Standing just outside the left in a pair of doors that led into the general's bedroom, Arachne gulped, and looked over her shoulder at the royal couple. She looked back and forth between them, and said, "I'd have thought she would ask you guys for a threesome. Are you sure she's upset with you?"
Ladybug took a deep breath, and said, "Look, we didn't even do anything serious. I was just feeding him."
Toothless grumbled, "I would have put it in a less transactional term, like horsing around. And it stopped being about feeding the instant you decided to give me a b-"
She quickly covered his mouth with a hoof, and placed her ear against the door. She listened for a moment, and turned around to look at him. "Okay, I have an idea," she said.
"Well, at least that makes one of us," he said.
She stepped towards the door on the right, and slowly pulled it open. She made sure to stay behind it so no one inside would see her, and grabbed Toothless's hoof. She pulled him in front of the open door, and said, "I need you to get in there, and figure out why she's upset." She then shuffled her stallionfriend into the general's quarters, ran to the door before Glados could see her, and slammed it behind her.
Toothless gulped as the sound of the door closing echoed throughout the bedroom. He glanced at the general's bed, and sighed with relief when he found it empty. He looked around the room, and ran over to Glados's personal restroom, whereupon he darted inside, closing his jaws over the hilt of his father's dagger.
Glados looked up from her stomach at him, and sighed. "What else have you come to take from me?" she asked him, having removed her armor and prepared to remove the final scourge in her life she could still do something about. She had gotten far enough to treat her stomach with disinfectant, and had been about to cut herself open.
That worm didn't deserve her work, her love, her body. She couldn't live with it any longer. Everyone thought of her as a wanton, or less pleasant things.
He shook his head, and carefully looked her up and down, taking note of some other things around the room. Her medical kit was sitting atop her sink, open, and she had popped out the purple armor plates guarding her stomach, propping them against the tub. He could taste her apathy, her denial, her listlessness.
He teleported the dagger away, and said, "Look, why don't you tell me what's got your tail in a bunch, and I'll help you put your armor back on. I'll leave you alone if you want, but I need to know what happened." He made a tentative moment of eye contact, and sat down in front of her.
Glados looked away, and said, "A large fleet of airships attacked us, and took all but one escape vehicle. We drew straws, and I got to come home, to find you, alive." She surprised herself with the amount of spite she could put behind such a positive word.
He sighed, and asked, "What's so bad abo..." He trailed off, and slapped his forehead with a hoof. A dozen seemingly random things fit into place; her avoidance of Ladybug, her remark about being happy, her suddenly intense awareness of her sex life.
Glados didn't look at him. She couldn't.
He shook his head slowly, and said, "Oh... I... I can't believe I didn't realize that."
She sat up, and hung her head low, biting her lower lip. She closed her eyes, trying to keep the tears welling up behind them at bay, and sniffled. She expected him to act all sorry, beat around the bush while telling her that she had to move on, and leave her without helping.
He wrapped his forelegs around her back, and nuzzled her side affectionately. "Why didn't you just make your move sooner?" he asked her.
Her breath caught, and she clenched her eyes shut, turning to face the wall to her left. "I didn't want to take advantage of her grief," she said, choking on the final syllable.
She hadn't said, "I didn't want her to think I was taking advantage of her grief." She hadn't cared about what the others thought of her. She just didn't want to live with the idea that she had taken advantage of Ladybug, even if she didn't intend to.
His eyes snapped open, and he gulped. Some part of him made him regret coming back to life. He had stolen away what was probably Glados's only chance. That part of him was immediately scolded by every other fiber in his body, but he couldn't think of a better solution.
Ouch.
He said, "I... She wasn't aware of that."
"Couldn't..." she choked. "... tell her."
He couldn't just tell her to move on. He wasn't cruel. But he couldn't just give her what she wanted.
Or could he?
Well, he couldn't just give Ladybug to Glados, because that would be slavery. But he could turn a blind eye to a bit of playing around. No, that wouldn't sit well with his conscience.
He thought back to a conversation he'd had with Ladybug the previous night, and smiled as the solution became glaringly obvious.
He gently patted the general on the back, and said, "I'll be right back."
She didn't respond, and simply sniffled as he left the room.
When she looked up, a mass of yellow and red was sitting in front of her, and Toothless was smiling mischievously —a look she'd come to dread over the years. She wiped her eyes with a hoof, and blinked at Ladybug, who was sitting less than a meter away, so tantalizingly close, but so painfully far.
Toothless said, "Glados, you are a well respected general, my personal advisor, and all around bossy sister. Ladybug has been informed of your infatuation with her, and, since there isn't a legal process by which marriages can simply pick up where they left off if one of the parties involved dies, she is technically single."
Glados thought over his words a few times, letting them bounce around in her head for a moment. Her eyes lit up as she realized what he was trying to say, and stood up. She wrapped a foreleg around his neck, and hugged him to her chest in an overly enthused moment of glee. "You're the best brother ever!" she said, her words barely separated by any length of time distinguishable from that between syllables, and placed a myriad of quick kisses on his left cheek.
By the time he managed to escape her grasp, his entire face was practically glowing bright blue. He pushed the general off of him, and said, "Now, I'm not going to just let you win her over entirely. I'm still in need of a princess, and I'm still going to marry her eventually."
"Whatever! You should go deal with the pirates! Bye!" Glados rambled, before quickly herding him out of her bedroom, and slamming the door shut behind him.
He blinked profusely as he regained his bearings, and shouted through the closed door, "What? So I'm supposed to announce to everyone that I'm alive by myself?"
The door opened for a moment, during which time the general taped a piece of paper to the front of the left door, which read, "Do not enter. Stay out. (Seriously, I will not be held responsible for any damages resulting from failure to follow this rule.)"
Toothless opened his mouth to speak, then jumped backwards as Glados retuned to place a hasty kiss on his nose, and snorted at the sign, "Nice." He turned to his left, prepared to leave, but added, "If she comes back to my room with a positive pregnancy test, you're fired."
"Okay," came the general's voice, accompanied by a trilling giggle from her partner.
He glanced over his shoulder, and shuddered, before marching down the hallway.
As he walked through the many halls of the castle, he took some time to think about his plans, of his reign. After he and Ladybug got married, and Glados reconciled her feelings for Ladybug, he could get to work on his great project, a key part of his public image —at least, before he'd died; wholesale reform of the changeling laws.
When his parents had built the city, their subjects had insisted they incorporate the old changeling legal system into their constitution. And, while his parents hadn't been naïve enough to leave the entire unedited bulk of messy, often contradicting laws that had supported the undisputed rule of the same queen for two thousand years in the law of their new city state, they hadn't been given enough time to edit the whole thing.
They had made it better, but it was still a huge mess, largely unstudied, and wildly inconsistent.
He had dedicated his spare to time to doing some deep dives on the books, but even he had only explored a small fraction of them, which was still a lot of reading.
Thankfully, they had inserted a clause into their constitution that basically said, "The changeling legal code will not hold any legislative power until this document is eighteen years old."
Something nagged at him. He didn't know what it was or why, but it bothered him.
He considered asking some of the purples what the exact date was, so he could get more acclimated to being alive again, when he tripped over something, landing on his face.
He groaned, and looked up.
The nameless changeling filly smiled down at him, and flapped her gossamer wings, lifting herself into the air. She gently set herself back down on Toothless's back, and curled up into a small ball, letting her head rest on the pink armor that covered his back. Her golden eyes drifted closed, and she gently nuzzled his white chitin as he stood up.
"Hi," he told her, and asked, "Do you have a name yet?"
She nodded.
"Don't bother with the silent treatment. I know you can talk," he told her.
Her breathing became slow and regular, as though she were asleep.
He didn't buy it, not for one second. "Look, dad explained the condition to me, and assigned me as your personal guardian in the event of his death. I know you have something to say," he told her.
He was referring to an unfortunate hereditary mishap that had only happened because she was both a biological queen, and their father's child. Changeling queens developed incredibly fast —unless the current queen somehow stops the hive from feeding them the necessary diet for the development of a queen, and stunts their growth, as Chrysalis had after her first successor became a rebellious traitor.
Queens also did other things that didn't really make genetic sense, like how each and every queen had a different pair of wings, horn shape, and many more differences. The trick was that DNA had very little to do with it. The biological diversity of queens was all about magic, which dramatically altered the epigenetic influences on a growing queen.
And they grew at incredible rates —Chrysalis's first child was rumored to be less than a year younger than her.
Between that, along with their father's unfortunate ability to learn faster than normal ponies, and the evidence she'd already provided Toothless with that she understood language, he was fairly positive that she could speak.
She stretched her legs out, and flapped her wings slowly, not taking off, but fanning him in the hopes that he might stop prompting her.
She did know how to pander, he'd admit. The gentle breeze she generated did feel nice in the warm desert air of the dry season.
Still, he pressed, "You're only convincing me all the more that you have a secret to keep."
He shook his head, and rolled his eyes, deciding that he'd deal with her later. He continued walking, occasionally making remarks about how much she'd grown since he'd last seen her.
Then, as he made a sharp left turn, and emerged into the throne room, he said, "So, Glados left me in charge of dealing with a..." He trailed off as the gravity of his task hit him.
He hadn't had the time to think about Glados's news. It had been of less priority than stopping her from committing suicide, and, now, as the words she'd used buzzed around in his head, he began to panic.
He looked around the throne room, and focused his gaze on a large, circular table in the center of the room, give or take a few meters towards the back of the room. Around the polished blue table sat a dozen or so members of the guard, eah with their own chairs that matched the table in color.
A large, holographic model of the city covered the table, with the outer wall lining the edge of the table. In the center stood the grand castle, with its many branches and spires, which was surrounded by a circular road, and the city itself sprawled around it.
He stepped closer to the group, who were busy with some important discussion. All of them seemed to speak at once, and none of them noticed him until he reached a hoof over the table.
He phased through the hologram of the wall, and sat down so his eyes were level with the table. He could see through the wall, and even make out the shape of an individual changeling, smiling gaily as she went about her daily business.
By that point, all of the purples had stopped talking, and were staring at him.
He stood up, and cleared his throat. "So... Glados tells me that the Prydwen was attacked by a fleet of pirates," he said, smiling nervously.
There was a flash of purple light, and two mares landed on the center of the table with a thud. One lacked the stains and marks of her previous battle, and was dressed from hoof to head in her purple armor. The other was clearly exhausted, panting heavily as she made her way to the edge of the table.
Ladybug's fur was visibly matted with sweat in several places, most notably on her shoulder blades, where her wings met her back, and her ears were pinned to the back of her head, hiding themselves away inside her rosy mane. She hopped onto the floor, whereupon Toothless turned to the other mare, and said, "That was fast."
Glados chuckled from atop the table, and said, "Unlike you, Toothless, I've had lots of practice with mares. We've made an agreement, and I'm not done by a long shot, but I have a war to wage, because nopony messes with my family and gets away with it. Could you please take Pupa to her doctor's appointment? It's in the research and development wing." A look of keen pride flashed across her eyes, and she cleared her throat, before addressing her comrades.
Toothless blinked at her, but nodded, and cast a quick glance at the spent pegasus next to him. "We have an R and D department?" he asked her.
Milli growled as she and two of her sisters slowly sat down, cowed by the larger force, surrounded, hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned. They couldn't escape from the gondala, as the only way out was off the ship, where the perpetual sandstorm raged.
The larger force in question was barely worth calling an army, as they had clearly lacked proper or amateur training. They were all covered in grease and oil, which stained their black chitin. They all had ghostly blue eyes, but she couldn't recognize any of them as citizens of New Hiveland, and she would have, as she had been the most active member of the postal service for a good two years now.
Two of them stepped out of the way for a different changeling to meet the last group of fighters.
Milli blinked when she recognized the mare.
Her eyes were orbs of scarlet red. Her wings were shaped like those of a pegasus, with hundreds of black, chitinous feathers bristling as she moved. Her frills were a vibrant shade of orange, and the large plate of armor on her back was sky blue. The smaller plates that guarded her stomach were different colors, from front to back, banana yellow, earthy green, and cyan. Her tail was a deep navy blue, and it flicked from side to side as she spoke, exposing her white tongue in the process. Her voice was deep, raspy, and feminine, and she said, "Oh, good. You remember me."
Milli asked, "What are you doing here?"
The rainbow changeling laughed quietly, and said, "What does it look like? I'm winning." She spread her wings proudly, and walked towards the purple changeling. "How's your brother doing?" she asked nonchalantly.
Milli frowned for a brief moment, before growling at the multicolored mare, whose hoof lifted her chin up.
"Oh. Poor, poor thing. You miss him. You actually care about a stallion," she teased, and shook her head, rolling her eyes.
The purple mare continued to growl at her, while two groups of three changelings moved in to carry her comrades off. She didn't care how she knew about Toothless's death.
The rainbow mare turned around, and Milli said, "You know, this ship doesn't have any weapons. It's basically useless if you plan to attack the city."
She laughed, and said, "The ship is the weapon, Millipede."
"It's just Milli," the purple muttered, before something solid met the back of her head, sending her helmet flying.
The helmet hit the rainbow mare in the back of the head, who then turned around to look at the guard.
Milli held her front hooves in the air, suppressing a smile.
The pirate leader glared at the changeling who had hit Milli in the back of the head, who promptly dropped the metal pipe he was carrying, and spat, "Take her to the brig."
Milli shook her head slowly, and said, "There isn't one."
"Maybe not on this ship," she chortled.
"How would you get me into another ship in this weather?" Milli asked her, raising an eyebrow.
A chuckle answered her, and she was led out of the ship. Milli expected the pirates leading her to dump her into the endless sandstorm, and commit mutiny in the process, as their commanding officer had just told them to take her to a brig of sorts.
Then the main hatch opened, and she was pushed out of the ship.
Landing on her hooves, she looked around, and her jaw fell open.
The chrome colored walls of a vast air hanger surrounded her on all sides, and the grand ship in which she had flown was simply tethered to the floor by a few chains. It looked minuscule when compared to the ceiling of the hanger, which rose to nearly triple the Prydwen's height.
Something solid slammed into the back of her now unprotected head, and she collapsed as the world spun away from her.