//------------------------------//
// Chunk of Change 
// Story: A Volunteer at the Bureau 
// by Comma Typer 
//------------------------------//

“I c-can’t change...I-I’m s-s-stuck....”
“Sam?”
“I-I...I d-don’t want to kill a-anyone….” Squeezed the pillow, as if consolation could be found there. “I-I d-d-don’t want to kill y-you...I don’t want to be a-alone...I don’t w-wanna die….”
“Sam?”
“They’re going to th-throw me out, g-gonna burn me for the hideous bug I am….” Chewed on the pillow, puncturing it in his woes. “Th-They’re gonna—”
“Sam!”
And Sam shot his changeling head up from his pillow, to see Crowhop there. He spat out some feathers he’d sucked in; they tasted bad and unfulfilling.
Unlike the love he so desperately needed.
“I know this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you,” she said, voice trembling as she looked at the door once more. Then, with a firmer voice, steeling her shoulders straight, swallowing a gulp: “B-But, it’s not just you—”
“What do you mean it’s not just me?!” he yelled, lashing out at her with a pointed hoof made all the scarier with its disgusting holeness. “How am I supposed to live?! W-Without hurting anyone?! N-No one’s going to—”
“Get it together, Sam!” she shouted, now the one rocking him back and forth with her hooves, putting him in his place.
Everything in him quaked, all hooves retracted as he embarrassingly bared his protruding fangs. Nothing was right, nothing was right, nothing was ri—
“We’re in the middle of an emergency,” Crowhop explained as calmly as she could, gesturing towards the door and the lights. “It’s not just the changelings who got in. A couple freaks almost got in.” Eyes scampering, scanning the scene, checking for the tenth time that nothing was wrong in this backup bedroom. “Security and LAPD’s doing their best, but once a bullet goes out or they break the doors...” looked to the floor in waxing terror, “we’re done for.”
Sam could only rub his forehead at that, taking in the glut of news—hit his horn, but all he then said was, “And what can I do?!” while stretching out both of his new dead forehooves at her. “I don’t know a lick of horse movement! I-I don’t even know how to crawl out of bed!”
He got his answer by being thrown out of bed and onto the floor with a thud! Pain surged through his new veins, feeling faint as that hunger gnawed on him, as his mind blanked out on what to do on the floor.
Crowhop picked him up, using her magic and her hoof to get him back on his four legs.
“W-Woah!” and Sam hobbled and wobbled a bit, unused to his four leg stance. He felt the urge to hold out a hand or even just a spare hoof, but he felt his legs lock. Lifting just one hoof felt like an invitation to fall again.
“You know how to crawl?” she asked, patting him on the head. “Now, multiply the speed by three and that’s how you walk.” Glanced at his insectoid wings. “Don’t ask me how to fly, though.”
He felt the pressure of no time, so he winged it—the walking part, not the flying part. Remembering the shows he’d watched before of military training, he just moved: right forehoof, left hindhoof, left forehoof, right hindhoof, rinse and repea—
“We need you to change into something,” she said, not bothering to congratulate him on equine trotting. “You have to...to feel your shapeshifting senses or whatever you call—”
“I don’t know how to do that!” he howled, flailing one hoof in the air and almost slapping her face with it. “I read the manual, but I wasn’t expecting to actually be a cha—”
“Sam!” yelled Ocean as he opened the door, his head bursting through the gap. “Are you alright?!”
“Yah!” and Sam glowed and turned into a carbon copy of Ocean Canoe.
Ocean’s response to this was, “Yah! Changeling!” before jumping back to the wall.
Crowhop, unable to check herself, also joined in the community screaming: “Yah! Sam, did you just—”
“What did I just…?” and Sam stopped, noticing his voice sounded just like Ocean’s. He looked at his hooves, now whole and a shade of blue. “Agh! I just did it?!”
“Did what?!” Ocean yelled, then examined him from head to hoof. “Oh! You did it! You’ve accomplished shapeshifting!”
“That’s not an accomplishment!” Sam screamed, running his Ocean voice dry. “What’s good a-about being able...being able to disguise as this or that or you?!”
“Will you stop?!” Crowhop yelled.
And both Ocean Canoes looked at her in surprise.
The real Ocean then put a hoof on Sam’s shoulder, feeling queasy on having to really talk to himself. “Sam, I want you to listen to me.”
Noticed the intense trembling going through Sam’s whole body, legs beginning to buckle.
“Calm down. Breathe.”
A few seconds elapsed.
Then, Sam stopped.
Breathed in.
Closed his eyes.
Breathed out.
“There,” Ocean said, content that he’d done step one of not turning Sam into a raging monster. “Feel better?”
“No!” and yelled at him again, glowing back to his changeling self. Voice back to his own: “How could that possibly make me feel better?! I’m still a love-eater! I’m still a parasite!”
And Ocean’s ears flayed. “Well, uh—”
Door swung open with a bang!, cracking the wall and causing Crowhop to shriek.
A flustered Key Note stood by the door, panting as his coat drenched with sweat. A scar had been dealt to him right beneath his eye. “Sorry to barge in, but I’ve heard that—what?!” and jumped in fear at Sam’s brand-new him. “It’s all real?!”
Crowhop shook her head up and down, slowly backing away from her old intern. “Y-Yes, K-Key. I-It’s true!”
Ocean’s solemn eyes-closed nod merely confirmed it for the dismayed Note.
He blinked, rubbed his eyes, then blinked again, at first unbelieving the gruesome figure with such an ordinary name to grace it. “S-S-Sam?! Th-That can’t possibly be you!”
“Of course, it can’t!” Sam shouted, close to pleading as he balled up his forehooves into holey fists. “But, it is me, and I-I hate it!”
Note hid a fleeting smile behind a pitying hoof, looking behind him for any danger or obstacle blocking his exit path. Then, he beckoned with his hoof. “Come with me! You can help clear the air outside!”
“Why m—”
And Note snatched the changeling onto his back right before galloping out the room and into the corridor. The cries of Crowhop and Ocean to stop failed to do their job.
Sam, too, failed at his job to stop him via screaming at the top of his lungs. His screaming was warranted, though; suffering the inability to do anything sensible with his new senses and his new body now. He could only feel more love from nearby creatures, and there was a lot of them waiting for this love-hungry changeling on the street.
As he heard more screaming and doors busting open, yelps of “Changeling!” hurtled his way, as the buzzes of others like him came to his ears.
He felt the love of so many outside, felt it more, felt it at higher—no, worse levels.
It scared him.



After what seemed like full minutes of looking up at lights and blank ceilings, Sam heard it clearer, heard it unhindered: the crowd’s rowdy racket.
A woosh, and he was outside, the hot and dangerous outside with the noise all the noisier. He didn’t have to open his eyes to feel how close those hands and hooves were to touching him, to harming him, not to mention he felt as if blades and crosshairs were targeted on him.
As if a gun was pointed at his head.
He didn’t want to open his eyes yet.
“Behold!” he heard Note cry out in his deep, commanding voice. He managed to silence a few voices, but that didn’t matter when everyone else’s numbered to the hundreds.
Still, he charged on: “They blame us for all their mishaps! When things go wrong for them, they don’t own up to their mistakes! Yet, as you should know, it’s all a smoke screen to throw you off!” A pause. “I won’t bore you with far-out examples of humanity burning itself with no regard to its own planet or its own kind! No! I have for you not an example, but the real thing!”
And dropped the changeling on the ground.
Sam grumbled, desiring to give this careless pony a piece of his mind. However, he refused. If he missed, a pony punch to the face wouldn’t cure his compounded troubles.
He didn’t want to open his eyes yet. Shame and scandal fell upon him like a waterfall, turning into a rising sea of disgrace. Overly merciful statements, curious questions of his fate, jeering insults about his so-called punishment: he heard all of these from the riot, from the crowd of cacophony directed to him.
“This is—no, was an innocent Sam Henry,” Note continued, introducing the man—no, the changeling himself above the disjointed noise. “Sam willingly volunteered not to harm you, but to help you survive!” Shaking his head, condescendingly looking down on his suspected Front members in the audience, “But, what did his kind give him in return for his help? This!” and gasps could be heard from the crowd even though they should’ve done so upon seeing Sam’s form. “They’ve turned him into a changeling, and it’s not just like he could snap and become one of the better changelings!” Cackling, “They wanted to prove their point through any means necessary, and if it means imposing evil changeling potions on all of you....don’t fall for the lies they spit out!”
“You’re the one spitting lies!” screeched a woman.
A familiar voice.
Sam opened his eyes, found himself looking at the sky.
A mass of many, talking and shouting and demonstrating, evoking mad drivers to toot their horn at them for causing the traffic.
The boulevard had become even more crowded in the time he’d been inside. Humans, ponies, and other Equestrians—but mostly humans and ponies—were protesting with each other and against each other. Arguments and spats had already risen; here’s a pegasus and a man fencing with their pickets, the one unwilling to give ground (or sky) to the other. The sight of gun and impromptu melee weapons like baseball bats only made him dread more; such was the state of this fragile, tenuous “peaceful protest”.
What grabbed his attention was the woman who’d called Key Note a liar.
Or, rather the pony who’d called him a liar.
Spaghetti Tree continued her violent tirade as she raised a picket sign saying, NO TO PER TYRANNY! NO TO BUREAU TYRANNY! HUMANITY HAS ALWAYS FOUND A WAY!
She was hovering beside a nervous Arthur, sheepishly holding up his own HLF picket sign, armed with a holstered pistol. The man was staring at Sam, jaw dropped since he didn’t know what to say, what to think of this changeling.
Amongst the commotion, Arthur mouthed a silent “Sorry” at him. Then, in shame, he turned his eyes elsewhere.
”Burn him!” Sam heard next. He found the source of the order: a cap-wearing man with a bulletproof vest. He was cowering under an extra vest like it. “He’s going to turn us all into cocoons!”
Wasn’t sure if he was pointing at him or the pony beside him, but it’d petrified the changeling. Hallucinations or not, there rose a million other shouts like his, and his mind turned to grim fates: the crowd’s noise became pandemonium to burn him, to stamp out this evil bug from this world, to save everyone and life as they knew it.
Wait, was that the same whisper from—
And, before he could grasp what’s happening, Sam saw most everyone tumbled as various humans started punching each other, taking down others’ picket signs, squaring up for melee combat with whatever was at hand. Little comic relief was discovered when a bulky bodybuilder resorted to using his wallet as his weapon of choice against someone who’d brought a rake.
Sam took a step back from this unraveling chaos. He didn’t know how he stepped back with his bizarre hooves; maybe it was changeling instincts kicking in. That didn’t matter, though, since everyone was screaming at everyone else, everyone moving around without any vicious collision. Not yet.
Spaghetti was still ranting at Key Note despite his ignorance of her. Arthur tugged at her wing to tell her to stop, but she instead slapped him on the head with her feathers.
The police were drawing near, riot shields acting like closing walls.
“Did you hear that?” Note asked, turning his head aside to the frightened changeling. That eerie calm in his voice, that placid smirk that spoke of unexplained confidence. “That’s the sound of their death.”
“D-Death?” Sam stuttered.
Then, the connections sparked: the mysterious whispers, how they seemed to come from nowhere, how someone always flared up right after he heard them.
The microphone cutie mark on Note’s flank.
Sam turned back to that uncanny smirk. With a shivering hoof, “A-A-Are you the whisperer?”
And he noticed something odd. The only ones fighting were humans. Not a single Equestrian to be found strangling one another; on the contrary, they either backed away to relative safety or were doing their best to split up the combatants before a hit could be registered and the police come barreling as the last resort.
Sam whirled his head back at Note who was smirking.
“Such a shame you had to be this way,” he said, neither confirming nor denying Sam’s allegation. Note lifted a tempting hoof instead. “If you come with us, however...we’ll always have your back, helping you serve your part.”
Serving his part?
I’m merely serving my part.
That thought. That saying. He’d heard it before.
Looked at Arthur, close to the crowd’s amorphous boundary on the sidewalk, his pony companion now desperately begging her fellow Front members to stop hurting themselves.
Arthur returned the look, then swiftly changed sights to Note overseeing the chaos before him. Arthur’s face of surprise slowly darkened as he put his hand on his gun, about to drop his picket sign.
Sam gulped, turning back to Note. The changeling knew anger would cloud a shooter’s judgment when it came to aiming, but he wasn’t absolutely sure Note knew that.
Still, he had one more question to ask the pony: “Y-You’re part of the Rebirth, a-aren’t you?”
Note snickered, his chuckle a deep growl as he trotted to the flower box. “OK, Sam. Ya’ got me.”
Sam glanced at Arthur. His grip on the pistol tightened.
“So what if everyone knows at this point?” Note asked, eyes still on Sam as his hoof rummaged beyond the bushes, making leaves and branches rustle. “This will be on national...international TV. No use in hiding now.”
Sam was in no mood for premature gloating and monologue. He glanced at Arthur again.
He was mumbling something, fingers trembling on the pistol’s grip as he surveyed Key Note from afar.
“I’m sorry I had to use you for illustration,” Note said, swinging a hoof in quick apology. “In fact, I’d been thinking of championing you before several would-be peers before today, but I thought it imprudent at the time. Now, though....”
The rummaging hoof stopped.
“Put. The. Hoof. Down.”
Key Note raised his head to see the one who spoke those words: Arthur, walking his way to the pony with a gun aimed at him. Whispers and whimpering shouts arose, as everyone withdrew from the gunman. Some cheered him on, others booed him off, but the many trembled and did some rubbernecking; they were already devising escape plans.
Officers were slowly moving in. There was more talking through their transceivers, scanning the area. Police dogs boomed with their barks, although that did nothing to dissuade Arthur to put his hand down.
Hugging the flower box was Sam, hoping it’d provide him any pretense of protection, frightened that discord would reach its tipping point.
Undeterred by all these factors, Note faced Arthur’s pistol head on. He calmly, quietly said one word:
“Psych.”
Ftb!
“Agh!”
And Arthur buckled to the ground, clutched his arm. Pulled the syringe out of his elbow.
A pony symbol on it.
Screaming everywhere, flooding everyone’s ears as a stampede followed, hundreds attempting to get out of here. Even running away from each other, even when those who’d prepared themselves with weapons were just as scared as their unarmed fellows.
Sam was terrified, backing away from Note as he took out a prototype of sorts from the flower box: a syringe gun, hidden deep in the soil before. It had plenty more syringes to go in its transparent magazine.
Bang!
Both Sam and Note ducked, hiding behind the flower box. A whiff! and a spear scraped it, sending bits of ceramic flying.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here again!”
Sam turned to Arthur, lying on the ground with his pistol now out of reach, with his mouth wide open from what he’d just said. Eyes wet, cheeks red, his worse fears only seconds from being realized.
“I should’ve talked you away from it!” he yelled, going coarse as he used up all his breath. “I was too kind on you! I shouldn’t have let my guard down!”
An arrogant smile flickered on Note’s face, turning his head up to look snooty. “Thank you for your services, then, dear human.”
As Arthur gritted his teeth, kicking the air as he lay on the ground, grunting as hard as he could to stop—
A glow overcame him.
Note laughed, not needing to look at that new pony as he instead turned to Sam, more screaming and loud noises on the street notwithstanding. “Well then, that’s taken care of. Now, what about we go inside the bureau and find cover while my friends get their own guns—uh, Sam?”
Saw Sam’s blank bug eyes snap open. The changeling licked his chapped lips with his forked tongue, displaying his deadly fangs.
“S-S-Sam?”
Sam shook his head violently. His stomach rumbled, starvation beginning to gnaw once more on him: the love of so many drifted through the air, emanating from so much food trying to get out of the riot they’d created. For now, however, the love of this one particular, peculiar, pernicious pony was his main dish, his only dish sitting before him.
Note felt something slipping away.
He looked down at his chest.
Saw a pink, ethereal stream floating out of his body.
His eyes widened, the love being sucked out of him. “No! You can’t be!”, trying to scoop his own floating tangible love back, but it strayed from his hooves.
Into Sam’s open mouth.
“Sam!” he yelled, accent becoming quite hoarse as he reached out to the feeding changeling, perceiving his strength being drained as well—legs beginning to crumble. “What’re you doing?!”
Then, Sam put in an evil chuckle, drinking his victim’s emotions now empowering his changeling self. The taste of love, that delicious and delectable love which made him lap at the air for more—he wanted more.
Key Note squawked one more cry before he lunged at him.
Was stopped mid-air by a holey hoof.
Fell to the ground, all parts of his body now burning in agony and pangs as he clung on to whatever energy he still had.
“No! No, no!” he yelled, then said, then muttered in a deflated, defeated snarl. Writhed on the ground as huge swaths of love streams poured into Sam’s throat.
And then, he stopped.
Note’s eyes had shrunken, his hooves had become shaky.
Alive and conscious. Unresponsive, lying on the sidewalk. Could he sense what was going on around him?
Sam didn’t know.
But he felt something else.
It was a strange feeling, to be powered by the love he’d stolen from someone else. He could ascertain all who it’d really belonged to: his PER comrades, his other friends in the city, a sickening goal of ponifying everyone. These turned into flavors, flavors his tongue translated into something more than palatable.
It tasted good. Dangerously good. Sinfully good.
Then, he sniffed the air. The hint for more love was up there. He followed the scent, eyes resting upon the fleeing crowd to steal all of their love and—
He shook his head, shook himself out of that trance. Rubbed his head as his vision came to once again. “What just…?”
Looked at a swooning Key Note lying before him.
“Aah!” and jumped to the bureau doors, holding on to the handle with one hoof wrapped around it. “D-Did I...did I do that? D-Did I just...?”
And he looked up.
Almost everyone was trying to get out of the riot zone, with the police helping the escapees get out in orderly single files, their weapons and shields ensuring no one would even dare pull out their own guns or baseball bats. Those who’d remained were already cleaning up the mess, securing the perimeter with verbal directions all over.
While they picked up the trash and the dropped picket signs, while they stood on guard against any more uncertainties, a lot of them gazed upon their new threat: this love-sucking changeling who’d just claimed his first victim in plain daylight.
This love-sucking changeling who was scared out of his wits. Locked in place, his own legs shivering once more at renewed shame pricking his heart.
The only ones from the riot who stayed were Spaghetti Tree and a stallion he didn’t recognize.
Spaghetti—or Julia—was crying at the botched attempt at peaceful protesting, and at what Sam had become. In her sobbing, she was pouring her tears onto the hugged shoulders of that stallion who fixed a long, hard stare on the changeling.
The hairstyle and the work-in-progress beard, coupled with resting half of his weight on Julia, made his identity clear: this was Arthur, and he was at a loss for words at what both he and Sam had turned into.
Sam peered into that staring face.
Indictments lashed his heart, his conscience. Witnesses had just seen what he’d done: stealing someone else’s love. The nourishment became a wicked load on his back. His ears folded back, he closed his eyes—
“...aah!”
On instinct, Sam hopped away before a body was thrown out of the bureau, smashing the glass doors into a million shards, and on to Note’s body with a thud!
Sam didn’t care about that changeling bound in ropes and a straitjacket. Not even when this one declared, “Where’s that Paraffin?! Tell her I’m onto her!”
Sam felt the cool of the inside, and he galloped back in for safety.
There, every staff member was locking the doors and defending their posts, several griffons and pegasi armed with blade-tipped wings of their own. Standing in this constant movement was Crowhop, dithering in place as Sam approached, and Ocean, hastily reading a scroll he was levitating.
“You have to jump to safety now!” Crowhop yelled, pushing Ocean forward so he could help her articulate.
But Sam was lost, mind preoccupied with his transgression. “Did you—d-did you just see what—”
Crowhop nodded, and that silenced him.
He noticed the teary streak on her cheek. On it, he could see a tiny reflection of what he was.
Could’t bear to see even that.
“We’ve just received notice that a couple rogue elements are coming in to storm the bureau,” Ocean said both fast and serious. “We got the HLF and the PER on speeding vehicles to ransack the place, but we’ll do our best to fend them off.”
“Fend them off?!” Sam yelped, head doddering around for some kind of safety, more than just walls minus the entrance doors. “What about the other changeling victims like me?!”
“You missed the delivery truck we were busy with thanks to that dumb Key Note!” hissed Crowhop before pushing Sam to his nonplussed unicorn therapist. “Now, you go! Leave the fighting to us mares!”
Then, more noises. Not the sound of men but of machines: the rising police sirens, the faraway screeching of tires, the distinct bursts of gunshots.
“This is an emergency teleport spell!” Ocean yelled, rescanning the spell scroll before him one more time before smacking it on Sam’s face. “Haven’t tried this at all, and it might knock you out, but we’ll be fine on the other side!”
Sam wrenched the offending scroll away, spitting out the disgusting taste of parchment, unwary to the unicorn’s horn glowing brighter and brighter. Rather, the changeling settled for repeating words in hysteria: “Never tried this out? Might knock me out?! We’ll be fine?!”
Poof!
Both were now gone.