"Halt. Who goes there?"
"Buzz off, Ozadene."
"Ah, it's Mandible."
As Mandible got close enough to recognize by sight as well as voice, the guards at the hive's outer gate visibly relaxed. Idiots. For all they knew, Mandible could be Thorax, the traitor, returning to the hive in disguise.
"On behalf of Frons and Squad 833," Mandible said formally, "I report our safe return to the hive."
"Your presence is noted. Where's the rest of the squad?" Ozadene asked. His base form was too squat to look as intimidating as he thought he was, even while wearing the mandible-like, purple helmet reserved for the hive guards. Mandible had often wished for such a helmet himself, but he wouldn't dream of giving up his position in active duty to stand around annoying his fellow changelings as a guard. Not even for one of those helmets.
"They're on their way," Mandible said. "I flew ahead to get this over with."
Frons wouldn't be happy with him for that – this was technically Frons' duty and Mandible was going against the order to stick together, but he just didn't have any buzz left to give. If he could speed up the process of getting the squad into the hive and bringing Proboscis to the Queen, he would.
The other guard, Ozopore, pointed a hoof in the direction Mandible had come from. She was naturally a slender thing, but unlike her brother, she seemed to recognize how unintimidating her base form was and spent her time on guard in a taller, broader form. "I see them," she said. "Wait, aren't there supposed to be just five of you?"
Mandible sighed. He hadn't been looking forward to this part. "The pink one's Proboscis," he said. Ozadene snickered at the name. "Or something. I don't actually know her name – she wouldn't tell us for some reason – but she's a changeling we ran into in Manehattan. Stuck looking like Pinkie Pie and acting like an idiot, and unfortunately I think the Queen can only help with one of those things."
"You're sure she's not Thorax? If anypony would shift against gender without the Queen's orders, it's probably him," Ozadene suggested, "and the name thing seems suspicious."
Ozopore frowned, but said nothing.
"Trust me," Mandible said, not bothering to hide his grumbling, "even at his worst, Thorax was never this infuriating."
"Mandible!" Frons said firmly from behind him, the squad having caught up. "I told you to stick with us."
"I just saved us some time."
"We weren't in a hurry." Frons turned to Ozopore. "On behalf of squad 833, I—"
"It's okay," Ozopore interrupted, "Mandible handled the formalities. You can go right on in."
Frons gave Mandible a stern look, but couldn't keep it up. He sighed. "Fine. Have you sent a messenger?"
"Not yet. Oy, Tarsus!" Ozadene shouted to a changeling flying overhead. Mandible knew him as one of the Queen's dedicated messengers.
As Ozadene arranged for Tarsus to bring news of the squad's arrival to the Queen, the six of them headed towards the inner gate. Or rather, what was the inner gate at the moment. It was always shifting, after all, like every passageway in the hive.
With Frons leading the squad indoors, Mandible let himself fall to the back, below Gena's gentle flutter, so he could keep an eye on Proboscis. She had been unusually quiet ever since they entered the hive's perimeter, even keeping her hooves mostly on the ground. He should be happy about that, but he couldn't shake the feeling that the silence was horribly wrong.
And why were she and Clypeus whispering to each other so much? For that matter, when had Proboscis learned to whisper?
Ozadene had been right. It was suspicious that Proboscis had never given her real name. Mandible looked at the infernal mare trotting in front of him as she looked around the interior of the hive, and began to wonder if he knew who she was at all.
For all its intimidating appearance, Party Popper thought, the changeling hive felt like a home.
Not her home, of course, and not one she'd expect any real pony to live in – unless they were, like, super into big open spaces and barren, dimly lit stone formations – but for the changelings, everything about it made total sense. It even looked a little like cheese with all the tunnels, just like their hooves did.
Usually the holes in cheese didn't change when she wasn't looking, though.
"Hey, Proboscis!" Frons called behind her. "This way."
"Didn't we just come from there?" she asked, earning her a stare from Gena. Mandible muttered something about shortcuts.
"It changed," Frons said.
Sure enough, the hole had been replaced by a new one a few hooves to the right, leading to a different room than the one they had come in from.
"Right," Popper said, following the rest of the squad through the hole.
Clypeus trotted next to her. "It's kind of intuitive to us," he whispered. "We usually just have a sense of how to get where we want to go in here."
She didn't say anything. It could never be her home.
"Hey, are you sure you want to do this? I don't know what will happen when the Queen can't 'fix' your frozen form."
"It's a little too late to turn back now, isn't it?" Popper whispered back, frowning. She hadn't thought that far ahead.
"I guess it is." He considered it. "We'd have to explain why to the squad, and getting you out after telling the Oz twins you were here to see the Queen might be a problem."
"Yeah, I—" Popper stopped in her tracks as the squad passed an offshoot hole to her right. Dozens of tiny things were crawling around in a dedicated room. They looked like white shells with changeling faces and two tiny front hooves each – there was no doubt what they were. There was also no doubt that they. were. adorable!
"Pa– Proboscis!" Clypeus called in surprise as she entered the room, then followed her. She didn't pay it any mind. The squad and the Queen could wait just a moment.
"Changeling foals!" she said as he caught up. "Look how cute they are!"
Some of the little ones looked up at her with big eyes, shining like tinted mirrors even in the dim lighting of the hive. One of them burped.
"Larvae," Clypeus corrected, "and yeah, they're adorable, but—"
"Were you ever this cute? Wait, what am I saying, you're still cute."
"—w-we should probably get back to the others." He trotted back through the hole, where Popper could see Labrum peeking around the edge with a grin.
"Sure," she said, now surrounded by at least half a dozen changeling larvae, "I just gotta say goodbye to these—" She looked towards the larvae again and immediately leaped back. "AHH!"
Right in front of her were three adult-sized ponies, except their features were… incomplete. They had cheese legs and eyes that were too large and monochromatic. Their back hooves were lying limp, as though they didn't know how to use them yet. There were no cutie marks, and their mouths carried sharp teeth.
And the worst part was they were all her. Three pink earth ponies with bubbly manes. One of them wore a hat, but Party Popper was sure that if she touched it, it would act like flesh, just another part of the head. Another had purple fur on everything but its head. And the smiles, the smiles were all wrong.
She backed away slowly, shaking, not breaking eye contact with the three – no, four now, five, eight, twenty – twisted reflections. No, no, no, no...
Memories flashed in her mind. Her memories, of all the clones she had created, of all her sisters and daughters and her mother. Of the moment she had understood what had happened to them all. Of the one who had allowed it to happen, the one she had thought she could trust.
Tears in her eyes, Party Popper turned and ran. She didn't look back to see if the larvae were following. All she could think of was being somewhere else, anywhere else.
The hole was gone. Of course it was.
Turning left, she spotted another exit, another path away from herself. Without hesitation, Party Popper galloped.