//------------------------------//
// Part IV, Chapter 11 - Van Hoover, Part 2 - Convention 
// Story: Fitting In Is Hard To Do 
// by origami 
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It took Thorax close to two hours to finish answering the questions of the curious guards.  He had been surprised to find so many ponies that were actually complicit with him being in the city they were meant to guard.  In a way, it was like mice being fans of a cat and not minding it spending time in their little hole in the wall.

Once the guards had taken their turns, they either went to their post for their shift, or they went home, as some of them worked nights to keep order when the night trains off loaded their passengers; sometimes ponies came in from other cities drunk and would need to be detained for causing a nuisance.  Before they left, Imperial Gold reminded them that they had been sworn to an oath of secrecy, and that anypony that divulged the fact that Thorax was what he was and in was here in Equestria, they would be dismissed with dishonorable letter by him personally, which was enough to keep his subordinates in line.

Thorax was disappointed that his being in Equestria had to be kept a secret, but he also understood the reasons behind it.  He was in a maelstrom, and where he sat right now was the only calm water.  If the ponies found out that there was a changeling currently among them, then there would be a panic and a hunt to find him, and once they did, who knew what they would do to him.

There was also the matter of the hive.  His being allowed to leave had only been done because Chrysalis expected him to fail.  To ensure it, she told her drones to deal with him should they ever encounter him in Equestria.  What that meant was up to them to decide, but if Thorax knew most drones as well as he thought he did, that likely meant he was pretty much dead where he was standing at that time.

Shaking the horrible thoughts from his mind, Thorax found a nice hotel towards the center of the city to stay in.  According to what he could tell from a local map, he was well within walking distance of some popular city attractions, so he made up his mind to put his things in his room and go see the sights.





In Appleloosa...





Elytra stood in her workshop tightening the bolts of her newest invention.  If it worked, it would likely be the one of the most significant inventions in Equestrian history.  If it didn't, then it would serve as motivation for her next project.  

The infiltrator, disguise as a mare named Wrench, had been sent to Equestria originally as a collector to find love in the city of Manehattan.  As part of her cover, she was shown how to fix the many technological things in the city.  Her instructor was a stallion named Lug Nut, who the queen had apparently contracted with a simple offer: he taught infiltrators what he knew about fixing things and kept his mouth shut about the changelings, and he and his family not only received a stipend of bits from the hive's personal hoard, but his family was considered off limits for the collectors and infiltrators tasked with finding new captives.

After having seen a demonstration of what the changelings were capable of to a rival, he was quick to agree.

Deals like that were not terribly uncommon; most ponies would do anything to avoid being taken or having to face the queen's ire.  However, the good faith of the deal would only go so far.  Once the queen felt that the pony was of no more use, they would be taken and replaced, and their family were then subject to being drained or replaced as well.

Elytra stepped back from her work and wiped sweat away from her disguise's brow.  She'd been working for a solid three hours straight, and the only air she get was from the slightly open shed door that led right out onto the main street.  Putting the wrench she was using on a workbench nearby, she turned and took a good long look at what she had done.

The contraption, as some would call it, was a good bit rough around the edges.  The main portion of it consisted of a repurposed boiler that came from a decomissioned train.  Behind it sat a platform where a pony was meant to stand, and jutting out from behind the boiler were a series of levers connected to valves that would control the flow of steam used to create motion.

Beside the boiler was perhaps the most unique part of the thing.  Set vertically and lined in a row were four steam pistons, and all of them connected to a shaft that was then connected to another shaft by way of a large chain set on two wheels with large teeth.  The second shaft then went into a sort of box that had a pair of axles that went to two large steel wheels that were covered in spiky studs.

What Elytra had created was ambitious.  Put simply, it was meant to travel over ground and be propelled by steam, but that would only help it to accomplish so much.  Experiments she had conducted proved her ideas were sound, and the device worked as intended, but today brought with it a special challenge.

After brainstorming various ideas, Elytra devised a way to steer the machine when it was in use.  The end result was a T-shaped handle with two loops in the end.  When under power, a pony would place their hooves into the loops and turn the bar.  If they turned it left, the bar would transfer that motion to a linkage systen and turn an axle at the front of the machine left or right, thereby allowing the operator to navigate where they needed to go.

Of course, this device was an experimental concept.  If she was to have any success with this, she would need to demonstrate that it served a purpose.  To that end, she came up with an idea and added a pair of metal bars on each side.  The addition would be used in her first public demonstration of the device, the oh-so-cleverly-named "Steerable Steam Engine".

The idea for the demonstration came from seeing the ponies harvest the apples in Appleloosa.  There were so many trees that many of the residents had to call upon family from far away to come visit and help with the apple bucking, the traditional method earth ponies used to collect apples from trees.  While most ponies were willing to help kin, their travels often interrupted their own harvest in their orchards back home, though the Appleloosans were more than happy to return the favor and travel back to help those who helped them.

Elytra had been helping the ponies as well, siphoning away some of the happy feelings the ponies had as they worked.  By the end of her first day, her hooves were sore and she ended up using a fair bit of the collected love to try and heal herself.  She reflected on all she saw and experienced and realized there had to be a better way, and thus the demonstration.

In about a week's time, Elytra would take her machine out to the orchard and run it between the rows of apple trees.  The metal bars on each side would go along and shake the limbs near the top, causing all the ripe apples to fall off and be collected into buckets set on a platform beneath the bars.  If it worked how she figured it would, then the ponies would be able to harvest apples much faster, and even need to use fewer ponies to accomplish the same amount of work.

Feeling a thirst in need of quenching, Elytra went through her workshop and into her kitchen.  In there, she kept her water and food.  There was pony food, such as apples and various baked goods made with apples, but also some jars of nectar she had made from excess love.  Those were carefully hidden near the back so that visiting ponies wouldn't see the fruits of her labor and ask questions.

Elytra looked at the nectar and salivated a little, but quickly shook her head and removed a jug of water with ice cubes in it from the fridge.  It would do her no good to burn through her nectar now, especially when a collector would be coming for it soon.  She had worked hard to collect it, and all of it done ambiently, which was her preferred method of collection.  A recent celebration between the Appleloosa ponies and the nearby buffalo tribe had went a ways to creating the nectar.  The reason was the anniversary of a peace treaty that had been established to allow the buffalo to stampede through the orchard in exchange for the ponies' orchard being there.

"Wrench?  You in here?"

The voice caught Elytra off guard and she quickly made sure her disguise was intact.  Coming through her workshop and approaching the door to her living space was a stallion.  He resembled the pony Braeburn, but there were multiple apples on his flank, the apples were all different colors, and his mane and tail were shorter and straighter than Brae's.

"In here, Bushel!" she called out to him.

Bushel walked into her kitchen with a smile.  "I thought I saw you up," he said with a smile.  "Still workin' on that contraption of yours."

"Mhm" she replied as she took a drink from her glass.  "If my calculations are correct, which they usually are, I'll be able to demonstrate my idea sometime next week."

Bushel smiled, but it was a sad smile.  "I don't know if anypony will go for it," he told her honestly.  "Earth ponies are awful proud of their applebuckin'.  It's a skill that takes ponies a while to get good at."

"I get that, Bushel," Elytra told the stallion.  "I'm not talking about eliminating tradition.  My experiment is meant to show that that machine can be very useful to the ponies around here, and helping to harvest apples is one of many things that that thing can be used for."

"I ain't tryin' ta insult ya," Bushel replied.  "I'm sure there's ponies that'll find that thing mighty useful.  I just don't think it'll catch on here in Appleloosa is all."

"Well, regardless, ponies will see it in action soon enough, and if things go right, I pretty sure I can make a right sweet penny off of that thing."

Bushel let out a chuckle.  "I can't imagine it's gonna be cheap to get one of them things, considerin' how much train you recycled into it."

"This is a prototype," Elytra told him.  "It's only purpose is to prove the concept works.  It's ugly as sin too, so if I ever did get such a demand that it got to a point where I needed to mass produce 'em, I'd have to redesign everything on it to look a heck of a lot nicer than what it does now."

Again, Bushel chuckled.  "I suppose yer right.  Say, have you seen Anjou yet today?  Nopony has seen him since he left the saloon last night and Marigold is getting worried."

"No, I haven't seen him yet today."

Elytra's answer was the truth, but it concealed a dark secret: she knew exactly what happened to Anjou.  While at the saloon, Anjou had met a pony who was acting rather odd and ran from him after being asked a few questions.  The pony was an infiltrator in training, and Anjou had discovered this when they tripped and fell to the ground, losing their disguise in the process.

Other changelings who had escorted the trainee had stepped in and subdued Anjou, cocooning him and taking him back to the hive.  A drone disguised as him would return to town soon, and Marigold would find him much different than he was before and likely end their long time relationship that bordered on being an engagement.

The changeling honestly hated what happened.  She had grown to like Anjou and his somewhat dry sense of humor; he needed it since he was a pear farmer among apples.  In truth, Elytra liked a fair number of the residents of Appleloosa.  They offered her encouragement as she made her inventions and fixed their tools.  Their gratitude and love had not only filled her, but also created a surplus that she knew would go a long way to nourishing the nymphs that would help the hive recover and grow strong again.

She secretly hoped that there could be peace one day between ponies and her kind, but knew that was never gonna happen.  Once the hive got to the numbers it had during the invasion, Queen Chrysalis would try to invade again.  The failure at the wedding had only stoked the fires for revenge in her.

The changeling shivered as she recalled the events in the days after returning to the hive.  Elytra had gotten back a day before the queen, but when she returned, she ordered every prisoner unpodded and brought before her throne.  Once the task had been completed, the queen looked over the prisoners and then drained all of them, simultaneously.

She hadn't been there to see it, but heard rumors that the queen's guards had actually been horrified by the spectacle.

After this had happened, the queen ordered new prisoners captured and the old and now useless ones cast into the wastes around the hive.

This led to even more rumors.  Some said that the guards that took the prisoners outside the hive had actually demonstrated rarely seen compassion and gave them flasks of water and some non-toxic mushrooms that grew in the damp lower portions of the hive.  Others said that there were even guards and drones that thought of adopting a disguise and escorting the ponies all the way back to Equestria.  The rumors that followed all of these were that the queen punished these changelings by draining them completely and killing them.

Of course, there was no way to really corroborate any of these rumors, so most were dismissed as hearsay.

"I'm sure he'll turn up eventually," Elytra lied to Bushel.

Bushel just accepted her answer.  "You're right.  I'm sure he'll turn up sometime.  I gotta go get some things from the general store.  You gonna hit up the saloon later?"

Elytra gave a nod in confirmation.

Bushel smiled.  "I'll see ya then," he said and then left out through the workshop.

Once he was out of sight, Elytra closed the door to her workshop and locked it.  She then rushed through her house to an unused interior room and closed that door locking it as well.  Once she was sure she was alone, she let her disguise fall and she shouted at the top of her lungs.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

The changeling turned to see a pile of junk and proceeded to pound away at it with her hooves.  As she did, she would let out more screams as her hooves sent pieces of debris flying every which way.  Tears came down her cheeks as she eventually expended what energy she had and just collapsed on the floor.

She was an infiltrator, trained to deceive ponies and steal their love.  Her presence would feed the hive intelligence that would be used to plot the downfall of Equestria, and eventually the world.

But right now, she hated herself.  She hated lying to ponies.  She hated the fact that she had to take love from them, especially since she had been front row seat to the act several times.  More so, she hated that she was asked to do things that would eventually hurt ponies, and despised her very being because she did them, regardless of her reservations.

Changeling infiltrators were not meant to feel anything for ponies but contempt.  According to the queen, they were nothing but a food source to be used and discarded when they had been exhausted of their love.

After having spent the past five years in Equestria before and after Canterlot, and having been around ponies for all that time, learning all manner of things from them and spending so much time one on one, Elytra could only reach one simple conclusion:

The queen was wrong.

The words felt like acid on her tongue, but there was no other way to say it.  All the time she had spent around ponies had made her life much better than it had been back in the hive.

Ponies as friends kept her fed in a way that normal feeding never could.  Learning how to repair and make things had ignited a passion in her heart that she never knew was there before.  Having her own place and having success at what she did filled her with a pride that simply couldn't be matched.

But most of all, she cared about the ponies around her, especially Bushel.  She didn't know what it was, but spending time with the stallion made her stomach do things she wasn't used to, and his emotions told her that the stallion felt the same way.  He was just simply too shy to show it properly.

After crying out her feelings, Elytra rose and adopted her Wrench disguise, looking into a nearby mirror and making sure everything looked right before heading back down into her workshop.

For the moment, there was nothing more she could do.  Anjou was likely already in the hive and his replacement was well on their way across the desert between the town and the hive.  Short of getting the stallion out and compromising the new infiltrator, there wasn't a good solution to the problem.

So, like many times before, Elytra opted to distract herself, returning to her workshop and preparing her machine for its trial run.






Back in Van Hoover...






Thorax had settled into his hotel and began making his way around the city.  Already, he had went to the fish market and saw the earth ponies toss the fish to one another, the spectacle actually a bit entertaining and prompting the changeling to visit a nearby restaurant and sample some whitefish, which he also found enjoyable.

After going to the market, he then visited a few eateries in the city.  Of note was a candy maker, Cherry Cordial, who demonstrated her craft by cooking up various sweet treats in a large copper kettle by the front window of her establishment.  Thorax had enjoyed seeing her work and went inside to buy some of her "love candy", which was nothing more than some taffy died pink and mixed with a heavy amount of cinnamon.

Snacking on the treat, Thorax wound his way around the city until he came across an item that caught his attention.  Crossing the street he was on, the changeling found himself standing in front of a pole for an electric line.  Wrapped around that pole was an informational poster that made Thorax's mouth go wide:


VAN HOOVER ANIMAL WELFARE SOCIETY
ANNUAL PET EXPO
THIS WEEKEND!


Thorax realized that it was Saturday, and that the expo may have been going on now.  Taking a chance, he referred to a map and made his way to the expo center.

Luck was on his side.  Arriving at the massive convention center, which seemed to dwarf the one in Whinnyapolis, Thorax could see ponies lined up outside.  A sign confirmed that the expo was going on today, and a quick reference to a nearby clock showed that it was sometime around lunch.  Torn between going to lunch and attending the expo, Thorax decided on the latter, hoping there would be food vendors offering more than just samples of pet food for the ponies to let their pets try.

Taking a spot in line, Thorax looked around at the gathered ponies.  Some of them were standing in a loose line of groups, each chatting to the other as though they were familiar.  Others were by themselves, reading over information about the expo going on or simply standing in line looking impatient.

A mother and young filly stood out, as the little mare was fidgeting and looking at her mother with worry.

"Just hold it a bit longer, sweetie," the older mare told the filly.  "We'll get inside and you can go use the little fillie's room."

Thorax directed his attention away from the mother and daughter and then caught sight of something he hadn't expected.

Standing over in another line was a mare he recognized.  She had a long and soft looking pink mane, a yellow coat with well-preened wings, and adorning her flank were a trio of small butterflies.

Without thinking, Thorax stepped out of line and approached the mare before him and called out her name.

"Fluttershy?"