Body And Mind

by Starman Ghost


Prologue

Pincer had overshot his landing again.

His angle of descent hadn't been steep enough, and instead of dropping solidly on the floor of the black, stony flight dome, his hooves scrabbled at the floor as he tried to bring himself to a stop. Their rapid-fire tapping echoed throughout the spacious cavern, a rattling announcement of his failure to the chamber's only other occupant.

"Don't bother taking off again."

It didn't make much difference to him — his wings, like every other part of his body, felt as though they were about to snap off. He'd been worked to exhaustion and then worked some more, and his body's screams for relief nearly drove out all other thoughts. With tremendous effort he swiveled on the spot, turning to face the other changeling. The cave was shrouded in a dull green, the light provided by pockets of some glowing liquid trapped beneath the floor and the walls, and Pincer could see her looking at him in disgust. He kept his own face determinedly expressionless. His joints aching from the motion, he mechanically saluted her.

"Yes, Commander."

"Six hours! You spent six hours failing a very simple flight drill! You've got to be the worst flier in The Hive!"

Being the target of Commander Formic's wrath wasn't pleasant. Being the target of her wrath without the background noise of an active training ground to distract her was worse. Every changeling had a voice that, when they were untransformed, was accented by a slight natural hiss. Formic's was a strange and unnerving thing, almost too low to hear but still overbearing, and she used it to great effect.

"Apologies, Commander."

"I should've been done here four hours ago! I stayed here because I thought you weren't too damn useless to get your maneuvers right! You! Only you! What is wrong with you?! Two hundred, fifty-six drones in Cluster Three and all of them but you got this drill done on-schedule! Your pod leader couldn't get you in shape! I couldn't even get you in shape! You're a waste, Drone! You're holding us up! Why? Why do I even bother with you?! Why would anyone bother with you?!"

Pincer wanted nothing more than to point out that most of his failures were likely because he'd been forced to do the drills for hours on end without any food or rest. He wasn't about to give her an excuse to strike him, though. In his current state, he'd drop like a stone if she did.

"You know what's going to happen if you keep this up? You'll go straight to Cluster Thirty-Two. I've already got my eye on some drones there I could trade you for, so you'd better shape up, fast. Understood, Drone?"

The moment he heard "Cluster Thirty-Two," it was as if the room was pulling away from him. Despite his empty stomach, he felt as though he was about to vomit. Everything but his own sense of dread seemed to fade. She could easily do it. She had the authority, and showing fear would only make it more likely she would. Sheer survival instinct kept him from trembling.

"Yes, Commander."

"Good. Back to your pod."

His front leg swiveled into another salute, and he turned to leave.

It was a rather eerie thing, navigating the twists and turns of the Hive's softly glowing corridors and chambers after all of the others had retreated to their sleeping quarters. He hadn't been anywhere alone since his last field training exercise, in which he'd taken on an earth pony's form and infiltrated a border town to live among them for two weeks.

Despite the ever-present fear that he would be exposed and executed as a spy — Equestria might not formally have capital punishment, but he knew they'd make an exception for a changeling — in many ways it had been the most relaxing two weeks he could remember. Without so much as presenting identification, he'd gotten a job hauling fruit on his first day that left him able to get local room and board for the rest of the exercise. What followed was a wonderful but all-too-brief period during which he was not once yelled at, beaten, or threatened, and where he wasn't jerked about by the demands of a by-the-minute schedule.

After descending one final slope and slipping through the hole at its end, he emerged into the long, narrow chamber that served as his pod's living quarters. Eight crevices, four on each wall, served as beds for him and his podmates; all of them were filled but his. On the center of each side wall, and on the far wall, were larger holes that led to adjoining chambers. He was about to go to the cocoon room to quickly feed before bed when a voice came from the pod leader's quarters, to his left.

"Pincer, did you just get back?"

He once again turned on the spot to face the speaker and gave an automatic salute. "Yes, Pod Leader."

The other changeling, who was now emerging from the doorway, sighed. "You can call me Scarab in private."

"Don't want to get into bad habits, Pod Leader. I'd really rather not slip up in public."

Scarab nodded. "Understandable. Probably a good idea, actually. That's the kind of thinking I've come to expect from you. Now, I didn't see you during dinner. Did they let you eat at all?"

"Formic ate, I didn't. I wasn't about to ask."

"That's what I was afraid of," Scarab said quietly. "Come into my office, let's talk about it. I was able to save you some fish."

"Thank you, Pod Leader."

The mention of food made Pincer more painfully aware of his empty stomach. Scarab's office was modest, the only place to seat guests being an uncomfortably small raised, flat rock that served as a desk and two narrow, flat-topped rocks on opposite sides that served as stools. After a day of nonstop training, though, it might as well have been a luxury suite in Canterlot. The cold trout he began ripping into was similarly delicious after a day without so much as a bite of food.

"How'd the flight drills go?"

Pincer swallowed the chunk he had been chewing. "Still didn't pass. They, uh..."

He took a breath as the fear that had been so mercifully pushed out of his mind by his own exhaustion returned. Once again, he had the strange sensation of the room falling out from around him.

"Cluster Thirty-Two. Commander said she'd send me there if I didn't shape up soon. I... I can't go there. If I do I won't last the year. I... oh Chrysalis, I can't, I can't!"

He was staring down at his food now, rapping at his forehead with his hoof. Scarab gave him a moment to collect himself before speaking.

"Look, you don't need to worry, okay? I know you're scared, but that's all they were trying to do. Between you and me, they were bluffing."

Pincer slowly looked up at him. "B—bluffing? Are you sure? Why? Why would you think that?"

"Tell me, how did you do in combat training today?"

"Huh? I won nine out of sixteen, but I don't see what that has to do with—"

"And the obstacle course?"

"Five seconds below par, but I still don't—"

"Shapeshifting?"

"Uh, passed inspection. All sixteen transformations."

"Impersonation?"

"They picked me out five out of sixteen times, we were in groups of four... so they barely did better than if they'd guessed blind. One of them spent just about the whole time grilling me and still didn't catch me."

"So you were at least above average in every other category, and you got infiltration scores half the pod leaders in Cluster Three — or even any cluster, really — would kill for."

Pincer's gaze drifted toward the ceiling as he considered this. The room seemed to be orienting itself properly about him again, and the terrible lurching in his stomach was dying down.

"Look, they'd never put someone with your infil scores on the Suicide Squad. You're exactly what we need. They can't afford to have drones like you gutting yourselves on the Royal Guards' pikes to distract them, especially not when our pod deploys to Canterlot in three days. In fact, I'd bet anything they'll have their eye on you when this cluster needs another pod leader."

Pincer exhaled slowly, then snapped up the rest of his fish and swallowed it. Him, a pod leader? He liked the idea.

"Yeah... when you put it that way, I guess I'll probably be fine. Thanks, Pod Leader."

"But," Scarab said rather more forcefully, "you've still got to get your flight score up. Train during your free hour. I'll gladly coach you. Not just so you aren't punished, but because we need everyone at their best if we're going to survive. No matter how bad things get here, the real enemy is Celestia. Never forget that."

Pincer knew that very well. It was why he couldn't blame Formic, or Chrysalis, or anyone else in The Hive for his life. The ponies had it so easy. They lived such stress-free lives, and yet they wouldn't have willingly shared anything with the changelings. The Hive had to take everything it needed by force, and to do that they all needed to be strong. That was why he had to face screaming and violence every day, without relief ever in sight. It was the ponies' fault he had to live like this.Just thinking about it made him want to tear at them like he had the trout.

"Of course not, Pod Leader."

"Good to hear. Dismissed."

Pincer eased off of his stool and wearily trotted out of Scarab's office, outwardly composed but still seething about the ponies. The fish had eased his hunger, but he still felt drained, and that wouldn't change until he headed into the cocoon chamber at the end of his pod's main hall.

It was a good feeling, to feed on love. The chamber was much like any other — small, made of black rock, lit a dull green. It had a pony, though, and that made all the difference. Scarab had personally captured the unicorn that lay sleeping and suspended in the jade-colored, crusty shell before him, a young lilac mare who'd been scheduled to wed in a week. Her affection for her groom-to-be was powerful, and it made her the envy of many pods. Now it washed over him, relaxing and energizing him like a warm shower. The rather perverse satisfaction he got from the little act of revenge for how his kind was treated only made things better, and gradually his anger and weariness ebbed away.

"Rough day, huh?"

The feminine voice shook him out of his reverie, but it was hardly unwelcome. He turned away from the cocoon to face his visitor.

"Good to see you, Antenna."

"You too. Figured I'd join you, I skipped out on feeding here when it was scheduled. It's no fun, having to eat alone."

"Thanks. I'm just glad you're finally out of quarantine."

She rolled her eyes — at least, Pincer thought she did. With the exception of Chrysalis', changelings' eyes weren't easily readable like ponies'. No pupils to dilate, no easy way to tell when they shifted or where they were looking — just two fields of deep, pure sky-blue.

"One thing's for sure: I won't be saying anything like that to Pod Leader Pteron again. I'm glad you guys knew he was lying about me having a chitin-eating disease. I just wish the docs had."

"How bad was it, anyway? You didn't really say much about it."

"Take it from me, Pincer: don't get sick or hurt, ever. The doctors pried off half my damn backplate when they needed a sample. For the first week after, I'd wake up in the puddle I'd bled overnight. Just a tiny, dark room, with nothing to do and no one to talk to. Worst month of my life." Antenna crossed her front legs. "I'll bet anything they make it like that so nobody fakes getting sick."

Pincer looked down. "I'm, uh... I'm sorry to hear that. I had no idea."

"Hey, don't worry about it." She was smiling now, though Pincer couldn't help but wonder if it wasn't at least a little forced. "It's over, it's done with, and most importantly, I still beat you today in combat training!" Antenna chuckled.

"Don't brag, I won the last two before that," Pincer groused.

"I'm still ahead, but maybe that'll change if you work on your flying."

Pincer groaned. "I just need more time. I'll have the drills down soon."

"I know that, but that doesn't change things." Antenna beat her wings, producing a low buzzing sound, and slowly rose into the air. "The better you fly, the better you can fight." She began doing lazy circles around Pincer's head. Being used to this, he didn't bother to try to follow her movements.

"We're going straight to Canterlot for this. Anything goes wrong, we'll be fighting Celestia's best. But if we pull this off, we'll be eating good, and The Hive'll keep eating good long after we've got a new queen."

"We might live to see that day. Chrysalis has been Queen close to eight centuries. She can't have long left before she dies or passes queenship on to another drone. I just hope whoever follows her can keep us alive another eight." He paused, tapping his cheek with his hoof.

"You know, you'd make a good queen."

She snorted incredulously but looked amused. "Let's be realistic here, 'kay?"

"You seem to have the right stuff."

"Don't know if you noticed, but I'm not a Cluster Commander. I'm not even a Pod Leader. Bit of a long shot there."

"A drone can dream, can't he?"

They shared a laugh, but then fell silent. Now that he was free to focus on it again, Pincer felt the energy from the cocoon beginning to fade. They were nearly done. Soon the pony would have to be left to rest and regain its strength. Then he could finally sleep, giving him a few precious hours of rest before he'd have to prepare for what could very well be the most important mission Cluster Three — and, in fact, The Hive — would ever undertake.