Changelings, Love and Lollipops

by Georg

Chapter 4 - In Durance Vile - With Benefits

The constant squeak, squeak, squeak of the wagon wheels brought the changeling out of his stunned state, blinking in the afternoon sunshine and trying to make sense of his surroundings. Ponyville was filled with fragile houses topped with flammable thatch and covered with openable windows, but the lumpy grey building that Scootaloo was headed towards was their exact opposite. Thick stone walls were pierced only by small barred windows, and the sturdy steel door squeaked as she pulled the wagon through and into a cool open room. The damp ropes had returned, wrapped with great care and with the addition of streamers to keep him totally immobilized except for his face and his throbbing nose, which once again was packed to a solid state and even his mouth fluttered out little bits of confetti at unexpected times when he exhaled.

“Hello? Jailbird? Are you in here?” The little pegasus checked the two barred cells and the office before dragging his wagon over to an open cell and pushing the changeling inside, wagon and all.

“Hey!” The changeling coughed once, a desperate deep and tubercular cough indicating immediate respiratory failure unless encumbering ropes were released. “Kid? You’re not going to lock me up, are you? Scootaloo? Hey!” With a flick of her magenta tail, the little pegasus hopped on her scooter and zipped out the door, leaving him alone in the cold stone building.

“Oh, pucker.” Now in addition to the throbbing pain in his gut and the agonizing itch everywhere the rope touched, the damp ropes were tightening up as they dried and getting cold in the process. He shivered and took a few minutes to closely examine the stone walls, stone floors and stone ceiling for undisclosed secret passages or decaying weak cracks that could be kicked open before settling in and waiting.

And waiting.

The sunbeams moved across the floor in a slow arc. A fly flew in through the window, buzzed around for a while, and then departed in the same way. The merry chimes of an ice cream cart drifted through the air. The lines of itching dulled slightly as the ropes dried. The aching pain in his gut continued, getting slightly more tolerable as a source of distraction from the boredom.

As the sunbeams had transitioned to near horizontal lines, a thin earth pony with a perpetual nervous tic came skittering through the outside doorway, followed by Scootaloo, who was anything but happy.

“He’s a changeling. Doesn’t that mean he should be locked up?”

“Not if he hasn’t committed any crimes in Ponyville. This is a local jail, not a Royal jail.” The skinny little earth pony eyed the changeling, the open cell door that Scootaloo had not closed, and the door which he had just entered the building before skittering behind the big desk in the office and scribbling something on a clipboard.

“JB! He stole our crate of juice boxes,” declared Scootaloo.

“I did have a report of missing juice boxes,” said the skinny stallion, leafing through the blizzard of papers on the desk and kicking up a little dust. “Where did you three get them?”

“Um…” Scootaloo fidgeted. “He knocked a hole in the roof of our clubhouse?”

“No report. No crime.”

“Well, fine! I’ll make a report, JB. Will that work?”

“You’re a minor.” Jailbird cringed away from the blistering look he received from Scootaloo and pushed a short stack of papers back in her direction. “If you get somepony who isn’t a minor to fill out the forms, I’ll submit them to the Mayor and see about getting her to issue an arrest warrant. You’ll still need an Officer of the Court to carry it out, though. As a prisoner, I can’t arrest anypony.”

“Fine.” The little pegasus turned to leave with the forms as Jailbird cleared his throat.

“He can’t stay here. He’s not under arrest or serving a sentence, so he can’t be housed with any other prisoners.” The scrawny earth pony wrinkled up his nose. “Besides, he’s in my cell.”

“Fine!” Scootaloo stomped across the floor and grabbed the handle of the wagon before starting to tow it outside, shoving the forms under the changeling so they would not blow away.

“Don’t forget to wear your helmet.” The heavy door to the jail slammed in what must have been a satisfactory manner before Scootaloo bent down and tied the wagon back to her scooter, grumbling all the way.

“Now where am I going to find an adult to help me fill out a bunch of dumb forms?” Scootaloo turned slowly, looking at the changeling with a growing look of curiosity. “How old are you?”

“Size and shape of hole?” The changeling’s voice was somewhat muffled by the pencil in his teeth as he lay on the floor of the clubhouse and regarded the partially-finished crime report, which when filled out, would allow him to spend the rest of his short life in a small barred cell instead of in the presence of insane little ponies. It seemed to be a fair trade. It would even get him unwrapped out of the cocoon of ropes that was starting to feel like a second skin. Maybe he would emerge as a beautiful butterfly changeling. Maybe it would cure his inability to sense emotions. Maybe the tight ropes were cutting off circulation to his brain.

“Twenty by twenty four,” came the thready reply from out on the clubhouse roof. A series of scratchings noises sounded as Scootaloo moved the measuring tape around. “I mean twenty three by nineteen,” she added.

“Well, which is it?” he huffed. “We’re not halfway done with the form, and it’s going to be dark soon. Why don’t you just let me go and I’ll measure the hole.”

“Ha!” There was another scrabbling noise and a few leaves fell through the hole. “What shape is kind of round but not really round, more of an oval.”

“An oval?” he hazarded, marking it down on the Criminal Damage to Property report under the description of the damage.

“Yeah! You know, Apple Bloom could probably get this fixed in two hours if she wasn’t so busy at the farm.”

“Two hour’s labor at…” He paused and considered the damages to the roof. “So we’re talking three boards, a flat of shingles, half a box of nails, and two hours labor total. What’s the prevailing wage in Ponyville?”

“I dunno.” A small curious face stuck through the hole and watched as he scribbled a few more lines. “Why do you ask?”

“Estimated loss.” He prodded a line with the pencil clutched in his jaws, feeling much like a wooden-toothed caterpillar as the little pegasus buzzed down from the ceiling to land at his side. “Three boards run around seven bits a board, shingles are twelve bits a flat, the nails are ten bits a box, and labor costs around Baltimare were nine bits an hour for non-union and fourteen bits an hour union scale.”

“What’s a union?” asked Scootaloo.

“Nine bits an hour then. Now we add them all up and we get…sixty one bits.”

“Fifty six bits,” said Scootaloo, pointing with a hoof. “It only takes a half box of nails. And you didn’t add in a sheet of tar paper, which runs three bits a square, or consider the rental of any equipment needed to make the repairs. Big Mac charges us for the ladder and the hammer, two bits an hour with a ten bit security deposit.”

“You sure know your repairs,” said the changeling, turning the pencil around in his mouth and laboriously correcting his figures.

“Practice,” said Scootaloo proudly as she laid down beside him and pulled another pencil out of her mane. “Now let’s look at the rest of your numbers.”

Darkness had slipped up on the odd pair of mismatched figures inside the clubhouse, the ebon blanket of night silently wisping through the oval hole in the roof (Final cost, one hundred and fifty one bits plus cost overruns), curtained windows and open door, which still hung by one hinge (six bits, Hays Hardware, included in the damage report). Scootaloo lay draped over one rope-wrapped shoulder of the drowsy changeling, her whistling snore right in one ear preventing him from dropping off to slumber too. Well, that and the throbbing pain in his gut, the whole body itch of the ropes, and one leg that had gone totally pins-and-needles from his position. In the concealing darkness, he bent his chin down to nibble at the ropes, stopping after a brief period to spit out the disgusting fragments.

Dying in prison would be better. Where did they find this horrid rope? Tastes like tree sap.

Still, the warmth of the little pegasus across his back was better than the cold concrete cell he had been in earlier. Changeling magic was far weaker than Unicorn magic even on a good day, but he managed to light his horn just enough to boost the tattered pink blanket up and drape it across Scootaloo, who wriggled a little at its touch and snuggled closer to the rope-bound changeling.

And ever so slowly and painfully, the changeling drifted off to sleep.

The false dawn of morning stretched across Sweet Apple Acres, lightening the colors from Luna’s silvery night and spreading a pastel warmth across the rows and rows of ripe apple trees. There was a familiar but annoying noise that awoke the changeling first, a constant noise that he had heard every day in his hiding spot, but had never gone outside to investigate.

First there would be a solid ‘whump’ as if a heavy weight had just been dropped.

Then a series of smaller thuds like distant hailstones.

Louder or softer at times, it would repeat over and over and over and over, with a brief break around noon, and only ending when the sun touched the horizon again.

As if an echo, a low rumbling now followed the pattering thuds, which puzzled the changeling until he realized it was coming from the stomach of the small pegasus sleeping on his shoulder. Despite the pain in his aching gut, being used as a pillow felt warm and comforting, or at least until the ramp going up to the clubhouse door clattered to the rhythm of little hooves on wood and Scootaloo woke up, doing a little tapdance on her ‘mattress’ before greeting her friend, Apple Bloom.

“Scoots! We’re gonna to be late for school! Where’s your homework! Did you sleep out here again? Come on, let’s go!”

“We can’t just leave him here!” yelled Scootaloo while stuffing papers into her saddlebag. “He could get away!”

“Yeah,” muttered the changeling in the most sarcastic tone he could muster. “I could creep out of here on my belly like an inchworm.”

“See! Help me get him into the wagon!”

“Oh, no!” The changeling cringed back from the eager hooves, but he was too slow and the little ponies too fast. Before he could get another word out, there was a helmet jammed onto his head and the familiar feeling of the far-too-small-for-adults wagon jammed onto his rear, which at least was the right order this time, even if the helmet was on backwards and down over his eyes.

Without a visual frame of reference, the pell-mell wagon ride was terrifying, but probably slightly less terrifying than if he had been able to see. Bumps and potholes slammed him from side to side and pitched him off the wagon as they made a sharp corner with a fading cry of “Sis,keepaneyeonourchangelinguntilwegetbackfromschool…”

The distant thudding noise had stopped.

So had the pitter-patter of small thuds that followed it.

As a matter of fact, it was very quiet.

So quiet he could hear breathing.

Angry breathing.

A pair of hooves removed the helmet and the changeling looked up into the green eyes of a pony he had seen only once before, although their brief meeting had made quite an impression on him. Applejack, that was her name. And from the look on her face, she was seriously considering finishing the beating she had dished out on their first meeting.

“Hey, don’t I know you?” The golden farm pony held a hoof to the side of the changeling’s jaw and placed it squarely on a nearly-healed bruise the exact size and shape of the earth pony’s hoof. “Yeah, I do know you. Ah thought Apple Bloom was just rattling on about another red herring, but I guess not.” The menacing expression on her face settled in like a boulder perched precariously above the changeling, and Applejack began to tap her front hooves together with a little metallic clink of iron horseshoes.

“You’ve got a lot of gall showing your face ‘round here after what your kind pulled in Canterlot. Just what do you have to say for yourself?”

“I’m sorry?”

The stern expression on Applejack’s face remained untouched by sympathy.

“I’m really sorry?”

A few pebbles rolled away from the earth pony’s emotional dam, but the supporting earthworks were still solid.

“If you just unwrap me and let me go, I promise to go fly away and never bother you again?”

“Ah ain’t got time for this,” grumbled Applejack. “Ah’m taking you back to Ponyville and tossing you in the hoosegow until—”

“JB said I can’t stay there without criminal charges,” gasped the changeling, taking a stab at the meaning of ‘hoosegow’ and hoping there were no other folksy sayings he would have to live through. “And since there are no criminal charges, you have to let me go, right?”

“Assault, attempted regicide, kidnapping, criminal damage to property, creating a public disturbance, and I believe treason,” said Applejack with a growing scowl. “And that’s just fer starters. I’ll bet the Royal Guard’d like nothing more than to get their hooves on your slimy hide.”

“Chitin,” corrected the changeling. “And it’s not slimy.” In a fit of inspiration, he coughed again, a long wet cough that was suspiciously easy after being wrapped up in damp ropes yesterday. “Besides, I’m sick. I won’t last long enough for your Queen’s Guard to get their revenge. I’m dying.”

“Yeah, and I’m the Alicorn of the Harvest,” muttered Applejack as the changeling flopped his head down on the cool grass, although her tone shifted a little more sympathetic as she unwrapped the ropes around the rest of his head. “You is awfully pink where the rope was touchin’ though.”

“Fungus,” he blurted out.

“Eww.” Applejack took a step backwards. “Reckon I could get Miss Fluttershy out here to take a look at—”

“No! I mean…” He paused for thought, or at least as much thought as he could think while still wrapped up like a knit sock. “Please, not her! She already knows. She sent me to Pinkie Pie, who gave me a bath in something that she got from a pony called Zecora. I’m feeling much better? But I’m still dying.”

“You are the worst liar.” Applejack stood and shook her head, looking between the changeling and the endless expanse of fruit-laden trees. “I suppose I could take you to see Twilight Sparkle.”

In an island of light surrounded by inky darkness, rows of brilliant lights shone down on a bloody dissection table with a changeling manacled securely to the cold steel surface. The violet unicorn looming over the table produced a long serrated blade and began to slowly saw her way down a series of bright lines inscribed on the screaming changeling, talking to her hideous deformed dragon henchling while cutting through his thin chitin in a constant spray of green blood.

“Take a note, Spikeavarous. Remind me to extract samples of all the organs and glands before the subject expires. It’s fascinating to see the way the creature’s remaining love supply can be used to keep it alive during the organ extraction process. Whoops.” A spurting lump of changeling flesh popped out of one of the gaping holes in the writhing subject to splat onto the floor, being slurped up by the fanged dragon before it even had a chance to splatter.

“Spikeavarous! I was going to do arcane experiments on that before the subject expires. Oh, well. I’ll just have to dig a little deeper. There’s some more of them here buried in nerve tissue along its spine. How did it taste?”

“Delicious,” growled the dragon, leaning forward to drool over the bloody changeling. “Dibs on the brain.”

“No!” yelped the changeling. “Anything but that! Please!”

“Anything?” Applejack paused, a pleased look coming over her face that made the changeling seriously reconsider his previous statement.

Five minutes later

“So, six bits an hour with grub, you don’t try no runnin’ off, and at the end of the day, ah’ll see ‘bout getting JB to give you his nice warm cell for the evening instead of turnin’ you back over to mah little sis and her friends. Sound about right?”

“I don’t have to ride in the wagon, right? Anything but the wagon.” He gave a nervous glance over his unwrapped shoulder, seeing only the few turns of rope tying his wings to his pinked middle and no sign of that devilish contraption. Despite his plugged nose, he could breathe for the first time in forever, and had finally taken advantage of the opportunity to water one of the apple trees for a considerable amount of time without even thinking of escape at the moment.

Of course, the moment was fleeting.

“No wagon,” assured Applejack. “Just don’t touch the apples. Use your magic to pick up the spares that miss the baskets. Good ‘uns go in the baskets, bruised ones go into the buckets for the pigs. And no escaping. Got it?”

The changeling nodded and used the incantation that had served so well previously. “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”

Step One: Gain their confidence

The golden pony was an absolute machine at work, rear hooves slamming against trunk after trunk with a force that would have shattered his legs all the way to the knees. He followed behind, dutifully using his weak magic to toss apples one at a time into baskets and buckets, taking the occasional moment to eat one of the bruised ones that otherwise would have just wound up being pig food. Although his emotional senses were dead, his taste buds were either compensating or these apples were the best he had ever tasted.

As they worked, he had time to think. From the perspective of an Infiltrator, there was no way Applejack could ever be approached for harvesting purposes. Any changeling powerful enough to match her physical prowess and gain her romantic attention would be guarding the Changeling Queen instead. Still, he could not help but admire the sinuous flow of muscles under her hide while they worked and try to imagine what love from her would taste like.

Probably apples.

When they broke for lunch, delivered by a hefty red stallion who eyed him suspiciously and talked for a while with his jailer, the changeling took the opportunity to look innocent while laying down in the grass and just wriggling to scratch at every itch that covered his sweaty chitin. If the young mare was strong enough to buck apple trees as he had seen, the changeling had no intent of finding out just how hard Big Mac could hit. After all, ‘squashed like a bug’ was a phrase he had no intent of experiencing.

“Yer not that bad a worker,” said Applejack in an approving tone that he suspected was about as high praise as the earth pony could muster. “Twilight, she can pluck a half-dozen trees bald at a time, but she kinda scares me when harvestin’ apples. I keep thinkin’ she’s gonna yank a couple trees up by the roots.”

A hulking violet unicorn grasped the cowering changeling in her massive magical field, getting a good grip on his limbs. “He loves me,” she growled, ripping one changeling limb off and throwing it over her shoulder to feed her henchdragon. “He loves me not,” she continued, ripping off another limb…

“Really?” he asked, cringing down into the grass and scratching his aching belly. “She sounds… scary.”

“Naa,” scoffed Applejack while hoofing over some delicious deep-fried pastries to the changeling. “She’s the sweetest thing, although she was plum furious about yer little invasion. Ya’ll done threatened her kinfolk, and ah don’t think she’s gonna let that one go.”

The purple unicorn levitated a bound and chained changeling in front of her, placing it down at the hooves of a fierce white unicorn with a flourish. “Happy Birthday, Shining Armor. Do you want me to get the skewers?”

“No, my darling and wonderful sister.” Shining Armor pulled out a bundle of sharp steel spikes, covered in long, thin spines that fairly dripped with poisonous acidic slime. “I brought my own.”

The afternoon slipped by without more conversation, which he appreciated. Every time he thought they were going to run out of empty baskets and take a break, the heavy red stallion would trundle up with an empty wagon covered in empty baskets, give him a menacing look, and trundle away with the loaded wagon they had just finished harvesting. Thankfully, there was plenty of water to drink, allowing him to take brief breaks on the other side of a tree from the hefty mare to ‘do his business’ and ever so slightly readjust the coil of rope binding his wings.

Step Two: Setup - Complete

Timing was going to be critical. There was no way he would be able to outrun the muscle-bound mare, even after an entire day’s work on her part. Those thudding hooves had not slowed or weakened in their strokes through the whole day, but once the sun was close enough to the horizon to blind any pursuers, the time would be right.

“Well, that’s pretty good timing,” said Applejack, looking at the last empty tree in the row. “Thought we’d be working ‘til sunset again, but we’ve got about an hour of light left. You’re a pretty darned good helper, there…” She paused, looking somewhat embarrassed. “You know, I ain’t never got your name. You do have names, don’t ya?”

“Tolliver,” he replied, taking a long drink of water from the jug. It was going to be a long flight back to the hive and he had a nice bellyful of apples for energy, even if it did make his aching gut throb with pain. It seemed as if there needed to be something else said before he made his break, and he added, “Thank you, Miss Applejack. You’ve been very kind.”

The mare actually blushed, taking her hat off and fanning her face. “Shucks, ‘twen’t nuttin’ any pony would do for somepony stuck away from home. Heck, we’ve got enough time. Why don’t you come on up to the house and we’ll cook you up a farewell dinner afore you go to the jail. All Jailbird’s gonna feed you there is take-out food anyways.”

“Thank you again, Miss Applejack. Just let me use the little Buggie’s room, and I’ll be ready to go.”

“Sure thing.” Applejack put her hat back on and took a deep drink out of the jug while the changeling vanished around the back of a nearby tree. “You know, you ain’t all that bad, for a changeling. It’s hard to get anypony to put in a good day’s work anymore. Apple Bloom’s always running off and Rainbow Dash only comes around dinner time. If we bump your wages up a few bits, maybe you could stick around for a few days until — Mister Tolliver?” Applejack looked around the back of the tree, only to see a discarded coil of rope.

“Consarned lying bug!”

Step Three: Escape - Again

Wind whistled through the holes in his carapace as the changeling flashed through the air into the blazing sunset. The itchy tingle of the pink fungus had faded to a dull throb while the piercing pain in his gut had flared up, but the air fairly flew behind as his beating wings rammed a tunnel through the sky, promising blessed freedom. Well, at least for a day or two until he starved to death from lack of love. Still, it was worth it, to feel the flow of air across his tongue, to see the ground fall away beneath his holey hooves, to see the bright blue of the sky with a vivid rainbow pacing him to one side.

Rainbow?

“Hey, you must be the changeling that Scoots captured,” said a blue pegasus mare who was casually flapping along backwards to his side. “Did she let you out to get some exercise? Because you’re flying away from Ponyville. You really need to turn around.”

The changeling leaned into his wingstrokes with a vengeance while trying to leave Rainbow Dash behind. In the lecture he had attended before the invasion, there were two important points about the pegasus that had been brought up that he just could not remember at the moment, due to gasping for breath. The only effect he noticed from his increased speed was a slightly increased waving in Rainbow Dash’s windblown polychromatic mane and the hint of a grin.

Competitive. That was one of them. What was the other? It was really important. Something about who she is seen with. A pranking buddy.

“Welp, I warned you.” The slim pegasus made a quick loop around him and darted straight up into the sky, calling out, “Okay, Pinkie. You’ve got a clear shot.”

Pinkie?

Unfortunately, flying into the sunset not only concealed his departure from prying eyes, but it also blinded him to anypony in front of him. Or anything. In this case, the thing appeared to be a flying pile of candy, from striped supports and taffy bars to candy cane landing gear, topped with a little blue balloon and being peddled frantically by an entirely too familiar pink mare. But what really captured his attention was the huge cannon strapped to the undercarriage.

Oh, eggshe—