//------------------------------//
// Friendly Fire 
// Story: Changing Ways 
// by Comma Typer 
//------------------------------//

Swift River continued sweeping the stone floor. It was free from trash, garbage, or rubble. The dust was reduced to short supply and the dirt was practically gone, but Swift continued his task of sweeping the floor with his trusty broom, its fweep-fweep giving life to an otherwise dull room.
He not only swept the floor but the cabinets and drawers as well. Sure, most of them had been ransacked, with nothing but scraps of paper and some photographs remaining, but that only inspired him to keep sweeping, now poking his broom inside a locker, now cleaning the top of a drawer and freeing it from dust. Flapping his wings and hovering close to the top, he swept the walls and the ceiling, adding some cleaning agent there and wiping the ceiling with a rag for good measure.
He flew down to sweep the rest that was there. A simple table, its chairs, the light bulbs and their lamp coverings, the maps and illustrations tacked on to the wall—nothing was spared from the overarching sweep of this broom.
However, despite his grand ambition to sweep everything he saw, he could not gather up the strength or the will to sweep Thorax with his broom.
Thorax was just standing there, holding out a clipboard and writing down a few words and numbers on it, holding the pencil by the eraser with his mouth.
“Do you have anything good to say about Queen Chrysalis?” Thorax asked out of the blue.
Swift stopped his great sweeping, holding the broom in mid-air. “Nothing.”
Thorax wrote the word “Nothing” down.
Swift sighed, bending his head back in a groan after seeing it on paper. “Was that really necessary?”
Thorax took out his pencil and clipped it to his board. “The queen must know everything. Not a single thought should go out of her sight.”
Swift snorted. He proceeded to sweep the floor another time. “As if she can hold all our thoughts and grievances in that tiny little head of hers.”
Thorax looked and felt queasy. “You better be careful with what you say, Swift River. I can write that down right now and I'll report you to Chrysalis herself.”
“Please!” Swift said, holding both of his forehooves up. “She probably gets ponies like me all the time. I don’t think I’ll be worth a second in her timetable.”
“You are worth one second,” Thorax countered, lowering his clipboard to get a good look of his frustrated slave. “If we get too many even for her to handle, she could always get some of her commanders to fill in for her.”
Swift bobbed his head left to right, mouthing jeers and insults with his back turned to the changeling.
Thorax took up his pencil and wrote down again. “’Continues to show a rebel attitude towards you, your Majesty.’”
Swift rotated his shoulders, throwing his broom to the table. “I’m done cleaning this room. I've done it too many times." He raised his hooves to the air. "What else do I have to do?”
Thorax lifted a few sheets of paper from his clipboard, peered in to see what the text read. “Apparently, you’re going to help with the lighthouse.”
Swift looked at his back, rubbed his aching back. “My poor body!” He turned to Thorax. “How long will I have to stay there?”
Thorax read it again. “Twelve hours.”
Swift replied by slamming his own head on the table.
“And you’ll do the same thing for the rest of the month. You better eat your instant oatmeal up.”



At the top of a McIntosh Hill, one tall framework had been set up. Wooden beams reached to the sky as few changelings oversaw the work of many ponies, most of them hauling and laying bricks for the structure against the harsh climate: the snow on the hooves, the gale on the coat, the bricks on the muscles. Over there, several more changelings were hard at work on several huge cooking pans and a massive lantern.
Swift felt the weight of the bricks on his back. Although they were not difficult to balance, what was draining to him was how arduous it all was. He looked at the ponies behind him, and he saw a great line of brick-carrying ponies, all silent as they walked towards the unfinished building. He looked ahead of him and saw many ponies with their trowels and their buckets of mortar, building the structure brick by heavy brick.
He looked to the side and saw several more changelings who were busy shouting at a mare; that mare was frantically holding a blueprint.
“You have to tell us how the schematics work!” shouted the head changeling at her, swinging his beret at the mare. “Or else!”
She shook her head fast and defiant. “I’m not going to give you the secrets of the lighthouse! Never!”
“Maybe you will after some more...coercion,” said another changeling, this one with a feminine voice. She let loose her tongue and extracted another pink river of love out of the mare.
The mare struggled to keep her stance, her eyes fluttering.
“Now will you tell us?” this changeling said, placing a firm hold on her head, slowly forcing the pony down to her knees.
She grinded her teeth. “Never!”
“It’s just a lighthouse!” yelled the head changeling in a somewhat reassuring tone. “You’ll not get hurt anymore if you just give up the information we need!”
The mare’s eyes fluttered more. Her breathing slowed. “No!”
“You are a stubborn pony, don’t you know that?” said the other changeling.
The head changeling took a cautious step forward. “Delilah, please be careful!”
Delilah hissed at him.
The head changeling proceeded to raise his forehooves up in surrender. “OK, OK! You go and do...whatever you want. I’ll just stand here...see if you can do it….”
Delilah turned back to the mare and grinned, her fangs shining under the midday sun. “Looks like you’ll be in for big trouble!”
The mare gulped.
Delilah brought in yet another river of love from the mare. The other changelings watched; some of them opened their mouths and fed from her, too, leaving the pony wearied and tired.
When it was all done, the mare almost collapsed to the floor.
Delilah looked straight to her eyes, bending in to get a good look. “What about now? Are you willing?”
The mare shook her head, though she groaned, struggling just to do that. “The secret will stay with me! You can learn it from somepony else, but not me!”
Delilah smirked. “And here, I thought you would finally obey.”
The mare opened her mouth in a big gasp.
Delilah lashed her tongue out and took in the mare's love.
The only thing the pony could do was moan, eke out a “No!” as it was taken from her.
Swift looked away, back to the incomplete lighthouse before him.
The sky was clear and blue. Some changelings flew around in it.



Swift sat down on the bench, his face covered by a sullied mane. He heard all the other ponies sleeping and snoring back in the bed area with those rows of hay lumps that could pass for beds.
Thorax sat down next to him. He turned to the rest of the room, saw the changeling guards over there with their crude helmets and their sharp spears, defeating boredom by exchanging quips and questions.
“What’s wrong?” asked Thorax in a whisper. “Is there anything I could do to help you?”
Swift merely looked ahead. “If you could help me get out of here, then yes.”
Thorax shook his head. “You know I can’t help you with that. Even if I tried, they’ll imprison me.”
“Then you’re selfish,” Swift said.
Thorax recoiled. “Selfish? I’m not selfish! I do everything I can to help the hive!”
“Then the whole hive is selfish,” Swift said, lightly hitting his knee. “You didn’t ask me if I was up to fighting you or anything like that.”
Thorax did all he could to not laugh at that. “It doesn’t work that way.”
Swift snarled. “Then you’re all dishonorable! Can’t even have the patience to wait for the enemy to prepare himself.”
“We’re not here to get honor,” Thorax said. “We’re here to win, and that means having to do whatever it takes to get there.”
“Huh?”
“Exactly,” Thorax went on. “It may be a pony custom to wait for your opponent to prepare, but we changelings…we don’t have that. We have our queen, our broodmates, and…you.”
Swift gulped. “I-Is this what I think it is?”
Thorax nodded. “This may sound very sudden, but...I want you to rise up the ranks in our hive.”
Swift made a sneering smile. “Are you serious?”
Thorax nodded again, wearing an honest smile back. “Yes, I’m serious. I think it’s something you said that made me think about it...that if you can’t run away from us, you might as well make the best out of your time here.”
“And if I live out the rest of my life here?” Swift asked pointedly.
Thorax mellowed his smile. “You’ll die a respected pony.”
“I’ll die a traitor to my fellow Equestrians,” Swift said, holding up a bruised wing. “Don’t want to leave that kind of legacy.”
Thorax raised his head, about to say something.
Swift held up a hoof. “Nothing you’ll offer me will make me change my mind.”
“But you’ll stay here, a miserable pony,” Thorax said, raising his voice.
Swift swished the hay around with his swaying hindhooves. “I did my part for Equestria. It’s best I stop there and not do anything to undo it.”
Thorax kept his face as neutral as possible.
“I’d rather die a hero,” Swift said, “then live on as a villain.” With hung head: “Kill me. It’s better you kill me than let me be tempted to betray my home, the...the ponies who trusted in me.”
Thorax raised a suspicious brow. “Then we won’t kill you.”
Swift sighed. “Should’ve kept quiet.”
Thorax patted him on the head. “Yeah, you should’ve.”
The snores continued and the changelings around those sleeping ponies left them alone to dream in peace.
Thorax stood up. “What about you sleep on it?”
Swift cast a glance on him.
Thorax maintained a calm facade. “Almost impossible to ask you, but...I gave it a shot.”
He opened his wings and buzzed his way out of the room through the hole in the wall.
Swift looked at the only hay bed still unoccupied.
He felt the guards watching him with those unmoving eyes, those sharp blades on their spears.



“Roll!”
And Pharynx threw down his stone-carved die which bounced around on the wooden table.
A small crowd of changelings had gathered around the table, watching a game of Cockatrice in action. The seven players had their cards and their irregularly-shaped gridboard filled with squares marked with various colors and names.
In other parts of the room, changelings were enjoying their night. Some played other kinds of games like checkers or charades—here, a changeling tried his best to act out the phrase “vinyl player”, although the guesses from the other side ranged from “derby hat” to “dry ice” which solicited the actor to smack himself on the face with a shameful hoof.
That only helped bring the guesses farther away from the correct answer.
Other activities included changelings eating and drinking their insect-filled celebration feast, drawing up individual plans for the next pony settlement, and feeding from the chained ponies that happened to be there.
The die finally settled on a one.
Everyone buzzed and hissed at that as Pharynx moved his game piece—which was a coin painted purple—sideways one square and into a plaid section of the board.
“I think it’s Ptery with the cannon in the kitchen,” he coolly suggested.
Delilah, sitting beside him, showed one of her cards to him.
Pharynx smiled and pointed to his head. “Keep it in mind, keep it in mind!” Then, he turned to his brother on his right and threw the die at his face.
“Ow!”
“Get used to it!” Pharynx said as the crowd went back to talking among themselves. He turned round and shouted at everyone else: “Hey! This is supposed to be a quiet game! No cheating!”
Everyone quieted down, gesturing to themselves and zipping their lips.
Thorax took the die, placed a rock on his face-down cards. He rolled it, landed a three. His blue token was moved inside the golden room on the board.
“I say it’s Fritill with the box of matches in the daytime observatory.”
On his right, Cornicle showed him a card.
Thorax took out his notepad and checked something off the list.
“We’re getting nowhere,” a player from across the table complained with hunched shoulders.
Pharynx hissed at her. “What are you saying? The more the merrier! By the end of the night, we’ll be playing with ten players!”
“But this game only supports eight,” Delilah said.
“Who said it can only support eight?!”
“The box?”
Delilah brought up the box which showed a cockatrice being attacked by eight ponies in the middle of a forest at night. At the top left of the box was a note saying: “Fun for up to 8 friends!”
“Then we’ll order the ponies to make the board bigger,” Pharynx said.
A knock on the door.
Pharynx opened his wings and flew to it. “Who is it?! We’re busy!”
“Um...i-it’s Swift River. I-I need to talk to Thorax.”
Thorax’s ears went up at that. “Why now? Isn’t it past midnight?”
“I...I thought about what you’ve said.”
The other changelings looked at him.
Thorax looked away from the door. “Just wait there. I’ll be there in a minute.”



In the narrow hallway of stones and damp smells, by the light of several torches, Swift and Thorax sat down on the gravel floor, their heads and backs on the rough rock wall. Past the door, they could hear die rolling and shouts coming out, with arguments and accusations flying around.
“You want to what?” Thorax yelped.
Swift nodded. “You think it’s a trick, a plan to leave this place, but what can I do?” He raised his forehooves to the air, only to let it fall down. “I’ll do my best to be obedient. Give me a good job, give me some good work. Perks, promotions, payments—everything you can offer.”
“So you’ll use them to escape with other ponies?” Thorax asked.
Swift hesitated. “No...not that way….”
Thorax sighed. “I know you want to escape. No sane pony would want to stay here, but that’s who we are. I’m already suspicious now you want to serve us willingly all of a sudden.”
“I don’t want to drag out the rest of my life,” Swift said right after.
Thorax looked at him. He made a quick smile but soon dismissed it.
Pharynx shouted from inside, blaming Cornicle for cheating by moving his token a square too many.
“Forget what I said about honor,” said Thorax. “We may have no value for honor between you and us, but...what about your value for honor? Didn’t you say something about legacies and how ponies would see you if you worked hard for us?”
“I’ll keep it a secret,” Swift said. “Besides, if they figure out, they can chalk it up to brainwashing or force. Not that hard, right?”
Thorax could not help but smile a little. “A pony becoming a liar...just like one of us. It’s...it’s…”



Thorax was sleeping in his own bedroom which contained a single lit candle and a mattress for a bed. In this small room, Thorax lay face up, snoring and showing his fangs to the ceiling.
In the corridor outside, Pharynx passed by. He stopped, took a look at Thorax, and smiled. “You did a good job, brother.”
He trotted on, not knowing the tears that drenched Thorax’s cheeks.