Rep stood at attention, at his normal position. It was a normal day in the hive, really. Except for the whole "bunch of strange creatures are now living with us" thing. But other than that, yes, it was pretty normal. He saw mostly the same changelings pass by today as any other day, save for the ones he figured were probably ogling the new guests. Honestly, he didn't really care about them so long as they let him do his job: stand there and stop any arguments or fights within earshot.
As a changeling Hiveguard, his duties were pretty simple. Keep the peace, and if danger comes to the hive then he was to be one of the first to respond. Really, Hiveguard wasn't all that high of a position... but it was an important one, and he was proud of it. The Devourer may be an unstoppable juggernaut, but there's not much it hears down in its little den without a messenger, and Rep was determined to prove that the hive could defend itself just find without him.
It was already embarrassing enough when their dear queen had sent orders to not interfere with the fight between it and the red demon. Rep still wished he had been there to give it a few hits... maybe a will-o'-wisp spell, just something! He admitted to himself that he was a little jealous of its power, but he more hated it for the fact that it invalidated himself and his purpose in the hive.
How does a changeling grow to be that big in the first place, anyways!? The dear queen had always told him and his siblings that the Devourer was a changeling just like them, just a little different, but he almost didn't believe it. If it weren't for its exoskeleton and loyalty to the hive, he definitely would completely disbelieve it. But, it's not like the dear queen had anything to hide from the hive that would be important to know. The Devourer's presence in Canterlot during the raid was kept a secret so that everyone could fight to their fullest without worrying about it, so that was excusable. And honestly--
"Hey Rep," a voice spoke up nearby. Rep snapped out of his thinking and shook his head before looking around.
After he finally cleared the lingering thoughts out of his head, he spotted his sister Lia, another Hiveguard, nearby. She had a smirk on her face that could only mean one thing.
"I was making the face again, wasn't I?" Rep said.
"Yeah, but time!" Lia laughed. "You always make that weird face when you think too hard."
Lia proceeded to tilt her head slightly sideways, turn her eyes upwards and and stick her tongue ever-so-slightly out the front of her mouth. The demonstration really wasn't necessary, and Rep rolled his eyes.
"What were you thinking about?" Lia asked after straightening her face.
"Eh... nothing," he replied. He didn't want to bring up the Devourer, even though he knew that some of his fellow Hiveguards shared his feelings about it.
"Tch, fine," Lia said. When Rep shut his mouth about something it was so hard to get him to talk you'd think he was impersonating a mule.
"So...." she continued, turning to look down the hall he was looking down. "...what do ya' think of the new guys that--"
"I KNEW IT!" Rep yelled suddenly, pointing a hoof at the now madly-giggling Lia. "I knew you were coming to ask me about the things staying here!"
Rep calmly waited for her to stop laughing and return to her hooves before saying anything further. "Why do you want to know what I think about them? Why is our dear queen letting them stay here in the first place, anyways?"
"Come on, you know why," Lia said in return. "They all have a family bond between each other, we're passively feeding on their love just by being near them! Chrysalis probably wants to find out if their love has any special properties or something like that, haven't you tasted it?"
Rep sniffed and looked back down the hallway. He'd tasted the love, alright, everyone in that half of the nest had back when the new group had been in the throne room. It tasted and felt different from normal love, though it didn't appear to grant them any more power than normal. He'd been to several different countries before and the love in each place had a slightly different flavor, but this love... it was just so radically different, he would almost think he'd hooked up his tongue to a waterwheel generator rather than eat a meal.
"Mph," Rep grumbled in response to Lia's question.
"Heehee, suit yourself," she said. "I didn't actually come here to ask you about that anyways."
"Then what did you come here for?"
"Pik and Snik are headed this way."
Rep's ears perked up at this and he looked down the hallway from her smug grin. Sure enough, two bipedal creatures he had seen in the throne room were walking nonchalantly towards his post: each one was roughly smaller than their mother and resembled her in most of their main features, but they were both covered in thick carpets of shaggy brown fur and seemed to be male. One of them seemed to notice Rep looking at them.
"Hey," he said, bumping his brother with his elbow to get his attention. "Hey Pik, lookie there."
"Oh," Pik replied to his brother Snik, "what's this here?"
The two stopped a few meters from Rep who had gone from staring at them to trying to look like he was watching for trouble, knowing full-well that it had just found him. He was, however, kind of thankful that they had said each others' names since he hadn't bothered to remember who was who back in the throne room.
The two stopped in front of him and seemed to wait for a response. They were standing directly in Rep's line of vision down the main hallway he was supposed to be watching, so they didn't have to wait long.
"Er.... *ahem*...." Rep said, coughing as politely as he possibly could. They smelled horrible.
Neither Pik nor Snik reacted, simply looking at him expectantly.
"You're, *ahem*... standing in my way." Rep said. "Could you... please move?"
Again, neither of Thaegan's children said or did anything. They began to look as impatient as Rep was feeling.
Losing patience, Rep decided to try another approach. "Move, you are impeding my duties as a Hiveguard and are thus breaking hive law," he said in an authorized-sounding voice. Really, they technically were breaking the law by impeding his duties.
Pik and Snik smiled, revealing teeth that looked heavily rotted; Rep was able to tell that their teeth just normally looked that way, but it was still disgusting.
"But you're in our way!" One of them said. Ah crap, was that Pik or Snik? Rep couldn't remember.
"What do you mean?" Rep asked, suddenly confused. He was between them and a solid wall.
"You're in our way, we just said it!" the other of the two said, motioning towards Rep in annoyance.
Rep turned his head to the wall, trying to figure out what they meant. No sooner did they move out of his view than he felt a slap on the back of his head, and he whirled his face back forwards to see them both innocently standing with their hands at their sides. One of them moved up beside Rep and leaned against the wall, looking down at him.
"You know," he started, looking down at Rep who was waist-high to them, "back where we came from... we had servants."
"Yeah," his brother said, stepping forward a bit. "we had a bunch of 'em. They'd do things for us like... like go and get us... some water," he said, Rep assuming that he was making eye contact through his impossibly hairy eyebrows.
Now this was NOT going to fly. "I'm not leaving this spot...." Rep said firmly and slowly.
The closest one (leaning on the wall) stood straight up and circled around to the other side of his brother.
"You know," he he said, "sometimes our servants didn't WANT to be our servants. Right, Snik?"
Good to see that mystery resolved.
"Yeah, that's right!" Snik replied with mock enthusiasm. "Sometimes, we'd have to..."
Snik stepped forward quickly, yelling "MAKE THEM!" while attempting to bring his knee into the side of Rep's head. Rep replied with a swift dodge and a headbutt to the stomach, making sure to tilt his horn far enough to the side so as not to stab the assailant. Pik began to move towards his twin but was rebuffed as Rep immediately turned away from him and nailed his stomach with a quick, powerful buck that sent him skidding on his rear a few feet backwards. After recovering their abilities to breathe, the two quickly regrouped a few meters away from Rep.
"Uff, looks like we picked a too thick of a brick to kick..." Pik said, bending over.
Snik replied, "Yeah, let's get out of here," before quickly running off with his brother.
Rep called after them something along the lines of a rage-filled "and don't try that with anyone else" as Lia walked up beside him. When he finished yelling, he turned to her.
"And where were you during all of that!?" He said, nearly yelling at her.
"Laughing, of course," she said with a grin. "I was around the corner listening to the conversation. Sounds like you gave 'em what-for!"
"Dang right I did," Rep replied, looking down the hallway they had fled down. "I didn't get into the Hiveguard on account of having great poetic skills."
"Wait, you can write--"
"No, I can't, I was just using that as a sarcastic example."
"Oh," Lia said, disappointed.
---------------------------------------------------------
Ten Minutes Later
"Was that good enough?" Snik said, looking down.
"Yeah, it was. You two did great!"
"Better have been great," Pik replied, groaning and holding his stomach again. That was going to turn out to be a painful-looking bruise... under the fur...
There was a moment of silence as Lia handed over a small bag of food from the food pods. Of course they could've simply gone and gotten some from the pod rooms for free instead of being paid with food to tick off a fellow Hiveguard, but they didn't know that. In the end, so long as she got her laugh Lia didn't care what she was paying them; it was just convenient that she didn't have to really pay them anything.
"So why did you say that brick line?" Lia asked. "It sounded... kind of like you didn't think it out too long. You probably would've been better off if you had just... I don't know, not said anything there."
"Eh, we've said worse," Snik said. "Like that one time we were talking about a dumb bum to drum... or... something..."
Pik continued, "Besides, it kind of felt like I had to explain something to some extra-dimensional being or something."
...
Lia shrugged. "Oh well. You two have fun out there, and..." she sniffed the air for a second before continuing, "take a shower or something, we have some places for that. You smell like troll dung."
Pik and Snik smelled their own armpits, looked at each other, and then shrugged before turning and going off to find someone else in the hive to mess with.