//------------------------------// // A Swarm of Changelings is Under your Bed (Scarheart) // Story: Fimfic Authors Are In Your Bed // by Admiral Biscuit //------------------------------// A Swarm of Changelings is Under your Bed Scarheart         A lone nightlight was plugged into the wall, drawing the attention of a certain little girl snuggled deeply into her covers. She had been hearing noises every night for the past week. They scared her and she naturally hid beneath the covers of her blankets because everyone knew they kept the monsters away.         She had tried to tell Mommy and Daddy, but Daddy would look under the bed and into the closet only after tearful insistence there was something there!         The girl’s name was Christina and she was told she had an overactive imagination for a six-year-old. She was too old to be calling for Daddy to chase the monsters away, she was told.         Mommy kissed her on the forehead and Daddy assured her there were no monsters under her bed nor were there any lurking in her closet. She was tucked in, her father grumpily telling her to try and stay asleep this time. Mommy tucked her in and soon both left Cristina alone with her nightlight.         The same light she was now staring at.         There were no monsters, Daddy had said. Monsters aren’t real, Daddy had insisted.         The soft chittering sounds reaching the little girl’s ears begged otherwise. Always, it came from under her bed. Once she had dared to lean over her bed and look. Only shadow greeted her. Shadow and her teddy bear Paddington she had put specifically there to guard against the dark little monsters who grew bolder and bolder with each new night.         The grandfather clock struck midnight down the hallway, its mournful tones seeming to beckon the things lurking in the shadows beneath the mattress.         “Is it Monday already?” hissed a voice in a loud whisper from beneath Cristina.         Apparently, Paddington was a very bad guard.         The little girl jumped and gave a little scream, cutting it off before it could escape her lips. She clamped both hands over her mouth and held as still as possible.         “Well, she went to that one guy’s house...became a bed...then those idiots at the hive decided it would be wonderful to do the same thing. We gotta take a chance.” The second voice was only slightly less harsh and more inclined towards some semblance of stealthy communication. “And yeah, it’s just as Monday here as it is back home. Now shut up! You’ll ruin it for everyling else!”         “Why are we doing this again?” piped in a third voice.         “Stop poking me with your horn!”         There was a giggle. “Well, I’m horny and I can’t help it!”         A sigh followed and yet another voice joined in. “Yo. Six year old up top. Watch the innuendo!”         “Do we finally have everyone here?” growled the first voice. “We need to do this as a unit. Did we bring all the things we need?”         “I got the crown!”         “I’ve got the cape!”         “Hey, one of my lucky lottery numbers is eighty-eight!”         “Shh! You’ll wake the parents! I am not doing another changeling fire drill if they come in again!”         There was the sound of a scuffle coming from beneath the bed. Catherine’s fear had given way to curiosity. Surely monsters weren’t this silly! Slowly, she inched closer and closer to the edge of her bed, her fingers grasping the mattress. Holding as still as possible, she held her breath and cocked an ear to hear better. She could have sworn she could hear an odd buzzing sound. Make that a lot of buzzing sounds!         “Can we go home?” yelped yet another voice! How many were down there? Catherine wondered, her eyes having gone round with wonder.         “Not until we do this! We’re starving for love.”         “I want a donut.”         “Shut up! We’re all hungry! We’ve also determined little girls are the best source of nutrition for our dietary needs!”         “Don’t eat me!” Cristina blurted, suddenly afraid again. “I don’t want to be eaten!”         “Well, crap, she heard us,” griped the shadows beneath her bed.         A dark round head poked out with two glowing blue eyes from beneath the bed. It looked at Cristina. “Um. Not going to eat you. Promise!” It zipped back beneath the bed, but only after something had reached out and grabbed it. “Hey! Establishing contact and a peaceful overtones!” he complained.         It had to be a he. It sounded like a he. Cristina wasn’t sure. “Who are you? How many of you are there? What are you?”         She was ignored. “Are we doing this? Are we sure we’re going to do this?”         A chorus of voices rose with a fervent “Yes!”.         There was a pause beneath the bed. A collective intake of breath. Cristina was holding her own. “Okay, we’re coming out and we’re not going to hurt you! We just want to… talk.”         “Uh, should just one of us go out there? I mean, if she sees all of us, she’s probably going to scream for her parents and I really don’t want to do another changeling fire drill.”         “Heard you the first time.”         “I am not going to make the siren noise!”         “Will you idiots kindly shut up! We need this and this needs to happen! Our queen is a bed. A bed!”         “On another manic Monday!”         “What are we doing Tuesday?”         “Not going back to the Badlands, that’s for sure. The bed thing is all the rage now.”         “We’re off track again, aren’t we?”         Cristina giggled. She had no idea the monsters under her bed would be so weird and funny. “What are you doing under my bed?” she asked curiously.         “Talking,” came the dry reply. There was the sound of something being pelted pretty hard. “Ow! What did you do that for?”         “Just shut up and let Speaker do his thing.”         “Speaker?” Cristina asked curiously.         A dark head poked out from beneath the bed. “Uh, yeah, that’s me. Hello there!” Bright blue eyes were lit cheerfully. They were completely blue! The hues were darker on the outer part, lightening to almost white to what Cristina thought were the creature’s pupils.         “What are you?” she asked again. The faint light of the nightlight hinted at some sort of four legged form no larger than a big dog or a small pony. Cristina liked ponies. “Are you a pony?” she blurted with a rush of excitement.         The creature stared at her. “Erm, not quite. At least not at all like the ponies you might be thinking of.”         “You look familiar,” Cristina said. “I want to turn on the light!”         “No! Please don’t do that!” insisted the Speaker. “We...um...don’t want you thinking we’re scary. Ah...how...exactly are we familiar to you?”         “A cartoon...you look like a bug.”         “What show?” the Speaker asked, tilting his head suspiciously to one side. His ears had gone...flat? It was hard to tell in the gloomy light. His eyes swirled, showing emotion. Cristina thought he was nervous.         “My Little Pony?”         “Oh, that’s it! We’re gone! I’m packing my bags! I’m going home to mother! OW!!”         “Hey! Did she just say ‘My Little Pony’?”         “I do believe I heard Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker!”         It was absolute chaos under the bed. Cristina could feel whatever was going on underneath her through the mattress and the bedspring. She wondered if it was possible to jump on a bed upside down.         The Speaker sighed and looked at the girl apologetically. “One moment, please. I’ll be right back.” Then, he produced an enormous hammer from seemingly nothing and dove beneath the bed.         “IT’S HAMMER TIME, YOU IDIOTS!”         There were thumps. There were lumps. They were given out judiciously, if the girl’s ears were telling her correctly. The cries of pain and agony reminded Cristina of the sounds of Bugs Bunny and Friends. One of the dark forms tried to crawl out from under the bed, clawing futilely at the floor with what looked like legs with holes pitted up and down their lengths. A hook shot out from beneath the bed and grabbed the odd bug pony thing about its midsection, then dragged the thing as it babbled pleading words at Cristina before being sucked up by the shadows beneath the bed.         The mayhem went on for a bit longer before the Speaker returned, hefting the broken shaft of his once hammer. “I hated having to do that,” he lied, flashing her a grin that had really neat fangs in it. She had not noticed them before. “Let me get straight to the point,” he insisted.         The girl clutched her blankets around her, staring at him expectantly.         “We are changelings. We are hiding from ponies. We have left our queen because she has become a bed.”         “Queen sized, too!” chirped a voice from beneath Cristina’s bed.         “Yes. Queen sized,” sighed the Speaker as he rolled his eyes dramatically. “Look. Cristina. We’ve been watching you for a while. We’ve been trying to keep away from being spotted by your Father—”         “HE’S GOT BIG, NASTY TEETH!”         “Shut up, Reggie!”         There was a gasp. “You spoke my name!” accused one of the monsters, er, changelings from beneath the bed.         “Why are you hiding from ponies?”         “Pink Bubble of Doom,” the Speaker whispered, looking away in shame and showing obvious signs of Post Traumatic Team Rocket Syndrome. “Our tale is too sad and terrible to contemplate.”         “The lazer pony was worse!” quipped another changeling lurking down below.         The Speaker shook off whatever terrible memory he had...or it was last night’s five bean burrito slathered in syrupy love....he would never tell…         “Bottom line is, we formed a committee,” the changeling went on, scuffing the floor with a...hoof? Cristina was sure it was a hoof. A holey hoof!         “I brought the donuts!” exclaimed another unseen voice. “With sprinkles!”         The Speaker pressed on, ignoring yet another interruption. “We need a queen.”         The little girl blinked. “Really? Why do you need one?”         “Our current queen is a bed. A magic talking bed! That’s embarrassing!” He scoffed at the indignity, running a...hoof?...over his...crest? “Have you ever been a tree?”         “No.”         He smiled. “Good. Now, do you have any personal desires to become a bed?”         “Huh? Noooo. That’s silly! I don’t want to be a bed!”         “Huzzah!” came a cry beneath the girl’s bed.         “Oh, good Luna impression, Kekee!”         Cristina’s next question was not exactly high on the list of questions expected by the Speaker. “How many bed bugs are under my bed?”         “Changelings, not bed bugs. We’re not bugs at all,” he insisted, buzzing his gossamer wings. They looked like bug wings in the faint wall light. “There are a dozen of us, actually. We’re not mindless drones who think becoming a bed is the answer to all love problems! We represent a faction who have decided to ditch the witch and start up our own hive. The problem is, a proper hive needs a proper queen.”         “You want me to be your queen?” Cristina surprised herself with her own question.         The Speaker nodded eagerly. “Yes please!”         “I don’t know. I’d have to ask Mommy first.”         There were groans from beneath the bed. “Oh, come on!” came one indignant cry.         “Now, now, that’s a properly raised child, I tell you!” said yet another voice.         “Baker’s dozen!” chirped the Speaker nervously.         “We are changelings of action! Lies do not become us!”         “Well spoken, Wesely!”         Everything beneath the bed was humming, having grown from nothing, going past the squirming group crammed deep within the darkness of what lay beneath a typical little child’s bed. There was a growing din, a coming swarm.         “We’ve gone over a score! They all want to meet the new queen!”         “But we haven’t decided yet!”         “She must choose!”         “What if she says no?”         There was sudden silence at the awkward question. “Maybe Celestia will be our queen?” came a horrible suggestion which started a tremendous uproar down below.         “Bad! That was bad, Bob! Newspaper me! GIVE ME THE ROLLED UP NEW YORK TIMES!”         “Can I keep the editorial? They have such interesting articles…”         “Gimme the funny pages!”         “Hey, I found a copy of an old Atari game… Can we beat him with it, instead? I need the wanted ads.”         The voices were now everywhere. They had spilled out from beneath the bed and were on the walls, on the ceiling, crawling everywhere on the floor! Cristina knew she was not afraid because she was in a fit of giggles. Everywhere she looked, there was a blue glow coming from dozens—no, hundreds of eyes going about and staring at her with intense curiosity.         Suddenly, Cristina’s bedroom door swung open, sending a few changelings scattering. They chirped, buzzed, squealed, hopped, scolded, and finally went silent as a pair of very surprised and suddenly open-mouthed parents were staring when Daddy found the light switch.         A room full of changelings stared right back.         “I told you there were monsters under my bed!” chirped Cristina happily. “Can I keep them? They want to make me their queen!” She grabbed a random changeling —which happened to be the Speaker— and gave him a huggable squeeze. He squeaked like a rubber ducky.         “Yes,” said Speaker. “Our queen has turned herself into a bed and some bozo is probably sleeping on her. We want a new one. How does ‘Queen Mother’ and ‘Queen Father’ sound to the both of you?” He was ever so diplomatic as a living squeak toy.         Daddy fainted into Mommy’s arms. The changelings all smiled awkwardly and tried —tried, mind you— to look as adorable as possible. Half looked as though they were trying to conceal a very bad bout of constipation while the other half made duck faces.