Lyra was not relaxed. She stared at the two monsters before her. One of the creatures was bright and colorful, and the other was the same nasty black of the thing that had captured and bitten her. "You have got to be kidding? You let them put something inside me and then you let them in again?" She snapped her head around to the Royal Guard who stood to the side.
"These are the good guys." Flash Sentry waved a hoof at Sunset Shimmer and Scythe. "They helped defeat the bad… uh… changelings."
"Changelings? So why do they look so different?" Lyra studied Sunset, then Scythe.
"We are right here, and we both used to be ponies." Sunset stepped forward and instantly caught Lyra's full attention. "And we have both been in your shoes. What Chrysalis had done to you is unforgivable. You will change, and become a changeling yourself."
"You have got to be joking. And just how will I become a changeling?" Lyra glanced between the two creatures, and found their serious looks to be worrying. "You are joking, right?"
"We're not." Chirping his wings with a little sadness, Scythe kept her distance from Lyra. "The thing that crawled into you will start to turn you into a changeling—has started in fact—we can't stop it, but we can make the change as easy for you as we can."
Lyra backed up all the way to the corner of the room. "What do you mean you can't stop it? Isn't it your doing?!"
Sunset hated to see a pony so terrified, and immediately one idea came to her. "Lyra, cal—" A black, hole-filled hoof stopped her talking.
"Don't you dare give her a command. That was the one rule about this, and the reason I came here. If you tell her what to feel, what to think, you are no better than Chrysalis." Scythe stood with her back to Lyra, her little insectile wings spread to defend the infected unicorn. She waited until Sunset stopped trying to talk before pulling his hoof back. "What you need is explanations, not commands." She turned as he spoke, ending up looking right at Lyra.
"For some reason I trust her,"—Lyra gestured to Scythe—"more than you." She jabbed a hoof towards Sunset, but looked directly at Scythe. "What do you mean about orders?"
"Our larva drug their host, you, to make them more tractable and easily suggestible. If any of us gave you a command, you would follow it." Scythe looked at Sunset, and read her guilty expression. "She was going to tell you how to feel."
Lyra stared at her savior. "Yup, definitely like the dark, evil-looking bug pony. Okay, I might be scared witless, but I would rather that than feel something I'm not."
"I'm sorry." Sunset slumped her shoulders and lowered her head. "She brainwashed us for so long I just forget that the easy way is never the best way sometimes." Shock pulled Sunset's head back up, when a black foreleg reached over her back.
"That is why a pail has to keep together. Helping each other, supporting them, stopping them from doing something bad." Scythe welcomed the full hug Sunset pulled her into. "We might be changelings, but we are still ponies where it counts."
Sunset let a few tears roll down her cheek before she felt like letting go of Scythe. "I think it is good the new hive isn't all new changelings." She gestured to her own coloring. "We need some hard-headed bugs who still think like ponies."
"Hardest head in the hive, any hive." Scythe's spirits rose at finding Sunset so willing to accept a different viewpoint.
"Hey, that's cool and all, but what about me?" Lyra turned her attention from the two hugging changelings to Flash Sentry. "Can I just go?"
"Sorry, but my orders are from Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Flash nodded to Scythe and Sunset. "They are here to help look after you, but until you have everything under control, you can't leave."
Sunset and Scythe both turned on Flash with scowls. Sunset was the first to speak up. "Take that back. Take it back right now. Tell her she can come and go as she wishes."
"Yeah. What if there's a fire? She would not be able to leave the room!" Scythe glared at Flash.
"Wait, really?" Flash tried to look for some sign either changeling were joking. "That's messed up. Okay, uh… You can come and go as you please." He addressed Lyra with the last words. "Sorry if I messed up."
Intrigued, Lyra lifted a hoof to her chin. "So you are telling me that while he had ordered me not to leave, I wouldn't have been able to leave?" Both changelings nodded, and looked about to say something. "Hold on, I want to confirm this. Tell me… tell me to get better at magic!"
"I don't think this will work how you want it to." Sunset admired how adaptable Lyra seemed to be, switching from scared to interested. "If I told you that, you would probably end up wanting to research magic until the drug wore off."
"Oh." Undaunted, Lyra tilted her head to the side. "That wouldn't be so terrible, if I do have to spend some time here. What about a game instead. The floor is lava?"
Sunset giggled at the choice, but Scythe and Flash Sentry only held confusion. Sky was more ready to admit her confusion than Flash. "I don't get it? What is that?"
"Right, it's a bit regional, and it's not like we got to play in the hive much. You stand on something, and pretend the floor is made of lava. So you have to jump from furniture to furniture, trying to avoid touching the floor. Whoever touches the floor loses."Having explained the rules of the foals' game, Sunset jumped up onto a couch. "Lyra, you can't lay a hoof on the floor."
Shocking herself at how sudden her reaction was, Lyra jumped up and landed on the chair she had been sitting on. "Whoa…" She looked around, and eventually spotted a table she thought she could get to. Panic set in, just as she started to jump, but it was the kind of panic she got when doing something private in public. Leaping, she gave a bark of laughter, but it turned to a gasp as she came up short.
Sunset watched Lyra hit the ground and start riotously laughing. It took a moment to work out what had happened, but when she realized the other unicorn had carefully rolled to her back, even Sunset started to giggle.
"I don't get it." Flash waved a hoof at the hilariously laughing unicorn and changeling. "What is so funny?"
Scythe had never seen anypony find the drug-compulsion funny before, and it startled her to her core that it could actually make for a game. "I think it is because she was commanded not to lay a hoof on the floor."
"Right. But she… Oh!" Chuckling, Flash pointed at Lyra's waving hooves. "And of course that means she can lay on her back. You look surprised. This isn't normally the point where a pony is laughing and happy, is it?"
"This would be the moment where we would tell a pony not to talk, tell them to follow, and demand their obedience. Where we destroy their ability to fight back, and begin shaping them into following commands in the hive. Conformity, loyalty, and fear." Scythe gave Flash a pointed look. "I fear that Queen Thorax will fall to the same methods, which is why I am not going to follow her too closely."
"You can put your hooves on the floor again." Sunset jumped off the couch, aborting the silly game. Reaching out with her green magic, she helped Lyra get up, though she was still giggling.
"So all this fwoosh-changeing, I will be able to do that?" Lyra used her own magic to probe at the force lifting her. The changeling magic felt a little "oily" to her unicorn magic. She tried to poke it further, but Sunset cut it off.
Scythe left Lyra and Sunset to talk, and focused on talking with Flash. "I want to show changelings that they can be free. That they don't have to follow a queen around."
"What I don't get is why all the others turned into something new, but you didn't?" Flash watched as Lyra and Sunset chatted away.
"I didn't want it. It means I don't get all that juicy love that Shining and Princess Cadance put out, but out of all the drones in Ponyville, I was the only one who could think straight when it happened. I flew up here to see if we had lost. The others have spent all their time with a queen, letting their minds be influenced, but I spent the last few weeks avoiding one. If someling had a chance of finding out we had lost, and getting away to warn the rest, it was me."
"So all the rest fed, and you didn't, and that made you stay the same?" Able to see Scythe's motives clearly, Flash felt camaraderie with the dark changeling.
Scythe chuckled. "Yeah. The only dark changeling left, except for those back at the hive, and Queen Chrysalis."
"That might make things hard for you. If you ever need help… I'm a Guard, but I think I am also a friend. After all, I don't follow any of the queens either." Flash spread a wing over Scythe's back. Suddenly a little unsure, he looked across at the changeling, and for the first time wondered what gender she was.
"I remember having friends… before I was foalnapped." Leaning into the hug, Scythe felt a rush of happiness in Flash, one that mirrored her own. "M-May I…" Her language fell back to the filly she remembered being. "May I feed from you?"
Flash raised an eyebrow. "Does it hurt? Will it stop me from doing my duty?"
"No." Scythe couldn't stop from blushing, and she didn't know why.
"Then go ahead, you need the food." As soon as Flash agreed, he felt what he assumed an apple felt like when being bitten. True to her word, Scythe's bite didn't hurt him, but he definitely felt her take a chunk of something. "Whoa…"
"Sorry! I was really hungry. More hungry than I thought." Scythe shapechanged easily with the rush of power, and caught Flash Sentry with her own wings. Now a pegasus every bit as big as the stallion, she propped him up while he recovered. "I must remember that Flash Sentry is a light-weight."
"Am not…" Flash's legs felt a little wobbly still, and he found himself shaking his head a few times to clear an odd fog around it. "Just… just resting. Guards have to rest, or they become tired! And I should really shut up now, I think I am rambling about nothing and everything and how pretty you are…"
Scythe blinked at the compliment. She could see in Flash's eyes that not only did he mean the words, but he was embarrassed about having said them. "For a pony, you are quite… handsome."
Lyra stared at Flash and Scythe. "Are those two—"
"Yup." Sunset smiled as wide as her namesake. She could feel the first hints of affection bubbling off Flash, and could see by Scythe's face that it was reciprocated. "Okay!" Making her voice loud, Sunset startled Flash and Scythe, but it was for the good of everyone. "I'll look after Lyra first. You can both go and get some sleep."
Scythe helped support Flash, but could feel him regaining his composure after the feeding. "O-Okay. I don't have a room to stay in—"
"I have an officer's quarters!" As soon as Flash said it, he knew it was probably overstepping. "Err, just for sleeping, of course. No hanky panky…"
"Sleep is exactly what I need now." Heading out the door, Scythe helped Flash along.
The moment the door closed, Lyra and Sunset broke into giggles of girlish joy.