//------------------------------//
// The searching 
// Story: Shining Chitin 
// by Damaged 
//------------------------------//

"So changelings have special talents too?" Shining looked to Careful, then to the new drone who was shaking like a leaf. "What's your name?"

"Slink, My Queen." Shining had long since gotten used to being called queen, so just nodded to the drone. Getting used to that was almost the fifth most scary thing that had happened so far. The head of the changeling snapped to the side and a beatific expression flooded their features. "My Queen!"

Shining turned his head to the side to see Cadance walking in. She turned heads for a whole new reason now and the stallion couldn't disagree.

"What is going on? I heard another group of drones arrived, is this one of them?" Cadance trotted over to the little changeling her husband had been seeing to, a pink wing curled around the suddenly giggling Slink.

Shining gestured with a black hoof. "Just finding that out myself. Slink, why did you come forward." The words failed to draw the drone's attention away from his wife and Shining had to trot over, closer, and repeat his question. "Why did you come to see me, Slink?"

"Slink is uniquely and amazingly gifted with numbers and sorting, organization runs like ichor in her veins." Careful was fighting every changeling urge to get closer to his queens, if he got as near to them as Slink was he would be doomed to incomprehensible snuggling, just like the little drone. "I think she wanted to help you."

"Help us? Well, it would be useful having another mind focused on this, but how would she-" Shining was cut off as the little drone, her instincts fighting with her mind and losing as she slipped out of the embrace of her two Queens.

"My Queen, I could… please don't come closer…" Slink backed away another step, knowing that if she got trapped by one of those pink wings she wouldn't have the willpower to get free a second time. "I need to help the hive. There are more coming."

"How many?" Cadance folded her wings down at her side but had to struggle with the urge to go and cuddle the drone more. She contemplated a moment on how much more cuddly she had grown during her pregnancy. Most of the changelings didn't mind.

"There was, as of the time I left, nearly five hundred and seventy-three changelings in the hive." Slink's eyelids batted briefly while she recalled the numbers. "I estimate nearly eighty percent will survive the trip-"

"Survive? That is unacceptable!" Shining's hoof came down on the floor. "Where will they be? We need to go and help them… what?" He stopped at the look Cadance gave him, there was a wide grin and… he cheated and leaned on his new changeling senses. Love. Complete and total love.

"You surely don't need to use that to find out I love you?" Cadance had felt the touch of his changeling power, she leaned into her husband. A hoof rubbed along the line, just below his cutie mark where the change was happening. "Seeing you demand to take care of your hive, it was gorgeous."

Fighting free of his wife's coddling, Shining looked to Slink. "How do we go about increasing that percentage?"

Slink's whole manner changed. She had been hoping that their queens were, as the others said, were nice. But this showed care for drones that weren't even technically their hive yet. "You have nearly twenty fighter drones here, along with a dozen infiltrators, send them. The infiltrators can cover the work of your fighters and they can reduce the probability of loss per drone by nearly sixty percent." Shining blinked at the numbers. "That would mean over ninety percent of them will make it."

"And if we send a troop of royal guard, too?" Shining watched the drone's eyes widen further. "What will it take to make that number one hundred?"

"My Queen!" Slink shivered with the intensity of her Queen's question. "I will find out as quickly as I can!"





The train was at least three times longer than any the railway had dealt with before. They had to hook up multiple steam engines to pull it all, but when a princess made a little request, ponies got things done.

Shining and Cadance sat in one of the cars, the train almost completely empty and their carriage certainly was, apart from them. And the drone they both knew as Chitin.

Chrysalis was shaking, she had no idea why the two had sent all the other changelings to prepare in the back-half of the train, but here she was. "My Queens," the words rolled off her tongue far too easily, to Shining she would say them freely, but Cadance still had to work for them, "if you don't have further need of me, I wi-"

"Quiet, please." Cadance looked at the drone, trying to imagine how hard it was for the deposed queen to live in it, to keep in hiding. "You know what we are doing?"

Her mind raced. Chrysalis had been trying to divine the intent of this, but outright asking questions led to a drone being remembered for such. She shook her head, remembering the command. Then she mentally kicked herself for following the command of Cadance.

"It seems we have accidentally bonded an entire changeling hive." Cadance looked out the window, but could see 'Chitin's reaction in the glass. Clearly the queen hadn't realized what a danger she had put her whole hive in. "That is why your numbers have been swelling, the nearest changelings were rushing to join us."

Chrysalis trembled in shock. She reached out toward 'her hive' and felt only the beating presence of the two other occupants of the carriage, with a distant tug of the other drones on the train. Had she really lost her own hive?

"Stop it, Cady." Shining marched up beside the drone that he knew to be Chrysalis. He put one black leg around her and pulled the smaller changeling in against his side.

Cadance sighed and turned back, to see her husband protecting the mare that had hurt him the most. "I thought I could be angry at you, I really wanted to. For his sake." Cadance gestured to her husband. "I steeled my heart, Chrysalis-" 

"YOU KNOW?" Chrysalis burned with fire, intending to become her full form but… it only sort of worked. She was certainly bigger than other drones, but she lacked the full stature she had, she lacked her mane, her tail; the mare now sported fins instead of hair. She struggled and fought against the sensation and found, at least, her mane and tail return.

Cadance walked all the way over and reached a hoof out to the mare who had worked so very hard to ruin her wedding and steal her husband. "I did. You feed so much stronger than the others, silly."

A wing draped around Chrysalis and she wanted to fight it, to hate it. She failed on both counts. "I love him…" She looked up at Shining and felt that love burn as bright as ever. A choice came to the changeling, she could keep fighting, possibly regain her stature, or she could take a gamble. 

Squeezing the deposed queen, Cadance beamed. "All the changelings in our hive love him." She got a startled look from Chrysalis. "Let's go save your drones." 

Chrysalis shook. She needed to make a decision and it would be a life-changing one. The time she had spent in the castle, under the 'care' of Shining and Cadance, had been the best time in her life. Food was plenty, her own drones around her didn't once hesitate to help her, support her, as she got used to her smaller body and the new feelings it brought.

The decision was made easily. Chrysalis' head and heart were both sick of fighting and struggling and the whole reason for her invasion of Canterlot was being solved by the two ponies before her. "Your drones, My Queen." It still felt hard to say, but it was easier now she realized how completely she had been both bested and accepted.