//------------------------------// // Stage 4: Accumulation // Story: Hybrids // by Blarghalt //------------------------------// Much to the false conductor's surprise, the little dragon had a lot more fight in him than he expected. The changleing's opening move was a charge, but Spike moved out of the way at the last moment. The momentum sent him into the trunk of a nearby tree; leaves floated down to the ground as the entire trunk shook. The changeling could hear scampering behind him and quickly recovered to discover that Spike had grabbed another stick to point at him. With a low hiss, the changeling charged Spike only to miss him again. Instead of the dragon's throat he only grabbed the stick, and flew into another tree. With the changeling momentarily dazed, Spike waved to the phoenix up above. "Peewee! Go get Twilight" Spike's faithful bird cawed in reply and zoomed off back toward the train station, which left Spike to deal with the changeling by himself. The terrifying insect's disguise started to fall apart from one too many blows to the face, and the black shell underneath was clearly visible. The bug charged Spike again. When the changeling whipped by the bite a chunk out of the dragon's face, all it received was a face full of green flames. Large cracks began to form all about the monster's disguise, and when he turned around again a large burst of green fire consumed the changeling; his false appearance failed completely. The mask gone, and it stretched its wings and slowly began to back away from Spike. The dragon puffed his chest out, defiant. "Whassa matter? Scared?" he mocked. "No." the changeling replied in a voice like a pile of wood was being grinded into a pulp. Spike started to advance on the changling. He picked up a third stick to threaten the creature with. "If you're not scared, why are you running?" "I not running." it replied in a venomous tone. "Then why are you running away?" They had cleared a few trees during their exchange. Spike was oblivious to everything except the changeling, who smiled. "I leading you to trap." "Then why are you—wait, what?" Spike suddenly heard hisses and clicks all around him; thousands of blue orbs appeared with shiny white teeth balanced perfectly below each set of eyes. He pointed the stick at several of them, and when they did not react he used his own breath to set it aflame, using it as a torch to hold back his many, many attackers. He was so caught up in the others ready to pounce on him that his back was turned to the changeling that had originally attacked him. It walked up behind Spike and clonked him on the head, sending the dragon down like a sack of wet cats. "Stupid fire lizard." it hissed. "Twilight, do you think Spike's been gone a little too long?" The scholarly of the two had picked out a magazine to read, and was absently reading through it. "Uh huh." "Well, don't you think we should go check on him?" "Uh huh." "Are you even listening?" "Oh! Sorry, there was an article in here about edible books. Now what's this about Spike?" "He's been gone for nearly an hour. I'm starting to get worried about him." "If I know Spike, he's been blowing every last bit he has at the lunch stand. He's probably still eating." Twilight had nearly turned her attention back to the magazine when Peewee entered the front door. Several ponies fled the flames he left in his wake as he flew up to the two infected unicorns and began to chirp in the most shrill voice possible. Rarity looked around for the the dragon; the phoenix was never seen without Twilight's assistant. "Peewee? Where's Spike?" Peewee chirped, holding out one wing to point behind them. Twilight rose from her bench, "Peewee! Did something happen to Spike?" Her bones chilled when the phoenix nodded. He motioned for them to follow him out of the station and sped off towards the woods with Rarity and Twilight right behind him. When they broke into the forest to rescue Spike, all three of them ignorant to the fact that something watched their every move. When they arrived at the scene where Spike had been in combat with the changeling, signs of a struggle could still be seen. Two trees had clearly been stripped of bark at their base, and burnt leaves littered the forest floor. A few broken sticks here and there also pointed to Spike resorting to improvised weaponry, and the scuffle seemed to continue up a covered path a small distance before abruptly stopping. "It's a disaster area." said Rarity. "What happened here, Peewee?" Peewee demonstrated a previously unknown talent as he began to move at speeds far too quick for the naked eye to catch; the fire that trailed from his wings provided an outline for the message he wished to convey. An image of Spike appeared, which soon shifted to an image of Spike and Peewee being attacked by a changeling, and finally the scene where Peewee came to Rarity and Twilight for help. "Changelings!" Twilight shouted, "What are they doing here, and where's Spike!?" Peewee stopped his charade and made a birdlike "Iunno" sound, but the harsh glares from the unicorns made him quickly revise his answer. He pointed towards the last place he had seen Spike: A long, dark corridor into the deeper part of the forest. Twilight turned away and looked down the dark road. "Down there, Twilight?" Rarity asked. "If that's where Peewee said Spike is, then that's where we're going." "A changeling attacked him, Twilight! There could be hundreds of them back there!" Twilight huffed and started to walk. "This was probably a straggler; they got blown all over Equestria after my brother kicked them out." With renewed vigor they ran into the deeper section of the woods with Peewee close behind. The fight had woken the trapped conductor, and he could only bang on the inside of his cocoon with pleas for them to come back. "Hey, let me out! It's weird and sticky in here!" The three froze when they heard the cries of their dragon friend. "HEEEEEEEEEELP!" "He's that way!" Rarity declared. They changed directions as Spike's voiced continued to drift beyond the thick trees. It grew louder and louder until it was right above him; the cries for help nearly moved Twilight to desperation. Twilight gasped for air as they tried to find her assistant. "Spike! Where are you!?" "I'm right above you!" Spike replied, his tone half-annoyed and half-panicked. Sure enough, he hung suspended by a shoddy rope tightly wrapped around his ankles. "Where have you guys been? I've been shouting forever!" Twilight quickly used her magic to undo the bindings and slowly lift him to the forest floor. "What happened, Spike? Peewee just rushed up to us and said you got attacked by a changeling!" Spike scratched the back of his head, "Yeah. I put up a fight, but he called his buddies to gang up on me, the big coward. Then when I came to, I was hanging from this tree." Rarity looked around nervously. "Wait, there are more of those things around here?" The dragon shrugged. "Yeah, but I think they're gone now. Maybe that's how changelings have fun?" "Well, I'm glad you're alright, Spikey-Wikey." Rarity said as she gave him a light noogie, but immediately pulled herself away. "Oh dear, almost forgot. Can't have any more of those heart things." Spike seemed confused. "Wait, you can see those already?" Twilight grimaced. "We've been able to see them since this started, Spike. Don't you remember what happened back at the library, or the train? You threw one out the window!" The dragon backed away. "Uhh...yeah!" he lied, "I have a strong throwing arm, huh?" "Spike?" Rarity asked. She noticed that Peewee had even turned on his best friend, and was growling at the dragon that had been his best buddy not two hours ago. "Spike, answer me. What's wrong?" The reptile switched his gaze between Rarity and Twilight, and shrugged "Welp, can't hide it now." he admitted, and closed his eyes. When they opened again, his irises were replaced by the definitive hue of a changeling's, and his fangs had sharpened into needle points. When he spoke, his voice seemed to carry two tones: one was Spike's in a distorted chord, and the other was a much more alien tenor. "You did it, ponies! You fell for oldest trick!" From the tops of the trees a thousand more changelings appeared. Saliva poured out of their maws and they began to slowly close in on the two ponies. The two mares backed into each other; Peewee took a karate stance as Twilight's mind raced. "Where's the real Spike!?" she demanded from not-Spike. The fake dragon gave no answer when he hummed an order to his comrades. The swarm closed the gap between the two in a blur. Twilight was only able to knock out a few of them before they seized Rarity and herself. As they were held down, one of them performed a spell on the both of them, and the last thing either saw was Peewee flying off as their minds faded into the void. When she opened her eyes again, her entire world was green. It was also really, really slimy. She jerked a few of her muscles to get her bearing; she was bound in place, and upside down. Her bondage was also partially translucent. Squinting as much as her eyes would allow, she could barely make out two similar cocoons, each glowing with an ambient light. Inside, a vaguely pony-shaped figure floated in one, and the other was the unmistakable outline of a baby dragon. She teetered on the verge of calling out their names, but hushed herself when she heard voices below. Was it talking, though? Hisses and snarls better described the conversation, and the most disturbing part of it was that she could understand parts of it. Her knowledge wasn't total, and she had to listen carefully to pick out words between each speaker. "Take—queen—wait?" were the words Twilight could gleam from the first speaker, buried under the horrible noise. "Queen—Here—Come." said the other. "Swarm—Find—Spread?" "Spread—Feed—Wait." The two changelings below her continued their conversation, ignorant to Twilight's consciousness. If that talk was anything to go by, they were attacked by a swarm meant to capture them. Exactly why was a mystery to her, but the mention a certain queen made it very clear that she did not want to stick around for whatever they had planned. She moved about her cocoon again, but she became even more stuck; her prison wrapped itself even tighter, and all she accomplished was tiring herself out. As the prospect of escape grew dim, she felt heat, and a lot of it. She screamed as the shell suddenly broke free from the branch and rocketed to the ground, landing right on top of the two changelings. The cocoon split and she tumbled out to slide a few feet away, still covered in green goop. The disabled changeling did nothing to stop her as she rose to her hooves and wiped off some of the slime from her face; the force of the impact knocked them out cold, with one one top of the other mouths agape and legs twitching. A chirp sounded from above Twilight, prompting her to look up and see Peewee. She almost shouted his name in joy, but remembered the woods still hosted many more squads of changelings and waved to the bird instead. The little guy nodded in reply as he used the heat from his wings to melt the thin strand that connected Spike's pod. It glowed and receded rapidly, sending his cocoon down as well. One of the changelings had just begun to wake up when Spike's cocoon landed right on his face and sent the insect right back into darkness. Spike's prison exploded as Spike was slung out, and Twilight caught him with her magic. She set him down gently, and Peewee finally went to work on Rarity's entrapment. It landed a few meters away from the first two and didn't split. Twilight ran over to pry it open with her magic and pull Rarity out, who was fully awake and shivering. "Rarity! Are you alright?" The prim unicorn shook herself like a dog to rid herself of the snot-colored gunk. When it was gone, she turned to Twilight with a scowl to make a hydra's blood turn to ice. "We will never talk of this. Ever." "Right. Um, Rarity?" "Yes?" "I don't know how to say this..." Rarity picked up on the tone of Twilight's words and rushed over to her former place of captivity. She put her face up to the slightly reflective skin of the shell, and turned back to Twilight. She didn't look hysterical or on the verge of tears, only gravely concerned. Not only had another one her teeth turned into a fang, but her right eye was now was now fully identical to that of a changeling's; very pale blue that darkened around the edges, with no pupil. She sat down and began to shake. "I'm a monster, Twilight! I can't go anywhere near civilization looking like this!" Twilight found no words to comfort her friend, and struggled to come up with a way to hide Rarity's mutation until it hit her. She ran to the nearest tree and dug around in the knot of the trunk. Rarity continued to poke at her new optic with horror when Twilight came up behind her and slipped something over her transformed eye. "Twilight! What are you doing?" she protested. "I'm putting on an eyepatch; now hold still." "An eyepatch? Where did you—" "Not important! There. That should hide it for now." Rarity looked at her reflection in the squished cocoon once more, and sighed. "I look like a cyclops." Rarity turned back to point at Twilight. "You might want to take care of that too, dear." Twilight looked down to see the black shell had spread even farther, and was now poking out slightly from her scarf. She took the loose end and tucked it over, and grunted. "We must have been out for hours. We'll grab Spike and get the hay outta here; there's no telling when that swarm will come back." Spike apparently fell asleep during his imprisonment, and snored peacefully as Twilight lifted him up onto her back. Peewee landed there too and nuzzled his friend with a soft coo. Rarity smiled. "Thanks, Peewee. If you hadn't come along, there's no telling what would have happened to us. What did these hooligans want from us, Twilight? If they were going to eat us they'd have done it." "Well, and you're probably not gonna believe this, I think I heard those changelings talking. And I understood them. Something about a queen and waiting." "Oh thank Celestia, it wasn't just me!" Rarity replied. "I thought I was going insane! "Language must be innate to changelings. The worse this gets, the better we can understand them." "Well, I can certainly say I'm not very comfortable learning changeling-ese if this is the crash course." Spike was still asleep when the edge of the forest came into view. Spike also had a tiny piece of the goo from the cocoon still lodged in his snout, and just when they were about to be home-free, he sneezed. Both unicorns stopped as the shrill sound bounced off the trees and deeper into the woods. Dozens of shrill cries echoed around them, and the sound of insect wings soon filled the forest. The group made a break for the train station, and did their best to evade the small horde of changelings that had crawled out of nowhere and committed every parcel of wingpower they had to recapture the three (and rid themselves of that annoying phoenix). They flew faster than either of them could run, and the tornado of hisses, clicks and roars threatened to move right on top of them. Rarity dared to look back just as they passed the barrier between the train station backyard and the forest proper to see many pairs of blue eyes staring at them; the changelings had stopped just short of the forest’s edge. She heaved a breath of relief when the hard floor of the train station replaced grass. The two unicorns gasped for air when Spike turned in his sleep and rolled off Twilight's back. His face smashed straight into the wooden floor of the platform and served as his alarm; he braced himself peeled his face off, shaking it back to normal size to see the two exhausted ponies and the overjoyed phoenix before him. "Rarity! Twilight! You're not gonna believe what happened!" This was not Applebloom's idea of an adventure. When Zecora had finished her tea, she expected that both of them would just bound out the door and begin to fight monsters and bears and ancient evils. No, as soon as Zecora sipped the last drop she instead cracked open a book and began to read, and implored Applebloom to do the same. She lazily glanced as the pages while the zebra did all the real research. She could take the boredom no longer, and finally spoke. "Zecora, if we're gonna save Rarity and Twilight, shouldn't we get goin'?" The zebra her book. "This is a most strange coincidence. I've just found what we need, and we can leave this instance!" "Really?" Zecora walked to a corner of the hut and picked up her favorite cloak. She wrapped it around herself to answer Applebloom's question and stocked up on storage gourds to keep the ingredients in. The filly jumped up into the air. "Where we goin' first? Is it dangerous? Oooh, is there a dragon there?" "A proper guide we'll need for the portions I seek, but I fear finding him may be heard, as he is likely quite meek." "Why? Is he shy?" The pony's ceaseless questions began to wear on Zecora as she struggled to find rhymes. "Yes, Applebloom, shy is the right word. He—" "Why's he shy? Does he have a secret?" Silence filled the room. "We're looking for a changeling." Zecora said, annoyed. "Oh."