//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3 
// Story: My Secret Life as an Evil Insect Overlord 
// by LordBrony2040 
//------------------------------//

Chapter 3: I Become A Magical Mad Scientist’s Monster Bodyguard Friend

So…yeah, I ended up as the faux Flash Sentry because the jackass managed to get a low command position and ended up in the ass end of nowhere for some posting that only existed to please some politicians that were in fact my subordinates. Stupid karma and its ability to come back and bite vampiric monsters in the ass. If this was the way Equestria worked, my future as its lord and master was really going to suck.

That’s when I got a very disturbing thought. What if this really IS the way Equestria works?

I wasn’t going to buy the whole ‘I am stuck in a kid’s cartoon’ thing, because I’ve killed plenty of stuff back during my training at the hive. Here, things do bleed, bones can break, and shit can die. But, considering things like cutie marks existed, there might have been a very real possibility that there was some kind of guiding force to make sure the good guys always came out on top.

Although to be totally honest, I had those thoughts way back on the train when I was sitting around with nothing to do, messing with my enchanted armor. Yeah, the guards armor is magic, the stuff is pretty thick but also light as a feather. How do you think pegasi can fly when weighed down with gold?

My thoughts when I met Twilight were more like: DON’T SCREW THIS UP YOU FUCKING MORON!

I mean, plenty of things could go wrong. Take for instance the question of whether I needed to swear a personal oath of loyalty to her when we first met. It’s actually more common throughout history than one might think, and since the ponies were still a pretty archaic society when it came to social customs, it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that each princess’s personal guard had their own loyalty oath.

And judging by the frown Princess Twilight was giving me two seconds after I opened my mouth, I had already messed up. When she just glared at me for a few moments, I looked over to the dragon for help. Of course Spike was his usual worthless self on these sorts of things and just asked. “Seriously dude?”

“W-What?” I stammered before looking back to the princess. “What’d I do? Princess?” I asked, which only seemed to make her even angrier.

Twilight’s wings fidgeted for a moment, then she pulled out a notepad and quill before writing something down and tearing it off. A second later, it was floating in front of me to grab.

I looked at the piece of paper in confusion. It was…a ticket? Not the kind of lottery or raffle, it looked more like an antiquated version of a traffic ticket. Princess Twilight Sparkle had just written me a ticket for…calling her a princess. I just looked back up at her with an open mouth. “Is this a joke?”

“No,” she told me seriously. “”I could have overlooked it the first time since it might have been a slip, but you just had to keep going at it. By royal decree, it is against the law to call me a princess within the town limits.”

I couldn’t help it. I just gawked at the purple alicorn. “Seriously?”

Twilight frowned at me a little more, then looked away. I could smell the slight embarrassment radiating off her, but it was still mostly anger that came from the alicorn. “I don’t like it when other ponies put me above themselves.”

“So…you take away their right to say what they want to show them that you’re not above them?” I asked, a little confused over the oddity of such an order. “That seems a little convoluted Princess.” And pretty damn hypocritical, but I was trying to be nice to Twilight. Yeah, I could have just nodded and sucked up to her, but I was also supposed to be playing the part of a soldier, and do tend to tell people what I think about stuff.

Of course my little comment got me another ticket. After it was scratched out, Twilight went back to glaring at me. “Okay fine, then I order you not to call me princess from now on,” she told me before looking to the other guards. “And that goes for all of you as well!”

I sucked in some air through my teeth, and then let it out through my nose. “Sorry…” I did manage to stop myself from saying princess that time, “but that’s just too disrespectful. Not to mention impossible.”

“I’m the one telling you to do it!” she replied with a frown before her expression became one of aggravated confusion. “And what do you mean impossible? It’s just a title.”

Crap, this really is getting out of hand, I realized before switching to a less lecturing tone and something more gentle. I even threw in some widening of the eyes to look more understanding. “In the first one, it’s disrespectful. Not just to you, but to every pony who has ever been a princess of Equestria. It’s something you earned, and yes, it does set you above us. We’re not your friends Highness, we’re your servants and subjects. We stand so far below you on the social totem pole, you’d have to dig down three levels just to proverbially step on us. Friends stand as equals, and there’s only three ponies in the world that are at your level these days.”



	

Yeah, I screwed up royal on that one. But hey, can you blame me? I mean, how many friendships end when one guy starts working for another? It’s why officers are discouraged from socializing with the enlisted men. The added power the guy on top has becomes a weight when he needs to choose someone to do something for him, it messes with the decision making.

With royalty, it’s ten times worse. I may not know the way things work in Equestria, but back home, a king could laugh and slap a guy on the back over a drink, but the second that guy got out of line, it was off with his head. Hell, it was that way in Equestria too, just look at me and Chrysalis.

Sure I was doing the exact same thing as Twilight in regards to my…(ugh) princess title, but I was a tyrannical bastard that didn’t like it over the added gender that had been dropped on me. The fact that Twilight was doing the same thing with just nicer reasoning being it, it was kind of disturbing.

Okay, it was very disturbing. I didn’t like it one damn bit and wanted to call her on it. Twilight my have not of been my favorite pony, but she sure as hell was all around best pony, and seeing her becoming even slightly tyrannical in her reign as princess was borderline pissing me off.

And yeah, the whole plan to kill Twilight Sparkle, that was probably out the door five minutes into my train ride. I might have fallen far enough to not give a damn about the 200 pegasi we snatched for Mom’s flight up north so she could cause problems in the Crystal Empire, but knocking off best pony? That level of evil just wasn’t in me.

Well, not yet anyway.

Okay, so long story short, we all got introduced to Twilight.

#616 was taking the place of a private Dawn Star, who was apparently a unicorn who specialized in stunning spells. I was just glad she wasn’t a medic or anything, changeling magic revolved around hurting and killing stuff. I’m pretty sure Dawn could cause enough pain to something so it would collapse or pass out, but even I couldn’t throw up a magical shield to defend somepony or heal them. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if healing magic existed at all at the time.

I gave Beast the other unicorn position, a stallion named Pathfinder who was a registered tracker. I really didn’t have any idea if we could copy that magical effect or not. Changeling’s were a predatory species after all, so it did kind of fall within our purview. If not, we would have had to fake it with our above average sense of smell.

#32 was the mute member of our group, and got to be the big white pegasus that could have passed for any royal guard named White Knight. Yes, even his name was that generic. I gave some BS story about a manticore ripping out his throat and ruining his vocal cords despite a great deal of emergency treatment that did save his life. There was also some side comment about brain damage, which I think Twilight took as a bad joke like I made it out to be. But at least it would help explain any odd behavior from the stupidest of the group.

Still don’t know why I didn’t replace his sorry ass as soon as I could. With Chrysalis up in the north, my telepathic signal with the main hive was stronger, so I got to be the one calling the shots. I was kind of hoping that Mom would do something stupid and get herself caught, thus making me the de facto leader of the changelings but…no such luck.

It really blew up in my face actually…but, that’s a different part of the story all together.

So after we made introductions and got everything taken over to the small house that would serve as the barracks for Twilight’s guard, I left my goons to unload everything and magically dig a secret room in the cellar for food storage before Twilight half-heartedly invited us for lunch.

I was the only one that went. I ditched the no fraternization with superiors excuse for one that said they needed to get settled in and buy some curtains and other things to block out the windows. But since I was Twilight’s head guard, I would be the one following her around all the time.



	

“So I was thinking I would be your personal guard during the daylight hours while Dawn Star and Pathfinder simply take up positions on the opposite ends of town and White Knight handles your protection after the sun goes down,” I told her while we walked through the grass streets of Ponyville while doing my best not  to gawk Oooo and Ahhh at everything around me.

Five weeks of having to keep a respectful tone and demeanor when dealing with my mother helped a lot with that. I also made a personal note to give some bullshit excuse to go patrol the town once Twilight started studying or reading in her library. But on the other hand, I told myself as I imagined all the books she had access to. While the changeling hive mind had some nice 1st hand accounts of things like our history, it was lacking when it came to anything else. The chance to find out about the history, culture, economics, and everything else about Equestria… Oh sweet Celestia the possibilities!

“That sounds fine,” Twilight said in the same depressed tone I’d heard from her since we left the station. With the other guards gone, she wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore. Spike was also giving me a dirty glare for getting his owner upset.

I was about to asked her what I’d done, when the building we were headed towards caught my eye. That’s not Sugarcube Corner, my mind told me as I looked at what my inner critic screamed was a crime against the continuity.

Okay, one hundred-percent honest here: it looked like a McDonalds. A FUCKING McDonalds in Equestria! Oh, the sign said Hay Burger, but it was sure as hell a fast food monstrosity from the pits of Hades! Or maybe Tartarus. The appearance of such a thing made me look around in fear for a moment while I silently prayed to myself. Dear God, I know I’m basically a cartoon version of the Legion, or maybe the Leviathan…some kind of biblical demon anyway, I haven’t gone to church in about twenty years, but please don’t let there be a Starbucks here too. The innocence of Equestria can’t take it.

“Something wrong?”

Spike’s annoyed tone snapped me out of my daze, and I looked back up to the depressed alicorn and her pet dragon. This time I had the intelligence not to just go ‘Hay Burger, seriously?’ at the poor purple pony. Her psychic smell of depression, as sweet as it was, already had me feeling pretty down. “Nothing,” I assured them. “It’s just…I’m coming.”

The inside of the building was at least a little…pony-ish. By that I mean ponies worked behind the counters, the serving trays were made to be held without hooves like the cameras I’d seen previously that just strapped around a pony‘s neck, and the tables were made from untreated wood to give a rustic appearance. But they still had cash registers and all that other stuff a human would expect to see back home.

Ordering food turned out to be…tricky. Changelings obviously don’t eat for sustenance aside from a little water to keep hydrated. The material we take in gets digested in a way, but we use it to make our cocoons and other things after vomiting it back up as green sludge. And being the evil mastermind that I was, I didn’t participate in the cocooning of our four hostages.

In short, I was full, and would be that way until I yakked up some material. Note to self, keep gunk sacks half empty in case of emergencies. Considering Pinkie Pie’s penchant for parties, it was a prudent precaution.

“I’ll just have an order of hay fries,” I told the cashier before reaching back under my right wing where my wallet was stored.

Twilight stopped me. “No, that’s okay, I’ll pay for it,” she assured me, still next to lifeless as ever. “I had planned to when I got the letter you all were coming.”

Out of habit, I just stood aside with a nod of thanks. Then Twilight placed her order for three of the larger burgers and an order of fries, then asked what Spike wanted, and I had to fight from gaping. The whole alicorination thing had to have upped her apatite or something, because Twi was on the skinny side of the dork weight range.

After that, I led Twilight to a table in the back while her slave waited on the food to be made. I didn’t want to stick around the front counter as I could have sworn I heard a deep fryer or something going off in the back where everything was cooked. I really didn’t want to know how the hell that shit worked with hay. 

I mean come on, the fries are made of hay, and so are the burgers! Didn’t that strike any of the ponies as odd? Their entire food supply is made from one material! And it’s not like it was something like bacon, ham, pork chops and sausage!

But I managed to shift my mind to more important matters once we were alone, or as alone as a princess could get in a fast food joint. I was just grateful we didn’t have a repeat of King Ralph going to Burger King. But then, Twilight may actually throw ponies in prison for asking for her autograph or thanking her for saving the world so…yeah.

Once we were alone, I focused on the depressed alicorn and hung my head in regret. “Okay, what’d I do?” asked in a soft tone.

“Hm? Oh, you…no, it’s nothing, I just…” Twilight trailed off.

“You’ve been depressed ever since we talked at the train station,” I told her, forcing myself to give a little smile. Truth be told, I was still a little pissed off she was giving me fines for that crap I said. All I had on me was Flash Sentry’s wallet, and knew next to nothing about his finances. That information would have to wait till we soundproofed the basement and tortured the information out of him along with getting him to sign his name so we could learn to forge it and the million other things I needed to know to fake being him. There was always the mind control option, but for that I would have to get him to drop his guard by taking the form of a pony her trusted thanks to my current operating power and…yeah, the only option I had for that would make things incredibly weird the next day I ran into Twilight.

“Is that really the way things are?” she asked without looking up from her table. I tilted my head in confusion at the question before she finished. “Is it really impossible to stay friends with ponies when you…outrank them?”

The translation from those words to what she was really saying didn’t take to long.

Oh shit. Oh fucking shit. You moron. You FUCKING MORON! YOU JUST TOLD TWILIGHT SPARKLE SHE CAN’T STAY FRIENDS WITH THE OTHER ELEMENTS AND GAVE HER SERIOUSLY GOOD REASONS WHY! I screamed at myself.

Hell, from the way she was reacting, it was obvious she’d been having some of these thoughts herself. My little speech about where ponies stood in comparison with the princess must have just been the extra little push she needed to make up her mind and jump into a pit of despair over it.

The poor girl could probably already see herself as the new Luna. Even Celestia wasn’t that much of a good model. Twilight was the closest thing she had to a daughter, and even the nerd didn’t know about that douche of a bird Fluttershy got tortured over! Note to self: kill Philomena for putting the pegasus through all that crap.

Okay, need to fix this…need to fix this NOW, I told myself as I got my mind back on task.

“Prin…Twilight,” I said, catching myself. The fact I actually called her by her name got the mare’s attention, and she looked up at me. “I said some things that were pretty stupid…probably because of those tickets you gave me.”

I paused for a second to reign in my anger over that again. It was pretty hard considering I had just spent the last five weeks proving to the changeling hive I just didn’t strap on my boots and act like the baddest thing on two worlds, but actually came to believe it on several levels as well. You had to when dealing with empathy capable monsters.

“You’re worried you and the other Element Bearers can’t be friends anymore because of your title, aren’t you?” I asked before reaching out for her hooves.

She looked up at me with worry in her eyes. “Is it that obvious?”

Yes. “No,” I lied. “I’ve just read your psychological profile as part of my assignment.” Or that’s what I’m going to say when all your other friends ask how the hell I know them so well, I told myself.

I took a deep breath again and organized my thoughts as best as I could. “Look, you may be a princess,” I told her, hoping that didn’t count a naming her Princess, “but its not like you have any governing duties yet.”

“A-Actually, when I came back to Ponyville, the next morning the mayor was asking me if I was going to take over running the town. And I do have to meet with her every now and then to give…permission for certain projects,” Twilight admitted.

Well, guess that makes sense. Maybe Celestia was trying to ease her into a leadership role or something. “But the mayor isn’t Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, or Rarity, is she? Those are the ones you’re really torn up about. What happened?”

“No, but…the last two times we went into the Everfree…my friends sent me away the first time because they thought I was too important to be put in danger along side them…and the second time, they all went to the Castle of the Two Pony Sisters with…w-w-without me.”

God damn it, you mean I missed a magical pony adventure? I mentally screamed. Maybe I should have just flown off to Ponyville when Mom told me to. Then, I gulped as her eyes and emotions told me Twilight was two seconds away from a breakdown. My stupid mouth with about to make Twilight Sparkle cry! Unfortunately, my options at this point were pretty limited.

I could…

A: Let it happen. Be labeled as a complete douche-bag by Spike. Get the same treatment from the rest of the Mane 6. Then get Flash Sentry reassigned to somewhere even a pegasus would freeze his balls off by Princess Celestia herself. That is if Luna didn’t kill me for breaking the heart of her first friend since she came back from the moon.

B: Try and talk her out of it. Fail completely since we’re not really close friends and still get badmouthed by Spike, hated on my the mane 6, beaten up by Rainbow Dash, get ousted as a changeling when Pinkie showed up at the barracks to continue ragging on me, have to kill Pinkie before she could tell anypony with an anvil to the back of the head, then take her place and spend the rest of my life as a pink pony on a constant sugar high.

C: Use mind control to ease Twilight back into a state of rationality.

Since I didn’t want to die and couldn’t fake Pinkie powers, I went with option C.

Luckily for me, changeling mind control isn’t 100% dependent on having a horn. It helps (a LOT) but subtle influences are still possible without one. It depends mostly on two things: pheromones and eyes.

Even with our shape shifting, the chemicals a changeling gives off are almost constant. The strength goes down quite a ways and we can turn it off completely if we concentrate, but it's still there most of the time. How else would we be able to tell who else was a changeling during an infiltration? Although I will admit that if you get about thirty of us in a closed space and put in one normal pony that we all look like, it gets hard to tell who's who.

Then there’s the eyes. Horns aren’t the only magical thing on ponies after all. Pegasi don’t just use their wings to fly, they also make the weather with them. Their hooves have a magic to make them lighter than clouds, and enable them to survive touching lightning. As for the eyes, well…remember that whole Stare thing? It’s pretty much mind control via emotions.

I reached over to lift Twilight’s head up while releasing enough chemicals in the air she would have had to of been dead not to notice me. Then I locked eyes with the princess and focused my will. Thankfully, what I was attempting was a lot easier than the domination Fluttershy did to that dragon. I didn’t even know if an alicorn could be affected that way without a full mental attack from a changeling monarch, and I really didn’t want to find out.

Instead of trying to force her to obey, I focused my will on conveying a sense of understanding and belief in her abilities. “Twilight, listen…forget all that junk I said earlier,” I told her. “Just because Princess Celestia, and Princess Luna, and Princess Mi Armoire Cadenza do things like that, doesn’t mean you have to. Look at how all your other friends buck tradition. Rainbow Dash flies faster than most pegasi think is scientifically possible, Applejack is the only member of her family to allow other ponies to work on an Apple farm, Rarity is making inroads to high society while living in this rustic town, Pinkie violates the laws of physics on a daily basis, and Fluttershy has made friends with Discord of all…whatever the hay he is. I’d bet anything you’re going to do just like them, and be a princess that other ponies can approach without having to put on nervous smiles and bowing every five seconds. I’m sorry, and if what I said scares you…then prove me wrong like your friends have done everywhere else.”

Twilight just stared at me for a moment, and I was starting to think I had overdone it and my subtle, unnoticeable pick-me-up of a mental push had been spotted. Then she smiled and let out a tiny laugh. “Wow, whatever world we’re in, you know just the right thing do to make me feel better.”

…

I think the fact that I actually picked up on the Equestria Girls reference made me even more confused than if I would have just been able to wonder what the hell Twilight was talking about. The only good thing about that movie was…um…

Anyway, so…yeah, confusion. I was confused at how something like Equestria Girls was supposed to exist when it wasn’t supposed to be cannon at all.

But then again, neither is Flash Sentry, I told myself while suppressing a shudder.

I swore then and there, if I ended up in an Equestria where Pinkie was making pony cupcakes, Scoots was destined for the Rainbow Factory, Fluttershy was a cult leader, or Molestia was the ruler of Equestria, I really was going to kill every single pony out there and replace them with mindless changelings so I could put it all right.

“So Flash,” Twilight said as she smiled at me, “what do you say to bucking tradition, and becoming my friend?”

Well it’s not like I can tell her no now, I thought. Of course, I was going to try and use this situation for all it was worth. So I pulled out my citations and presented them to Twilight. “As long as you’re willing to start with a clean slate, Twilight.”

The alicorn giggled. “Sure thing,” she said before the tickets were ripped apart by her magic.



	

So, yeah, I became friends with Twilight. Probably shouldn’t have used the pheromones so strongly though, that started something it is better left not mentioned for now. Then Spike came back and we made nice, but…well who really cares how that happened? It’s Spike.

Twilight gave me a scroll with her itinerary for the whole damn week. It wasn’t just a fucking checklist either, it had everything she planned on doing, broken down hour by hour. Turns out not being Princess Celestia’s student didn’t seem to stop her studies either, more than half the things she had planned involved magic books. I made some plans of my own to grab those for a quick look.

Changelings might have had a hive mind that could cram knowledge into a guy’s head within seconds and leave him with a splitting migraine when he woke up, but aside from the bare essentials, there really wasn’t that much in the way of useable knowledge. I wanted to learn teleportation damn it!

After watching the grotesque display of Twilight’s eating habits that put more ketchup on her coat than in her mouth, she went to library for a shower while I went back to my goon squad to start prepping for some other side activities that would come in useful down the line. It was nothing really major at the time. I just gave orders to a few changelings to fly to Appleloosa and a few other southern towns that were still out of Mom’s control range to find out what was going on their. Nobody was hurt since the trip there and back could be made by a fast pegasus. I also had our spies in Canterlot give me a rundown of Celestia and Luna’s schedules so I knew what they were up to as well. Celestia wasted a lot of her time on public relation events for the be all and end all voice of the realm.

Of course I met Twilight’s friends less than two hours later, me and the other changelings that could talk that is. It went…okay. I’ll admit, I gushed over meeting Rainbow Dash kind of hard, but managed to say it was just because she was the Youngest Flier winner instead of calling her favorite pony. White Knight was, okay the changeling who stood in for White Knight was able to stay in the barracks thanks to an excuse we wanted him being put on a night shift sleeping schedule. Luckily, we had time to empty our stomach so we could eat the food. I stress just eating, not enjoying. Even after taking on another pony’s form, changeling taste buds don’t quite work right. And by that I mean not at all. Everything tastes like cardboard to us.

For awhile I thought about faking an allergy to bread to avoid 90% of the food provided. However, I really had no idea if that was even possible with ponies, and I didn’t want to risk it when I was next to a walking encyclopedia for every waking hour of my day.

The week passed and we (me and Twilight) fell into a routine. I showed up at her place, said hello, hugged Derpy when she dropped off the mail, and either followed her around at a respectable distance or just read a book at the library. We didn't really talk all that much insofar as being friendly. Although, she did explain a few things about magic to me and seemed to like the fact most of the stuff a read at the library revolved around Equestrian history.

Everything was great until I discovered the horrible, awful, mind numbing truth.

I was in a fan fiction.

…

No I’m serious, this is a fan fiction.

Written by Rainbow Dash.

That was the only fucking way I could come to possibly believe that Daring Do is actually real.