//------------------------------// // 82- Achlys // Story: Changing Expectations // by KKSlider //------------------------------// The next day started as many before it had. Not all days. Not even the majority. Just a large number of them. I woke up and immediately wished I hadn’t. No, I didn’t wish to fall back asleep, I wished that I hadn’t woken up at all. Some days I had to pretend to be alive. There wasn’t anything specific that triggered these days. In fact, last night’s conversation with Double Diamond and Thorax has been great. Diamond seemed like a swell, upstanding guy. He even promised to teach me how to ski, something I had been meaning to learn. No, by all accounts I should be in a chipper mood. Though Luna didn’t visit me last night, that was simply not enough to damper my good mood. Yet when I woke up, the cheerfulness didn’t evaporate; it had simply ceased to be long before my eyes opened. Today, I was not dead. Today, my shadow was still dead, as was one of my other closest friends. I cringed and rolled off the couch I had slept on. Barely creaking my eyes open to see, I blearily made my way to the apartment’s bathroom. Shutting the door behind me, I all but collapsed onto the sink, leaning into it and sighing. Forcing myself to open my eyes further yielded a pitiful sight. A unicorn with a messy, puffy black mane was hanging by a thread, as if he was on death’s door. Expected Value’s orange eyes looked back at me through the clean mirrored surface. Picking the same colored eyes as Far Sky was a bad idea. Even worse, both had shared my eye color. However, it made this so much easier. I slowly lifted myself up and forced myself to sit up straight in front of the mirror. “Expected Value,” I whispered. “I am Expected Value. Phasma is sleeping the day away. I will take care of his duties and obligations in the meantime. I am Expected Value.” It was a lie I tried to convince myself of in the past. It never really worked. This was yet another stranger looking back at me. I had only barely started to get used to how I looked as a changeling, only just getting used to who I was now, nine or ten months after I was murdered. Then the invasion happened, and I had to wear a false face ever since. I was given no reprieve however, as work forced me to swallow my thoughts and leave them for later. Sometimes at night I would remove the disguise, just so I could look at myself. My real self. However, unlike when I wore Far Sky’s face, there was no happy-go-lucky unicorn bouncing off the welcome mat of my apartment. Instead, there was a hyperactive bug that could melt the coldest of hearts with a smile. He knocked on the door. “Phas? You awake already? You uh, gonna be long in there?” I grunted a reply. Some days were just harder than others. I didn’t get to choose, they simply were. ‘It was on days like this that my disguise frayed and the guards saw the real me. What will Thorax see? I… Is he okay? If I wake up like death warmed over, how does Thorax take Oest’s and Lace’s death?’ “I need to pee, Phas!” I shook my head, straightening out some of the stray curls in the grayish black mane. ‘He’s powered by rainbows and hopes ‘n dreams, I guess.’ I opened the door. “Finally!” Thorax sighed as he started to push past me. “I was only in there for a minute,” I said as I walked out. “Time is relative,” he replied as he shut the door behind me. I went and sat back down on the couch I slept on. The minutes passed slowly, and Diamond left the bedroom and entered the main room. “Morning, Phasma.” “Hello Diamond.” “You alright?” I slowly turned to look at him. “I’m fine.” If he wasn’t convinced, he chose not to say so, “Hm, alright. You were going somewhere with Thorax, right?” “That’s right.” “Later tonight let’s hit the town. It’s Friday, and I know of some really great clubs. No bars anymore, but I’m sure you can have a great time still.” “I’ve got work to do. Securing a place to stay, amongst others.” “Yeah but you don’t have to come here tonight.” “Excuse me?” “You know, meet a cute colt or filly and–” “I’m in a relationship.” “Ah okay, sorry dude. Does she know…?” “Yes.” “That’s good– wait, Thorax told me we were the first, you know, couple between our kinds. When did you two meet?” ‘An audacious claim, but I had kept quiet in the hive.’ “You’re certainly the furthest along. It’s a long distance thing, we’re waiting for this to blow over.” Diamond nodded then awkwardly swayed slowly on his hooves. “Anyways, I’ve got to go to work. We can still go out tonight, if you’re not busy.” ‘Unlikely.’ “We’ll see. I have a meeting with a friend, might even secure a place to stay for us. We’ll talk later.” Coxa led the way into the sketchy warehouse he had scoped out. Located on the outskirts of Manehattan, it was certainly a ways away from the shore. The building was an old brick thing, with broken glass windows that were haphazardly boarded up. It was about three stories tall, and sat on a cracked concrete lot that only extended a few hooves out past the walls. It seemed that the most intact thing about the place was the chain link fence that surrounded the lot. “I’ve got a good deal lined up for this one, boss,” Coxa smiled as he opened the gate and gestured for me to enter. He was wearing a blue unicorn disguise, while I was Expected Value still. I entered the lot and walked up to the main entrance. There were two, one large garage door made of metal that was shut tight, and a smaller wooden door to the right of it, close to the corner of the building. I tested the door and found it to be unlocked, and pushed it open. Lighting up the room inside using a light spell, my blue-tinged white light illuminated a damp hallway that had seen better days. There were three doors, two on the left, one at the far end, and a stairwell at the end on the left past the two doors. “The far door leads to the main room, the first one to what must be a break room, and the second to the second floor,” Coxa spoke, answering my questions before I could ask them. Coxa walked up next to me and opened the first door and– scratch that, the door was ripped off its hinges, the wood having rotted away and broken under the pressure of moving. With an awkward cough, he set the door down on the opposite wall. He entered the room and I followed. Sure enough, a large square room sat empty, the wooden floorboards starting to rot. The white plastered brick walls were stained and graffitied. At the far wall, a broken window overlooked the front section of an empty warehouse. “Nothing much right now, but I’m certain there’s a hundred uses for it. The other room is similar. Come on, you should see the second floor.” The stairs were creaky, old, and probably rotting too. We noisily stomped our way up them in the stairwell. At the top, an open doorway on the left revealed a large room, similar to the one beneath us. Straight ahead, a door led to what I assumed was a fourth. “Two more rooms. If we find places to stay or make rooms out in the warehouse, this’ll be perfect for offices. This room right here for me and whatever, and the room beyond for you. For now, they’re good for setting up cots or bunk beds.” I nodded, “We will expand when we can.” “So boss, whaddya think?” “Buy it. Then, get furniture: beds, desks, filing cabinets. Whatever we will need. I’ve got to look into transportation, but before that I’ll go set up shell companies for us. Thorax has helped arrange for meetings while I was in stasis.” “Hehehe, this is going to be great!” “Once you’re done furnishing this place, we’ll need to look into selling. Clubs– both private and partying, restaurants, individuals, and so on. We can’t approach ponies without the transportation and production in place, but we’ll need to get buyers picked out.” “I’ll start the process of looking around. Or get someling else to do that. You just focus on transportation, Phasma.” “Sure.” We started to make our way out of the building. “So, you planning on staying in here with the other lings?” Coxa asked me. “I don’t have anywhere else to go,” I replied in a monotone voice. “Ah. When the bits start rolling in, we can each get our own place.” “Sure.” “Unless you’re already planning on moving in with your fillyfriend. Up there, at the top of the mountain.” “We can’t even see each other without risking one of our deaths, probably mine.” “It was a joke.” “Okay.” “.... Are you alright?” I paused as he redid the lock on the gate outside. “I’m fine.” “That’s bro-code for no.” “I said I’m fine.” “I heard. Phasma, we’ve got a secret lair picked out! That’s like, the best part about this whole thing! What’s wrong?” “Nothing’s wrong.” “You’re acting like something’s wrong. What’s the matter?” “I’m f–” “If you have any respect for me, you’ll drop that bullshit.” ‘Are we really doing this, out here on an empty street? Of course we are, he’s not going to let me mope and whine.’ “What do you want?” He jabbed my chest, “For you to be straight with me. I know you’ll find that difficult– not as difficult as Thorax– but tell me what’s eating at you.” I sighed and rubbed my face with a fetlock. “The First Fang is back together.” “Isn’t that a good thing?” “All of the First Fang is together. It’s just us three left.” Coxa frowned but didn’t say anything. “Half of us are gone. Tarsus may be alive for now, but that’s going to change the next time I see him. You all were my first friends, and the only lings I was ever really close to. Katydid and Eucharis were friends at best. Weevil and the generals? Acquaintances. I met three new friends, over in Hooferville, but for my own safety and sanity, I couldn’t stay there. But above all other reasons, it’s the fact that we’re only half of the First Fang.” Coxa stared at the ground, “Tomorrow… Yeah, tomorrow. You, me, and Thorax. We’ll leave Manehattan for a few hours, just go out into the woods. There, we’ll hold a funeral.” “A… funeral?” He nodded, “Happens often in the hive when a changeling dies. There’s never a body, those are chucked in the recycling vats, so there is a bit of drinking and talking. Share stories about them, you know? We’ll hold one for Oest and Lace. It’ll help all of us. Yeah, they would have wanted one.” “Just us three?” “Mhmm.” “... Feels wrong to commemorate their deaths, and not others like Cicada, Weevil, Eucharis…” Coxa shrugged, “We’ll do a bigger ceremony later, when we’ve met up with more changelings. Have a huge party of it, where everyone’ll add names to a pile or whatever. A celebration in honor of those who sacrificed everything for our survival, and for a chance at the best future we could hope for.” A smile slowly crept onto my face. “... Okay.” “Okay. I’ll go finalize the deal for the building, and you go terrorize those pencil pushers in the town hall or whatever hellhole you’re going to. Tomorrow, we’ll meet up.” “Yeah– oh! I don’t know if Double Diamond is fine with me inviting others, but he wants to go hit the town tonight with Thorax and I. You want to come with?” “And interrupt your threesome–?” I elbowed him in the chest. “–oof! I mean, yeah, sounds like fun!” “Bastard.” “You’re smiling, aren’t you?” Damn him, he was right. It wasn’t the small smile that I had before. He had me grinning ear to ear. Or would it be from fang to fang for changelings? “Fine, I am. But you better be careful, using the same joke twice in a conversation tends to wear it out. Anyways, you’re going now, whether you want to or not.” “I’ll be sure to clear my schedule, Your Majesty.” I rolled my eyes, “Diamond’s apartment at nine.” “I’ll be there,” he said while waving as he turned to leave. The process of setting up the shell companies was meticulous, tedious, and altogether boring. The Manehattan town hall was a massive building, decorated with old Greek style chiseled columns and facades. The interior was spacious, too. At least, the main lobby area was. After being directed to the right place, I spoke with some overworked clerk and got the paperwork to create a company on paper. I grabbed a few copies and went and filled them out while enjoying lunch at an open air cafe. I retrieved a pot of love from a dead drop location to discreetly mix into an iced water and drink from. I also added a pink lemonade mix into it just in case ponies asked questions, and made a visible motion of emptying the paper packet just before hiding the cup and adding the love. All that just to cover up an action that likely wouldn’t raise a single question anyways. I created fake disguises and wrote down their details and connections in a journal. I kept the journal on me in a pair of saddlebags that I would take off between disguises. Each disguise had a use, an assigned purpose. I filled the paperwork out, arranging for a transportation company to be made under a pegasus pony named Al-Capony, a storage company owned by a unicorn by the name of Butcher Cassidy, and an accounting firm founded by the earth pony named Natural North. Enron just wasn’t a pony name, so I had to go with the origin of the name. Expected Value would not show up on any of the paperwork. He was merely a secretary and manager in whatever company he was at during that day. He was a nobody, but not as much of a nobody as the ponies which only briefly existed, and would only exist again if new paperwork would need to be filed, or if something bad happened. If something very bad happened, then they definitely wouldn’t ever exist again. Al-Capony would probably be the one who ran afoul of the law the most, as transportation of alcohol was illegal. Butcher likely wouldn’t exist past filing the proper paperwork, and Natural North was a shit-the-pants scenario. If that company got caught out, then likely ponies were paying far too much attention to my activities for things to be going well. I had done some research while in Hooferville, and had changelings help out while I was in the pod, too. Cooking the books, as well as making these companies, was actually a simple process. A lot of the internal and external controls simply didn’t exist yet in Equestria, as it was at least a century behind Earth in terms of laws, and far more than that in terms of technology. Still, I had no plans of running afoul of the Equestrian Tax Agency. The ETA’s ETA on kicking your door down for tax evasion was brutally short. One did not come between the Crown and its rightfully appropriated bits. That, and avoiding taxes while named Al-Capony is just begging for fate to screw me over. I took the form of Al-Capony first, since I would need to handle that transportation stuff before the rest. There simply was no changeling mafia without moving things from point A to point B. The other two disguises I decided would come into play on different days. It was best to separate out each company as much as possible. After filing the paperwork and collecting the proper files for taxes and whatnot, I also acquired a few P.O. boxes scattered throughout the city. And a few bank accounts. Well, really I got one of each and picked out banks and post offices for the rest to be made on other days. It would be really awkward if everything could be linked together because they were all purchased, setup, or otherwise connected by all happening on the same day. With everything planned and scheduled, I was left with a few hours before I was due back at the apartment to meet up with the guys. I stopped mid-stride on a busy sidewalk when I saw where I wanted to spend those few hours. “Equestrian Museum of Natural History….” I read out loud.