//------------------------------//
// Chapter Three: Laying The Groundwork 
// Story: The Cuckoo Child 
// by Nyarlathi 
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An unexpected but fascinating revelation he gained access to as he made his first forays into investigation was that apparently, since anyling could remember, hives had been adapting new generations using traits stolen from their prey. His own hive, he learned, had gleaned portions of earth pony and diamond dog affinity for ground and stone for their Builder caste, allowing the hive to be dug into the gorge with greater ease. That had potential. Already, his mind was whirling with ideas, but as a grub, there wasn’t much more he could do than plot, and try to bring Queen Sclerite into it. Not the most ideal situation, but considering that he had to adapt to living under her authority now, so he had to think about what would happen if he was discovered acting covertly by even one changeling. They were a hivemind society – one was all it would take, and said one wouldn’t even need to go anywhere in order to ‘tattle’ to the Queen. If he wanted to actually be able to conduct his business, and not have to deal with the stumbling blocks of active interference from well-meaning ‘older’ changelings, he had to make sure he had some level of approval, as irritating as that was.

His long-term plan of course involved regaining his lost power and the means to return, but he couldn’t tell her that. What he did tell her was that he had some project ideas for when he was able to act more freely, hoping that she would be willing to aid in preparation while he was indisposed. Obviously, the fact that he couldn’t even suggest that he was trying to give her orders made matters more difficult, but he had always been persistent. He had to give his approach a lot of rather more careful thought than he would usually dedicate to talking to someone else, but he was sure it would be worth the effort. Fortunately, while he was still not allowed to so much as visit the requisite equipment, she was willing to indulge him where raw materials were concerned – but only so long as it would present a clear advantage for the hive. Apparently, young Royals undertook some form of biomagical project anyway, as a form of rite of passage. He was in no way capable of making a proper start at this stage, but any groundwork he could wheedle from Sclerite was worth something, at least, even if he had to chew on his pride to get it.

What he requested wasn’t even all that out of the ordinary – genetic samples for the hive’s bank. The main difference was the targeting, thanks to the admittedly limited foreknowledge he was disguising as past recollections of certain pony lineages. To his frustration, they had no agents in Ponyville to collect the specific Apple genes he wanted, nor potentially the Belle line – he forgot if they lived there yet. However, as it turned out, most well-established hives had a presence among the hairdressers, spa staff and medical personnel of major settlements such as Canterlot and Cloudsdale. Citing that the Twilight line was prone to producing powerful magic users, he was able to convince Sclerite – eventually – that gathering samples from the family for potential adaptation would be advantageous. Likewise with a certain chromatic pegasus line for strong fliers, though he decided to leave the Shys out of it for now – he had no evidence yet about that Stare ability, and he saw no need to draw down on those without it.

It was, unfortunately, a waiting game. The undercover changelings couldn’t simply compel anypony to visit their infiltrated establishments right away, for all that they could influence who got which customer. He had also mentioned the Pie family for their tendency to turn out ponies who could rapidly chip away huge falling boulders, which he figured would line up with intended upgrades to the Builder caste – but nobuggy yet actually knew where to find them, and he had no idea where their rock farm was. What he really wanted was access to the pink one’s ludicrous and apparently chaotic magic, in the hopes it would aid him in freeing himself, but it seemed he’d have to wait for them to be discovered. At least the pink Princess was already a target, though from what he was told, it seemed alicorn biomagic was fiendishly difficult to make any sense of, much less get anything useful out of. If only he had Flug to decipher it for him, instead of very likely having to pound the relevant knowledge into his head from scratch. He liked science, but he’d never studied it. Actually, he’d never had much in the way of structured schooling, given that he pre-existed it somewhat. Instead, he’d mostly picked things up as he went along, over the centuries. Somehow, he just knew it would be an obnoxious endeavour to cram everything into his head, hivemind or not.

At least he had more things to occupy himself with while waiting to be able to do something about his plotting besides sitting on his plot – if a relatively maggoty behind could be called a plot anyway. Saying one’s first word was, it seemed, just as momentous an occasion among changelings as it was among Earth sapients, despite the milestone of one’s first clear hivemind broadcast preceding it. His clutchmates had been weaving true words in among the concepts of their broadcasts for a while as they’d all grown within the limits of their carapaces’ stretch capacity, something that had delighted the adult changelings who frequented the nest. These smiles of delight and attempts to get the grubs to mimic them returned in force when some of those words made it out into their audible babble. He had been expecting that, and thus didn’t startle when his chosen simple proclamation of “Hat!” saw him scooped up in eager hooves for praise and nuzzling, despite how profoundly pleasant strange it felt to receive this. The others, though, had no such expectations, and their stunned expressions and squeaks were hilarious. He blew raspberries at them and laughed, allowing himself to enjoy the moment.

Walking was getting easier as well, though he still wasn’t allowed out of the hatchery. He’d come to be quite familiar with the premises – and the numerous little hiding places dug out by generations of mischievous grubs. Now that he and the others of his nest could scuttle around, he wasted no time in marshalling them into sneaking little things into these hidey holes, tiny hoards of dropped objects. They weren’t ready for outright theft from adults, but Black Hat figured that teaching them to scavenge and hide objects would be useful training for them – and a boredom buster for him. The fact that they squeaked at him so adorably amusingly when they brought him something didn’t hurt either, though he’d have denied it. More than once, they managed to find something a caretaker dropped – not quite a prank, but mildly amusing anyway.

Once he deemed that they’d gathered enough, he urged them to converge around him, their eager faces shining with enthusiasm for whatever game he’d thought up for them. He let the suspense build for a moment, grinning at them with a gleam in his eye, before outlining his plan in hushed, intent tones. He was mostly using his mental voice, reinforcing the words with images and impressions, but he used as many spoken words as he could while enthralling his audience. Splitting them into teams, he urged each team to guard their hoards and send raiders to steal trinkets from the others while he watched. The team with the most trinkets at the end of the game, he declared, would be the winners.

It was, as expected, a total shambles. Some left their hoard totally unguarded in their charge for more treasure, while others defended to the exclusion of all else – it was utter chaos, and Black Hat cackled with abandon as he watched it unfurl. There did end up being a winning team, beaming at him so brightly as he proclaimed it, but he could see they had a long way to go. Well, perhaps he could take guiding them along that way as a hobby. Also predictably, there were some sore losers, hissing and nipping, but a caretaker stepped in to handle that before he could. All in all, he thought that had gone rather well, despite the confiscation of the trinkets that actually had owners.