"Okay, not missing a single thing today." Stick checked the little set of saddle bags while Penny did the same for her own. Ready for schooling the two mares set off.
"You read the sections from the book that I highlighted?" Penny leaned over and kissed the changeling. The kiss was returned with gusto and the pair ended up breaking apart again with giggles.
Stick booped her marefriend on the nose. "Of course I did, so we are starting with recent history, then?"
Shrugging, Penny grabbed her phone off the charger. The cord was starting to look like it had seen better days, so she didn't like leaving it plugged in unless she was around. "Apparently, although we might have other classes for those things."
The pair wandered the hall in search of breakfast, first. There was a large kitchen area where students and faculty alike were already eating. As the two entered, a high pitched shriek sounded and they were stopped dead by a magical wall of force. "A changeling! Get it out, they are not unicorns!" It was a young mare from the student table.
She was babbling almost incoherently now, Penny could see the wall that had blocked them was circling around to seal around her and Stick.
"Miss Cart, you will stop that immediately. Using spells in the dining hall is forbidden!" A stallion with a set of notes on his flank, at the faculty table, had risen.
"But, it's a changeling! They are horrible and-" The rambling was cut off by the stallion.
"No 'buts', SHE is the special somepony of the school's latest student." As he spoke, the stallion's horn cycled quickly through a series of patterns and the bubble around Penny and Stick popped. He trotted over to the pair, smiling. "Penny, Stick, I am vice-headmaster Arpeggio." He lifted a hoof to each of them, the startled pair clopping their own in reply. "I apologize for my student's behavior, it seems she will be spending the day studying the recent events regarding changelings and in particular Princess Fast Change's hive." The mare in question shrank at the words but glared at Stick.
"Oh, it's okay," Stick beamed apparently unable to be really fazed by nearly anything today, "her technique with that force bubble was quite good though."
The mare looked surprised by this, blinking a little in shock at getting complimented.
"It was at that, tell me, what would your reply have been had this been a duel?" It was clear Arpeggio had a motive here. Stick picked up on it, but was unwilling to be the 'scary monster' she thought he was setting her up to be. She wondered if he knew what special spells she had learned.
"Since she is a student, and not an enemy," Stick looked to the mare with a smile, getting an oddly curious look back, "I would have put up my own force wall, surrounding myself and Penny."
"A superb answer, so long as you are sure your own reserves can outlast your opponent." Stick couldn't help but feel he was a touch annoyed by her lack of wanting to use something offensive. "Well, I am sure during your own time with Gingersnap today you might be able to practice this." He looked to the mare who had caused all the trouble. "Since Hay Cart will be joining you for your lessons."
Penny was still a touch lost. This situation was a little more complicated than she was normally used to. She had thought pony schools would be fonts of learning and happiness. It almost hurt to find out there were still petty ponies who would make it less fun.
Breakfast was served to them and even as they were looking for somewhere to sit the mare from earlier called out. "Hay, new ponies, if you want to sit over here…" She sounded a little hesitant to the pair. "I am sorry. I just... my parents keep telling me how terrible changelings are and how they are going to destroy Canterlot."
Looking like she had already faced the fact that her parents were a touch deluded, Hay Cart slouched a little.
"It's okay, when I was little everypony told me that ponies were just dumb and food, that the only one to fear was Celestia." Stick set her plate down, her magic sitting it just before her where she sat. She was right beside Hay.
The formerly aggressive mare looked surprised at this and giggled. "Oh, I bet, you are from that pony wannabe-" Hay halted, shaking her head. Stick reached out to her and comforted her with a hoof. "It is hard, they talk about you and your princess so much, saying not nice things. In a way I am glad the school requires all students to live on campus. What I meant to say was, Princess Fast Change, you are from her hive?"
Stick nodded. "One and only. If you find changelings who claim they are from another, you would be best to contact the city guard, or any of the princesses." A piece of mashed potato floated up from Stick's plate toward Penny's mouth. Closing her eyes and opening up, Penny got her first bite to eat for the day.
Hay looked confused now. "You aren't going to eat your breakfast?" A light seemed to go off, figuratively, in the mare's head. "Oh, that's right, changelings don't eat food, do you eat her?"
Penny was trying to get a word in to refute the statement, or at least correct it, but her mouth was too full.
"Kinda, I eat her love. She is tasty!" Stick was absolutely without any shame in that regard, for some reason Penny found herself blushing a little.
"How do you do it?" Hay scooped up some food and almost choked when her brain caught up and she spluttered and almost choked getting it down. "I mean do THAT… I mean how do you eat her love?" She looked more than a little flustered.
"Penny? If you would." Stick turned to her marefriend and could already feel a faint swell of love start to flow off her in all directions. She leaned in and began to drink the sweetest of love from the mare, the taste always so good simply because it was aimed right at the changeling.
The unicorn in question could see as a few ponies, particularly faculty, broke the earlier stated rule and cast spells that had their own eyes glowing a touch. She figured it was something to help them see magic.
"So it is happening?" Hay looked confused, either she didn't know the sight spell or she was unwilling to risk using it and tempt the vice principal again. "I don't see anything."
Penny nodded, with Stick distracted by feeding off her, her mouth was free. "There is a trick I can do, where I channel magic through my emotions. Apparently it is just the thing to feed a ravenous changeling." She leaned over and booped Stick on the nose cutely.
"It is pretty cool. So you can feed her from your magic? Is that why she feeds you extra?" Hay was asking most of the right questions, Penny could all but hear quills scratching paper as Gingersnap was watching.
"Yup, that and I am eating… well, technically for three."
"Three?" Hay looked a touch confused.
Another mare on the other side, proving that their conversation was being overheard quite effectively, cut in. "She has a foal on the way, duh."
Hay blushed more, looking between the dreamily distracted changeling and the lunar unicorn. Her mouth moved a few times as her brain tried to process first what this all meant and then what would be appropriate to ask. She stopped, shook her head and gave a smile. "Congratulations."
Penny found herself liking the mare, realizing her initial reaction was likely the result of… inaccurate knowledge on Hay's part. "Thank you. So what kind of magic do you do?"
Neither of the pair were ready for the sudden deluge of words to come from Hay Cart. "Well…"
"You really do get very intense." Fast was chuckling as she lay in the sun, watching the day slowly wind down. Beside her, Twilight was sitting contentedly with a book laid out, quill and ink beside it.
"I get focused." Twilight defended her behavior, adding notes to the pictures of Fast's aura changing in the book. "It may not be how everypony does it, but I take my science very seriously."
Fast laughed outright. "Did Slow help you with that information you were after?" She knew the stallion had, of course, it was odd how easy it came to her to know every little detail of her hive.
"She did." Twilight paused in her writing, reflecting on the slightly different pony that was Slow Perfection. The stallion had finally made it known to the alicorn that she preferred 'she' as a reference. It had felt odd, but Twilight banished that sensation. It wasn't odd at all, it was just different and different wasn't bad. "Her shifting is different to yours. You seem to break out in flames of change everywhere at once. Hers is more a gradual shift, and she always starts at her hooves."
This was news to Fast and she looked over at the notes Twilight was making in the book. "It is interesting, I wonder what that says about our mindsets, how we think about using our magics?"
If ever there was a right thing to do, with Princess Twilight Sparkle, to perk her up, it was to talk science.
"You both likely learned the ability in different ways. Yours was your cutie mark, your special talent." Twilight seemed to go off on a tangent. "What happened to your cutie mark?"
The words were out and Twilight, usually lacking in empathy when in 'science mode', picked up that this was a poor subject to raise. Fast looked down. "I lost it. My flank is blank." A hoof slipping over her withers had Fast look to Twilight.
"Part of being a changeling?" Twilight kept her tone low, for all the excitement she felt at learning, she really didn't want to hurt her friend. "I wonder if there is a way to change back, to being a pony again?"
"No."
"No?" Twilight was surprised at Fast Change's vehemence. "There isn't a way or-"
"I won't abandon my hive. They love me just as I am, as they need me to be." Fast gazed off, watching the warming sun dragged down to the horizon by alicorn magic. "And they are there for me. Did you know, a little drone called me 'mom' yesterday?"
Twilight was shocked at how much happier Fast suddenly looked, like a switch had been thrown.
"She was feeling down, she bolted into my embrace for a hug, reassurance. I don't know if I am ready to be that…"
The alicorn squeezed with the leg over her friend's shoulders. "I think you are. You already are mother to the hive… now there is a question I need to ask."
Fast blinked at Twilight, it was almost impossible to keep up with her mind.
"How do changelings reproduce?" Twilight looked into the eyes of the changeling queen cuddled against her.
Almost cursing out loud, Fast had a moment of shock when she realized she didn't know that herself. Maybe it would be fun?
The morning flowed easily. Penny, Stick and Hay were being tutored by Gingersnap, learning about the recent history and drifting into events Penny knew from the show. It confused her a little, the show had the big stuff, but it missed out on a lot of the reasons and purposes behind some of the actions.
"Now, the vice principal…" Gingersnap hesitated on the word, she sounded a little unsure of what she was about to say, "has asked if Stick and Hay could test out what Stick had said, about defending herself with a shield. I… have reasons to think he has motives that aren't really clear here, but if you both promise to not take this any further and you will both stop your magic when I say, got it?"
Hay and Stick, who had been sitting at adjoining desks, grinned. "Daddy said my force bubble was as strong as Shining Armor's!"
Stick gave a counter. "It isn't, trust me there." She got up and moved to the front of the little class.
Hay stuck her tongue out. "How would you know?" She followed the changeling up and faced off with her.
"Because I had the complete displeasure of finding myself in it." Stick waited, watching the surprise register on Hay's features. "Now, are you going to do as well as he did?"
The unicorn tossed her mane and her horn lit. The ball appeared quickly and solidly around Stick. "This it?" Her voice was a little muffled.
"Yup, now try… gently, to use your own bubble to stretch-" Gingersnap was explaining to Stick how it would work when that ball of jade-green force wrapped the changeling and pushed outwards.
Hay looked surprised and tried to hold her own bubble but the green one stretched it past the breaking point.
The jade-colored bubble popped a moment later and Stick was standing with a grin on her face. The look on Gingersnap made her tilt her head though. "What's wrong, did I cast that wrong?"
The teacher shook her head. "I have never seen that spell before… where did you learn it? Is it a changeling spell?"
Stick was caught and looked it. Penny could see the changeling was about to try and do the thing her species were famed for, and stepped in. "She can't tell you." Sighing, Penny stepped over to her mate and nuzzled the drone's cheek. "Suffice to say, it was okayed by a princess."
Gingersnap didn't look happy about the puzzle but she couldn't really fight that kind of authority.
"I had that…" Stick whispered to Penny.
The unicorn returned the whisper. "I know, but you shouldn't have to lie to defend her, she wouldn't want that."