Buggy and the Beast
Gone Green
Warning: The following chapter has depictions of changeling moulting. Ponies or people of delicate disposition are hereby cautioned to perhaps skip forward at the first sign of goo, and to tread carefully so you don’t get any changeling on you, because it’s the dickens to get washed out. Just remember, if you wake up screaming in the middle of the night or experience feelings of nausea, the management and ownership of this fic hold no responsibility⁽*⁾ for your reaction. So please, read responsibly, and try not to become emotionally unhinged at the sight of any blood, guts, or spoo. We now return you to your scheduled story, already in progress.
(*)Heck, the author holds no responsibility for anything else either, so why change?
The alarm clock had scarcely rang when the Murphy bed lurched and Beet Salad’s back got suddenly very cold. “Up and at the day, Beetsie,” called out the changeling in a bright, cheerful voice seeming on the edge of breaking out into song. She turned off the alarm clock and scurried away, flashing with green fire as she shifted back into her regular blue pegasus form. Although he would never be caught dead admitting it, sleeping with a changeling was not too bad. She shut up and stopped snoring when nudged, didn’t flail around in bed while having dreams, and was actually fairly warm. If it were not for her annoying habit of rolling herself up in every blanket on the bed until she was a tightly-wound blanket cocoon, which made Beets huddle closer to the bug in order to stay warm… Oh. That explained it.
Beets rolled out of bed and plodded into the bathroom, which his roommate was inspecting with a critical eye. “I wish we had enough space to get a two-pony tub in here,” she groused. “Here, take your brush.” She climbed into the tub and pulled the curtain closed, starting the water while calling out, “Try to get my whole back, Beetsie.”
One advantage of being a unicorn was the ability to scrub somepony’s back in the shower while standing outside of it. After ensuring she had been properly scrubbed and conditioned, he stood off to one side as the disguised changeling stepped out of the tub and he stepped in. “I don’t understand why you need to scrub up your disguise,” he said while scrubbing his own back. “Can’t you just change forms into something cleaner?”
“Morphic resonance,” she responded through a mouth full of toothpaste. “If I’m a dirty changeling, I can only turn into a dirty pony and back again. It’s a lot easier to get the dirt out of transformed hairs than my normal chitin.”
“But you’re covered in shellac,” he countered. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation.”
“It’s part of the bodily transformation spell, but even then, I still can’t use my wings in either form. They could have been broken beyond my body’s ability to heal, but I can’t tell with all this shellac over them. I’ll know better after I moult.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered. “Another reason to lounge around the house and chew up my bits.”
* ♥ *
“I don’t know, Nek.” Beet Salad regarded his lunch of a nice tossed alfalfa salad with bean sprouts and tofu chunks, topped with croutons and thousand island dressing. “There’s just something so wrong about this.”
“Are you going to eat that?” Nectarine paused with one hoof over the pair of bran muffins which had been included in Beets’ lunch.
“No. I’m not hungry — wait a minute. You can have one of those, not both.” Beets reclaimed his muffin and took a big bite. “She’s making me… feel again. I thought I had all those memories of my folks and my little brother locked away behind an iron door.” He chewed for a while on the suddenly dry muffin while trying to muster up enough spit to swallow. Despite the length of time it took, Nectarine remained thankfully silent while Beets took a drink out of his bottle of mineral water in order to continue. “It’s like some termite is chewing holes in the door… I don’t know.”
“Are you happy?” Nectarine munched away on the bran muffin, scattering crumbs as he waved one hoof to punctuate his words with a gesture. “I mean really happy.”
For a while, the two of them ate in relative silence other than the crunching of celery sticks and the opening of a box of grass crackers. Beets quietly tapped his hoof against the table in the rhythm of the song he had heard the changeling sing while thinking. Maybe there was something missing in his life, but it certainly wasn’t her. “I don’t know,” he said abruptly. “It’s been so long since I’ve been happy.”
~ ~ ~ ♥ ~ ~ ~
Beets was still considering the point while he walked back home. Alone, because Nectarine was pulling some overtime again in order to get a few bits ahead on his back foal support. It always chafed to hear his friend talk about his money woes, knowing of Beets’ own bank account balance, but just as certain as the night followed the day, a few thousand bits put into Nek’s hooves would turn into another illegitimate foal inside a few months and just sink him deeper into debt.
But he seemed happy, and would gladly show pictures of his adorable progeny at the drop of a hint.
Doctor Bonebreaker seemed happy with his buggy bride too, although a little overworked.
Even Shining Armor and Princess Cadence seemed happy, despite their difficulties.
Beet Salad deserved a little bit of happiness too, didn’t he?
Just a little bit. Until Buggy went home. Then he could go back to being miserable again.
The dawn had long since broke over the horizon by the time Beets strolled into his apartment, or at least it seemed to be his apartment. The sharp scent of fresh paint was familiar from yesterday, but bleach and other cleaners mingled their scents along with it, and the threadbare carpet had somehow been replaced by something that crushed beneath his hooves like dry moss. His boxed possessions had been reboxed into neatly labeled clean boxes and compressed into a neat cube while the rest of his apartment had been shuffled like a deck of cards in the hooves of a poker shark. Even the crusty old stove gleamed in the lights, having been transformed into something sleek and spotless by the application of immense amounts of scrubbing.
“Don’t come in!” filtered back from the bathroom. “I still have things to clean in the kitchen! Just… walk around the block a few times. Go take in a movie.”
Instead, he locked the front door and headed back to the bathroom. “Buggy, how did you manage to get Missus Spitonoikokýris to spring for new carpet?”
“Nodon’tcomeinthebathr—” Beets swung the door open and stopped, the caustic quip on his lips unsaid. The changeling looked horrible, with the darkness of formerly healthy chitin beneath the hoof shellac having leprous patches of white scattered randomly across her chest and back. It had to be some sort of disguise crafted to extract more love out of his calloused heart, but as much as he tried to think of it as such, the more he noticed the little details which put a lie to that theory.
“You look like shit,” he responded almost automatically. “What happened?”
“My moult is starting early. I barely saw the carpet installers out before I lost my disguise. I’m not ready to moult yet. I’ve got linoleum squares to lay in here and shelf paper for the kitchen and edging—”
“Stop.” Beet Salad held a hoof over the changeling’s mouth, feeling the cool touch of dry chitin instead of the warmth she had always displayed when trying to put those same lips anywhere on his body. “I can finish up the remodeling. You need to go lie down for a while.”
“I can’t,” she whined. “I have to hold it off for a few more days so I can soak up more love or I’ll never get out of my cocoon. As long as I’m scurrying around working, my metabolism will keep me from moulting.”
“Oh, yeah,” remarked Beets, looking at the patchy discoloration spreading all the way across her back and halfway down her rear legs. “That’s just working peachy for you.” He reached out with his magic and put the lid on the linoleum glue. “Breathing those fumes can’t be good for you in this condition. Since you said you need some more love, I’ll get out the guitar and play for you if you’ll take a break and sit on your squishy rear for a while. No singing on your part. Please.”
The snarky reply he expected did not occur as the changeling meekly allowed herself to be led out into the living room, although she did take a few minutes to cover nearly the entire corner of the room’s carpet with a thick coat of newspapers before sitting down in the middle of them. He looked up from his tuning briefly before resuming plucking on a troublesome guitar string. After all, if she wanted to pee on the new carpet, at least she was putting down papers.
He played, slowly at first and all by himself, before putting on a Dusty Withers album and playing along with the country singer. It did seem to calm the worried bug, although she still looked vaguely as if she were succumbing to a bad case of hoof fungus beneath the shellac. And reluctant as he was to admit it, playing the guitar helped him too. Bean Sprout had been so upset after dad had passed away, and listening to his big brother play for hours at a time had allowed him to fade into a fitful sleep, despite the spates of racking coughs sweeping over his frail body at random times during the night. As much as Beets wanted to forget, the ghost of his little brother seemed to be haunting his memories this morning, as if he were curled up in the form of a vulnerable changeling, listening with lidded eyes and unwilling to fall asleep.
Time slipped away from him, as it always seemed to do while playing. The played records stacked up to one side of the cabinet while he worked through songs he had thought long forgotten, playing main or backup guitar to the performer as they crooned or caroled along. It was past noon by the time he quit, while the mottled form of the sleepy changeling dozed along with his last few notes in a quiet snore.
And then he slipped her into bed and curled up before sleep claimed him too.
* ♥ *
The next evening, Nectarine seemed surprised to find Beet Salad standing outside his apartment door with a sack lunch already packed. The two mismatched stallions made it outside with the beginning shadows of night beneath their hooves before Beets said anything.
“Don’t say anything.”
“Wasn’t going to say a word,” said Nectarine. “However you want to do your mane is between you and your screaming fans in the pop music world.”
Taking a few minutes to run a hoof through his near-mohawk pink mane and using a licked hoof to attempt to keep it under control, Beets glared at his friend, daring him to speak.
As it was Nectarine, he took the dare. “Late night with the love-bug?”
“She’s moulting,” growled Beets as he resumed walking. “I spent half the day singing to her and the other half worrying she was going to die or something in bed. She was sleeping when I left.”
“Mares are such a problem once a month,” said Nectarine. “The other three weeks make up for it.”
“I don’t think this happens every month. Maybe once a year or so. Why in Tartarus am I worried about her dying, anyway?”
“Dying? Don’t you think you should be taking her to a doctor? Or back home?”
Beets managed to hunch his shoulders while walking. “She says if she goes home, they’ll just harvest her for whatever leftover love she has, and that’ll kill her. If I take her to the cops, that’ll kill her. The doctor…” Beets hesitated, trying to remember if he had filled Nectarine in on the insectile origin of his psychologist, or the fact she had also treated Princess Luna. Both embarrassing revelations were probably best kept secret, and telling Nectarine was a sure-fire way of making them a non-secret. “She says her doctor wasn’t concerned about moulting, so I’m probably just making a mountain out of an anthill.”
* ♥ *
After work, Beets dropped by Nectarine’s home library to borrow some bug books, just in case they would give him a hoof-up on his sick houseguest. It was probably somewhat like borrowing a book on rats to see how to take care of injured ponies, but it was at least an effort. As he sat in the middle of the chaos of a Nocturne clan house, filled to the top with batwinged nocturnal pegasi who each were somewhat lacking a sense of personal space, he considered his friend and the secret he had told to him. After all, he had a sick changeling in his apartment. If Luna knew she had a changeling psychologist, that meant the Princesses were ‘on his side’ so to speak. On the other hoof, if she did not know she had a changeling psychologist, things could get messy fast, with little bits of Beet Salad scattered all over the city, probably starting with the bits he appreciated the most. There was really no subtle way to say, “Princess Luna, do you know you have a bug shrink?”
But there was a way to at least get a hint.
“Hey, Roquefort?” Beets waved at a disheveled Nocturne who was just passing by the open bookshelf. The tall Nocturne was a Royal Guard in the Night Division of the Royal Customs Service, which in a port town like Baltimare kept him hopping. All kinds of cargo and creatures passed through the port every day and night, and only the really stupid smugglers smuggling dangerous cargo thought they could get contraband past Luna’s Night Guard. “Can I ask you a question?”
The tall stallion strolled over, which was a safer method of transport in the crowded clan house than trying to fly. To Beets’ concealed amusement, Roquefort had on a full set of dark blue slippers embroidered with Princess Luna’s cutie mark, and the damp towel thrown over his back was likewise embroidered with the same moon-and-cloud. “Hey, Beets,” said the guard. “Didn’t expect to see you here today. The grapevine says you managed to clock Shiny a few days ago. Thought we’d have to pick you up with a stick and spoon.”
“Yeah.” Beets rubbed his jaw. “We had a little disagreement. And I don’t think there was any ‘clocking’ going on, unless you count me slamming my face into his right hoof and my ribs into his left.”
“Ouch.” The guard winced. “Break anything?”
“Only my pride and a lectern. Listen, I’ve got a serious question. Let’s say… I told the cops I knew somepony was a changeling. What would they do?” Beets paused. “Skip that. They’d go crazy and run around in little circles like idiots. What would you do?”
Although the dark pegasus did not change a single bit of his posture, Beets could feel the sensation of iron doors slamming shut behind his smiling face. “Who?”
Beets waved a hoof. “No, this is totally hypothetical.”
From the way Roquefort drew his lips together, it was obvious what Beets was calling hypothetical was, in his mind at least, suspicious. “Would this hypothetical changeling be impersonating another pony after having cocooned its victim? Because in that case, it’s a Crown responsibility, and the Royal Guard would strike just as quickly as possible in order to ensure the safety of the pony or other sapient being.”
“That makes sense,” said Beets, somewhat uncomfortable at the idea of being wrapped up in some goo-filled cocoon like the Canterlot Times photo spread had detailed, or at least their artist’s interpretations of the cocooning process, since the changelings had all been thrown out of the city without the courtesy of allowing press photographers access to their works. “But what if the changeling was just pretending to be some random pony in order to to survive, like a sewer worker, or even Nectarine here.”
“Hey, don’t drag me into this, Beets.” Nectarine raised his forehooves. “I only let very special mares put me in hoofcuffs, and you aren't cute.”
Lighting his horn briefly, Beet Salad waved the first changeling detection spell over Nectarine, satisfied that it only showed a few small green blotches and a faint green aura. Roquefort likewise nodded as if the spell had been used in his presence several times and he was getting familiar with it. It did bother Beets to think that his friend might have actually been a changeling, but he put it to one side and continued.
“So, if I found out a pony was actually a changeling who had been living in town for several years, and I told you… what would you do?”
“You don’t need to know,” said Roquefort rather uncomfortably. “That’s Crown business.”
“I mean, would you arrest it?” continued Beets.
“It really depends,” the off-duty guard grudgingly admitted. “What crime has this theoretical changeling committed?”
“So you wouldn’t arrest it without knowing if it had committed some sort of obvious crime?” pressed Beets. “So if I were to find a changeling and tell you about it, and I see it later, I can assume it’s not a criminal, right?”
The guard paused for a long time before venturing, “We only arrest criminals who break Crown law. The local police handle local laws.”
Beets thought back to a conclusion which had been staring him in the face ever since he had learned the two changeling-related spells. “Shining Armor didn’t use a changeling detection spell on the crowd at the riot, did he?”
“Did he?” The guard’s expression was perfectly deadpan, probably a result of having spent too much time in a tin can.
“If there were changelings in the crowd,” started Beets while working through the chain of logic in his head, “the rioters would have torn them to pieces and gone out looking for more.”
“It’s possible,” admitted the guard. “So you can see why we would treat any changeling sighting with a great deal of caution and discretion.” The guard just sat there and looked at Beets for a while before adding, “By the way, a couple of the colts at work said you’ve got a marefriend now, but I haven’t heard Nek say one thing about her. Normally, he’s all over a fine piece of filly and won’t shut up about it.”
“She’s ugly,” said Nectarine, taking another book on insect lifecycles off the shelf. “Big hooves, a nasty voice, and this way of screeching at you like you tracked mud into the house. She’s got a sister if you’re looking for a date, Rocco. She’ll be out on probation in a few weeks.”
* ♥ *
In the end, Beets limited himself to a short stack of Nectarine’s entomology books and a few cookies from the clan kitchen before heading for home. He was prepared to spend a few more hours being ‘milked’ by playing on the guitar and singing, but when he opened the door and slipped inside, he was not able to find the changeling right off.
The apartment was spotless, like some sort of model home put together to lure renters into a decaying building. Everything was labeled, stacked, arranged, painted, and there was even a border around the kitchenette ceiling showing sheaves of grain and flowers. The only thing out of place was a huge pile of wadded-up newspapers stuffed into a corner of the living room and the absence of his insect roommate.
The two observations turned out to be related. Moving a few newspapers to one side, Beets revealed a changeling who had faded to almost a light lilac shade in nearly every part of her body, including her milky eyes which had almost lost all color. At first, Beets thought she had died, but she gave a little convulsion when he uncovered her eyes.
“Beets,” she gasped. “It’s too early. I don’t have enough love. I w-wrote you a note. The trash needs to be taken out.”
“Stay here.” Beets swallowed a lump the size of a can of creamed corn. “I’ll go get Idiosyncrasy and see if she can—”
“She’ll k-kill me and suck out all of my remaining love,” gasped the changeling. “I might be able to finish moulting. I don’t know. I’m just so cold. You’re supposed to snuggle when I say that, dummy.”
“Sorry.” Beets reached out and picked up the changeling. She felt almost weightless in his magic and as cold as ice when he wrapped his forehooves around her. “You know, if this is just some ploy to suck a little extra love out of me, I’m going to be pissed,” he whispered.
“I wish. Don’t hug so tight.” The trembling changeling started breathing again, with short breaths smelling of flowers and sweet nectar. “I’m sorry.”
“Dammed straight,” said Beets. “I’ll never be able to find anything around here now. I almost didn’t find you. I don’t want to lose you,” he added. “Not until you pay me back for all the bits you cost me.”
“I owe you a lot more than bits. Set me down. And back up.”
Beets did as he had been requested, kicking away a few of the books he had brought. For the longest time, nothing happened other than the pale changeling shifting positions slightly and her breathing steadying to a rapid in-and-out which seemed entirely too healthy for the trembling and drawn form it was coming from.
Then she doubled over with a sharp cry. “Stay back,” she gasped when Beets moved forward. “Don’t touch!” A second convulsion swept over the pale changeling, along with the sharp crack of sundered chitin. The faintest line of darkness appeared across her back, moving from just over her forehead and down her spine towards her tail in an unstoppable motion which made it seem as if the bug were about to split wide open.
And then she did.
It was a horrible, splintering noise sounding like the worst of broken bones and splintered noses. Something glossy green and dripping burst through the changeling’s splitting chitin and spilled out on the newspaper-covered ground as the discarded shell clattered to the ground behind it, tinged in a liquid green goop smearing across the color comics and the stock reports.
Looking much as a clam without its shell, the slimy creature who had once been a changeling curled up on the newspaper-covered carpet with a keening cry, rolling back and forth while Beet Salad cringed backwards away from it. Beets knew there was some sort of shelling and extraction process involved in moulting, but the abrupt suddenness of the eruption made his heart hammer in terror as he stumbled and fell during his retreat.
The vaguely pony-shaped creature had only a thin translucent membrane as a barrier between her lumpy internal organs spilling out along the ground and the present agonized writhing among the stained newspapers scattering in all directions as she thrashed. He had expected red blood to spray across the floor as the changeling had erupted out of its shell, but this was far, far worse. There was a ruddy tinge to the flailing changeling, mostly covered by the green goo which seemed to be extruding from its skin, but still obviously blood beneath the skin just the same as what flowed in his own veins. In a way, that made his present distress far worse. Had the changeling been totally alien, he could have managed some sort of psychological distancing from it, but the vivid crimson hue only made Beets more aware of the living, feeling creature in agony on his living room floor.
He could not move. He could only watch and feel his heart tear in half at the sight.
The creature spasming in pain on the newspapers began to fizz and froth as if it were dissolving into the green ichor covering it, with a sharp hissing noise growing while it twisted in place. He did not recognize what was happening until he saw the gooey strands spitting out from its mouth, leaving a foamy residue climbing up over its legs and torso. It was terrifyingly beautiful in a gruesome way, as if the changeling were some caterpillar spinning its own cocoon out of green paint and goop, and he watched it happen in detached fascination until just moments before the changeling vanished from view, it looked at him with astonishingly-dark teal eyes.
Then she was gone.
The hissing grew quieter once the initial cocoon was closed, but it still twitched and writhed as the creature inside moved. Thankfully, he could not see the naked changeling’s pained expression any more, even though it still grunted and moaned in a suggestive way inside the opaque substance as if she were trying to escape. Over time, the twitching grew slower and less spastic until it smoothed out into slow pulsation like the beating of a huge green heart, and a low green glow began to glimmer out of the darker interior and cast a faint light that lit the inside of his room in eerie shadows.
I will never be able to eat jello salad again.
He remained silent and unmoving until the cocoon likewise stopped its motions, or at least reduced them to a soft rhythmic pulsing like the beating of a giant obscene green heart. It took considerable effort to tear his eyes away from the changeling’s resting spot and look at the hollow frame which had once enclosed her. The pale violet of Rock Royalty hoof shellac had been scoured and faded away from the inside, leaving only a little white dust on the inside of a hollow changeling shell. Even the rupture across the spine where she had burst out had sealed itself mostly behind her as the elastic shellac sprung back after her departure. He awkwardly moved the empty shell quietly to one side and regarded the slow pulsation of green light from the cocoon instead.
She had said something about a note, and after a little searching, he found and opened it.
Beets. If I’m in my cocoon now, there’s nothing you can do. Just keep going to work so nopony gets suspicious and play me a song every once in awhile. I won’t hear it while I’m in there, but maybe I can get a little love in the process.
If I die by running out of love before I’m done, contact you-know-who. They can dispose of the body while you’re at work, and you can pretend I was never here. If I don’t die, you need to be careful. I’ll be hungry and may not be able to keep from eating you right down to the hooves. Just be careful.
Destroy this note, stupid.
—Sultry