One of the things that Grasshopper liked most about her hive is that it was always busy. There was always something going on, always something needing to be done, and always changelings running around doing them. There was always a cheerful order to the busyness, everyone with a task, a route, and a destination, moving about in a sort of contented buzz that, to Grasshopper, just felt like home.
This was the first time she had ever seen a genuine riot.
Every changeling in the surging black mob was screaming all at once:
“Mama! Help us!”
“They know about us, Mama!”
“What do we do? What do we do?!?”
“What’s gonna happen to us? Are they gonna get us?”
“Mama! Mama!!”
At the heart of the teeming mass of changelings stood Mama herself, as frightened and helpless as the rest of them. She looked around, lost, her wings buzzing in fear and agitation.
Grasshopper shot a withering look at Luke, who drooped his head and looked away. The two of them were sitting, side-by-side, in a little out-of-the-way niche at the back of the chamber, watching the chaos. Grasshopper had half a mind to lecture Luke, but the scene before him was punishment enough--at least for now.
“I’m sorry,” Luke murmured. “I just wanted to see what Ponyville was like--really like. I-I’ve been practicing my transformations for a while… and I was thinking—”
“No,” Grasshopper said sourly, “no, you weren’t thinking. Otherwise you wouldn’t have run through the town square like that. Or at least not disguised as Pinkie!”
Luke took a deep breath, then looked away. Grasshopper watched him for a moment, then huffed and turned back to the rest of the chamber.
She happened to look back just in time to see it happen: one of the smaller workers managed to jump on top of someone’s back, then hop from her back to someone else’s shoulder, then to someone else’s head--and from there, to lunge at Mama. She was probably trying to hug her around the neck, ask her to hold her and tell her it was all okay, but if that’s what she was trying, her trajectory was slightly, horrifingly off. Instead of wrapping her arms around her neck, the worker struck Mama’s horn with one of her hooves.
A sharp crack echoed through the chamber. Mama doubled up as white-hot streaks of pain arced down into her skull, through her neck, and into her chest. Every one of her children felt the pain--or at least the dull edge of it, scraping down their spines--followed by a wave of intense nausea and disorientation.
For perhaps two minutes, there was no sound in the chamber except labored breathing, and the occasional whimper of pain and fear. Finally, Mama straightened up, took a deep, trembling breath, and wiped the tears from her eyes.
“That’s it, then,” she said, her voice low and raspy. “We’ve had a good run of it, everyone, but we’ve been found out. We can’t come back from this. Too many ponies saw.” She swallowed. “We’re not safe here. Not anymore. We need to move on.”
It was a sign of the feeling in the room that no one spoke.
Mama took a few more ragged breaths as she looked around. “It’s too bad we’re leaving our friends behind, but we can’t risk the safety of our family for them. I need to worry about us, first.” She swallowed uneasily. “We need some scouts to head out, now,” she said. “Find another cave system for us. Maybe near the Crystal Empire--they have lots of love to spare. We need others to start sealing off the entrances. And we need a few to figure out how to transport the grubs without letting them catch cold.”
Grasshopper turned to look mournfully at Luke--only to find him already staring at her, his eyes wide and shining.
“The rest of you,” Mama continued, “start packing whatever we need to travel. And we’ll need someone to start disenchanting the crystal cave…”
And suddenly, as Grasshopper looked at Luke, something she had said to him echoed back into her mind:
Butterflies.
“Butterflies!” Grasshopper cried, leaping to her hooves.
Everyone in the cavern turned to look at her.
“Grasshopper?” Mama asked curiously.
“The rules are different for butterflies,” Grasshopper insisted.
Mama frowned. “What do you mean?” she asked.
Grasshopper shook her head. The ideas were coming so fast, it was hard to keep them all straight—
“We can’t hide,” she said. “And we can’t run away. Where else are we going to find another place to live like this?”
“But we can’t stay,” someone whined.
“Yes we can!” Grasshopper insisted. “But first we have to show our colors. We have to be butterflies.”
“Grasshopper, slow down,” Mama said. “You’re not making any sense.”
Grasshopper took a deep breath.
“We told Twilight there was a magical place in the woods,” she said, trying to contain her growing excitement. “A place where we could copy ourselves. It was her idea, actually. That’s why there were two Pinkies--because of the magic.” She leaned forward and buzzed her wings. “But what if we used the magic again?” she asked. “What if there were more Pinkies?”
Mama’s face went slack, and a ripple of uncertainty passed through the assembled changelings. Grasshopper’s face fell. She knew what she had wanted to say--but how do you make something so risky and stupid sound like a good idea?
And then, Mama’s eyes widened, and she started to nod.
* * *
“Alright, everybuggy, listen up!” Mama roared.
The ready room, the little alcove at the base of the stairs leading up to the secret passage in the Party Cave, was not designed to hold more than about ten changelings, tops. All fifty or so changelings in the hive had squeezed in.
“You know the plan,” Mama continued. “Get out there, and cause as much chaos as you can!”
All the changelings were disguised as Pinkie. Some of them were too tall, and some too short. Some were the wrong shade of pink, and some of their manes weren’t curling just right. But that was the point.
“But don’t hurt anypony,” Mama said. “We want them to laugh, maybe feel sorry, but not get angry!”
Even though she hadn’t been able to put it into words, Grasshopper had hit on a fundamental truth: two Pinkie Pies was a problem. Fifty was a crisis.
“Get out there and do your worst! The Hive is depending on you!”
Two Pinkies were an oddity--something that needed to be investigated and understood. But fifty Pinkies--well. The investigation could wait. And, in the meantime, there was a lot you could do to delay and distract and reassure everyone that you were the exact same pony they’d always known.
Or one of the fifty, at least.
Mama looked around the ready room, and spotted the sign next to the portrait of Pinkie. “Stay disguised,” she read aloud. She shot an arc of pink lightning at it, and it exploded in a shower of smoking splinters, which rained down on the assembled Pinkie Pies.
“Stay disguised,” Mama repeated disdainfully. “Screw it. Break your disguise,” she commanded. “Break it as hard as you can. Break out of your disguise like your life depends on it--” Her eyes glittered with cold fire. “Because it actually might.”