there is. I wasn't sure I could deal with forcing ponies to grow angry at each other just for food, but that was something that I was going to have to deal with if I didn't want the Prince as an enemy, and seeing as he was my only way of learning about the world at the moment, I had to follow him. I filed away my thoughts to think about later when I noticed something peculiar. It was only when I looked around the tunnel did I notice that there weren't any torches lighting the way. In fact, there wasn't really any sources of light anywhere in the tunnels, but I was able to see as if there were. I assumed changelings were able to see in the dark, but I wasn't sure. When I reached the surface, though, I knew the answer immediately. I never expected to see this late into the night as if the sun were shining over head, but it certainly bumped changelings up on the 'awesome' scale. The familiar forest was serene as ever, possibly even more so in the night light. I took a deep breath of air, and the absence of the salty smell of the sea confirmed that Equestria is really freakin' weird. Or I now have no sense of smell, I couldn't tell which. "First things first, you need to learn the basics of changeling magic. Usually the Hivemind gives you the knowledge when you hatch, but since you have no connection, Ill have to teach you the hard way." Shucks, if having no connection to the Hivemind means getting a training montage, I wouldn't have wanted to ever connect in the first place. "It doesn't matter," she continued, "somehow I'll make a changeling out of you." Cue montage music of your choice. First thing we practiced was shape shifting. She lifted a few headshots of various ponies, and each and a small description of the profile I had to imitate. There was a lot of guesswork, as the weight, height, and cutie marks were only described in brief. I had to concentrate and give shape shifting my full attention, and it was really tricky at first. Eventually, I found that shape shifting was more like finding a mask in your mind and putting it on. After a little more practice, I was able to shift through a few different shapes in a matter of seconds. I was starting to get a little beat, but I think that was mostly due to my years of physical inactivity rather than the training. But before I was able to say "I'm ready," 473 moved on to the next test. But the catch was I had to be in disguise while practicing, which was very similar to trying to do a normal workout routine while concentrating on balancing three plates on a stick. We practiced flight for a little while by playing a small game of tag. I grasped the ability to control my flight rather quickly, though it wasn't without multiple crashes into trees and a few new bruises. I still have to pay special attention to where I'm going instead of trying to keep myself up. There were also little details like positioning yourself for maximum speed or knowing the air currents to help you fly, but I wasn't paying attention. I was aiming for the ability to fly, not for the Best Young Flyer competition. I almost got her once, but she changed her direction at the last second, causing me to crash into the tree she had dodged. My disguise faltered, and that earned me a smack to the forehead before we tried again. Still loving the exoskeleton, by the way. Next, we tested my skill with unicorn magic. This, actually, wasn't as easy as it sounded. If disguising myself to look like a unicorn was hard work, then digging deeper into my skill to cast magic at the same time was like trying play guitar with one arm tied behind your back. I had to focus on the actual disguise as well as the magic I had to perform. I almost vowed to never imitate unicorns, it was hard doing both at the same time, but if I needed to perform magic it was an essential skill. I needed to be able to cast while in disguise, otherwise everytime I have to cast magic I'd have to stop shape shifting, which could prove disastrous in the long run. I manipulated a few objects, I was able to do basic telekinesis and all the things that every unicorn could do. But when it came to performing feats of magic that were beyond the elementary school level, it was impossible. Changelings have an internal magic source that was fueled by how much emotion they fed off of, and seeing as I hadn't eaten at all since I hatched, it wasn't expected to pull of alicorn level spells. As long as I understood the fundamentals of magic, I was fine. My training ended with the moon high above our heads, I had hardly noticed the passage of time until we were finished, with both of us exhausted beyond belief. After watching the night sky and catching out breath, I decided to break the vow of silence. "That was the most fun I've ever had with training. It was my only training, though, so it won by default." 473 gave a small chuckle, "It was my first time being a teacher. I'm glad I was able to show you how to do things that every changeling should know from birth." I gave a frown, "You're still going on about the whole 'I'm the strangest changeling you've ever met,' aren't you? "Of course I am. In all of my years I have never seen a changeling that was in some way connected to the Hivemind. Your sort of an... well, I'm not sure what you are. I don't even think we have a word for those not part of the Hivemind." A few words played across my mind, and as I thought I lifted my fore legs so I could see the orange fur that I was currently disguised in, "I'm an outcast." "A what?" 473 sat up and looked at me quizzically. I lowered my legs back down to my sides, and I turned to face her. "An outcast, a stranger, someone who doesn't belong. Someone who is looked down on or rejected." 473 mulled over this new information for a long moment before she returned her attention to me. "The Hivemind agrees with the term." Now it was my turn to stare questioningly. "The Hivemind never made a connection to you, and it wishes to not make a new connection to a changeling as different as you." The collective consciousness is a bigot? Well, on the bright side, at least I won't become a slave to the minds of thousands of other changelings. It'd get pretty crowded in my head, and I had enough trouble with just one conscious. We both just laid there, thoughts about the upcoming mission filled my head with all the possible ways this could end up horribly. I felt a lurch in my gut, but thought nothing of it. I just wrote it off as a reaction to some of the more gruesome thoughts that my twisted mind dredged up. It wasn't until the second and more powerful lurch that I realized that something was amiss. I got to my hooves, and felt the strength ebb out of my legs. I unsteadily tried to stay on my hooves, but I was too weak and I fell to my side. 473 was at my side, asking what was wrong. I tried to answer, but everytime I opened my mouth I gagged, making my stomach do somersaults. I started to dry heave, my forelegs wobbling like crazy as I felt my abdomen start to make the retching motions. I laid my forehead on the grass, my horn buried into the dirt to keep my head still. I hardly noticed 473 yelling about help, I was so preoccupied with trying to keep my stomach in place. I closed my eyes, and shut off the rest of the world from my mind. I dimly realized that I was still holding onto the shape shifting spell. I let go of it without a moment's hesitation, as I knew full well that trying to keep a disguise while also focusing on making sure my bowels didn't escape through my mouth. As soon as the dry heaves came, though, they had disappeared. I knelt there, hunched over with my head planted against the dirt, as I took ragged breaths and felt my whole body shake. What was that? Why did it stop? And more importantly, was it going to happen again? Questions raced through my mind faster than I could dwell on them for answers. I don't know how long I was there, maybe days, maybe only minutes. Eventually, I gained enough confidence to stand up again, albeit on shaky legs. It was then that I noticed the presence of a couple of newcomers. The Prince stood there, where his questioning gaze roamed all around my body before addressing the changeling beside him. "You say he was growing ill, yet he looks to be as fine as he did in my chambers." The changeling, whom I guessed was 473, looked just as shocked as I felt. "Pupae, he was pale and heaving. I don't know what was happening or why... but he was ill, of that I'm sure." The Prince once again examined me, possibly taking note of how my legs were shaking. "Drone, can you change?" I concentrated on finding that mask again, but I was utterly unable to do so. I shook my head, which cause the Prince to raise a holed hoof to his chin in thought. "I have heard of a few changelings that were unable to stay disguised for long... Perhaps they weren't just rumors, though. Perhaps this changeling acts under different rules... rules that seem strange to us. The Hivemind suggests that since he was hatched a strange changeling, he should be treated as an outcast." I winced. It was hardly ten minutes and the Hivemind already started throwing around the word like candy. "In any case, he has to find the limitations that the rules he follows allow. We cannot use conventional methods to train him, now. He is not a true changeling, therefore must be treated as such." I lowered my head, I wondered if this was it for me, and I was destined to live a life of solitude. "But the Hivemind speaks not for me. He will continue to train, and the mission will stay. The Hivemind knows what's best for the other tribes, but we cannot afford to dally around with as few drones as we have. We're desperate, and we need that energy." He fixed me with a stern green glare. "If you feel as though you cannot perform under your newfound limits, then you may back out. Drone 473 will carry out the mission alone if you so wish, but know this; if you do back out, and if the mission fails because 473 did not have the support that she needed, then you will be held accountable for it." With that, the Prince flew off back into the hive. Drone 473 trotted closer, afraid I was going to start convulsing again. "I think that settles it for training, yeah? Let's go and get some rest before heading out to Minnow's Rest." I nodded, unable to really respond with the sudden weight that was dropped on my shoulders. I had to go into a closely-knit town, with changeling powers that I've only had for a day, and apparently limitations that have to be obeyed otherwise I start puking my guts out, and if I backed out I would probably be executed, and if I failed the mission I would also be executed, and the mission starts when the sun rises, which isn't that far away judging by the position of the moon. Less than a day in Equestria, and I was already starting to think about whether I made the right choice or not.