//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 // Story: Stinkbug the Unwanted // by kudzuhaiku //------------------------------// “Stinkbug, there is no nice way of saying this.” Queen Chrysalis turned her imperious stare upon the changeling cowering some distance away from her. A glowing green bubble of magic surrounded her and she made a disgusted face as she spoke. “Stinkbug, you stink!” The changeling drone recoiled as if struck. “Mother, please—” “Silence!” Chrysalis shook her head, gagged, and the green bubble surrounding her glowed even brighter around her as she tried to keep the smell out. “Stinkbug, you have the unfortunate condition of having inherited some genes that I thought I had successfully removed quite some time ago. I was wrong. Oh goodness, was I ever wrong!” Prostrating himself, Stinkbug whimpered for mercy. “Oh my goodness, my eyes are watering”—the changeling queen took a step backwards and fanned the air with her wings—“for the good of the hive, you must go. I release you from your service. Your status as a drone is now revoked. You are a free ‘ling.” “But I don’t want to be free… the hive is all I know!” “Too bad, Stinkbug!” Unable to stop herself, Chrysalis gagged. She coughed, tried to summon even more magic to empower her shields, and then let out a pained cry when she realised that nothing could stop the stench. If the stench could be a famous monster, Stinkbug would be The Smooze. Poor Stinkbug smelled even worse when he felt threatened and Chrysalis was in a hurry to make him go. “But I’ll starve to death… who could love a ‘ling like me?” Stinkbug turned his compound eyes upon his mother and gave her a pleading, pitiful stare. He had a face that only a mother could love. It was unfortunate that he had a stench that could overcome even the most powerful of maternal instincts. “That’s too bad!” Chrysalis snapped. “Now go!” When the connection to the hivemind was severed, Stinkbug gibbered in both fear and mental anguish. Independence? Free will? No constant, soothing presence of the Queen Mother intruding into his mind and smoothing out his troubled thoughts? What terrible torture was this? No ‘ling wanted independence or to be separated. Being separated was death. A changeling’s only strength came in numbers. The idea of surviving as an individual was something that did not exist. And Queen Chrysalis had just forced it upon one of her own offspring. “The hive survives on the strength of our unity. You, Stinkbug, represent weakness. You destroy our unity. For the good of us all, you must go.” Queen Chrysalis looked at her cowering offspring and shook her head. He was one of thousands that existed at the moment. One flawed, defective drone. She wasn’t sure what had gone wrong, he had been normal for the longest time and the smell was something that had only appeared just a short while ago. The stench was so terrible that he became a 'ling that had earned a name. Most ‘lings had a thought or a mental cue that they answered to. Up to the point where he had become super-ultra-bad-nostril-raping-stinky, Stinkbug’s mental cue was a nebulous thought consisting of He Who Whistles and Will Be Pleasant Enough for Sex. Queen Chrysalis wasn’t quite cruel enough to kill him, at least not by her own hoof. No, the outside world was probably going to do him in. But before he died, he was going to make the outside world smell bad. Real bad. And screw the outside world… what had the world done for her lately? She hoped that Stinkbug found his way into pony territory before he starved to death. She hoped the wretched little pastel equines choked on his unbearable stench. It was time for payback after the great Fling-a-’Ling event that happened on what was supposed to have been the single greatest day in Queen Chrysalis’ life. Oh, how she hated the ponies. How she loathed them. Her hatred of them was projected throughout the swarm. Revenge would be sweet—er, smelly. “Goodbye, Stinkbug, do not come back!” Blinking, Stinkbug had a look around. He had never even been outside before. He was a worker drone, a darkling that was never intended to even see the sun, a changeling that never left the hive, a changeling that was slated for reproduction purposes once he had matured. Being a good, upstanding changeling male of viable breeding stock, he would be impregnated with eggs that he would fertilise after they were laid inside of him and he would be responsible for raising the ‘lings that were his. When they were grown, the process would repeat until he expired from old age, at which point he would be broken down and his biomass would be repurposed for the good of the swarm. Stinkbug had been looking forward to being a good mother. Now, he had no future. He couldn’t feel the minds of his fellow 'lings anymore. They were gone. Everything was gone and he was all alone. It was quite a shock. His mood fluctuated and with no regulation, everything was far too raw and unfiltered for him to deal with. He was alone, a terrible state of affairs for a 'ling. Overhead was the burning sun, a fabled object that he had only heard stories about. The sky was a shade of blue that he had never seen before. The world around him wasn’t much to look at. There was sand, rocks, more sand, more rocks, the mountains that had been his home, and more sand. He tried to remember what he knew about the world, what he had learned from the shared mind of the hive. The pony lands were to the north. To the north were the green lands with strange things called trees. He didn’t know what trees looked like. He also knew that the outside world was dangerous. Wings buzzing, Stinkbug coughed to get his spit production going. He needed armor. The world was full of things that could eat 'lings. He felt his insides burble as his internal organs went to work producing the special spit that made armored outer shells that went over his chitin. It was a goopy, sticky substance that became smooth and hard once it dried. He had a variety of spits that he could create and armor was only one of them. Glancing back at the sealed entrance, he had trouble believing that he had just been dumped outside and forgotten about. Somehow, he was going to have to survive in this new world. He coughed up a glob of armor spit and applied it to his foreleg. Reaching around, he smeared it along his back and it began to harden almost right away. He spit out a bit more, applied that, and kept going. He buzzed his wings to create the openings they needed in his back armor. In no time at all, there was a glittering semi-translucent shell upon his back to protect him. He went to work on his legs next, knowing that they needed protection too. The armor goop found good anchor spots in the holes that perforated his body. He was a creature made to survive, his body was the peak of biological perfection, or so his Queen Mother had said. He was perfect in every way. Except that he stunk. After armoring his legs, he went to work on a helmet to protect his head. As he crafted his helmet, he wondered how he was going to eat. He had no nectar bearing drones to feed him. He had never fed on love fresh from the source before. He had existed on leftovers; dine and dash brought home to the hive. As Stinkbug finished up his helmet, a passing black fly dropped dead when it came too near to him. He looked down at it and contemplated his own mortality. When he died, his remains would just rot, or he might get eaten perhaps. He would never be repurposed. He wouldn’t continue to live on with the rest of the swarm through having his biomass repurposed. Saddened by the thought, his helmet now finished, Stinkbug flew away, never to return to his home ever again. He headed north, towards pony lands, hoping that he could find a meal. The outside world couldn’t be that large and surely he would find food soon enough. Perhaps his exile wouldn’t be so bad. Ponies were soft, stupid creatures, or so his Queen Mother had said. They were food. Stinkbug supposed that he might be able to use his stench to knock them out so he could feed on them. He had no idea how wrong he would be… Below, endless sand, rocks, and pebbles stretched in all directions, except north. Stinkbug knew all about sand, rocks, and pebbles; they were the three key ingredients for changeling quick dry cement. Mix them in the right way with changeling spit, and you had an instant structure that could be shaped by drones in no time at all. Ahead of him, hills rose up from the endless sand, hills that held the promise of green, and he could see what could only be trees. They were strange things indeed. Stinkbug was a swift, capable flyer, which surprised him. All of his previous experience flying had been indoors. Changeling hives maximised the use of space, going up, down, left, and right, making tunnels in all directions. A 'ling spent as much time flying up and down as he did walking along a flat surface. Any 'ling that became so old they couldn’t fly were placed into the repurposing nursery. Stinkbug wondered why his Queen Mother hadn’t just had him repurposed and been done with it. A swift, merciful end would have been better than this… this slow death that he was sure to suffer. He supposed that his remains would have smelled bad too. His armor would need to be reapplied. He hadn’t done as good of a job as he had thought. Parts of it were already crumbling and falling away as he flew. With time, he supposed, he would get better at it. The thick armor also protected him from the merciless sun, keeping the sun from shining with direct force upon his chitin. The armor’s reflective, glittery surface helped to reflect the sun away from his black, somewhat rubbery chitin. Flying was also depleting his energy. He wondered what it would be like to starve. He needed emotions, if not love, than a meaningful, bubbly friendship as a snack. If not friendship, something syrupy, sugary, and energy dense, something like tree sap perhaps. He tried to dredge up stories of survival from his collection of memories that were left in the depths of his mind. Changelings could eat things, they had to. Nectar was was more than love, it had other things in it, sugars, proteins, much of it made from repurposed changelings. A changeling could survive on basic, simple foods, but Stinkbug knew that without love, without complex, positive emotions, his magic would grow weak and things would start to happen to him, but he wasn’t certain what those things were. None of his memories held any clue what the symptoms might be. Wings buzzing, soaring through the sky, Stinkbug came upon a most amazing sight… There was a massive wall of falling water that fell down the side of a cliff. It created a fine mist, which in turn created bands of beautiful illusory colours. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. He had never seen anything quite like it before, and his collection of memories held no information on what it was, but it was beautiful. Seeing it, taking it all in, seeing the gorgeous colours in a perfect, arching band that rose up out of the water made his inevitable slow death almost seem worth it. As he approached a flock of birds took wing and flew off, squawking in protest at the sudden foul smelling funk that had appeared from out of nowhere. Other creatures were fleeing the watering hole as well. Hovering, Stinkbug kept a wary eye out for danger. He looked all around him, he looked above him, and with a worried glance, he tried to look down into the water to see if anything was lurking. Satisfied that he was safe, he landed near the water and had himself a drink. Water and other liquids would help to refill his internal chemical reserves. He would need to dissolve some rocks with acid soon and slurp up the sizzling mess so he could continue to make the armor he needed. He drank as much water as he could, so much water that he sloshed when he moved. He had never been this full before and it was a novel sensation. Previous to this point, he had always taken just what he had needed, but now, with his future uncertain, he wasn’t sure when he would see water again. He didn’t know where the drones who brought water to the hive found it; perhaps this was it. If so, it seemed like quite a way to fly to get water. Stinkbug sat down in the grass and started to groom himself. He began eating what was left of his armor, drooling a helpful, dissolving acid upon it, breaking it down, consuming it, and repurposing it. He was in a tough spot and nothing could be wasted. He gobbled down his backplate and thought about how he might do a better job when he made the next one. The watering hole was peaceful, serene, and nothing with a nose would dare to molest Stinkbug as he sat eating and repurposing his armor. He studied the world around him, trying to take it all in, wondering if things had names, like the colours that shimmered in the air as the sun shone through the mist rising up from where the waterfall spilled into the basin. The air was cool and damp. Before Stinkbug had arrived, the air had been scented with the pleasant aroma of wildflowers that grew where there was water. To the south was desert and scrub. Stinkbug had once heard his Queen Mother call it ‘The Badlands.’ Now, he could see why they were so bad. To the north, an endless expanse of green awaited. To be this green, it had to have a lot of water… and if it had a lot of water, then it had to have lots of illusory bands of colour everywhere. It was, in Stinkbug’s mind, a land of literal happiness and magic. No wonder the ponies were such happy, frolicking, lazy creatures. And they were lazy—the Queen Mother had said so. They were wretched, lazy creatures with no work ethic, no sense of industry, they were prey creatures. Now freed from the influence of his Queen Mother’s thoughts, Stinkbug, who felt a growing sense of resentment, wasn’t sure if he believed her. Perhaps approaching them in a peaceful manner might be good, but there was the matter about how he smelled. He couldn’t smell himself, not in the slightest, so he didn’t know how bad the stench was. Ponies were smart and smart creatures could be reasoned with. Ponies had princesses and all ponies lived in castles, massive castles where they lazed about all day doing nothing—castles were structures that had to be constructed. A castle was like a hive, but with a more defined shape, with towers, walls, and halls where ponies held endless feasts so they could grow fat. Stinkbug had a hazy image of Canterlot in his mind, a shared mental image brought back to the hive and distributed. Stinkbug had a most peculiar thought; his Queen Mother had tried to take over Canterlot. If they took over Canterlot and lived in a castle, wouldn’t they become no better than the ponies? Fat, lazy creatures who lounged around in a castle all day sucking the love and life out of the ponies they had conquered? The now thoughtful little drone unhinged his lower jaw and extended his chewing mandibles so he could remove the armor from his leg. Acidic saliva dribbled down his chin and the droplets sizzled upon the grass. As he sat there, removing his armor, the very thing that protected him, Stinkbug heard a voice. Hearing the voice startled him, so much so that he almost swallowed and choked upon his own mandibles. He sucked them in and popped his lower jaw back into place as he looked around. “Forgive me for saying so, but you smell mouth wateringly delicious…”