A Princess and Her Queen

by kildeez


Chapter XXVIII: Scars, Part II

Bait was about as comfortable as a jock in a Dungeons and Dragons tournament. Which was ironic, since that was the complete opposite of the situation he found himself in; wearing his button-down, collared shirt over his quivering, tiny frame, surrounded by moshing, drunken stallions and cheerleaders all rubbing themselves against each other in between sips from plastic cups that smelt like Tirek’s asshole. He looked like he belonged here about as well as any of this bunch might belong in one of his YPI meetings.

Thing was, this was his ticket, his one and only shot away from the empty classrooms and swirly-filled bathroom breaks to high school stardom, or at least meeting a mare who didn’t look like she’d only grown halfway out of her chubby grub phase. Still, there was no denying that feeling of being out of his depth, far from familiar waters, especially as he stepped into the crowd of flailing, dancing, mostly-drunk changelings, most of them sucking on one another’s faces.

He almost thought he might be alright, until he came across a stallion with his tongue down the throat of a mare disguised as a miniature Princess Celestia, plastic cups in both their hooves. His mind reeling in horror, he had to press his hooves into his eyes to avoid the image of his race’s greatest enemy prancing around in bikini bottoms, and how undeniably sexy that image was.

“Sweet Chrysalis above, where am I!?” He screamed right there in the middle of the dance floor, his hooves still pressed into his eyes as some stumbling drunkard spilled a bit of Stalliongrad-brewed Vodka on his polyester shirt.

“Bait!” A massive hoof clamped on his shoulder, whirling him around. His head spinning, Bait could barely make out Switch’s form in the dark, pulsing lights, though it was much easier to see the lanky, skinny little mare his other leg was draped over.

“Bait, I wantcha to meet Cherry,” Switch slurred between sips from the bottle in his free hoof.

“Umm…it’s Berry,” the mare pointed out with a gentle smile.

“Right, Ferry, sure,” Switch guffawed and sucked at his bottle again. Of course, where most stallions would have earned a smack across the face by now, Berry just giggled like the empty-headed bimbo her current status as Switch’s flavor of the week had earned her, apparently finding his lack of regard for something as basic as her name utterly charming.

Bait sighed. And his mother wondered why he didn’t like making friends. “Hey Berry, nice t’meetcha,” he said, sticking out his hoof with a smile he hoped was disarming, and not creepy.

Without even sparing him a passing glance, Berry nodded in his direction while keeping her eyes on Switch. “Babe, I need to freshen up, do you mind?”

“Of course not,” Switch said, which of course earned him another kiss and another giggle. As the mare turned towards the bathroom, he gave her flank a good, hard smack, earning a squeal and a round of giggles from the crowd of mares that had materialized behind her. Or, more accurately, behind Switch. Bait had to bite his lip to keep from retching. Did she have any idea about the mare in the cavern? Or did she think she somehow had a hold on him the other mares had simply lacked?

“Yeah man,” Switch turned back to Bait and nearly fell back in a drunken half-stumble. “You see the flank on her? Damn!”

“Aheh…yeah, it was…nice…” Bait shrugged.

“Hey man, whatchoo wearin’? This ain’t a fuggin’ church picnic,” Switch guffawed.

Suddenly feeling very exposed, Switch took a quick glance down at his shirt, his cheeks warming. “I…uh…shit, I dunno,” he finally admitted.

“Well, take that shit off! You’re geekin’ up the place!”

Only slightly alarmed that another stallion had asked him to take his shirt off in the middle of a party, Bait pulled his shirt over his head, but before he had a chance to fold it up and lay it someplace he might find it, Switch seized one of his hooves and started leading him through the party.

“Gwah! Where’re we going!?” He gasped, the shirt drifting off the end of his hoof to some forgotten corner of the dance floor, where it would start its new life as a cleaning rag for one of the partygoers who worked part time as a janitor.

“Jus’ c’mon!” Switch insisted with that particular persistence that came most naturally to drunks. Bait opened his mouth to protest again, but soon closed it. Switch was far beyond reason and coherent thought, no way anything the smaller stallion could squeak out would change what was happening.

Bait made another futile attempt to wrench his hoof free, batted weakly at Switch’s side for awhile, and then gave up and just let the drunken stallion take him wherever. It's not like he was particularly attracted to the dance floor, where the only thing he might do would be to give both mares and stallions alike more ammo to use against "The Irate." So he followed along, dragged out the Nest's back cavern and towards a tiny back tunnel. Around there, Switch finally released his hoof and stumbled along by himself. At this point, Bait could only follow, if only to make sure the larger stallion didn't get lost in some forgotten tunnel and wind up stumbling into a manticore's nest.

After a few minutes, Bait gave up on any illusion that Switch even had a destination in mind. Even if he had, odds were it was long forgotten in a brown, alcohol-induced haze. He just trotted along, making note of any turns they made, and hoped Switch would get tired and pass out before they got too lost. Which was why the gust of cool, night air whishing down the cave almost caused him to leap out of his horseshoes.

"Wh-what?" He stammered, shivering from the shock and the cold. "What was that!?"

Switch just grinned that half-coherent smirk of the totally drunk. "Wassamatter, Baity? Never felt a fresh breeze before?"

Bait had, in fact. Only three times before, however, which was why the alien scent of fresh air pounded his nostrils like a punch to the face. "W-we're going outside!?"

"You know it!" Switch cackled with a huge punch to the shoulder that was just a smidge too hard to avoid being painful. “C’mon, we kept ‘em waiting long enough!”

“K-kept who?”

No answer again. Just that big, dumb, happy drunk’s stare locked straight ahead as if a pile of Donut Joe’s glazed donuts was sitting in the middle of the cave. Bait’s stomach twisted. This had gone from a harmless adventure with some drunk he barely knew and nosedived into unfriendly territory pretty quickly. Worse yet, the moon was out. He’d heard stories about the mare in the moon, and seeing her now, that stony, white eye glaring down at him, did nothing to settle his nerves. Nor did the endless expanse of lifeless wasteland around him, only broken by the darkened forest a few miles away.

To his horror, Switch started walking in that direction, the big dumb grin still on his face. Bait pranced on his tip-hooves at the entrance to the cave for a second, then sighed and followed suit. Out here, at least, the quiet seemed to be amplified, and all at once, he found he might just have the voice out here he lacked in the echoes of the caves.

“Hey, Switch,” he started, laying a gentle hoof on the larger ‘ling’s shoulder. “Whatever you got going on probably isn’t a good idea, right?” I mean, we’re getting pretty far from the Hive now, maybe we…”

But Switch just shrugged the hoof off. “If you wanna pussy out, go right ahead,” he growled, the friendly, everypony’s-friendly-neighborhood-drunk attitude sliding away in an instant. Bait stood back, shocked. For a moment, he considered doing just that. Just walking back to the Hive and heading home, forgetting this night ever happened. He hadn’t really expected much to happen anyway, right?

Except he couldn’t go back, not now. He’d been invited, to a party held by the jocks. If ever there’d been a chance to work his way out of his nerdy status within the Swarm, this was it. He couldn’t just throw it away, because odds were it’d never happen again.

Sighing, he continued alongside Switch, who’s laid back, drunken smile had returned full force. He half-expected the drunk to look to the side and start asking why he was looking so nervous, saying something along the lines of: “Hey there, what’s wrong, li’l buddy? You can tell your ol’ pal, Switchy!” Of course, if that was the case he’d just have to make a beeline for the Hive. Nerd-escape or not, he was not equipped to deal with a damned split-personality!

After a few more minutes of walking, Bait noticed a flicker of something far away: a campfire. No, wait, judging by the hollering and calls coming from that direction, a bonfire. The kind ponies might set on a beach for a party. Was this something to do with the party going on back at the Hive? Some secret part of the party that only the elite of the “cool” foals were welcome to? His pulse quickened at the idea.

As they approached, Bait could make out the silhouettes of racing stallions and mares around the fire, most with bottles in their hooves. A small, inaudible gasp passed his lips. Even from here, he could tell from the shapes of the bottles that this would be the real booze, not just the swill everypony at the main party was drinking in their plastic cups. As they got closer, the happy chittering of talking changelings got louder, and he could even make out the sound of a guitar being strummed somewhere. But nothing could prepare him for what he saw when he got close enough.

Next to the fire, two changelings made love beside a small box of condoms, the stallion rummaging through the box with a free hoof while clinging to the mare under him with the other. A half-empty bottle of Stallionaya vodka laid on its side next to their writhing bodies, the brown glass catching every crack and flicker of the flames. Across the fire from them, a group sat gathered around a changeling strumming at a guitar, looking up to the sky with red-rimmed eyes as if every pluck of the strings was some bit of divine inspiration. Personally, it sounded to Switch like a stoner that could use a few lessons, but he wasn’t about to say anything.

“Tyler!” Switch enthused, spreading his hooves out as he approached the fire.

A changeling in a baseball cap turned to them, letting Bait see every sweat stain and crack in the cap’s fabric, the bill now folded upwards in a permanent bend. He grinned seeing the larger stallion. “Switch, m’stallion!” He laughed, leaving his bottle in the dirt to get up and bro-hoof the big changeling. “’Bout fuckin’ time you showed up!”

“Trust me, woulda been here sooner, but the guest a’ honor took too long getting out to us,” Switch cocked his head in Bait’s direction, and Tyler peered around him to get a look at the smaller changeling. His smile flickered, but shot right back to full strength in an instant.

“Stallion of the hour!” Tyler gasped, reaching out and pounding Bait’s shoulder. “You did my man here a real solid, bro! Seriously!”

“Um…thanks, it was…no problem,” Bait stammered.

“Alright bro, alright!” He shot that winning grin Bait’s way, and in that instant, Bait decided he didn’t like Tyler much. His dad had always taught him to trust a stallion by his smile, and Tyler’s face was less a smile and more a smirk. The superior smirk worn by most stallions right before delivering a wedgie or a swirlie to some unsuspecting ‘ling. The one he’d pretty much been trained to be wary of the moment he saw it aimed his way in the halls.

“So, Bait,” Switch said, pulling Bait’s attention away from the other stallion. “You ready?”

Bait blinked, turning to him with a big, blank look, as if he’d just been snapped out of a trance. “Ready?”

Tyler flashed that chitin-forsaken smirk again. “My stallion didn’t tell you anything, did he?” He asked. “Shit yeah, just the way to go into it.”

Alarm bells blared in the back of Bait’s head as he forced a smile and a nervous chuckle up from somewhere deep inside. “Go into what, you guys? C’mon, just tell me.”

Tyler strode up to him with that little smirk that made Switch wish he was just a little taller so he might be able to wipe it off his smug little muzzle. “Bait…that’s what my stallion here called ya, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Bait, my man, we got this little tradition here,” Tyler’s superior little smirk became a superior little grin. “It’s a little something we do with all the stallions that wanna hang with us: see if they really got what it takes. Guess you could call it a test.”

Danger! Danger, Will Trottinson! “A test? Well, I’m awfully good at those.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Tyler flashed a grin at Switch, but for a second, Bait could see the way his eyes rolled. As if to say, Chrysalis above, this guy? Really? “Still, don’t think this’ll be easy, I’ll let m’stallion here walk you through it, but when it comes time to perform, you perform.”

“Sounds good!” Bait said as he quietly hoped he would recognize the best time to bolt for the Hive when he saw it. Switch showed up and cocked his head, meaning he should follow, and Bait did, holding his head up high with a confidence he didn’t feel. He was about ready to trot off with Switch like a good little stallion, but…then again…there was that little eye roll.

“Hey Tyler,” he said over his shoulder, Switch still leading him away from the firelight. “Save a seat for me, will ya?”

There was a moment of silence from the firelight, then a rushed: “You got it, bro!” from behind the firelight. Bait grinned in the darkness. He was probably going to pay for that little touch of smart-flank later, but damn was it worth it.

His personal victory was lost as the powerful hoof clenched around him again, once more dragging him off into the darkness. This time everything was reversed: he went from a massive and wide-open space into the strangling confines of a leafy prison, the Everfree forest looming all around him. Bait swallowed loudly. This, the one place where no civilization laid claim, the only place in the world that changelings were taught to fear more than Equestria itself, and he was letting himself be led into it by a drunk.

By Chrysalis’s amazingly-toned flank, why had he let it get this far!?

“Hey, Switch, c’mon,” Bait said, trying to keep the fear from his voice and failing miserably. Enough’s enough, alright? What’s say we get back to the main party, that cheerleader’s probably…”

“Naw man,” Switch replied, only something caught Bait off guard. The reply wasn’t the drunken slur he’d been expecting, but barked out like a command from a drill instructor. “Naw, we’re seeing this through, you an’ me.”

Bait bit his lip, suddenly feeling too much like the little colt that had run back to its mother with tears running down its face after a day of being used as a dodgeball by the older foals. “O-okay,” he said, his voice far too tiny for his liking. And they pressed on, tromping relentlessly through the brush. An hour passed, and then two, completely in silence. He’d given up all plans for escape or trying to remember the way home by then, but oddly enough, he spied a set of lights in the distance.

Switch stopped so suddenly that Bait had to stumble to keep from crashing head-first into the guy’s flank. He wore a smile, but it was far from that drunken grin from the fire. “Okay, we’re here.”

Bait took his spot at Switch’s side, ignoring the rising beat of his own heart. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear voices of loud merrymaking, coming from the flickering lights. His hooves trembled. “Switch, where are we?”

The larger changeling turned to him with that cocky, hateful smile plastered all over his face. “Outskirts of some redneck haven called Ponyville.”

“P-P-Ponyville?” Bait’s voice shot up a few dozen octaves. There was no mistaking that name, even if he hadn’t heard it before: only the nation of Equestria would allow the locals to name a village after their own species, no matter how stupid it sounded.

“Eyup!” That everyling’s-best-friend drunk was making a roaring comeback as he grinned over at his partner. “We’re gonna go in undisguised and swipe something off a store shelf!”

Bait’s mind shut down in a sudden flash of panic. “Are you completely--” he started with his voice so high he could barely hear himself. Hearing this, he cleared his throat and corrected. “Are you insane!? Go into a pony town undisguised!? The Queen would have our heads!”

“Oh, stop being such a little pussy!” Well, goodbye everyling’s-best-friend-drunk, see ya in a few. “The Queen won’t because she’s not gonna find out, just like none of the stupid little ponies in town are gonna find out, understand?”

Bait understood. He understood only too well. He understood that he, a freshman changeling with less than a year of infiltration courses under his belt and still several years away from even being eligible for his Infiltrator’s license, was going to be expected to walk into a pony village undetected and undisguised, using his nonexistent skills to stick to the shadows and remain out of sight. He understood that this idea was completely idiotic and that, if he were a decent stallion, he’d turn around and head back into the woods while telling the larger stallion next to him to kiss his flank or something. Unfortunately, he also understood that he was not a decent, brave stallion capable of anything of the sort, and that turning around would mean braving the Everfree alone without the protection and guidance of the one who led him here. His head bowing, he understood that he was the type of stallion who didn’t make waves and went along with what was easiest, and hated himself even as he was doing it.

But then again, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, right? After all, the other changelings around that fire had managed it. Some of those guys didn’t even look like they could hold their own heads up without help!

“Yeah,” he said, hoping it sounded a lot better than he felt. “I understand.”

“Good,” Switch peered ahead. “There’s this little shop right on the outskirts. Pretty isolated: only other places around are all restaurants that close waaayyy before now. It’s kind of our favorite. We just need something to prove we were here, something that could only be gotten off the shelves of a pony store, you dig?”

“Y-yeah, yeah, I dig.”

“Good,” and once again, could it be, in that nice little smile the big guy was flashing his way? Why yes, it’s our old buddy, everyling’s-best-friend! We missed him so! “Don’t worry about it. The guys do this all the time. Odds are, these rainbow-colored idiots won’t even notice what’s gone. I doubt shopkeeps in this neck of the woods even keep that close an eye on their stock.”

It all sounded so reasonable, so perfectly easy. So why did a cold fist clench in Bait’s stomach thinking about it? “Alright, sounds pretty good!” He exclaimed, a smile pasted to his face.

“You know it!” The larger changeling smiled back before darting off into the brush, far faster than you’d think a drunk guy could run. It only now occurred to Bait that if Switch was ever even drunk, odds were he’d have long since sobered up. And still, he could only follow along helplessly.

The shadows rushed over their chitin, the occasional glare off the lamplight bouncing off the changelings’ shells. Bait made sure not to fall behind, fearful that doing so would mean losing Switch and being abandoned to whatever the ponies did with captured changelings. He kept his head down, trying to remain unseen, even as the brush faded away until it eventually became lighted city streets. Here, finally, he slowed down and looked around, jaw agape. Nothing here was carved from the land like a changeling hive: it was all purely artificial buildings, all erected solely for the ponies’ purposes. Even the lights were on suspended artificial poles. It was a whole world where you were surrounded by something that had been crafted, rather than repurposed from what was already there.

“Hey man, put your tongue back in your head, the mares around here aren’t that pretty!” Switch snickered, snapping Bait out of his reverie.

“I-I wasn’t looking at that…”

“What, the stallions then?” Switch offered.

Bait huffed but kept quiet. He knew better than to let something like that get under his skin. After a few minutes, Switch shrugged. “So we’re here now,” he said.

Bait looked up at the plain, nondescript storefront labelled “Sandy’s Wholesale,” in pony-speak. His ears perked at the glass front: he had been so intrigued by glass from the first moment he’d read about it. Clear as crystal, yet so much more fragile…it made it all the more jarring when Switch scooped up a rock and chucked it right through one of the glass panes.

“What the hell, man!? What the actual hell!?” Bait screeched, leaping back.

“Relax, dude, the ponies are all asleep. None of ‘em heard that,” Switch replied, pointing at the storefront. “So g’wan. Get in there, grab whatever, and get out again.”

“Dude…” he looked over the shattered remnants of glass scattered around his hooves. Somepony made this, they spent time on this, and then somepony else spent their own hard-earned cash to put it here. It just didn’t sit right to add theft on top of this senseless destruction. “Dude, I dunno.”

“Man, c’mon! You’ve been a little bitch about this thing from the start!” Switch growled. “We’ve come too far now, and I am not leaving empty-hooved when all that’s left to do is literally walk in there and pick up something! So quit your damn whining and finish this!”

Bait whimpered, hopefully too low for Switch to hear. The old rising panic and threat of tears he always felt when forced to do something he didn’t want to threatened to spill up as a lump gathered in his throat. But he swallowed it all, nodded, and walked through the shattered pane with the trepidation of a soldier going to war.

Just like everything else, a pony storefront was much like its changeling counterpart, but different. Everything was artificial, yet still warm, as opposed to the cold yet natural feel of every changeling edifice. Again, it was all carved wood and shaped furniture, which all felt remarkably homey. For some reason, the image of reclining in a chair much like the one behind the counter while reading a book by a stone fireplace and smoking a pipe appeared in Bait’s head, but he quickly banished it with a little scoff.

“Dude, you sightseeing!?” Came Switch’s voice from outside.

“I’m just lookin’ for something good!” Bait lied as he traipsed along by the aisles, his chitin protecting him from the razor-sharp edges of the glass. He passed the quickest and cheapest stuff, going right for the backroom. His mind buzzed with old stories about cartel ponies keeping drug labs and griffon smuggling operations hidden behind innocent-looking storefronts. As he walked, his fear and trepidation faded and a smile crossed his face. Yeah, imagine that! Coming across a pony crime syndicate! He pressed a hoof to the faded wood, oblivious to his surroundings as the door slowly creaked open to reveal…

…a shelf. Next to a desk crowded with papers and office knick-knacks, including a clock shaped like a cat, a stack of magnets, and several framed photos of cats. His muzzle twitched. “Whoever works here needs to get laid,” he muttered. “And speaking as a virgin in freshman year, that’s saying something.”

Turning away from the desk full of sadness, he focused on the shelf, squinting in the darkness. He picked a jar up, trying to make out its label in the darkness. What would a pony keep back here, away from the shelves? Some niche products? For sale to druggies!? On account of it being drugs!?

Naw, nobody with a framed picture on their desk of a dog at a bank going: “I’m here to make a de-paws-it” would be involved in the illegal narcotics trade. Still, what was this? He turned the jar over, and something inside sloshed around. Was it some illegal slug repellant? Or…

“Finally caughtcha, you bloody thieves!”

Bait’s heart dropped into his stomach with an almost-audible splash. He turned around very slowly, keeping his hooves visible, and found himself face-to-face with the biggest musket he’d ever seen in his life, handled by a trim stallion with a handlebar mustache and a monocle draping from his eye. With a “harrumph,” the stallion’s horn glowed and the massive hammer behind the weapon’s barrel drew back with a click that sounded like it blasted throughout the room.

“I say, old fellow,” the stallion said with a twitch of his magnificent whiskers. “What are you?”

“Ummm…nobody and n-nothing?” Bait managed an unconvincing smile. “Th-this is all a dream? Brought about by too much bangers and mash before bed?”

“Hmm…quite...I do like a good plate of bangers and mash before bed, but I highly doubt that is the case, seeing to it I can still feel this,” the stallion shifted the weapon to one hoof and held up the other, revealing a small cut across one fetlock. “Did this to myself on a piece of glass up front. You know, from that window you nasty buggers shattered? The window my dear friend who owns this shop put up with her own money? The same dear friend who brought me here from an expedition in Zebrica to catch the nasty brigands that have been ransacking her livelihood and continuously breaking her windows?”

He was up front!? Thanks for keeping watch, Switch, Bait grumbled. “Okay, okay, so this isn’t a dream, it’s…a lucid fantasy?”

“No, no I don’t think so,” the stallion harrumphed and motioned with the barrel. “Sit down in that chair, and no funny business. This thing is loaded with enough shot to take down an elephant.”

“I-I don’t doubt that, sir,” Bait whimpered as he did as he was told, still holding onto the jar as he took his seat. The stallion followed him into the room, the barrel of the weapon never wavering.

“Now, I’m afraid I’m going to have to bind and gag you, old chap,” the stallion said, using his cut hoof to pull a roll of duct tape out of a drawer, the other still holding the musket on Bait. “Nothing personal, you understand, I just can’t have you calling out to your friend while I’m looking for him.”

“Oh…I see…” Bait shivered in the chair, the jar clattering in his grip. “Oh-okay…but…before you do, can I ask something?”

“I don’t see why not, as long as it’s quick.”

“Is that a Model-437 Solid-Bore Colt muzzleloader?” He asked, pointing to the weapon.

The stallion blinked. “Why yes! Good Celestia above, stallion! You’re the first to recognize it!”

“I-I’ve done a lot of studying,” Bait chuckled nervously. “I just happened to know that gun hasn’t been in production for nearly twenty years.”

“One of the last off the lines at Colt’s Manehattan plant!” The stallion beamed. “She’s seen me through more sticky situations than I’d care to think about!”

“Oh really?” Bait suddenly grimaced deeply. “Well, I’d like to see it get you out of this!” The stallion didn’t even have time to respond before Switch melded out of the shadows, a chunk of goo hovering from the tip of his horn that promptly smacked the stallion in the face, blanketing his eyes. With a scream, the stallion whirled and let loose with a shot from the musket, which missed Switch by a mile and obliterated a shelf full of cleaning products.

“Cowards!” He screamed, the musket clattering to the ground and a dagger appearing in its stead. “Come up behind me, will you!? Don’t think I’m disabled just because you’ve blinded me!”

Bait remained seated, his ears ringing from the titanic thunderclap of the shot, his eyes wide and visibly shellshocked. It took Switch appearing in his vision from out of the gunsmoke to finally shake him from his reverie. “Dude, we gotta go!” The larger changeling screamed, seizing Bait’s hoof and physically dragging him from the room. Bait’s head whirled on his shoulders, even as he was dragged through the store, stumbling over shattered glass until meeting the cold night air, the stallion throwing curses at the backs of their heads and slashing blindly through the air behind them.

Once again, Bait allowed himself to be carried away by the larger stallion, practically flying through the streets and back into the brush just as a group of ponies dashed towards the storefront, whispering about the massive blast they’d all heard and listening to the curses of the stallion still hacking away at thin air inside. He barely registered it all though, even as the shouts faded and the lights became faint glows in the distance.

Finally, after running for what felt like hours, Switch stopped and laid on his side, panting. “C-can’t believe we just did that,” he gasped in between lungfuls of air.

Bait looked at him with the same focus and attention of a lobotomy patient.

After a few minutes of panting, Switch turned to him, and beamed. “Oh, no way! You fucking kept your hold on that thing!?”

Still looking like a zombie on Quaaludes, Bait turned to his hoof, saw the jar still clenched there, then turned back to Switch and nodded.

“No fucking way!” Switch snatched the jar up, beaming at it. “I can’t believe you did it! Tyler is gonna lose his fucking shit when he hears about what we did!”

All at once, the zonked-out, dead-eyed stare faded from Bait’s features, his lips curling up into a disgusted, fang-filled sneer. “By Chrysalis’s all-powerful flank, you’re still worried about what that dickwad is gonna think!?

Switch turned to him, eyes wide with surprise. “Uuuuhhh…what?”

“After breaking and entering, making ponies suffer for no good goddamned reason, and nearly getting our heads blown off by a madman with a shotgun, you’re still worried about the entrance exam for your gang of dropouts and losers!?”

“Hey, look who’s talking!” Switch sat up, the surprise replaced with a sneer that mirrored Bait’s as he loomed over the smaller changeling. “A bunch of losers!? Whaddya call a little moron who spends all his time in a classroom, running a club noling is ever gonna join!?”

“At least in there I actually get shit done!” Bait screamed, hardly believing he was speaking to a jock this way - one who outweighed him two times over at least - and still too angry to really care. “When’s the last time you or any of your asshole friends even bothered to open a math textbook!? When’s the last time any of you weren’t totally ashamed on report card day!?”

“Listen to you!” Switch half-yelled, half-chortled. “As if grades are all that matter! Why? Because that’s all you’re good at, you little virginfag.” He planted a massive hoof in Bait’s chest and gave him a good shove, sending him sprawling. The jar flew from his hooves, smashing against the rocky ground and splattering them both in something that smelt like a pony had taken a dump in it, then gotten a drunk friend to throw up in it, and finally mixed the whole vile concoction with some cat piss.

Neither noticed, the stench only inflaming their tempers as Bait rose to his hooves, flicking off little droplets of the stuff. “Fucking dammit,” he cussed. “I can’t believe I let you drag me out here on an errand set by a druggie!”

“And I can’t believe I thought you’d be worth giving a chance to,” Switch growled, pressing his hoof to Bait’s chest again. “Here, I thought you were worth something, not just another uppity little smartass who gets everywhere by avoiding eye contact with mares he’s too much of a pussy to even look at!”

Switch gave another push. This time, however, Bait remained on his hooves. “Oh, thank you, massa!” He screamed. “Thank you for this fine, fine opportunity for poor, li’l me! Thank you so much for aiding me in being a little bit more superior, like you!”

“Well, thank Chrysalis someling said it!” Switch bellowed.

Color rose on Bait’s cheeks, his teeth clenching. “You know what!? Fuck you, you big, stupid, jock asshole! I wish I let that mare rip you apart, it’s what you deserved!”

“Yeah? Well at least if you did, you wouldn’t have wasted my time running around this fuckin’…”

A low growl interrupted the arguing stallions. Both their minds blanked out in sudden fear, their ears folding back as they turned towards a set of bushes off to the side. Something with a savage, yellow gaze and fangs the size of their forelegs glared back. Far too late, the changelings remembered that they were in a savage land far from civilization: a place where their survival depended entirely on stealth and remaining unnoticed, and where they had spent the last few minutes screaming their heads off like a couple of maniacs.

“Wh-wh-what…” Switch swallowed. “What is that?”

Bait looked away, casting an eye on the remnants of the jar and the stink rising from it. A single shard of glass turned over in the moonlight to reveal the remnants of its label: “ICORE” on the first line, “AIT” on the second. “M-manticore bait,” he whimpered as the growling rose in volume. Now, why a pony would have a massive Griffonian-made muzzleloader made all too much sense. You’d need something that big to take on a manticore.

Spending the night tied to a chair next to a stallion that had been prepared to vaporize his brains with a weapon meant to take on beasts the size of small houses suddenly didn’t look so bad.

A thousand pounds of muscle and fur rocketed out of the brush. A rush of tan and purple with fangs dripping saliva barreled down at Bait. He could only stand and watch. This was death. This was how he died. This was strange. Why was he on the ground?

He looked up, watching all that fur and muscle trailing a tail that looked like it could snap two-by-fours in half shoot right over his head. It moved in slow-motion, every hair on its body waving at him, every muscle tensing and undulating under its skin, every drop of saliva tailing it lazing by in slow-motion. And then Switch was visible on the other side of it all, looking towards him, his hoof outstretched. Oh, so he’d shoved Bait out of the way, that was nice, and it looked like he’d even had time to lunge back to avoid…

The rear paw…

Oh Chrysalis above, the rear paw was changing its angle. It was gonna thump Switch right in the skull.

He didn’t even have time to voice a warning. The only thing that made it past Bait’s lips was a frightened “Uhhh…” before the paw slammed across Switch’s back with a low thud, crushing the wing. The bigger changeling spun from the force of the blow, dazed, and once again too late, Bait realized the manticore’s paw had only been the first in a two-pronged assault, as its tail whipped around and bared down faster than he believed anything could move. Again, his heart dropped into his stomach. This time, a warm stream of urine down a hindleg accompanied it.

The angle was awkward, and the change in motion had been hasty on the manticore’s part, but none of that mattered. The tail still made its target. The stinger slashed Switch’s face in a downward motion as his body completed a full circle from the initial blow, giving Bait a perfect sideview as the stinger gored the other changeling’s face, digging deep into his brow and continuing along the surface of the eye with a sickening squelch. The stinger finished its journey as it dug a trench down Switch’s cheek before mercifully curling away, droplets of blood and venom splaying away from it as it pulled in against the beast’s body again.

The manticore landed in the brush on the other side of their small clearing. Bait looked at Switch, jaw agape. “S-Switch?” He squeaked, too quietly to be heard.

Switch turned to him, reached up, felt the deep gouge in his face, and then his lip trembled. He fell on his flank, stupid shock and uncomprehending fear on his face. He mouthed a silent “Bait?” as he fell back, so totally stunned he couldn’t even support himself anymore.

Bait turned towards the shrubs where he’d seen the monster disappear. The growl echoed back at him. He turned and ran, hooves pumping, tears in his eyes. He made it perhaps a few hundred yards before he realized he’d just left another changeling to die at the paws of some awful beast.

Without really thinking about it, he made a wide arc back to the tiny clump of shrubs he’d left behind. A gust of wind tore through the branches as he padded to a stop, letting the moon through to light up everything: Switch on the ground, still dazed, still laying helplessly as the manticore towered over him, placing a paw on his back and beginning to press.

Still without really thinking, still operating on pure adrenaline and emotion, Bait scooped up a rock and chucked it as hard as he could. It still only barely managed to thud off the manticore’s flank, but that was enough. It whipped around in the space of a heartbeat, its yellow eyes staring him down furiously. Bait’s knees gave out for an instant, and then the adrenaline kicked back in and he was running again. The sound of thrashing trees and splintering wood told him the damned thing was right on its tail, throwing boulders out of the way as if they were pebbles, bending massive pines over like toothpicks. He ran faster, not even trying to tell himself that the tears on his face were from allergies, or the sobs rising in his chest were just shortness of breath. He just ran, because stopping would be death.

How long did he run? Ten minutes? An hour? Thirty seconds? It could have been any of these, but all at once he couldn’t run any longer. He found himself stopping just short of a rapids the size of which he’d never seen before (though this was the first time he’d ever seen a rapids, so this in itself wasn’t impressive). What did impress him was the sheer volume of muddy water roaring past, cascading by in a torrent at least twenty feet across. Still, the howl from all that water didn’t cover up the astounding roar from the woods behind him.

In his fear, Bait almost forgot his wings, but once he remembered he grinned and fanned them out. Finally, a way to escape! Of course, if he just flew over, then Switch might well be screwed again. He had no way of knowing if the other changeling had regained his senses enough to make a break for it, and the manticore might remember where it had left its first meal. No, instead he needed to finish this, once and for all.

Figuring he might put his namesake to use a second time that night, Bait lowered his head and fanned his wings, as if ready to charge at the woods. The manticore burst from the brush, all bestial rage and angered howls. Still, Bait didn’t move but for a fearful tremble that worked from his spine to his wingtips. The thing roared and threw itself at him.

Bait knew the timing would need to be perfect. Too early, and the manticore would have more than enough time to stop short of the river. Too late, and well…he didn’t want to think about that right now, okay? But he stood his ground, ready to push all his might into a single thrust at the night sky, springing the trap!

But as it approached, the manticore slowed, its eyes narrowing.

Bait balked in horror. It had stopped. It had seen the trap for what it was, of course it had. There was a massive river behind him, plain for miles around! Of course it had seen this coming! Now, it loomed over him, just a few short meters away, paws the size of hatchlings padding over the muddy grass towards him. His mind locked up again, the stench of whatever the manticore had killed the night before washing over him as it let out a long, gasping breath. It was tired from their chase, but not blind, and if anything, hungrier than ever before.

Bait fell to his stomach, his wings shaking all over again. The manticore was too close now, taking off would just make it lunge. No way he could fly fast enough to get out of the way before those massive paws crushed him into the ground, or those humongous fangs turned him into a bug kebab. He could only stand there and pray that it wouldn’t hurt too much, and that it would be quick.

BAIT!

Bait peered up, over the manticore’s shoulder, just in time to see Switch swooping out of the sky, straining to pour on as much speed as he could from a high tree branch, an eyepatch made from a bit of creepvine and a leaf stretched around his injured eye. His forehooves stretched out, ready to plow into the back of the beast’s head. Bait didn’t need to hear his name twice. He leapt into the air, wings buzzing as loud and hard as he could get them, pouring all his strength into moving his body as Switch plowed into the back of the beasts mane with all his strength, sending the manticore literally tumbling head over heels into the rapids as the sheer force of the kick pivoted it over on its face.

For a few glorious moments, Bait actually thought he was in the clear. For those few wonderful heartbeats, he saw nothing ahead but clear, black skies and shimmering stars, waiting for him to join them. Then, a horrified screech reached his ears. His head whipped to see Switch, having dived off the manticore’s head and flown off to the side, craning his neck around at him, his wings pumping, his bad eye still oozing a whitish-red fluid, and his good eye wide-open in horror. Bait turned just in time to see the manticore’s tail, rearing over him like a cobra about to strike, bearing down on his head.

“Nuh-no…” he managed to whimper. He tucked himself in, tried to dodge, but it was no use. The tail was too close. He closed his eyes as the stinger bore down on him. A fraction of a second later, he opened them again.

Agony screamed through his back, all the way down his side. The world spun crazily around, the earth became sky, which switched places with the trees and became ground again. The stars were a spinning array in his vision. A rock reared up to meet him head on. And then, everything was darkness and silence.


When he came to again, Bait was delightfully surprised to find himself in a hospital room hooked to a heart monitor, as opposed to a cloudbank where some pure-white mare in a flowing robe was fitting him for a halo.

Moaning, he turned over in his gurney, and was immediately greeted by an only-too-familiar shell, pressing itself against his face. He sighed. “Hey, ma.”

“What were you thinking!?” The older mare gasped, wrapping her forehooves around his head. “All that way out there, in pony territory! Don’t you realize what could have happened!? Oh, Baity!”

He sighed again. “I know ma, I’m sorry.”

“Mrs. Bait?” Another familiar voice, one he hadn’t thought he’d be hearing so soon, cut in. “I don’t think…”

“You hush up, young stallion!” She interrupted, and somehow Bait just knew she had craned her head around to glare at the offending changeling that dared interrupt her while embracing her son. “If it wasn’t for you, my Baity would have been doing his homework last night instead of out raising hell in pony territory! Why, if it was up to me, I…”

“For what it’s worth, I did finish my homework, ma,” Bait said, pulling his face out of his mother’s bosom to look at her for the first time. Her bewildered gaze locked with his. “Look, Switch didn’t do anything to force me along. I…just wanted to fit in. And I’d finished my homework beforehoof, so there.”

The older mare bit her lip. “Oh Baity,” she sighed, moving to hug him tighter again. He resisted, pressing against her chest. She sighed again. “Baity, I figured that was the case, but I…I almost lost you…”

“Butcha didn’t ma,” he replied, finally relenting and letting her hug him as tight as she wanted. He nuzzled into her chest, just the way he knew she liked. “I’m okay.”

“Speak for yourself,” she huffed. “Baity, do you have any idea how bad your injuries are!?”

“And again, none of that is his fault.”

“I…I know…” he knew she was biting her lip. He just knew. “I’m just…I know we owe him a lot, he dragged you for miles to get here after all.”

“Really!?” Bait looked around his mother at the other bed, a curtain drawn between him and it. He gave another sigh, this one longer and slower, his shoulders rising and falling with it. “Ma? Can I have a moment?”

“Uh-uh!” Bait’s mother placed her hooves on her hips, glowering down at her son. “You think after everything you pulled, I’m letting you out of my sight at all!? I’m going to be on you like glue for the next month, buster!”

“Ma, please!” Bait turned to her, eyes wavering. “Please, me and him need to talk.”

His mother bit her lip. Bait’s eyes widened a smidge, despite the guilt at manipulating his mother’s emotions like this. Finally, she looked away and relented, hugging herself with her forelegs. “Okay, but make it fast. I…really don’t want to be out of your sight for too long.”

“I know, ma. I will.”

She nodded, walking towards the door. Before she stepped out into the hallway, she cast a final, forlorn look over her shoulder, as if right after she left he was going to be shipped off to a battlefield in some far-off land or sent to infiltrate a hostile country. Then she was gone, and the two occupants in the beds were left alone.

“I…guess I should thank you,” Bait said after a prolonged silence. “I’d probably still be on that riverbed if it wasn’t for you.”

“Please, you’re the one who did all the heavy lifting with handling the manticore,” the silhouette on the other side of the thin curtain replied. “I just tagged in at the right moment, is all.”

“Yeah, okay,” Bait rubbed his trembling forehooves together, biting his lip. “H-how’s your eye, anyway?”

The silhouette scoffed. “I dunno, Bait,” it said, pulling the curtain aside. “You tell me.”

Bait gasped. A long, greenish line crossed down Switch’s face, right over one milky-white eye. He kept a tiny smile on his face, even as he ran a hoof over the angry-looking scar. Bandages were wrapped around his midsection to guard his wing. “Doctors say I’ll never see out of it again,” he sighed. “Between the manticore venom and the physical damage, the Queen herself can’t help me.”

“Oh sweet Chrysalis,” Bait swore. “Switch, I’m so sorry…”

“Heh…by the way your mom was acting, you’d think you were the one who got off worse.” The little smile faded as he pointed to Bait’s back. Sitting up ramrod straight, Bait reached a hoof over and ran it down his back. A long series of bandages and reformation goo met his touch, along with a tiny stab of pain that flared up at his shoulder blade, where the wing met chitin.

“Doctors say it’s gonna heal alright,” Switch said quietly. “The stinger just grazed you there, but when you came down again, it kinda jacked up your ear. That isn’t gonna heal okay. I’m…sorry.”

Bait’s ears perked at the little quiver in Switch’s voice, then quickly folded down. “It’s not your fault we were out there; I could’ve stopped you at any time.”

“No you couldn’t,” Switch shook his head, suddenly finding something interesting on the floor. “I was the one dangling a way into my inner circle in front of your face. Don’t lie and tell me you didn’t want it: I saw the look in your eyes when I invited you to that party, it’s how I knew I had you, it’s why I went ahead with that retarded test, ‘cause I knew you wouldn’t back out.”

Bait fell back in his bed with a huff. “It was still fucking stupid of me. I knew how dangerous those woods were, and I still let you lead me into them, and why? Because I wanted to join your circle of buddies? No offense, but I don’t think any circle of friends is worth risking your flank just to be one of them. I could’ve flown off at any time, so don’t go hogging all the blame to yourself.”

“Yeah…alright…” Switch acknowledged in a way that Bait knew meant he didn’t really believe the words even as they left his mouth, but instead of fighting on he filed it away as something to deal with when they were both a bit more healed up.

“Hey, that was one helluva hit you gave that thing though,” Bait added, grinning. “It pivoted all the way around on its head! I mean, shit!”

Switch chortled. “That was nothing, I’ve just always known how to use my size. You, though: those were some amazing reactions.”

“You learn a lot dodging punches from jocks,” Bait shrugged, then cringed.

“Yeah, I bet,” Switch shifted uncomfortably in his bed. “Also, earlier, that was some real quick thinking, distracting that crazy, near-sighted pony like that.”

“Hey, that was nothing too!” Bait’s grin widened. “I’ve always had weird bits of useless crap rattling around in my head, just glad it saved my flank this time around!”

“Shyeah,” Switch chortled again as he finally looked up, then rolled his eyes, or at least did the equivalent of an eye-roll for changelings. “Forgot about that.”

“Forgot about what?”

“You chipped a tooth,” he replied, motioning to his mouth. “You came down pretty hard on the riverbank after the beastie nailed ya. Took a nice chunk out of your fang.”

Sighing again, Bait reached up and ran his hoof around in his mouth. Sure enough, where he had expected a nice, sharp point to give him a tiny prick, he instead felt something more jagged and dull. His shoulders rose and fell. “Welp, just another scar to add to the collection, I guess.”

“They can fit you with a prosthetic, you know.”

“Nah, forget that. Besides, I think it looks kinda like a battle scar, you know?”

“Heh, naw, this is a battle scar!” Switch ran his hoof over the line again, and then cringed. “Too rough that time…”

“Idiot,” Bait shook his head.

“Still looks better than your little tooth, pussy,” Switch grinned, and somehow, Bait decided he liked Switch an awful lot. Helluva lot, in fact. “Aww man, good thing I’ve got you to talk with, it’s been so damn boring since my dad left for his shift.”

“Really? Didn’t…didn’t anyone else stop by to see you?” Bait asked.

At that, Switch snorted. “Whadda you think? I doubt Tyler even crawled out of bed when he heard I was in the hospital, might still be sleeping off that night for all I know. Either way, I think I’m done with those guys. My dad said he’d bend me over his knee and paddle my flank like I was a colt again if he ever saw me hanging out with them. Honestly…after all this shit, I think I kinda agree.”

Bait nodded. “That Tyler guy was a douche anyway.”

“I don’t think he was gonna let you in even if you’d come back with something from that pony’s store all by yourself.”

“I figured.”

“Yeah…” Switch trailed off, settling into his bed again, staring up at the glistening rock that made up the ceiling. “Thing is, between that and getting booted from the soccer team, looks like my social life just got a lot smaller.”

“Damn, they booted you!?” Bait swore, sitting up in his bed.

“After all the shit we did, I was lucky I didn’t get expelled from Infiltrator’s school,” Switch replied, running a hoof over his new scar with a forlorn sigh. “It’s kinda for the best, I wasn’t gonna be much good on the team now that my depth perception’s shot.”

Bait opened his mouth to say something generic and comforting, when something else entirely dawned on him. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, facing Switch with a grin. “Hey,” he asked, mindful of the IV tube running to his leg. “You ever hear of a club called ‘The Young Paranormal Investigators’?”

For an awful moment during the considering silence that followed, Bait was afraid the larger stallion would laugh in his face. He was certainly taking long enough to respond. For those awful few moments, Bait was ready to dismiss everything he thought he’d seen in Switch as just the product of an overstressed, but still hopeful, imagination. He really believed for those few awful seconds that perhaps some things were just not meant to be, and that things would go right back to the way they were, stitching together t-shirts he knew nopony would ever wear while a radio fizzed in the background, tuned to a news station for any trace or sign of extraterrestrials.

And then Switch returned the grin. “No I haven’t,” he replied. “But you know what? I think I might be interested.”