//------------------------------// // A Creeping Alliance // Story: My Little GLaDOS // by TheApexSovereign //------------------------------//         “Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless.” -Adolf Hitler         The air was hot; Glados, despite being latched around a changeling’s neck and pressing a kitchen knife against his throat to make him fly faster, still found herself begging for an ice age to bear down upon this godforsaken land. The droning hum that was given off with every beat of HookHook’s wings, coupled with this ridiculous heat, added more of an edge to her already ill-temper. Strung around her shoulder via an old rope was the portal gun; when asked what it did by HookHook, Glados snidely replied, “It’s good for bashing in the skulls of inquisitive mutant freaks with a speech impediment.” It didn’t even exist to him after that. The merciless sun was both nigh and high within the time it took the backstabber and the back-stabber to fly across the Equestrian Badlands and reach what HookHook described as the Changelings’ hive: a black citadel, prominently erected from the foundations of an old Diamond Dog settlement in the heart of a large, bowl-shaped valley. The Badlands’ pure white sand, soft and dusty, devolved into a black, grainy substance at the valley’s perimeter. According to HookHook, the castle was not, in fact, the Changelings’ home; it was the Queen’s stronghold. The Swarm lived in a long-abandoned Diamond Dog tunnel network underground, which, if his information was to be believed, channeled throughout the entire desert.         Judging from their surmised method of reproduction, and the sheer size of the hive, Glados estimated that there were tens of thousands of the insectoid equines living right under Celestia’s big fat nose. The thought of which made her both smile a bit and develop a small lurch in her stomach.         As the pair made their descent into the arid valley, Glados’ vision of the castle became gradually less impaired by the heat waves rising from the sand; the desert mirage was replaced with the area’s own distinct atmosphere, which clung to the entire basin like a foul fog. The smell of the place was wretched, like a garbage dump hosed down with hot sewage; it hit her with such unexpected force that she almost heaved on the spot.         HookHook, despite his very life being threatened, sensed his kidnapper’s sudden discomfort and yelled over the hallowing winds, “It is our natural pher-o-mones that has kept changelings hidden for all these years! Don’t worries, little pony! You will adjust!”         HookHook halted before the great threshold and descended to the ground; he landed as daintily as a feather, hardly kicking up wisps of black sand as he did so. Glados woozily slid off his back, stumbling a bit in the black sand before regaining her bearings; despite her momentary disorientation, she still held the knife in her mouth, blade pointed at the changeling. HookHook acted as if the threat was nonexistent. His sunburnt-orange eyes gazed up at a pony-sized emerald grafted into the stone door’s apex; its weak glow rhythmically faded in and out, humming sequentially. His horn fired a thin beam of similarly colored energy at the gem, brightening its radiance and leaking a thick green fluid from either side. It traveled along a preordained path bordering the threshold. When both sides reached the sand, the entire border lit up like a Christmas tree before vanishing altogether; the great stone gate parting its heavy doors. Before entering, HookHook turned to Glados and said, “We hopes you gives us a warning if little pony tries stabbing us in the back. Pony be wiser not to; pony outnumbered.” “Believe me, troglodyte,” she warned, removing the knife from her mouth and slamming its blade into the sand. “If anything happens, you’ll be the first to know if I kill you. I promise.” HookHook nodded warily and proceeded to enter the castle, but froze to the sound of Glados saying, “And HookHook…” He looked over his shoulder as she picked up her weapon and joined him at his side. Readjusting the portal gun’s strap, she flatly said, “I highly recommend you don’t betray me.” A single nod. “No, I need you to understand,” she asserted. “Run off, stab me in the back and imprison me or try anything other than not dying? You’ll wish I gutted you back in Ponytown. Are we clear?” Hesitant at first, HookHook quickly nodded and made a hasty trot into the foreboding darkness of the changeling stronghold; Glados followed. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but when they did, the changeling queen’s fortress disappointingly resembled just another medieval castle from a gothic nightmare: busts of changelings lined the walls, with occasional suits of pony armor popping in to break up the display’s blandness; the archaic chandelier above was massive, and held, she roughly-estimated, about seventy-five candles, making it the only necessary source of light illuminating this dank entrance hall. Two grand staircases on either side of the foyer led to the upper levels, and between the two stood a massive sculpture of a furious-looking changeling queen with long, silky hair blasted back. She stood on toned, swissed hind legs, about to crush the broken bodies of a unicorn, pegasus, earth pony, and alicorn lying in a crumpled heap beneath her. An inscription on the base read: “Slycilla the Conquistador: the first and finest of changelings. Crippled in battle with the wretched Queen Solianna and King Artemis, she spent her final days nurturing The Egg before passing away in her sleep months later. May she be the model of which all changelings aspire to be. 866 A.D. - 913 A.D.” The Egg? thought Glados, taking a step towards the statue as if she were in a trance and rereading the scripture. She was snapped out of her stupor to the sound of HookHook calling her name. “We go this way, down into the tunnels,” he said, gesturing to a door on the eastern wall. Glados looked up at the twin staircases facing them from the other side of the foyer and said, “I thought we were meeting the queen.” Before HookHook could open his mouth to speak, she angrily warned, “I don’t make idle threats, insect. Take me to the queen if you don’t want anything important hanging out of your body.” HookHook’s gaze frantically shot from the door to Glados as he tried finding the words to speak. “We… but I… Queenie is down there! I-In the tunnels! Pretty pony has to trusts HookHook, we swears!” Glados pursed her lip and hardened her stance. “No,” she said. “You bring me the queen, or your guts are ending up here, here and here.” She gestured to the walls, floor and statue. “Then I leave here and get on with my day.” For the first time since she’d met him, HookHook was angry. When he spoke, his voice was low and sounded more of disappointment than anything else. “Very well, pony. We takes you to Queen Chrysalis’ chamber.” Glados dispelled her stance and stood upright once more. “Excellent. I’m glad we came to an understanding. Would’ve been a shame if this ended in mindless violence.” “Indeed. ‘Mindless violence.’ We sees pretty pony desires a quick and bloody death for dropping in on the Queen of the Changelings unannounced.” HookHook brushed past her, lurching towards the easternmost stairwell. He flicked his long, finlike tail, beckoning her to follow. As they reached the top of the staircase and made a right down the hall, towards another set of stairs, Glados said, “I know I said I’d kill you if you tried to betray me, which you just did, but I couldn’t help but pity a mindless drone with an I.Q. as low as your’s.” HookHook gritted his teeth; a few twitches popped up in his face at the term “mindless drone.” “Besides,” she continued, “killing you would be a waste of the janitor’s valuable time, as he’d spend it scrubbing your bloodstains from the foyer carpet.” “Pretty pony is mean,” mumbled the changeling. “‘Pretty pony is mean?’” echoed Glados. “I’m mean? You knock out my bodyguards, break into my home to do lord knows what, I’m missing my first day of work, so I’ll probably get fired, and then you try tricking me back there in the foyer? Yeah, I guess I could say I’m a little upset.” She could hear the scrawny changeling swallow a lump of anxiety, to which she said, “So try anything else, and you’ll know what it means to be my enemy.” After that, HookHook remained silent for a good chunk of the journey through the twisting and turning corridors of the changeling queen’s stronghold. Glados started thinking that there was some kind of spell at work when nearly every door opened up to yet another hallway that eerily resembled the last one. His eyes still glued to the path in front of them, HookHook asked Glados, “Pony said she was missings her first day of working?” “Mm-hm.” “We are very much sorry for that. What does pony do?” “Uh…” she moaned, her attention mostly trained on a passing changeling wearing a black and white dress with a feather duster carried in her mouth. “Uh, I’m a baker I guess… at the Sugarcube Corner.” A hiss of delight came from the tall creature in front of her. “Ha-ha! We loves that place! We’d sometimes sneaks out after school and fly really far to the pony-village just to get something from Corner Sugarcubes. We’ve always wanted to be a baker…” “Then be one,” she casually proposed. “Don’t tell me you guys have ass-tattoos that advertise the purpose of your meaningless existence to the whole world, too.” At an intersection capped with a candlelit chandelier, HookHook went straight through, towards a large set of double doors. “We changelings do not have the ‘cutie marks’ like you privileged little ponies. The changelings are all hatched as hoofsoldiers—” “Christ alive…” “—and from there until adulthood, if we displays a special prowess in a specific field, we are given that job with the choices of turning it down.” The tip of HookHook’s horn grazed the double door’s lock, sparking a bit on contact. They swung open on their own accord, opening the passage to a dark, dank corridor lit only by the extraterrestrial glow emanating from a large threshold facing them at the very end. That, and a lambent mucus-like substance drooping low from the ceiling. Upon seeing this, Glados was immediately fascinated by the pony-shaped silhouettes twitching within the goop.   “Scouts, infiltrators, supply runners, bodyguards, captains, maids and cooks, there’s bunches. We’s a scout, because we’s is super sneaky and good at getting out of trouble.” “HookHook,” said Glados, watching the changeling’s hindquarters rhythmically bob until he was engulfed in darkness, “you reinvent what it means to be a moron.” The pair casually made their trek down the sinister corridor. When a little ways in, the double doors behind them slammed shut. They were swallowed in complete darkness, leaving only the threshold’s malevolent afterglow ahead for guidance. Being unable to see made Glados’ skin crawl, but she pressed on in silence. She froze when HookHook looked over his shoulder, as the orange glow of his eyes were unexpectedly visible in the darkness. “It is not too late for pony to turn back…”         “No,” she hissed. “I’m gaining an audience with your queen, whether she wants to or not.” Glados prayed he couldn’t see her patting the side of her ASHPD.         She sensed him shrug, followed by the light clopping of hooves on waxed softwood. “It is pony’s funeral…” he sang.         “Yes,” she breathed, “it is ponies’ funeral… Heh-heh-heh.”         As HookHook and Glados got closer and closer to the threshold, the walls and floor became coated with blots of the putrid slime. Glados’ light trot through the sticky ooze devolved into a burdened wade, her hooves squishing and squashing against the muck as if it was trying to suck her in. HookHook remained completely unaffected by the viscous terrain; in fact, it sounded like he was gliding over the stuff as if he were ice skating. But any trace of the substance vanished when entering the ominous glare of the blackened steel door. Glados remained behind her prisoner, shrouded in inky darkness. Swallowing hard, HookHook raised a hoof and knocked three times.         His response were heavy, plodding hoofsteps trudging to the door, then silence. What immediately followed was the lock being dispelled after a series of thunderous tumbles capped with a heart-stopping “clink.” The dark metal door opened with an ancient creak to a massive changeling, twice as tall as HookHook and just as burly, with turquoise eyes peering through a bucket of a helmet. His posture was almost that of a gorilla, with his huge forelegs propping up the upper half of his body while his smaller hindquarters sat on the floor; his oarlike wings hung limply at his sides. The brute’s huge frame filled much of the doorway, preventing Glados from catching a glimpse at the queen’s quarters. “HookHook… why have you… come… unannounced?” grumbled the buckethead, his voice heavy, guttural and monotone. The lankier changeling bowed his head. “Brute Force, stewards of Queenie Chrysalis, good mornings. How was his mornings?” Brute exhaled a throaty sigh; his posture remained like a statue’s. “What… do you want… HookHook? Unless you have some… viable information… Queen Chrysalis wishes to be… undisturbed. She’s… fertilizing.” HookHook turned to Glados, whose face lit up green when standing at his side and was regarded by Brute with nothing but a simple tilt of the head. “This is goods,” he said. “Queenie is brighter mood than usual when she fertilizers The Egg.” “I think your definition of ‘brighter mood’ and mine aren’t quite the same, troglodyte.” “Is your definition of ‘brighter mood’ a biting on the necks as opposed to that?” he gestured to the pony-filled goo above, churning and smacking against the frigid cobblestone ceiling. Renegade droplets enthusiastically tap-danced their way down the peeled wallpaper, giving off a chilly, scum-ridden atmosphere. “Actually, yes. Now,” Glados stood between the changelings and flicked her tail to the larger one, “shall we go in?” “No,” halted Brute. Glados turned and looked up to him with an eerie, blank stare. “And… why not?” she asked, staring intensely. The blue slits peering through the helmet’s slot narrowed. “Who… are you? To barge in on... the queen… unannounced? To trot around… making demands… and disrespect our home... like you’re of a higher power? I could squash you… right now… pony.” “You’re not going to do that,” was her reply, in classic blunt simplicity. Brute Force smiled underneath his helm. “And why’s that?” he asked, almost sounding mildly amused. “Because I’ve got an offer your queen can’t possibly refuse.” She adjusted the rope slung over her shoulder, which Brute carefully analyzed. “If I waste the queen’s time, then you can kill me. I don’t care. How’s that sound?” The behemoth slowly raised a beefy foreleg and rubbed his bicep. “You are… strange… pony. But your words… speak truth. If you waste even... a second of my queen’s time… then I shall squash you into a red paste. Are we… clear?” “Crystal.” “Good.” Brute turned; his thundering hoofsteps seemingly shook the entire castle. Glados wouldn’t be surprised if they actually did. “Then... let us go.” The bouncer led Glados and HookHook into the queen’s living quarters: spacious, circular, with a vivid green bonfire on a closed off and elevated platform in the center illuminating the entire room a sinister emerald. A red velvet couch sat precariously close to the flame, with a novel and reading glasses set on the very end. Scarlet carpeting matched the depravity of a liar’s sleeping quarters perfectly, which were in brilliant contrast with a wall composed of marble. The perimeter was evenly patterned with three ebony doors, with Brute leading them to the one on the far left. Glados furtively inspected his slow raising of a hoof and beating on the door. As he did, dust and lint flittered from its surface. Brows raised, she asked, “Uh, how long has that been closed?” “Seven months,” Brute replied. “It’s just… an old door. Queen Chrysalis… usually just teleports... in there… No one really bothers her… when she’s fertilizing.” After a third, seemingly light knock, the door swung open and crushed its doorstop. Light from the bonfire poured into the room ahead, and a terrible odor flooded out of the quarantined room into Glados’ nasal passages. “Oh, sweet merciful Johnson!” she blurted, madly backing away from the door with jaws clamped over her foreleg. The pair of changelings looked at Glados as if she had two sets of legs. “Who is this ‘Johnson?’” asked HookHook. She slowly set her hoof down and stared at them for what felt like an eternity. “I... don’t know,” she drawled. “The stench… is gone,” said Brute. Glados cautiously approached the two, then looked to either one of them before entering the chamber. Upon creeping in, she was greeted with a sight that both intrigued and disgusted her analytical mind. The room was nothing more than a dungeon; humid, and completely closed off aside from the doorway behind her. But it wasn’t completely empty. Not by any stretch of the imagination, for what Glados saw made her hairs stand on ends: A spider web. A giant, funnel-shaped spider web was set up near the back of the room, away from the door. Rather than traditional silk, it was crafted entirely from the nasty mucus-like stuff Glados has seen numerous times while on her trip through the castle. The bridge threads, as thick as power cables, reached three different points in the spherical room, with one not too far from Glados’ left. Several anchor threads stretched from the web’s center and stuck into random, shadowed points in the ceiling. Nestled within the funnel itself was a glowing green pod, no larger than a football, humming softly like some alienoid insect. Its glare was weak, but Glados swore she saw one of the shadows beside it move. Her heart stopped when a flat hiss drifted from the gloom. “Who are you?” asked the darkness, it’s voice vibrating through the air in a low, drawled falsetto. “You don’t look like a changeling… An outsider, perhaps?” There was a twinge of surprise in her calm facade. “An outsider who so boldly trespasses the Fertilization Chamber? I won’t ask how you found this place, or how you got past my guards, because you’ve got guts, pony. Not many have the bravery and gall you do. Unfortunately, nopony would hear of your accomplishments, for I now have to—” “Look,” Glados cut in, “can we please skip the dramatics? I’m here to talk business.” After a brief period of silence, the inky blackness spoke once more with an obvious struggle at repressing her rising anger. “Talk… business?” she growled. “I have no intention of doing such a thing.” “It’d be in your best interest to do so, Love Bug.” The queen ignored her warnings and screeched into the air. The sharp noise made Glados falter and cover her ears in vain attempts at extracting the deafening whine slicing through her skull. “Severance!” cried the foe. “Defend your queen!” At his highness’ call, a changeling dropped from the shadows and into the doorway’s emerald-green light. His eyes matched the flame, as did the stainless steel bard completely reinforcing his dextrous shell. The creature hissed, bearing a pair of absurdly long fangs and pacing to the side with his chin low to the ground. Glados took one look at her opponent and shrugged. “I warned you,” she said, sounding genuinely disappointed. A stretch of just four seconds felt like time grinding to a halt for Glados. At one second without hesitation, Severance lunged his head forward, emitting a bud of malevolent green lightning from his horn; in similar apathy, Glados ripped her portal gun from its sling, effortlessly snapping the old rope. In two seconds, the offensive is halfway down the path to its target; breathing remains at a steady pace as the pony jammed her bandaged foreleg into the gun’s arm-slot. At three seconds, sparks were practically licking at her nose as Glados dove into the attack and thrusts her armed leg forward. Within the fourth and final second, the blue sprite in the ASHPD’s chamber turns orange, just as a blast of similar pigmentation escapes the clawlike barrel and hits the stone underneath Severance’s footing. Too slow to react, he was swallowed whole by the resonant aperture. Glados ducking forward just barely escaped a grazing, and when Severance’s footing faltered, his aim floundered as well, forcing the neon bolt to become spastic and strike a point just above the doorway behind her. Hunks of stone and debris scattered across the floor in a cavalcade of rumbles. His screams were abruptly cut short when the portal vanished as quickly as it appeared with the simple push of a button. “I warned you,” she said. “What… what was that?” Silence. “What did you do!? Where’s Severance!?” she cried, mostly out of fear than anguish.  “This,” Glados kept her gun-clad foreleg in the air, but gestured to the hidden speaker, “is a multi-dimensional rift gun. Nothing special, just one of my latest creations. It opens a wormhole to another dimension. Your little bodyguard is probably twisting and turning through some horrific god forsaken realm right about now, so unless you want to suffer the same fate, I suggest you step into the light very carefully.” A disdaining growl. “Very well, pony. I shall meet your request. But do not take me for some kind of fool, like that pathetic whelp, Celestia. I have dozens of lurkers hanging in the shadows above your head right now. The only reason why I am wasting my time on you is out of respect.” “You keep telling yourself that, Fruitfly.” Produced by a great leap, a heavy twang coupled with the buzzing of wings reverberated throughout the spacious chamber. Nearly getting squashed, Glados found herself tiredly looking into the snarling face of Queen Chrysalis; Swampy-green eyes intensely locked with a pair of gold.         Glados found herself less than surprised that Chrysalis simply looked like a mutated Princess Celestia, with tangled locks of scummy blue hair that hung around her face like drapes, and a malformed horn jutting prominently out of her forehead.         The queen sniffed Glados’ musk, receiving a step away and a puzzled stare. “You reek of hate,” she growled. “Not a tidbit of love to be found within your body.”         “I get that alot.” “So tell me, foolish pony,” hissed the queen, reeling away from her pint-sized guest with bared fangs, “what is this ‘business’ you wish to discuss?” “No, no, no,” Glados retorted, faintly shaking her head. “No, I ask the questions here.” The queen responded to the pony’s ignorant demands by smashing a swissed hoof into the ground; dozens of small fractures in the stone reached out from under her foot. Glados reeled back, appearing more annoyed than scared. “No,” spat the queen. “I’ll… gladly… listen to what you have to say, but you will respect me when in my home. Now…” she straightened her posture, “...speak your piece. Why have you come all this way?”         “Noted…” Glados bit her tongue to prevent future outbursts, and hotly asked, “First off… ‘respect?’ Why would a megalomaniacal insectoid demigod respect anyone?”         Chrysalis brushed past Glados, chuckling softly. “Looks can be deceiving, little pony. You have certainly proven that today. Breaking into my home and making it all the way to a monarch’s living quarters, where she sleeps?” She stepped through the doorway, having to duck a bit for her horn. “You’ve got moxie, pony. Not many of your kind have that. With that out of the way, how in Equestria did you make it this far?” Glados chose to remain silent, and instead allowing the scene before them to speak for herself. When scanning the common room, Chrysalis found HookHook and Brute Force sitting absentmindedly on her couch near the fire. The malnourished changeling enthusiastically waved to his queen; Brute gave a single nod and continued reading his book.         “What are you idiots do—!? Oh, wait a minute,” she caught herself, eyes narrowing at HookHook. “Now I see.”         “Pretty much,” added Glados. Queen Chrysalis stormed to her subject, wings humming furiously.          “My queenie,” cooed HookHook, bowing low to his queen. “Has her business with little pony finished?”         “HookHook, you idiot!” Chrysalis swatted the naive changeling across the face, cruelly watching him crumple to the ground in a shuddering mess. “What in Tartarus compelled you to make such a imbecilic decision!? Do you realize how close that pony was to harming me!?”         “She seemeds docile!” he sobbed, covering his face. “HookHook don’t knows!” Brute lowered the book, miniscule in his colossal hooves, to take one glance at the whelp of a changeling and go back to reading.         “HookHook don’t thinks sometimes! HookHook foolish!”         “HookHook very foolished,” snarled the queen, who then closed her eyes to groan. “Four weeks in The Hole,” she declared, “no exceptions!” The shuddering heap feebly nodded.         “What’s The Hole?” asked Glados, stepping over the grieving creature after punting him in the gut.         “Detention Center, basically. A bleak, isolated quagmire cut off from the rest of the hive. Trust me, it’s the least of the punishments I can distribute.” Chrysalis led Glados across the common room, to the door adjacent with the web’s dungeon. The ebony door swung open with a single push of magic, leading to the Queen’s bedroom: a room much like the web’s, but with a massive alicorn-sized pod stationed in the center. Dozens of knick knacks and trinkets in glass cases were hung from the enclosing wall. Some were large, others small. A few held staffs and pendants, while many more looked strange, ancient, and collected over the course of several centuries. One nearby held a small, timeworn vial filled with pinkish fluid. It was half empty, but never finished.         Chrysalis approached the one window in her room that filled it with natural, brilliant sunlight, overlooking the entire castle and beyond the Badlands. She squinted at a familiar crag piercing the horizon far off into the distance; she could only just see the silhouette of a castle built into the side. A contempt-filled growl escaped her throat.         Glados neared the large pod with a curious look about her. It was lightly prodded, making her shiver to the cold gelatinousness of it. With the very tip of her hoof, she lifted one of the drooping flaps on the side and allowed it to fall into the strange anomaly’s opening, leading her to believe that this was definitely the queen’s bed. But this just raised another question. “So… mind telling me the purpose of that big web back there?” she asked. “The one with the pod?” Glados leaned over the capsule’s flabby edge and eagerly ran her hooves along its ribbed floor. “If this is your bed,” she inattentively continued, staring at the thin layer of slime coating her hoof with wonder, “then… what purpose does the web serve?” Queen Chrysalis retreated from her perch on the window and approached the bed from its other side. “It’s the Fertilization Chamber, where The Egg lies.” “I’ve seen that earlier,” alluded Glados, her gaze snapping up from the pod’s interior. She crossed her forelegs, which the queen inadvertently copied. “I’m going to take a wild shot in the dark and guess that it’s your’s?” Chrysalis nodded, pushing herself away from the pod; she began pacing across the room, occasionally glancing up to see Glados half-paying attention and half-asleep. “Yes, it is. Every thousand years, when a Changeling Queen nears the end of her life cycle, she selects a suitable mate and, together, they make an egg. The Egg.” “Who’s the unlucky guy?” mumbled Glados. “Hm? Oh, I don’t know. The mate continues with his life and I do mine.” Chrysalis seemed genuinely apathetic to the process, prompting Glados to give her a peculiar look that she read like a mind reader. “We don’t mate for ‘fun’ like you privileged little ponies,” she spat. “We do it for survival.” “Fascinating,” the pony glumly replied. “How long does it take for The Egg to hatch?”  A twinge briefly surfaced the queen’s face, which she hid behind her hair. “It’s… a slow process, but worth it… in the end.” “Uh-huh.” “I’ve had a good, long life,” she continued. Glados swore she was hearing things when the queen’s voice subtly lurched an octave. “Not many regrets, no. Well,” her tone suddenly took a dark turn, “except for my repeated failures against Twilight Sparkle and her miscreant little friends.” That caught Glados’ attention; she tore herself away from the pod and rushed over to the queen’s side. “That’s actually why I’m here. Well, mostly.” The queen looked less than understanding. “I’m sorry, what?” “That’s mostly the reason why I’m here,” she explained, pacing circles around Chrysalis. “Not exactly for Twilight and her intrusive friends, no, they’re just small fish in a really, really big pond.” “What are you getting at?” asked Chrysalis, voice understandably rife with suspicion. “What I mean,” she stressed, “is that, despite my boundless intelligence and my ability to condense quantum physics into three minutes of thorough explanation, there’s no way in Hell I could take on an entire nation. No, I need help, assistance in the like. That’s why I captured HookHook: to bring me to his superior, in hopes of receiving a little assistance with my plans.” Glados marched to the window overlooking the gorge. There, she stared through the sand, at the thousands of tunnels and intersecting networks replete with changelings. “I had no idea he was bringing me to an army.” “You must be new to this land,” laughed Chrysalis. “Have you really not heard of our failed campaign against Canterlot?” “No,” lied Glados, “I haven’t.” She returned to looking out the window, whimsically uttering, “You’ve bred quite the impressive army.” “Indeed, I have.” Chrysalis was felt looming over her. “And what do you suggest we do, pony? Use force? Knock on Celestia’s front door, ‘Oh, hey Celestia. Could you please hold another wedding and allow me to inconspicuously replace the surely heavily-guarded bride and pray to Slycilla that this one doesn’t have any ties to the Elements of Harmony’s bearers?’ Sorry to burst your bubble, science pony, but another operation like Princess Cadence’s wedding just isn’t happening anytime soon.” Her gaze dropped to the floor. “Perhaps I could pass my young the torch.” “As far as I know, a wedding isn’t being held anytime soon. However…” Chrysalis gave Glados a blank stare, as if she were speaking nonsense. “However… there’s a big party in Canterlot coming up in a few weeks. The— what was it? The ‘Grand Galloping Gala?’ Yeah, that’s it. And I’ve got tickets for two...” “You aren’t suggesting…” breathed Chrysalis, her eyes slowly widening to the size of saucers. “I am,” Glados curtly replied. “You enter the party as my new ‘friend,’ I’ll have a diversion planned, and amongst the confusion, your army arrives in swarms. From what HookHook told me, changelings have a telepathic link to one another, am I correct? A hive mind?” The queen nodded, still trying to comprehend the magnitude of the offer this random pony had just willingly suggested. "Well, actually," she sputtered, "they're only connected to me, not each other. And even then, the link can only stretch so far. It's able to stretch as far as Canterlot, for that I am certain." “Yes, that's good. Good. I’ve got a few surprises in mind for when the fires start, but those are for me to mind.” She leaned against the wall, crossing her right legs over the left. “And then we just take Canterlot, you pass away with zero regrets, and I go on my own. Well, Lovebug? Does this spark your interest?” Her offer was met with tense silence. Glados had to try her hardest not to laugh at the stark whiteness surfacing the queen’s face. “I know, I know. The ‘something you don’t see every day’ cliche. But come now, Changeling Queen. With our ruthlessness and bloodlust, why, we may as well be sisters. So I’ll ask again: Do. We have. A deal?” “‘Deal?’” echoed Chrysalis. “It’s not a deal if you receive something as well. Why are you doing all this? Why help us with the enslavement of your entire race?” Glados huffed and looked around the room as if the emptiness held an answer. “Uh… I dunno. Sport?”         “...Sport?” she clarified.         “Yes. Sport.”         “You want to betray your entire race for… sport?” Chrysalis was sounding more confused than horrified with Glados’ severe genocidal nature.         “Look, my reasons are my own. We’ll work out the details later. And my offer stands for ten more seconds, so think fast.”         “It’s useless arguing with you, is it?” the queen sighed, looking a hundred years older. To the pony’s nod, she furrowed her brows and gave a firm nod. “Very well, pony,” she raised a swissed hoof to Glados’ face, “we have a deal. Once we squeeze your address out of HookHook, one of my agents will meet you within a week and bring you back here. He’ll be in disguise, so the passphrase will be ‘Change is Abroad.’”         “Alright,” murmured Glados, bumping her hoof against Chrysalis’ and wiping it into the floor when she wasn’t looking. Then her eyes widened with immediate realization. “What happened to my bodyguards?” she asked. “They may find it just a little bit suspicious that I’ve been gone for a few hours.”         “If HookHook performed correctly,” growled the queen, “then they should be sleeping in a couple pods nearby. If you take them out now, they’d likely awaken with no memory of what happened.”         “They’d better be.” Glados’ bold threats drew a long, dark stare from Chrysalis.          “HookHook!” she spontaneously hollered. The spindly changeling was in the doorway on the spot, bowing with his face to the ground. Glados couldn’t help but shake her head at the embarrassing display, especially after seeing the scornful look on Chrysalis’ face; the changeling queen spoke to him in a degrading manner, as if she were addressing a child:  “Bring our new ally home, and ensure her guards are found and removed from their pods unchanged. Then report back here to begin your time in The Hole. Perform well, and I may shorten your punishment to just a couple weeks. Can you do that?” HookHook slowly picked himself up from off the ground and gawked at the two with a pair of large, moistened eyes. “Yes…” he mumbled, hoarsely. “Good,” she nodded, gesturing Glados to follow him. “Bring me home,” the pony demanded. “I’ve got a job to get fired from.” Chrysalis watched the pair slowly trail out of her chambers, and vanish into the dark, humid corridor without so much as a goodbye; the Queen realized that she didn’t even catch this pony’s name. She couldn’t explain why, but a spark of unbridled, tyrannical fury lit up in her core. The entire scenario replayed itself a hundred times over in her head, and every moment of bottled-up silence fed the spark, soon kindling it into a roaring fire deep within her belly.  Jaws clamped tight, the queen exited her sleeping quarters and found Brute Force splayed across the common room sofa, skimming through his tiny novel. Upon seeing her, Brute closed his book and placed it on the oaken side table. “I heard… everything,” he stated. Chrysalis looked into his eyes and, much to her chagrin, couldn’t read any discernable emotion; his monotone seemed to just be stating a fact, which didn’t sit well with her.                  “Is there something you’d wish to discuss, my faithful steward?” asked the queen, her tone struggling to remain calm and leveled.         “No disrespect… my queen… but you sounded like a scared little filly speaking to her abusive father. You were practically clay in that... pony’s hooves.”         The queen pursed her lips and exhaled rapidly through her nose, venting anger that was threatening to explode at any given moment. “Brute…” she fumed, her voice beginning to fail, “...your queen highly suggests you choose your next words very carefully.”         “I’ve known you since… you were no more than a grub… my queen,” Brute sighed, not a hint of emotion to be found in his character. “I changed your cocoon… for Slycilla’s sake. Bottling it up… isn’t very healthy.”         The queen’s eyes flared with rage as she stormed towards her steward; he in turn slid off the couch, predicting what was to come. “Don’t you tell me what is and isn’t healthy, whelp! You homunculus!” she screamed, striking Brute Force in the chest; he gave no reaction to the offense. “That stupid little pony thinks she can tell me what to do!?” Another strike was absorbed by the giant’s thick shell. “Displays zero respect! No creed!”         She sent another left hook to Brute’s side, which the old changeling accepted with hardened passiveness shaped over the course of several centuries. “There… there,” he said. “Just... let it all out.”         “She thinks I’m an idiot!” Chrysalis whipped around and bucked him in the chest, hard enough to elicit a modest grunt. At least, she thinks she did. Either that, or Brute was helping her calm down in his own personal way. “A pawn in her foalish game!”         Two more slugs; Brute said, in all his sagely wisdom, “You’re angry... that a mere pony… was able to get to you. You couldn’t care less… about how she acts.” A jumping smack across the helmet, hurting the queen’s hoof more than it did Brute.         Panting and sweating, Chrysalis collapsed against her steward’s broad chest and listened intently to his wardrum of a heartbeat. He wrapped her in one brawny foreleg and began to slowly stroke her mane. “I’ve known you for a long time… Chryssie. I’m just… concerned. You never acted so… willing… before.”         Chrysalis pushed herself away from Brute and paced to the other side of the vibrant green bonfire; she found him staring at her through the flames. “No...” she said, studying the emerald embers glowering within the pit, “No, that pony is just a mere means to an end, nothing more,” she assured herself. “I was just… i-in shock with how forward she was. Her… her usefulness will be at an end once we claim Canterlot.” Chrysalis looked up from the pyre and saw Brute giving her a hardened stare. “That’s it, my faithful steward.”         The stocky insectoid nodded once, then reclaimed his seat on the sofa. “So… you don’t plan on meeting her end... of the bargain?”         “Of course not!” she snapped. “We’re changelings! We were born to stab others in the back!”         Brute magically removed the bookmark from his measly novel and shrugged. “If you say so… my wise and honorable queen.” * * * * * *         Perfection. It’s a word that’s lazily tossed around these days, with the ignorants claiming there’s no such thing as “perfection,” that everything has flaws. Glados is one of these people. But what she pulled off, the first of many plans she’s just waiting to hatch, comes damn close to being ‘perfection.’         To put it in simple terms: Celestia won’t know what hit her.         But all great masterminds need some downtime. After two long, grueling flights across an unbearably hot (and also smelly) desert, barely saving her position at Sugarcube Corner and having to endure the day with a pair of crying foals and Pinkie Pie, Glados conceded to a well-deserved rest.         Back at her house, its front doors guarded by a still-yet-to-be-awakened Ironsides and Dewmist, there was tranquility, warmth, stillness, and singing.         Plumes of steam gently rolled from the bathroom, flavored with the light scent of tangerine. The mirror was fogged, as was everything else coated in a thin layer of moisture. The bathtub, overflowing with lukewarm and foamy water, held Glados with her lathered and dripping mane hanging limply over the edge of the tub; her eyes were drawn closed, with her body awash in pleasure and soused on leisure.         The pony lazily rocked her head side to side, grinning a bit with each crick broken and muscle loosened while she sang in a groggy manner every so often. “You’re… some’ne else’s pro’lem…” she sighed deeply, “...some-thing I guess I’m coun’ing on…”         Glados dopely opened her eyes and watched the water drip from her resurfaced foreleg; its bandage having been removed at work, it held no scar or memories of what happened many nights before. “I’ll let you right-thing to it, now I on’y wan’ you go-o-one… hm-hm.” As she sang, she propped her hind legs up on either side of the tub. “Hm-hm-hm-hm wan’ you go-o-one...”         A loud scream came from the basement down below.         “Sonuva bee-sting,” she sang, miserably. Glados didn’t even bother reaching for a towel as she begrudgingly lifted herself from the tub and stormed out of the bathroom, leaving a small river in her wake.         She crossed the living room, towards the basement door and furiously slammed on it three times in succession. “Hey!” she hollered, slamming again. “Shut up down there!”         “Lemme go, you monster!” came a hoarse cry.         “Alright, that’s it,” she grumbled. Glados swung the door open and marched into the cellar. A hopper window situated across from the staircase filled the room with pale, natural light. Glados stopped at the bottom of the stairs, with the soft patter of rain sliding off her body echoed into the emptiness of the basement.         “Ah, you!” said a voice. “I hear you, pony! Release me at once!”         “You’re in no position to be making demands,” she said, sauntering over to below the staircase.         The prisoner bared his crudely-sawed fangs. “I wouldn’t do this to my worst enemy,” he rasped, infirmly trying to fight against the shackles clasped around his perforated hooves, but to no avail.         “Oh, please… what was it?” Glados licked her lips and leaned in close to the creature’s face; her mane drizzling water onto his stomach. “Severance, was it?” She nudged his bared stomach, eliciting the two of them to look at the bard piled up in the corner.         Seeing his chance, Severance gnashed his teeth in an attempt at snapping down on Glados’ muzzle; she swiftly withdrew before gaining so much as a scratch. The changeling’s face twitched through the grime and filth forming on it. “I have no idea how you did this, whether it was magic o-or—”         “No magic here,” intruded Glados, holding up a hoof with waterlogged fetlocks. “Only science.” Severance’s expression remained unchanged; he instead hugged his legs close against his chest. “It’s simple, really. Before leaving, I fired a portal to the wall you’re leaning up against right now. Of course, when I first saw HookHook I just had to get a sample. To benefit my plans at the fullest, I needed to enter your home and strike up an alliance with that freak of a queen.” Severance snarled at the disrespect to his queen, which Glados couldn’t help but grow a smug grin.  “I had a hunch that idiot, Chrysalis, would have a bodyguard or two, and I knew superstitious morons such as yourselves would fear something as ludicrous as a… as a rift-induco what-the-hell-ever-o-ray, so really, it was easy pickings. Now, obviously your screams of basically falling out a wall wouldn’t last long enough to strengthen this threat, so, as I’m sure you vividly remember, that kitchen knife I had sticking out of the bookcase and impale your body on the way through was enough to produce a cry that would surely enhance the improbability of it all. And now,” she held out her forelegs, “here we are. I have to say, this required a lot of shots in the dark. Still, it all went off without a hitch.” Severance covered the green, puffed gash that had formed at his sides; his translucent wings, each with fresh incisions made at the base, pathetically beat several times as if they were having muscle spasms. He dropped his head and elicited a low growl. “You’re insane. You take away my dignity, my freedom, my flight and purpose... There’s nothing more you can do with me, science pony.”         “Oh, there is, Severance. Believe me.” Her ominous threats were met with reticence. Sensing sleep about to take him, Glados felt it was time to go. “All in good time, my little test subject. All in good time. But for now,” she began making her way upstairs, “I must go. I have plans to make and a bath to finish.” Next Time: A Big Ol' Storm Pt. 1 - The return of the King Sombra's Crystal Empire ushers Twilight and her friends to assist Cadence and Shining Armor, leaving Ponyville completely unprotected by the unexpected return of a powerful enemy.